Art Chantry speaks: a heretic's history of 20th century graphic design

265 Pages·2015·22.819 MB·English

by  Chantry, Art;Rochester, Monica René

AARRTT CCHHAANNTTRRYY SSRREEAAKKSS

ART
CHANTRY
SREAKS
A HERETIC’S
HISTORY OF
20TH CENTURY
GRAPHIC
DESIGN
Edited by Monica René Rochester
FERAL HOUSE
Contents
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
Context Is Everything
6
About the Title of the Book
9
SECTION ONE
The Language of Design
11
The Secret Brotherhood of Graphic Design 13

“Design Diversity” and the Con 17
20th-Century American Industrial Graphic Design 21
Typography as Image 29
Manufactured Style: From Prissy Victoriana to Art Deco 33
Modernism is Just Another Retro Style 39
Graphique Moderne 45
God Told Me To 49
Cheesecake Clip 57
Hallmark Psychedelia 61
The Acrimonious History of the Happy Face 75
The Anonymity of Manufactured Art 81
Alfred E. Neuman is MAD 89
Help! A Genius Cluster 92
Grade School Indoctrination 97
The Fine Art of Marketing Lowbrow 101
A High “Huh?” Factor: Japanese Graphic Design 105
Chaos as Design Theory 108
SECTION TWO
Designers and Artists
123
Ross F. George: Typographic Man of Mystery 125
Saint Paul 131
Norman Rockwell and Corporate Sentimentality 135
Alvin Lustig: A Nod is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse 139
Albert Hurter: Disney’s Crazy Uncle in the Attic 143
William Golden: Grand Master of Corporate Design 147
A.M. Cassandre’s Bazaar Surrealism 151
Richard M. Powers Showed Us What Science Fiction
Looks Like 155
Harry Chester, King of Monster Type 163
Herb Lubalin: If You Can’t Design in B&W,
You Can’t Design 169
Ivan Chermayeff and BJ 175
Robert Massin: Thinking Outside the Condom Box 179
Peter Max and the Cult of Fake Psych Celebrity 183
Cal Schenkel Cleans You! Thrills You! Cleans & Thrills You! 189
John van Hamersveld and Los Angeles Psych 193
Sister Corita Kent 197
Mo Lebowitz’s Antique Press 201
Jim Phillips: Skate or Design 204
Mouse 207
Moscoso 213
Drella, Commercial Artist 217
Genesis P-Orridge: No Future at the Death Factory 221
SECTION THREE
Tools of the Trade, Forgotten
Processes, and Obsolete Objects
225
Linotype 227
The Lost Art of the Print Process 230
Printer’s Drill 233
The Haberule 236
Printing Cuts 238
LabelMaker: Punk Typography 101 239
Stencil Lettering as Art 242
The French Curve 244
Pocket Pal 247
Punch Tape 249
Thermography 252
Niche Market Packaging 255
Matchbooks, A Tiny Design Canvas 257
AFTERWORD
The Moist Towelette
261
INDEX 262
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / COLOPHON 264
Author’s Foreword:
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
—Johnny Rotten, 1978
his is a book of opinions in essay form, gathered from
a Facebook™ blog I worked on for a few years.These
are thoughts and convictions gathered from over 40
years of practice in the field of freelance graphic
design in America. I’m firmly convinced that graphic design is a
language form—a language of color, shape, icon, idea, etc.It is a
language everyone can read and understand—and yet nobody
recognizes that fact. As a graphic designer, it has been my job to
use this language to change the minds of the viewer—“Buy this
product! Go to this event!Vote for this candidate!”
In that process, I use all the skills and knowledge at my com-
mand to manipulate the viewer into thinking the way that another
interest—a client—wants to see. I’m a virtual cultural propagan-
dist of the lowest order—a mindfucker. And I do this for hire.
Graphic design has taken on a higher reputation over the last
30 years, becoming an “art form” in many eyes.It is taught in art
departments of the highest universities and institutions in the
world.But it’s not art at all.It’s anthropology and politics and eco-
nomics—almost ANYTHING except art. It is not a muse-driven
masterpiece created by a single person in an edition of one. It is
mass-produced manipulation and coercion created to maintain the
current economic system of exploitation.
Throughout my four decades of design practice, I have inten-
tionally kept one foot in the popular culture dialog (particularly the
subcultures that produce so much design language for us) and one
foot in the “high design” culture dialog where I sought recognition
and professional prestige.By straddling that fence, my work and
my ideas became a conduit between the two, pumping in new lan-
guage and ideas from one end of the cultural spectrum to the oth-
er. This fence-sitting also gave me a soured reputation on both
ends. Neither side fully accepted my work (or me) but they still
wanted me and needed me. This outlaw status allowed me the
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freedom to pursue what I was interested in the most: to observe,
study and understand the world I operated in.
I am not a scholar.You’ll see no footnotes, few references in my
writing.Most of these essays were written daily in a single first draft
and then posted warts and all.Quite often, I would get some things
wrong and the resulting corrections in comment threads acted as
my only fact-checking source.Needless to say, it was humbling to
face my constituency and find myself corrected over and over
again. I remain in their debt forever.I thank you all, no matter how
annoying you were.
In the end, I think I’ve managed to express the observations and
history of much of this poorly documented language form.I find it
differs remarkably from the accepted mainstream narrative pre-
sented in “design education,” which tends to promote the “great
man” theory of history. I discovered that there is no “high” or “low”
in this historical dialog generally. And precious few great men.This
graphic language I present is a dialog among people—of all stripes
and walks, some talented, some lucky, all practicing the cultural
learning style of ‘monkey see, monkey do.’ The truth I found is that
this language has a deep, rich cultural interplay that goes back gen-
erations with many players, and thinkers and doers. Yes, there may
be key links in that chain of history, but it takes all the links to make
the chain.
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About the Title of the Book
n 2009, I gave one of my little talks about my work and
ideas to a chapter of the AIGA (American Institute of
Graphic Arts, a professional design organization) in Cleve-
land, Ohio. Mike Burton (of Little Jacket Design) created
this wonderful poster to advertise the event. It reads “Art Chantry
Speaks: Posters Yell.”The brilliant “censure” of my last name chang-
es the meaning of the image to “ART SPEAKS.” The use of the black
bar, the Xerox “rot” textures, the “distressed” typography and crude
handwriting all reflect a lot of my own design passions and stylistic
nuances. Yet, Mike was able to push this image into a much higher
concept that took on a more universal resonance.
For instance, within a year or so, a clothing company in Asia
started to market the principal type (with my name cancelled out
just like you see) on T-shirts for popular sale. As I understand it, the
AIGA had their lawyers approach the company and send them a
legal “cease and desist” order to stop the bootlegging of “their”
copyrighted design. All of this was done without my knowledge.
I was told about it some time later.
The photograph of the T-shirt on the back cover was taken by
Vincent Chung on a trip (to Thailand, I seem to recall), where he
spotted this version of the image still being sold on the street by
bootleg vendors. Notice how cleverly they got past the legal “cease
and desist” order! They simply altered the text to read “Art Chantry
SREAKS, Poster Yell ‘Oh My God!’” (with my last name still crossed
out with the censor bar). This is an amazing example of how the
language of design takes on a life of its own when projected (like it
always has been) INTO a shared cultural dialog.
So, now, I’m taking the whole thing back and using it as the title
of this book. However, due to fears of spelling/title confusion, I’m
self-correcting the title with LabelMaker. The world goes ’round
and ’round and spills out here (for the moment).
NOTE: For all you Seattle people, that coffee ring on the cover is
from The Dog House, c. 1992.
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