In 1985, Berkeley-based graphic design company Emigre, the publisher of the legendary design magazine of the same name, launched one of the first independent digital type foundries to explore the new design possibilities offered by the MacIntosh computer. To announce each of their new typeface releases, Emigre published small booklets displaying the virtues of the fonts and revealing the processes used to design them. By creating specific contexts, many of these so called "type specimens" went beyond being simple sales tools. In fact the Emigre booklets were meant to be enjoyed as much for the typefaces as for their esoteric content.
In 1984 a radically new graphic design magazine set out to explore the as-yet-untapped and uncharted possibilities of Macintosh-generated graphic design. Boldly new and different, Emigre broke rules, opened eyes and earned its creators, Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, cult status in the world of graphic design. After a decade of publishing, the jury is still out on Emigre. But now, thanks to this comprehensive 10-year retrospective, you can reach your own conclusions. Are Emigre’s Mac-generated graphics important, influential and controversial…or just plain ugly? You decide. "The only people who have trouble reading Emigre are graphic designers who have been trained to make type clear. The rest of the world doesn’t live in that purist atmosphere." —Chuck Byrne, Print Magazine, September 1992 Here gathered together for the first time, you’ll find: Every Emigre cover ever issued A full catalog of over 80 Emigre typefaces Emigre’s most striking editorial layouts Plus stimulating and provocative commentary from both Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko How has a magazine that prints just 7,000 copies managed to outrage so many graphic designers while inspiring so many others? The answer is in your hands.
A quarter of a century ago, glasnost opened the door for a new look at Russian émigré culture unimpeded by the sterile concepts of Cold War cultural politics. Easier access to archives and a comprehensive approach to culture as a multi-faceted phenomenon, not restricted to single phenomena or individuals, have since contributed to a better understanding of the processes within the émigré community, of its links with the lost home country, and of the interaction with the cultural life of the countries of adoption. This volume offers a collection of critical articles that resulted from the international interdisciplinary symposium which was held at Saarland University in November 2011 as part of a one-week festival, “Russian Music in Exile”. Scholars from around the world contributed essays reflecting current perspectives on Russian émigré culture, shedding new light on cultural diplomacy, literature, art, and music, and covering essentially the whole 20th century, from pre-revolutionary movements to the present. The interdisciplinary approach of the volume shows that émigré networks were not confined to a particular segment of culture, but united composers, artists, critics, and even diplomats. On the whole, the contributions to this volume document the fascinating diversity, the internal contradictions, as well as the impact that the largest and most durable émigré movement of the 20th century had on European cultural life.
From the largely forgotten prewar visit to the city of Petain and Laval to the seizing, burning, and capsizing of the Normandie, France's floating museum, in the Hudson River, Jeffrey Mehlman evokes the writerly world of French Manhattan, its achievements and feuds, during one of the most vexed periods in French history."--BOOK JACKET.
Will the Internet of the future just be enhanced television with 'buy-now' features? Is it destined to become no more than another leisure and commerce medium, or can it be steered away from this fate by designers, taking it to surprising new directions? In this manifesto designers, critics and multimedia specialists such as Kevin Kelly, Max Kisman, Steven Heller, Aaron Betsky, and Dagan Cohen express their opinions in sharp, thought-provoking questions and declarations. In a social milieu continually transformed by computers and communication technologies, can design make a difference? Has interactive design lost its battle to interface ignorance? Are we faced with a future in which our bodies will be the interface? Everyone is a Designer is meant to inspire new creativity with its incisive look at the new "Design Economy."
This new volume addresses the lasting contribution made by Central European émigré designers to twentieth-century American design and architecture. The contributors examine how oppositional stances in debates concerning consumption and modernism's social agendas taken by designers such as Felix Augenfeld, Joseph Binder, Josef Frank, Paul T. Frankl, Frederick Kiesler, Richard Neutra, and R. M. Schindler in Europe prefigured their later adoption or rejection by American culture. They argue that émigrés and refugees from fascist Europe such as György Kepes, Paul László, Victor Papanek, Bernard Rudofsky, Xanti Schawinsky, and Eva Zeisel drew on the particular experiences of their home countries, and networks of émigré and exiled designers in the United States, to develop a humanist, progressive, and socially inclusive design culture which continues to influence design practice today.
The political changes at the end of the last century in the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Federation, had deep-reaching repercussions on the interpretation of Russian culture in the time of division between “Russia Abroad” and “Russia at Home”. Ever since, scholars have tried to understand and to describe the interrelationship between the two Russias. In spite of intensive research, numerous conferences and publications, there are still many discoveries to be made and a number of questions to be answered. This volume presents a selection of articles based on papers presented at an international conference on Russian émigré culture that was held at Saarland University, Germany, in 2015. The essays assembled here offer new insights into aspects of Russian émigré culture already known to scholarship, but also to explore new facets of it. As such, it is not the well-known centres and leading figures of Russian emigration that are highlighted; instead the authors give prominence to places of seemingly secondary importance such as Prague, Istanbul or India and to such lesser-known aspects as collections and collectors of Russian émigré art and the impact of cultural activities of the Russian emigration on the culture of the respective host countries.
Kenneth FitzGerald proposes that the objective of design, to create a class of expert professional practitioners, can - and should - only lead to its demise as a specialist profession. Lorraine Wild and Sam Potts respond, separately, to the publication of Rick Poynor's recent book "No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism." Eric Heiman urges designers to "think wrong" and refocus their creative energies to solving non-commercial, more socially motivated problems. Jeffery Keedy gives us a list of some of the most popular but dumb ideas in design. Ben Hagon warns that without a significant change in the method by which we create work, Joe Client will, in time, do our graphic design work for us. Kali Nikitas and Louise Sandhaus respond to the criticism levelled at their conversation "Visitations" which was published in Emigre #64. And Emigre interviews Armin Vit, the founder of Speak Up, design's most successful blog, and David Cabianca who discusses the value of design theory and criticism. Plus, the Readers Respond, featuring letters from around the world in response to past issues of Emigre magazine.
