Letters from the Avant-Garde: Modern Graphic Design

by Ellen Lupton, Elaine Lustig Cohen

Letters from the Avant-Garde presents designs for businessephemera -- including stationery, envelopes, postcards, andbusiness cards -- created by F.T. Marinetti, AndréBreton, Herbert Bayer, Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky, Mies van der Rohe,Jan Tschichold, Ladislav Sutnar, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and many others.Working in Europe and the U.S. between 1909 and 1950, these designers usedprinted stationery to project the public identities of avant-gardemovements to an international community, disseminating modernist theoryand practice around the globe via the postal service. Letters from theAvant-Garde features over 150 illustrations, in color and black andwhite, of printed ephemera from the collections of Elaine Lustig Cohen andother sources. Letters from the Avant-Garde is an invaluableresource for all those interested in graphic design, typography, and thehistory of modernism.

Critical essays show how artists and designers mobilized the techniques ofcommercial communication to promote their ideals and ambitions. Gatheredtogether for the first time, the materials presented in this book aretypographic self-portraits of the most influential people and institutionsin the development of modern design.

Genres: Design, Art

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1996

Reviews

[JBP · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm in the process of having a letterhead and some stationery made by Hammerpress in Kansas City and picked this book up a few weeks ago as inspiration of what I'd like to have done. It's not cheap having something done custom with letterpress, so, I want something I really like. This book has a myriad of examples--it's mostly images with bits of information about each design and a short introduction to each specific chapter--of the kind of thing I'm looking to do. I like the design aesthetic of the 1920s/1930s world with Constructivism and Dutch Modernism mix and am hoping to have something like that made for me. Great book to really show you different kinds of things to do with letterheads for this sort of thing.