tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32087699717914883422024-03-21T01:51:09.934-07:00Modern CanadaDuncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-84702815555302501322012-03-17T13:11:00.013-07:002012-03-17T15:34:55.897-07:00Government by Design images<span style="font-size: small;"><b>THE PEOPLE TREE </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Government of Canada Pavilion - Expo 67</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Government by Design" - page 1</span><b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">INSIDE THE PEOPLE TREE</span></b> <br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>UNDER THE TREE</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhenm5iMvxLOLPTcWBa9h2MQIX9qtyMz-2ML5yj94sDiqZkwZ5htIl8ExOXz7EYIvkG_39tMnQ4cCa8BlYugF8L-prvuQLxUSUAVpXdijOuFMjDAAxMHMyAuMQ_sNsWBDVkbx0jH8eHikI/s640/IMG_0006.jpg" width="606" /></div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>HALIFAX GAZETTE</b></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Published by: John Bushell</b><i><b> </b></i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b>(1752)</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Government by Design" - page 12</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Title: <i>Cape Split</i></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">By: William Henry Bartlett</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Published in: <i>Canadian Scenery Illustrated</i> (1842)</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Government by Design" - page 11 </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Unvuc5IRKNna1yIV81TeJemcpsHyCefqESHcAXtVnOdtX4s5S8JAYsUijzlYonqhZ49EKmwg1vtKO5trwJXIOCgSUddjm6vC8Xsn34b2NcuSJ7jMCT_5lZzZM9Y9ZoBuMwut1tBiDNo/s1600/f8735.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="534" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Unvuc5IRKNna1yIV81TeJemcpsHyCefqESHcAXtVnOdtX4s5S8JAYsUijzlYonqhZ49EKmwg1vtKO5trwJXIOCgSUddjm6vC8Xsn34b2NcuSJ7jMCT_5lZzZM9Y9ZoBuMwut1tBiDNo/s640/f8735.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Cover page from:<i><span style="font-size: small;"> Canadian Illustrated News</span></i></b></div><b><span style="font-size: small;">October 30, 1869<br />
Vol. I, No. 1</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">"Government by Design" - page 16 </span><br />
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<b>Text: SOUSCRIVEZ A / L'EMPRUNT DE LA 'VICTORIE' - [Subscribe to the Victory Loan].</b><br />
<b>Canadian Victory Loan campaign</b><br />
<b>First World War</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 41 <br />
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<b>Cover image of: <i>Leaven of Malice</i> (1954) / Robertson Davies</b><br />
<b>Designer: Clair Stewart</b><br />
<b>Date: 1954</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 52<br />
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<b>Designer: Allan Fleming</b><b><br />
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<b>Client: Canadian National Railway</b><br />
<b>Date: 1960</b><b><br />
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"Government by Design" - page 52<br />
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<b>Designer: Carl Ramirez (or Allan Fleming??)</b><b><br />
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<b>Client: Canadian National Railway</b><br />
<b>Date: 1960</b><b><br />
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"Government by Design" - page 52<br />
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<b>Designer: or Allan Fleming (notes by James Valkus) </b><b><br />
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<b>Client: Canadian National Railway</b><br />
<b>Date: 1960</b><b><br />
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"Government by Design" - page 52<br />
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<b>5 cent stamp - 1952 </b><br />
<b>Designer: Ernst Roch</b><br />
