Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

It’s hard to imagine a time when the government actually promoted the graphic arts. Yes, it’s true. It was once considered a respectable vocation, not just a haven for leftist intellectuals. Between 1935 and 1943, the Federal Art Project was created to encourage American design and art. It was part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Works Progress Administration. The federal government created the WPA to help restore the economy during the Great Depression by employing Americans in every industry. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn this into a lengthy essay on the ramifications and legacies of this leading to Johnson’s Great Society. Let’s stick to the travel posters; they’re a safer subject.

These posters promoted travel in the United States. They take advantage of the limited printing technologies available and use simple shapes to create depth. The colors are unexpected, but never seem incorrect. The Grand Canyon is a study in pink and purple. Lassen Volcanic National Park’s poster has a plum colored lake and avocado green sky. Often, the posters employ a strong foreground and extreme shadows. The result is a dramatic and grand landscape similar to a Bierstadt painting. The attraction posters at Disneyland designed 20 years later, employee the same techniques.

What is remarkable to me is the clarity of each poster. They each have a strong point of view and do not appear to be designed by a committee. But, the federal government was the client, so maybe every poster was subjected to 100 committees suggesting a nice blue sky, some culturally, age, and racially diverse happy people, representation of all the available activities, colors that are more lifelike, and more detail. After all, will anyone be able to recognize the blue shapes on the left as mountains?

Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Richard Halls, Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Frank Nicholson, Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Frank Nicholson, Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Frank Nicholson, Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Frank Nicholson, Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

M. Weitzman, Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Alexander Dux, Federal Art Project, WPA, 1935-1943

Disneyland Grand Canyon Diorama poster, 1959

Alfred Bierstadt, Among The Sierra Nevada Mountains California, 1868

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There is a fine line in design between clever and trite. Often, I’ll see a solution that is trying too hard, forcing itself on the viewer and screaming, “I’m clever!, I’m clever, dammit!” The projects that succeed are the solutions that appear effortless, even obvious. Obvious is hard. It’s easy to think something won’t work because it’s so obvious everyone would have the same solution. But, that’s just it. Everyone thinks that, so nobody does the obvious. The best example that is clever, effortless, and once seen, seems completely obvious is the work Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar did for Pepsi-Cola World. It’s light, playful, never forced, and beautifully articulated.

The solutions, often a fused image, provide the viewer with the pleasure of solving a problem. The payoff is delight. I don’t mean delight as in “That tea set is just delightful.” Delight is hard to make. And it’s a feeling that makes life worth living.

images courtesy of the Lou Danziger Collection and AIGA Design Archives

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, November 1961

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, June 1958

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, February 1960

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, Summer 1959

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, September 1964

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, March 1961

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, December 1961

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, April 1965

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, March 1959

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, December 1959

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, November 1958

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, October 1958

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, November 1959

Pepsi Cola World, Chermayeff and Geismar, Summer 1958

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Tony Palladino, promotion for a packaging designer, 1957

After this year’s Command X at AIGA Pivot, one of the designers, Wendy Hu, sent me a thoughtful thank you note. I didn’t expect it, but I was touched to receive it. The note is still on my desk. It’s a lost art, but a handwritten note is a sign of respect. In my taboret at work, I have two other notes. I have a quickly scribbled note from Tibor Kalman congratulating me on a project. I also have a note from Tony Palladino, complimenting our first UCLA Extension poster. The note from Tony was, for me, the equivalent of an Academy Award. We were getting slammed left and right by the groovy designers as we weren’t layering images on images, mangling type, or making purposely oblique messages. The UCLA poster was a statement about our design philosophy, that old clarity, purity, and resonance. Tony’s note was an affirmation that we might be doing something worthwhile.

