What in the world is Leo Lionni doing in the Module 7 lecture? He is a children’s’ book illustrator!
I was very surprised to see Leo Lionni’s name as an illustrator of the Nevada entry for CCA’s States Series, since I was familiar with his name as an illustrator for children’s’ book. Indeed, I have read “Swimmy”, “Fables”, “Frederick” (still have that one) and others to my boys many times . If you are unfamiliar with his work, his website has an image of Frederick the mouse (probably his most famous book) showing his unique drawing style: https://www.leolionni.com/ He won a Caldecott Medal for Frederick and three other of his books.
More links about his books for children:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/02/20/leo-lionni-annie-lionni-creativity/
https://lithub.com/leo-lionni/
https://www.printmag.com/design-topics/the-space-of-story-the-small-worlds-of-leo-lionni/
So, it turns out that he didn’t write and illustrate children’s books until he was 52 and before that, he was quite the advertising genius. He started as a painter in Italy but moved to Philadelphia in 1938 (Mussolini was in power by then) and had a very successful career doing art and designs for big advertising clients like Ford and Chrysler. He was so successful that he was entered into the Advertising Art Hall of Fame. In 1948, he moved onto working as the art director for Fortune magazine, and stayed there until 1960. And finally, he also accepted outside commissions, which is how he ended up as an illustrator for CCA’s State Series.
I can only find a small amount of his advertising work online, but what I can find shows that he displays a lot of the features of the works we studied in this module: less text, a strong visual component, integrating typography with the image, and they look more modern than old fashioned. He doesn’t use photos however! He even did some posters for the US War Office, which seems to have been done by almost all of the designers who immigrated to the US before WWII (Lionni was born in Italy, came to the US, and returned to Italy in 1960).
Some links with his works:
https://digital.library.unt.edu/search/?q=%22Lionni+Leo%22&t=fulltext
His work at Fortune magazine mentoring other artists:
https://illustrationage.com/2018/04/03/turn-back-the-pages-leo-lionni-fortune-magazine/
Is this work something that would work today?
As I read through Meggs and looked at the images, I kept asking myself, “would this work as a designed piece today?” And while many look a bit dated because of the font used or even the style of the work, many of the pieces are only dated because the photograph used has a model with 1950s hair or clothes, and if you changed that out, it would absolutely work in a magazine or ad today.
It would be a fun exercise to take some of the posters that are out of copyright and try to update them so that they look fresh and modern.
Can you find copies of the Bauhaus and Graphis magazine online? And in English?
Graphis magazine still seems to be in existence as a competition, and you can buy the old editions (2$ for a digital PDF), But they and the copies of the Bauhaus magazines I could find are still in German. It would be fun to look at the illustrations and images though!
Other questions I didn’t have time to explore in depth:
Does the Noun Project discuss their roots in the Isotype movement?
Why is Fortune magazine right up there with CCA in using the greats of early and late modernism? I did find a link I didn’t have time to watch: https://www.coursera.org/lecture/graphic-design-history/case-study-fortune-magazine-jUTX0
I typed in “Bauhaus” in my Libby app (online library books) and the SFPL had a copy of “IBauhaus”, or how Steve Jobs was influenced by the Bauhaus style (namely Herbert Bayer’s work at the Aspen Institute). What exactly spoke to him?
What are the differences and similarities between Caslon and Times New Roman?