In the history of graphic design, students were given the task of designing a publication to reflect a time period of design. Our group was assigned the topic of mid-century modernism. When we first thought of mid-century modernism architecture and furniture pieces came to mind. But we wanted to design something solely focused on art by graphic designers.
We created this publication with a purpose in mind. Our magazine was created for Parsons The New School in New York, New York. Our mission in creating this publication was to encourage alumni to join the graduate program and continue on in higher education. Parsons The New School is an art school that has taught many famous mid-century modernist designers such as Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Alex Steinweiss, and many more that we included in our publication.
Our production process began with gathering the artistic content of seven Parsons mid-century modern alumni artists. We included photos of their art and wrote about each artist’s work in a layout and grid system to ensure that each chapter was cohesive throughout the magazine. As a group, we chose to echo the artistic style of Paul Rand’s 1943 advertisement for Coronet Brandy called Waiter. This brand character became our cover photo along with the colors black, white, and red.
An emphasis on Paul Rand’s Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America also impacted our publication because his exhibit focused on forty mid-century whimsical designers. Much like our own publication, we displayed seven different mid-century artists’ work and how it impacted life as we know it.
COLLABORATORS
Jennifer Hollifield, Lydia Sutton, Abbie Vanasse, and Trinity Hamic.
This publication was physically printed using East Park Printing in Clemson, South Carolina.
The full 96-page publication can be found on Issuu.com at https://issuu.com/jennifer_hollifield_anderson.edu/docs/issue
