WORLD GEOGRAPHIC ATLAS
A Composite of Mans Environment
Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer (designer/editor): WORLD GEOGRAPHIC ATLAS. A Composite of Mans Environment. Chicago: Container Corporation of America, 1953. Only Edition ever produced (never commercially available). A near-fine hardcover book bound in original monkscloth covers with gold stamping to cover and spine: tips lightly worn. The pages are gilt-edged. The monkscloth (burlap) covers are unsoiled -- very unusual for this oversized volume. One of the nicest copies I have seen of this legendary volume whose form and content guarantees use and abuse.

11.25 x 15.75 hardcover book with 368 pages, including Table of contents, maps, charts, illustrations and an enormous (88-page) index. Illustrated throughout with color maps, renderings, free drawings, photography & montage. This book is a triumph of the Bauhaus ideology of clarity put into practice. It is also a high point of American book design and production, from the rossette-inspired endpaper designs to the incredible ten-color printing throughout (CMYK plus custom spot blues, reds and others).

Bayer supervised a team of three designers (Martin Rosenzweig, Henry Gardiner and Masato Nakagawa) over a five-year period in order to produce this volume for the CCA's 25th anniversary in 1953. CCA Chairman Walter Paepcke wanted Bayer to produce an atlas that reflected the new geopolitical realities of post-WWII life. In order to achieve this lofty goal, Bayer travelled throughout Europe searching out suitable maps and data, producing a re-examination of the classic atlas with Bauhaus clarity and concision. Jan Van Der Mack noted Bayers "fascination with the shape of the earth resulted in an extensive use of pictorial and diagrammatic representations in the section of geomorphology" (Cohen p.237).

Bayer chose to cross-reference his information in the following categories:

• economics
• geography
• geology
• demography
• astronomy
• and climatology.

In doing so, Bayer's clarity of vision set a benchmark for information graphics that has yet to be equalled. According to Bayer: " Successful map study provides two kinds of knowledge: interpretation of landscape, and human development in the physical setting... swiftly spreading global communications and increasing interdependence of all peoples compel us to consider the world as one. This Atlas places emphasis on the physical and material background against which man is set."

This book has to be seen and experienced to be believed.

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