INTERIORS + INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
February 1947 [Volume 106, no. 7]

"Designing Information" by Ladislav Sutnar and and K. Lonberg-Holm

9 x 12 magazine with 156 pages of color and black and white examples of the best modern American interior and industrial design, circa 1947 -- offering a magnificent snapshot of the blossoming modern movement after World War II. A very desirable, vintage publication in terms of form and content: high quality printing and clean, functional design and typography and excellent photographic reproduction make this a spectacular addition to a midcentury design collection. Highly recommended.

Contents include:

• The first installment of the Series "Designing Information" by Ladislav Sutnar and and K. Lonberg-Holm: 15 pages of elaborate design printed in two colors. The "Designing Information" Series was commissioned by Interiors magazine and originally appeared in three parts during February, March and April of 1947. "The lack of discipline in our present-day urban industrial environment has produced a visual condition, characterized by clutter, confusion and chaos," wrote Allon Shoener, the curator of the exhibition Ladislav Sutnar: Visual Design in Action, which originated at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati in 1961. "There is an urgent need for communication based upon precision and clarity. This is the area in which Ladislav Sutnar excels."
• New Furniture by Marcel Breuer: 5 pages.
• Paul Rand, Industrial Designer: 4 pages devoted to Rand's packaging design.
• Interiors Contributors: illustrated profiles of Marcel Breuer, Paul Rand, and K. Lonberg-Holm.
• Interiors Bookshelf: review of Paul Rand's Thoughts on Design.
• Architects Studio By Conrad Wachsmann and Serge Chermayeff [with fold-out].
• Modern Rooms Of The Last Fifty Years by Edgar Kaufmann: Includes work by Charles Eames, Marcel Breuer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Edward D. Stone, Walter Bogner, George Fred Keck, Walter Gropius, G. A. Berg, Erwin Gutkind, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier And Pierre Jeanerret, Josef Frank, Josef Hoffman, Charles Rennie Macintosh and others.
• Furniture News From France by Saul Steinberg [with fold-out].
• And much more.

According to Steven Heller (in Critique, 1999): "...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."

"Although Sutnar and Lonberg-Holm didn't coin the term 'information design,' Designing Information codified the tenets of clarity and accessibility like no book before it. 'The treatment of the subject came about through our realization of the need to clarify design in everyday terms, and to demonstrate that design has practical values that go far beyond mere decoration,' K. Holm said. Thus, in their hands, 'the basic elements of design-size, blank space, color, line, etc.-become tools for selectivity, simplifying the visual task' of the user. Designing Information (which was planned as a huge volume, but published in an abridged form) set out to define design as a tool for achieving the 'faster flow of information,' through principles of flow and unity. "

Sutnar and Lonberg-Holm took great pains to demonstrate the process of visualizing information by including scores of charts and graphs that addressed the needs of customers, employees, stockholders, and the general public. They believed that giving efficient form to information requires more than just pictorial illustration ('Ease of seeing means more than easy to look at,' wrote K. Holm). Their crystalline charts became the foundation on which comprehension could be built. In fact, in one simple chart the whole of Designing Information is efficiently summarized as 'Transmitting: speed, accessibility; Seeing: visual selectivity, visual continuity; Comprehending: visual extension, universality.'

Perhaps Sutnar's most significant innovation in the design of the book itself was his use of full-spread designs. Indeed, he was one of the earliest designers to treat spreads as units rather than as separate pages. Even a casual review of Sutnar's designs for everything from catalogs to brochures during his American period (with the logical exception of covers) shows that he used across-the-spread designs regularly. Using all the space at his disposal, he was able to inject excitement into even the most routine material without impinging upon comprehension: his signature navigational devices guided users firmly from one level of information to the next. At the same time, Sutnar was not an 'invisible' designer. While his basic structures were decidedly rational, the choices he made in juxtaposition, scale, and color were rooted in sophisticated principles of abstract design, bringing sensitive composition, visual charm, and emotional drama to his workaday subjects. He developed a distinctive vocabulary, or style, notable for arrows, fever lines, black bullets, and other repeated devices."

George Nelson famously served as Editorial contributor to Interiors, where he used the magazine as his bully pulpit for bringing modernism to middle-class America. Interiors was a hard-core interior design publication, as shown by their publishing credo: "Published for the Interior Designers Group which includes: interior designers, architects who do interior work, industrial designers who specialize in interior furnishings, the interior decorating departments of retail stores, and all concerned with the creation and production of interiors-- both residential and commercial."

Interiors during its peak in the 1950s was the most beautfully designed and printed American Interiors magazine I have seen. An amazing vintage mid-century resource, not to be missed. Excellent vintage resource for wallpaper, rugs and floorware, funiture, lighting, decorative objects, etc.

Spreads from this volume can be viewed here.

out of stock