I’ve always been interested in inherently American works of art. Tony Palladino’s work is that. He was born in Manhattan in the 1930 and spent his youth in the vibrant and gritty world of New York during the depression. He may adopt some of the principals of Bauhaus Modernism, but it is filtered through a layer of American high energy and spontaneity. Like jazz, Tony’s work is rigidly crafted, but bursting with an energy that does not play politely. His solutions are brave and unapologetic. The SVA poster hand-drawn with markers is a hand-drawn poster made with markers. In the hands of a lesser talent, this would be a sketch, and the final poster would be a polite geometric set of gradations, dull and elegant.

The American identity is complex. It is a mix of Puritanism and extremes. It is pragmatic and didactic. And, it is about optimism. Tony’s humor is clear in all of his solutions. This levity, craft, vitality, and intelligence are a miraculous combination. Add in Tony’s poetic vision, and the results are rare and spectacular.

Tony Palladino, poster for SVA

Tony Palladino, poster for SVA, 1970s

Tony Palladino, poster for SVA, 1984

Tony Palladino, poster for SVA, 1959

Tony Palladino, poster, 1957

Tony Palladino, poster The Wedding Party, 1975

Tony Palladino, cover for Architectural & Engineering News, 1967

Tony Palladino, cover for Architectural & Engineering News, 1963

Tony Palladino, envelope, 1986

Tony Palladino, book cover, Far Out, 1961

Tony Palladino, poster, The Women's Strike for Peace

Tony Palladino

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Ryuichi Yamashiro, Japanese Cancer Society, 1960

I feel sorry for the people who work with me. It must seem that I have a remarkable memory for an obscure design solution from 1960, but I can’t remember their names. And I can only nod and pretend I know what they are talking about, when they discuss new music. You know, that rock and roll.

I found myself referring someone to a beautiful poster designed by the master, Ryuichi Yamashiro in 1960. It’s an appeal fort the Japanese Cancer Society, and remarkably pairs multiple images in a concise composition. At the same time, I suggested a cute ad for a knitting mill, a catalogue spread by Erik Nitsche, and a shoe company poster from Germany. What do these have in common? They were all designed around 1960. Other than that, I don’t know. And I imagine they had no connective tissue for the person that I told to find them. They’re used to that, though. The designers who work with me always politely find the example, put it on their desk, and smile when I walk by. Then they look at each other and roll their eyes. I’m sure of it.

poster, H. Michel and Günther Kieser, Schuhhaus Kiefer, 1960

ad, Lionel Kalish, Marum Knitting Mills, 1959

catalogue spread, Erik Nitsche, General Dynamics, 1959

ad, Herb Lubalin, SH&L, 1959

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1963 Cadillac

My family never had a Cadillac. My grandparents always had a beige or brown Mercedes, and the Wagoneer, “Old Blue,” at the ranch. My father stuck with the Mercedes thing except for a detour in the late 1960s and the requisite VW bus. Other friends’ families had Cadillacs. I coveted them and was deeply jealous. The Mercedes was nice and staid, and said, “Please. We’re not flashy.” But a yellow Cadillac said, “What the hell, let’s have drinks and get into trouble.” When you’re 13, this sounds far better. Now the unfortunate part of this is that by the time I could buy a Cadillac they were, forgive me, ugly. For awhile I considered buying a vintage one and researched every year and make. Like most of us, I’ve been conditioned too well. It sounds like a swell plan, but when the time came to head to the vintage car auction, I thought, “well, they really are kind of flashy.”

For me, 1964 was the pinnacle year. The fins were still in place, but had lost the trashy factor of the 1959 model. The profile is clean and almost a perfect rectangle. It’s sleek and clean. It’s probably a good thing that I’m not the CEO at GM. If I were, I’d be retooling and pumping out 1964 Cadillac Eldorados. If they worked like a new car and had all the features we now want, like seat belts, who wouldn’t want one? And if they were all over the road, I wouldn’t feel too flashy in mine.

1964 Cadillac Eldorado

1962 Cadillac Eldorado

1960 Cadillac Eldorado

1959 Cadillac, too flashy

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