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List of illustrations

  • Leaning Tower of Pisa
  • Still Life with Apples
  • Church of St. Basil in the Kremlin
  • Baptistery of San Giovanni
  • Children's Games
  • Children's Games, detail
  • Unknown
  • Romanesque capital
  • The Fountains of the Lions at the Alhambra
  • Diagram of the Parthenon
  • African ceremonial mask
  • Katsura Palace
  • Fisherman's buoys
  • Gorgan pitcher
  • Tipu's Tiger
  • Cactus
  • Song of the Stone Drums, detail
  • Lock & Company label
  • Thonet and Shaker rockers
  • Traditional roman numerals
  • Pa8e
  • Newspaper advertisement, Holocaust Rememberance Day
  • Logo design, Accent Software International
  • Logo design, Computer Impressions
  • Logo design, Gentry Living Color
  • Poster, Earth Day
  • Poster, Ecology
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Magazine cover, Direction
  • Circus poster
  • Aidez l'Espagne (Help Spain)
  • New York Times op-ed illustration
  • Poster, UCLA 75th anniversary
  • Poster, UCLA 75th anniversary
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Annual report cover, Cummins Engine Company
  • Logo, Cummins Engine Company
  • Logo, Cummins Engine Company, detail
  • Logo, IBM PS/1
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, Okasan Securities Company
  • Logo, EF English First
  • Logo, EF English First
  • Logo, EF English First
  • Logo, EF English First
  • Letterhead, EF English First
  • Business card, EF English First
  • Business card, EF English First
  • T-shirt, EF English First
  • Poster, EF English First
  • Logo, Hub TV
  • Logo, Hub TV
  • Logo, Hub TV
  • Logo, Hub TV
  • Logo, Hub TV
  • Logo, Hub TV
  • Logo, Hub TV
  • Logo, Cummins Engine Company
  • Logo, Cummins Engine Company
  • Nazi rally
  • Differences Between New and Old Typography
  • Cover design for Hoffmann-La Roche & Cie
  • Title page, Typographische Gestaltung
  • The Practice of Typography, page 311
  • The Practice of Typography, pages 404–405
  • Knife, fork, and spoon
  • George Washington Bridge
  • Grid
  • Map of Brooklyn
Free
Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
Contents
Author
PublisherYale University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.001
Free
Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The cave of Lascaux was discovered in September 1940 by four boys roaming through the woods near Montignac in the Dordogne (France). Among the many drawings of ibex, oxen, bison, and antelope is the sophisticated drawing of a wild horse (frontispiece), sometimes referred to as the Chinese horse because it seems to have been transplanted from an old Chinese print. Leroi-Gourhan’s chronology for paleolithic art places the images in the ancient Magdalenian period, circa 15,000 B.C.
Author
PublisherYale University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.002
Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
What do the cave paintings of Lascaux have in common with ... … The Tower of Pisa? A Romanesque campanile on the Arno, built in the twelfth century of white marble, 293 steps to the top. Its oblique orientation, for which it is famous, is 14 feet off the perpendicular. Ironically, it is this very aberration that produces so dynamic a composition in relation to its surrounding buildings. But is it the formal composition, the relations between diagonal and vertical elements, or the perception of …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.2-26
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.003

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The cave paintings of Lascaux, as well as the exhibits on pages 3 to 27, are objects of aesthetic experience, irrespective of time, place, purpose, style, or genre. Aesthetics is the standard by which a work of art is judged. It is essentially the study of the successive or simultaneous interaction of form and content. How skillfully these components are fused will determine the aesthetic quality of the work in question. There are two parts to this hypothesis. One relates to the artist, who, …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.30-42
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.004

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
Ideas are fuel for the imagination; they are the unique response to a meaningful question. Where do ideas come from? “I keep six honest serving-men, they taught me all I knew, their names are what and why and when and how and where and who.” There are four stages in the creative process: 1. preparation, during which a problem is investigated; 2. incubation, during which conscious thought is useless; 3. revelation, which yields the “happy idea;” and 4. verification, which embodies working out an …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.44-50
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.005
Chapter subject tags:Graphic artsDesignAesthetics

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
Direction Magazine (1935–1945) was a self-supporting, one-woman operation: Marguerite Tjader Harris was proprietor, publisher, and editor. A sophisticated traveler, she was able to meet, befriend, and cajole distinguished personalities to write for her and support her ideas: Theodore Dreiser, Le Corbusier, Julius Meier Graefe, and many others were among those who provided material for the magazine — a politically oriented, anti-fascist publication. In 1938, at the age of 24, I was asked to do …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.54-57
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.006
Chapter subject tags:Graphic artsDesignAesthetics

