Alexey Brodovitch was a was a Russian-born photographer, designer and teacher. However, he was most famous for his art direction, primarily for the magazine Harper's Bazaar from 1934 to 1958. He spent his early life in and out of the military before spending time in Paris, which is where he began his career in the graphic arts. His first major success came after winning a poster competition for a local theater, the 2nd place poster was created by Picasso. He was famous for revolutionizing the way the magazines are designed. He was recognized for the way he used the colours, how the images are cropped, the dynamic and the composition of the layout. His designs were well balanced on the page layout and the elegancy of the typography he uses.
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| The Bal Banal poster on the streets of Paris Brodovitch remained proud of this poster throughout his career, always keeping a copy of it pinned to his studio wall. The graphic, light-to-dark inversion of its mask shape, type, and background suggest not only the process of photography, but also represents the process of trading one's identity for another when wearing a mask. It is the oldest surviving work by Brodovitch. |
Brodovitch created a harmonious and meaningful whole using avant-garde photography, typography and illustration. After being hired he asked several old friends like Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Raoul Dufy, Marc Chagall and A.M. Cassandre to work for the magazine. Cassandre created several of the Bazaar covers between 1937 and 1940. Brodovitch was the first art director to integrate image and text. Most american magazines at that time used text and illustration seperately, dividing them by wide white margins.
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Brodovitch cropped his photograhps, often off-center, brought them to the edge of the page, integrated them in the whole. He used his images as a frozen moment in time and often worked with succeeding pages to create a nice flow trough the entire magazine. This brought a new dynamism in fashion layouts.
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The typeface he preferred was Bodoni, but when needed he switched to Stencil, Typewriter or a script. He matched the typeface with the feeling or with the need for an appropiate effect. Legibility was not his primary concern.
His layouts are easily recognized by his generous use of white space. Colleagues at other magazines saw his sparse designs as truly elegant, but a waste of valuable space.
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"I learned from him that if, when you look in your camera, you see an image you have ever seen before, don't click the shutter." -Hiro, fashion photographer
"The Alexey Brodovitch course... really changed the direction of my life. It was not anything that Brodovitch taught specifically, it was an ambiance that he created, a connection that he would make with particular students. He'd try to get them to move in directions that they were already discovering." - Davit Attie fine art and commercial photographer
"He once said "we learn by making mistakes. We must be critical of ourselves and have the courage to start all over again after each failure. Only then do we really absorb, really start to know."
David Carson (born September 8, 1954) is an American graphic designer, art director and surfer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge typography" era.
"I have a degree in sociology, and taught that for a few years, then somewhat by chance, I took a two-week summer workshop at the university of arizona – about this thing called ‘graphic design’. it changed everything. I hadn’t even known the term graphic design before then.
"I describe my design as experimental, intuitive and personal. I have no formal truanting, which helped a lot as i never learner all the things I'm not supposed to do. I just did what made sense to me... I knew nothing about grids, formulas, school of thought etc., I just did what felt right."
http://www.designishistory.com/1940/alexey-brodovitch/
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