CATALOG DESIGN PROGRESS:
Advancing Standards in Visual Communication
Ladislav Sutnar and K. Longberg-Holm

Ladislav Sutnar and K. Longberg-Holm: CATALOG DESIGN PROGRESS: Advancing Standards in Visual Communication. NYC: Sweet's Catalog Service, 1950. A fine plastic coil-bound book in a near-fine dust jacket. The screen-printed cover boards have one smudge to the yellow ink and the die-cut dust jacket has a couple of spots darkening the uncoated tan paper. It is difficult to imagine finding a nicer copy of this landmark edition.

9.5 x 12.5 hardcover book with approximately 106 illustrated pages. In addition to the presence of the scarce dust jacket, this book also includes the folowing pieces of ephemera laid in: one 8.5 x 11 folded mailing order forms (designed by Sutnar), one 11 x 14 pre-publication folder/order form (designed by Sutnar) and one 8.5 x 11 folded mailing order form for American Standard Catalogues (also designed by Sutnar). There is also a publishers second of the Architectural Review (March 1951) review of Catalogue Design. The presence of this original ephemera make this a truly one-of-a-kind offering.

According to Steven Heller: "Over forty years after its publication, Catalog Design Progress remains the archetype for functional design. It is a textbook for how designers can organize and prioritize information in a digital environment... "

"...Ladislav Sutnar was a progenitor of the current practice of information graphics, the lighter of a torch that is carried today by Edward Tufte and Richard Saul Wurman, among others. For a wide range of American businesses, Sutnar developed graphic systems that clarified vast amounts of complex information, transforming business data into digestible units. He was the man responsible for putting the parentheses around American telephone area-code numbers when they were first introduced."

"As impersonal as the area-code design might appear, the parentheses were actually among Sutnar's signature devices, one of many he used to distinguish and highlight information. As the art director, from 1941 to 1960, of F.W. Dodge's Sweet's Catalog Service, America's leading distributor and producer of trade and manufacturing catalogues, Sutnar developed various typographic and iconographic navigational devices that allowed users to efficiently traverse seas of data. His icons are analogous to the friendly computer symbols used today."

"He made Constructivism playful and used geometry to create the dynamics of organization," says Noel Martin, who was a member of Sutnar's small circle of friends in the late 1950s."

"One of his favorite comments was: "Without efficient typography, the jet plane pilot cannot read his instrument panel fast enough to survive. [So] new means had to come to meet the quickening tempo of industry. Graphic design was forced to develop higher standards of performance to speed up the transmission of information. [And] the watchword of today is 'faster, faster'; produce faster, distribute faster, communicate faster." ©2004 AIGA

out of stock