DIRECTION
Volume 4, No. 3, 1941
The Art In Industry Issue

Paul Rand: DIRECTION. Darien, CT: Volume 4, No. 3, 1941. Original Edition. A very good magazine with wear to the spine, including splits at top and bottom. Features a classic collage cover design by Paul Rand.

8.25 x 10.75 saddle-stitched magazine book with 24 pages of fiction, social commentary and art. DIRECTION was the laboratory where Rand tested many of this developing theories of modern design and typography. Because he worked without compensation (except for a few Corbusier lithographs...) Rand was allowed a tremendous amount of aesthetic leeway in designing the DIRECTION magazine covers. With little money budgeted for typesetting, Rand used his own handwriting for the cover copy, and the rest is history.

Paul Rand's DIRECTION covers have been reprinted in every major graphic design anthology and have achieved iconic stature in their own right. This DIRECTION cover stands as a true icon of American Modernism -- it has reproduced in countless anthologies, including Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's VISION IN MOTION (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947: page 309) and Gyorgy Kepes' LANGUAGE OF VISION (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944: page 71). I believe this cover was one of Rand's personal favorites since it always seemed to show up in his self-edited compendiums such as Yusaku Kamekura's PAUL RAND (Tokyo: Ginza Graphic Gallery, 1992).

In VISION IN MOTION, author Laszlo Moholy-Nagy described this cover: "The rigid use of the traditional horizontal and vertical typography has now been discarded in favor of an oblique composition mixed with drawings, photographs, facsimile handwriting, derived from the collage and photomontage, easily reproduced by the photo-engraving techniques." That sums it up quite nicely.

The theme for this issue of DIRECTION is Art in Industry and includes these sections:

• POSTERS: work by Howard Willard, A. M. Cassandre, E. McKnight Kauffer, Herbert Bayer, Will Burtin, Lester Beall, Jean Carlu, Alexey Brodovitch and Gustav Jensen. Includes short biographies of the designers.
• BOOKS: work by Robert Jospehy and E. McKnight Kauffer. etc.
• TYPOGRAPHY: work by Paul Rand, Harry Burke, etc.
• PRODUCT DESIGN: work by John Vassos, Alvar Aalto, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Gustav Jensen, Davis Pratt, etc.

The Art in Industry special issue was coordinated by Percy Seitlin. Seitlin was a writer and co-editor of PM and AD magazines. He served on the staff of the Composing Room from 1933 to 1943 and helped to organize and run the AD Gallery and then Gallery 303. He was director of advertising and publicity at Aetna Steel Products Corp., head of product publicity for Celanese Corporation of America, did PR for the Museum of Modern Art's exhibit on Marcel Breuer, wrote poetry, short stories, advertising copy and articles on the graphic arts and typography for several publications. His books include New York: People and Places.

Edited by William Gropper, et al, including contributing editors Richard Wright, Kenneth Burke and Edwin Seaver. A dynamic, frequently visually striking, consistently left of center journal of literature and the arts, drawing on the foundations left by the WPA for much of its brilliance. A substantial roster of contributors appeared through its tenure, including Dreiser, Dos Passos, Le Corbusier, Caldwell, Rexroth, Kees, Larsson, Abel, Kemp, Anderson, Herbst, Scott, Brown, Art Young, Halper, Komroff, Macleod, Bourke White, Burke, di Donato, Woody Guthrie, Seldes, Lorentz, Hughes, Maltz, Chaplin, Sandburg, R. Lowry, Ellison, Morris, et al. A major 20th century American periodical which is increasingly difficult to acquire in decent condition.

out of stock