The Moderns: Midcentury American Graphic Design by Steven Heller and Greg D'Onofrio, 2017. Abrams Books, USA. 9.5 x 11.5, pp. 336. Designed by Kind Company. Heavily illustrated with more than 785 color illustrations; many never published before. themodernsbook.com
Modernism transformed American graphic design in the mid-twentieth century and established a visual language that still carries tremendous authority. The Moderns is the first comprehensive survey of this phenomenon that shaped our visual environment, presenting the work and lives of sixty-three graphic designers.
Some were émigrés (including five Bauhaus students and faculty) who brought the gospel of Modernism to America from its sources in Europe. Others were homegrown talents who continued the legacy in the design capitals of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles from around 1937 with the founding of the New Bauhaus to 1970, the height of the International Typographic Style. Some of these designers are well-known, others are honored in this volume for the first time.
Like Modernism itself, this selective group had varying viewpoints and methods yet were bound by governing principles of function, clarity, and simplicity held together through geometry, abstraction, and minimalism. Brand new hardcover, still in the original publisher's shrink wrap.