#Hermanns & Froitzheim

[carbone14]

Boutique juive Hermanns & Froitzheim détruite pendant la nuit de cristal (nuit du 9 au 10 novembre 1938) – rue Breiter Weg – Magdebourg – Novembre 1938

©Bundesarchiv - Bild 146-1970-083-42

La nuit de Cristal est le pogrom contre les Juifs qui se déroula dans la nuit du 9 au 10 novembre 1938. Ce pogrom a été présenté par les responsables nazis comme une réaction spontanée de la population à la mort le 9 novembre 1938 d’Ernst vom Rath, un secrétaire de l'ambassade allemande à Paris, grièvement blessé deux jours plus tôt par Herschel Grynszpan, un jeune Juif polonais d'origine allemande. En réalité, le pogrom fut ordonné par Adolf Hitler, organisé par Joseph Goebbels et commis par des membres de la Sturmabteilung (SA), de la Schutzstaffel (SS) et de la Jeunesse hitlérienne, soutenus par le Sicherheitsdienst (SD), la Gestapo et d'autres forces de police.

Deux cent soixante sept synagogues et lieux de culte furent détruits, 7 500 commerces et entreprises gérés par des Juifs saccagés ; une centaine de Juifs furent assassinés, des centaines d'autres se suicidèrent ou moururent des suites de leurs blessures. Au total, selon les estimations les plus modérées, le pogrom causa la mort de 2 000 à 2 500 personnes.

[local-boob]

Julius Klinger. 1910. Hermanns & Froitzheim. 28 in. x 37.75 in.

[sethcampos-blog1]

History of Graphic Design - Reading 5

Chapters 13 through 17 cover the time period from the late 1800s until around 1950. This relatively small amount of time covered indicates that there are a number of significant movements taking place during this time, which all worked together to establish most of what is recognized today as graphic design.

For much of recorded history, art has been characterized by a focus on representation and depicting subject matter taken from real life. High profile movements in modern art around beginning of the 20th century worked to establish the legitimacy of non-representational art. A central part of the evolution of graphic design is the cubist movement, started by Picasso’s work in the early 1900s. In cubist works such as Man with Violin, Picasso approaches art with an emphasis on spatial relationships and geometry, rather than focusing on realistic representation of objects. Cubism, and the movements that spawned from it, paved the way for non-representational forms of image making that allow designers more control over the types and varieties of messages they seek to convey.

A significant design movement that emerged in the new world of image making was Plakatstil, which emerged from Germany around the start of the 20th century. Plakatstil’s defining characteristics, flat colors and reductive image making, have become some of the most widely recognized and used techniques in graphic design ever since. Posters such as Julius Klinger’s work for Die Lustige Woche and Hermann’s & Froitzheim’s Clothing, with their reductive depictions of birds using a small number of flat colors, use a style so repeatedly iterated on and imitated that they would not feel out of place in a contemporary environment. The reductive nature of Plakatstil designs emphasized sign, signifier, and meaning over traditional representation. These concepts are now thought of as central to effective graphic communication.

As the central figure of the Russian Constructivist movement, El Lissitzky approached art and design with structural and mathematical considerations gained from his study of architecture. Lissitzky worked with structured grid arrangements in order to create his posters and print layouts, such as The Isms of Art. By focusing on the structure of the content of his layouts, Lissitzky avoided ornamentation and focused on the object-ness of his type and content. This was a significant step in the establishment of type as form, which opened doors into new uses for typography.

One of the many contributions of the German Bauhaus movement of the early to mid 1900s was the attempt to develop a universal language of design which could be applied to visual design, industrial design, architecture, and more. By thinking about design in a broader sense, Bauhaus designers sought an integration of design into all aspects of life, and tried to envision what that would look like. The integrated, universal, and sometimes mystical approach used by members of the Bauhaus movement represented an early effort to think about the applications of design in all aspects of life. Applied design thinking has been used to great effect ever since, and it tends to be instrumental when put to use designing the future of new technologies. New technology such as AI and virtual reality are examples of fields that benefit from intentional applied design thinking.

Alexey Brodovich’s editorial design work, such as what he did for Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958, took elements from the Russian and French design movements and moved them into an American space. Brodovich’s focus on open layouts and white space, as well as sharp modern type and a unique eye for photography, defined a new approach to editorial and publication design with principles that are echoed in today’s web and publication design.

Bibliography

Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. J. Wiley & Sons, 1998.