DOT ZERO 1-4
Robert Malone (editor), Massimo Vignelli (designer)

Robert Malone (editor), Massimo Vignelli (designer): DOT ZERO 1-4. NYC: Dot Zero/Finch Pruyn, 1966-67. Complete set of magazine First editions. A very good to about fine set: very light wear to covers with a few spots to the cover of issue 4. All interiors unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print.

Each issue is 9 x 12 perfect-bound with 48 pages of editorial content dealing with design and its effects on the man-made environment. DOT ZERO was an interesting publishing experiment that was about fifteen years ahead of its time. Sponsored and underwritten by a paper company, it paired Robert Malone's editorial sense with Massimo Vignelli's aesthetic sensibilities in a journal that has never been replicated. With a cast of contributors ranging from Marshall McLuhan to Bruno Munari to Reyner Banham to John Kenneth Galbraith to Umberto Eco, it made a real attempt to address design issues in the environmental context.

Back in 1966, the medium truly was the massage. Only in the pages of DOT ZERO could inquiring minds find articles about computer graphics, corporate identity, paperbacks as a mass medium and environmental management. A very stimulating publication that only lasted for four issues-- the lack of advertising dollars probably did not help Malone and Vignelli spreaad their message too far.

A unique opportunity to acquire a complete set of this short-lived design journal.

DOT ZERO 1 (n.d.) contents:

  • Intaglio relief cover printed on Finch,Pruyn opaque text and cover papers
  • Introduction by Herbert Bayer
  • Editorial by Robert Malone
  • Decline of the Visual by Marshall McLuhan
  • Computer Graphics: Extending the Visual Media by Maurice L. Constant
  • Variations on the Face by Bruno Munari
  • The Psychology of Visual Communication by Martin Krampen
  • Printing as an Art Form by Eugene Feldman
  • Questions of Legibility by Bror Zachrisson
  • Alternatives to Architecture by Arthur Drexler
  • Greetings by cards by Josef Albers, Roy Lichtenstein and others from a MOMA exhibit
  • Vasarely review

DOT ZERO 2 (1966) contents:

  • Cover design and printing by Eugene Feldman
  • Trademark Design by Jay Doblin
  • Corporate Identity as a System by Nan Adams
  • Canadian Flag by George Bain
  • Museum Graphics by Allon Schoener
  • All that glitters isnot stainless by Reyner Banham
  • Visual/Verbal Rhetoric by Gui Bonsiepe
  • Economics and Environment by Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith
  • Bettmann Portable Archive Review

DOT ZERO 3 (Spring 1967) contents:

  • Cover design coutesy of the World Journal Tribune
  • The Plastic Parthenon by John McHale
  • Will newspapers ever enter the 20th century? by Clay Felker
  • The Hybrid Media: an interview with John Diebold
  • Paperbacks as a Mass Medium by Germano Facetti
  • Photography and the Mass media by John Szarkowski
  • Film -- An Essay by Gordon Hitchens
  • Mass Media: the Stimulation System by Jay Doblin
  • Leo Lionni book review by Mildred Constantine
  • The Living Line by Thomas George

DOT ZERO 4 (Summer 1967) contents:

  • Cover photo by George Cserna
  • A Theory of Expositions by Umberto Eco
  • The concept of environmental managment by Serge Boutourline
  • Designing Creative America by Ivan Chermayeff
  • Creating emotional involvment in geography, geology and space science: an interview with Rudolph de Harak
  • Thoughts on three-dimensional science communication by Will Burtin
  • Alpha Chambers by Kenneth Isaacs
  • Expo '67 puts you in the picture by Bosley Crowther
  • Five films at Expo by Willard van Dyke

Massimo Vignelli recalls the exact day that he found the design language that he would be known for. It was 1963, he had a studio in Milan, Lella & Massimo Vignelli Design & Architecture, where he designed in a reductive manner using Helvetica, black rules, and solid colored backgrounds. He put this into practice for Sansoni designing formats for scores of series and hundreds of books until leaving Italy for American in 1965. Today he uses more Bodoni, but hasnıt changed his basic design attitude one iota. He made his early reputation by designing strict formats for series like these.

"I always worked like this from the very beginning, I never had another way but this structural approach," admits Vignelli proudly. "My aim was always to reach maximum impact, so I used Helvetica on white or solid color backgrounds, which stood out ‹ boom ‹ from the texture of all the other books on the shelves. I designed many series this way, I had some books with only white covers with type raining down and some with a black and white illustration on bottom. We wanted to develop standards to avoid gratuitous criticism by publisherıs wives or secretaries and sales people. First and foremost we were searching for objectivity. So we convinced the publisher that a book was like a soap box. The publisherıs brand was the important thing, so each book looked alike. We played safe with the illustration by using things from the past. Who could argue with Rembrandt and Durer?"

out of stock