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The poster is really an enlarged postage stamp, and the postage stamp a miniature poster. The art of the poster, like the art of painting, is an art in which risk plays some part, which can create problems in selling an idea both to a client and to the public. It is also a problem in communication, in form, and, God help us, in public relations. What is the purpose of the poster? Is it to persuade, to sell, to inform, or to amuse? Responding to such questions demands experience not only with …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.72-76
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.007
Chapter subject tags:Graphic artsDesignAesthetics

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
Because design is so often equated with mere decoration, it is safe to assume that few people understand what design means or the role it plays in the corporate world. Graphic design pertains to the look of things — of everything that rolls off a printing press, from a daily newspaper to a box for corn flakes. It also pertains to the nature of things: not only how something should look but why, and often, what it should look like. Why then do design programs in large corporations seem to be …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.80-82
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.008
Chapter subject tags:Graphic artsDesignAesthetics

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
A logo, meant for print or television, is designed primarily as a means of identification. Some logos can do more; they can help sell a product, an idea, or an ideal; the Cummins logo does both. But this function must be designed for print or television and must be built into the basic design at a critical stage of the design process. There are few logos that provide such opportunities. Simplicity is the key to these problems. Illustrative material that is too complex is self-defeating. …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.83-91
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.009
Chapter subject tags:Graphic artsDesignAesthetics

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
A printed presentation is a designer’s modus operandi — a silent salesman — a graphic demonstration, informed and authoritative, but not an object of self-aggrandizement. It is a lesson devised to help a prospective client understand the connection between design and business. The designer-client relationship, ideally, is like the doctor-patient relationship: mutual trust is the common denominator. To explain the design process, multiple choices may be explored. But the choice should not be left …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.93-94
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.010

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The design of a logo is often arbitrary — the product of a whim. If, for example, in a given project letters are to be used, the effect depends almost entirely on the abstract quality of the design and the euphony of its expression, rather than on any substantive idea. It is rare that a logo will contain an idea that, at the same time, is part of the company name. Embodied in the name Okasan are the letters OK, which, by chance, are both full of meaning and universally understood. …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.96-106
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.011

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The EF Company is composed of worldwide language schools and travel offices. English accounts for 85 percent of the language programs, which explains both the initials (which existed long before the name was chosen) and the name English First. A logo is the graphic distillation of a company’s beliefs, management, and products. Its principal purpose is to call attention, to point, to identify. Like a signature or thumbprint, a logo is unique. It represents the particular and helps to define the …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.112-129
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.012

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The design a logo is largely the process of intuition, trial and error, skill, and good fortune. The ideal logo is simple, elegant, economical, flexible, practical, and unforgettable. What follows is designed to fulfill these criteria. …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.132-143
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.013

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The problem of designing a distinctive corporate trademark is twofold. First, the job involves decisions concerning the effectiveness and appropriateness of the design itself. These include considerations about the nature of the business the design will reflect, its international affiliations, and its subsidiaries. Second, it involves such questions as the compatibility of the new design with existing company graphics, the problems of transition from old to new, and the rather serious question …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.147-150
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.014

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
It was no breakthrough, like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; nevertheless, Jan Tschichold’s Die Neue Typographie, published in Germany in 1928, fostered a different way of looking at typography. His views were based largely on modernist ideals: on cubism, in which a word or letter became surprisingly revealing merely by becoming part of a collage; on the unorthodox writings of Mallarmé; on futurism and the typographic leanings of Marinetti; on the seemingly wild ideas of dada, the …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.155-165
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.015

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski, is a tantalizing book. Here, in the engineer-author’s untechnical language, is a sample of its contents that is both amusing and revealing: “It is said to have been Cardinal Richelieu’s disgust with a frequent dinner guest’s habit of picking his teeth with the pointed end of his knife that drove the prelate to order all his table knives ground down.” Not only does this book tell us about the evolution of such familiar artifacts as flatware, but …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.168-175
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.016

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
We all know how to use the grid. Or do we? To many, the grid triggers revolt. It is a kind of repression — what today’s uninformed would deem archaic. The grid is an elementary system of organization, in harmony with the classical concept of unity in variety. The key to its proper application lies not so much in varying the size of individual squares or oblongs as in the manner in which the content of these squares is treated, oriented, multiplied, scaled, enlarged, reduced, cropped, …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
Related print edition pages: pp.176-180
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.017
Chapter subject tags:Graphic artsDesignAesthetics

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
I was born in Brooklyn. It could have been Budapest, Buffalo, or Beijing, each with its own special ambience, each having its own aesthetic link to the cave paintings of Lascaux, irrespective of time, place, or distance. At the Brooklyn Museum I got my first glimpse of the watercolors of John Singer Sargent, the etchings of Anders Zorn, the apples of Cézanne, and the icons and hieroglyphs of the great Egyptian collection, as well as the sculptures of Karl Milles that enliven most of the top …
Author
PublisherYale University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.018

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Description: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
Select Bibliography
Author
PublisherYale University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00052.019

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From Lascaux to Brooklyn
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