<b>Canada Post</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page55<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc9nCIyjaZWgau7pWH56LFY9udsZNa65xkgP_2LtNtphLIhO-t84i1Vn0CYe3ujb4jklbEsnTPTidLWaaw3puemhaWz9AYZTv9YL9NOjjU1PFyPklqhLkr_71YcsCQTowz4mrAJmotIw4/s1600/Queen+Elizabeth+II%252C+Canada+postes+postage%252C+blue%252C+5+c%252C+1963%252C+stamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc9nCIyjaZWgau7pWH56LFY9udsZNa65xkgP_2LtNtphLIhO-t84i1Vn0CYe3ujb4jklbEsnTPTidLWaaw3puemhaWz9AYZTv9YL9NOjjU1PFyPklqhLkr_71YcsCQTowz4mrAJmotIw4/s640/Queen+Elizabeth+II%252C+Canada+postes+postage%252C+blue%252C+5+c%252C+1963%252C+stamp.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Title: <i>A Walk in the Forest </i></b><br />
<b>Designer: Ernst Roch and Rolf Harder</b><br />
<b>Firm: Design Cooperative</b><br />
<b>Date:1966</b><br />
"Government by Design" - relevant page 54-7<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjewiTjm9ER7XrNKk4fQwI89nilEmv73Qfg8H-RvngMuW537OoTnhiaUkD83b8NOockb-7tIDvPm1dfmplt41SsZGFqErP2iS4cipP-EGQsMBIq15zslRi8VjipdCdEqWx-_OLhyhH-Nss/s1600/CRI_171421.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjewiTjm9ER7XrNKk4fQwI89nilEmv73Qfg8H-RvngMuW537OoTnhiaUkD83b8NOockb-7tIDvPm1dfmplt41SsZGFqErP2iS4cipP-EGQsMBIq15zslRi8VjipdCdEqWx-_OLhyhH-Nss/s640/CRI_171421.jpg" width="488" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Box design for: Gantanol</b><br />
<b>Client:Hoffmann-LaRoche </b><br />
<b>Date: 1961</b><b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Designer: Rolf Harder</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 56<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUk8zq28Pfokvt_jLrtPGAAc_tJWEG67qBVFIDYxYKCdrGz4yl57TUGiy-VNa68io9LquybKxwHVKooHqKUr5IykDQQdpvAWBt4BYNMr47cDtm-fdcroKcuexxQr8kjhGIEowPqL2583I/s1600/laroche+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUk8zq28Pfokvt_jLrtPGAAc_tJWEG67qBVFIDYxYKCdrGz4yl57TUGiy-VNa68io9LquybKxwHVKooHqKUr5IykDQQdpvAWBt4BYNMr47cDtm-fdcroKcuexxQr8kjhGIEowPqL2583I/s640/laroche+image.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Cover design for: Le budget familial</b><br />
<b>Client: Royal Bank of Canada </b><br />
<b>Date: 1966</b><b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Designer: Rolf Harder</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 56<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8M8TWnLTVaX2DibOtKDVCFalAyctgPismPkhAJmJHlv-U5ESA5uWRqYdkdkgsNX_jAhcl3jdsKpxQTuevzbB0szXyV1mru_GrpYagW5_3dR6jnRQd-bkG_BzwSw4LY3p9WLzpIOsgBWM/s1600/CRI_172256.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8M8TWnLTVaX2DibOtKDVCFalAyctgPismPkhAJmJHlv-U5ESA5uWRqYdkdkgsNX_jAhcl3jdsKpxQTuevzbB0szXyV1mru_GrpYagW5_3dR6jnRQd-bkG_BzwSw4LY3p9WLzpIOsgBWM/s640/CRI_172256.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Design Canada Poster for XIV Trienale di Milano<br />
Designer: Rolf Harder </b><br />
<b>Client: National Design Council</b><br />
<b> Date: 1968 </b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 56<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwthJ1uE1yVzC0Mt1VVDrCrGLV7brrFeYoBJWlTsij9aY_UxZr-VZLAGZhQurWSJl1SKyBQ5G4dTk3-IJfOhKO5qzG0DwjTxwxb3T_Lmtj_JU4L4M9HrUGZtv9Nc2XxwnbEsuMvcP_2EQ/s1600/Rolf+Harder+in+1968+Members+of+the+Alliance+Graphique+Internationale+1960-1985.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwthJ1uE1yVzC0Mt1VVDrCrGLV7brrFeYoBJWlTsij9aY_UxZr-VZLAGZhQurWSJl1SKyBQ5G4dTk3-IJfOhKO5qzG0DwjTxwxb3T_Lmtj_JU4L4M9HrUGZtv9Nc2XxwnbEsuMvcP_2EQ/s640/Rolf+Harder+in+1968+Members+of+the+Alliance+Graphique+Internationale+1960-1985.jpg" width="470" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Cover page from: Typography 64</b><br />
<b>Society of Typographic Designers of Canada</b><br />
<b>Designer: Tony Mann</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 59-60<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkcDXptrckx06vwNBO9IrpS9ZjbdmkBGkwQdoAKhQLsmLBecR0-KZoPSRmT9aqRY4e1SAY8D5-JTA80Rre8Wnl-1xBZB15r8ZXidMduXBEdnf1EN4vB_dlRUYANJkcP1TJ6Tk8T-FPOc/s1600/typography+64.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkcDXptrckx06vwNBO9IrpS9ZjbdmkBGkwQdoAKhQLsmLBecR0-KZoPSRmT9aqRY4e1SAY8D5-JTA80Rre8Wnl-1xBZB15r8ZXidMduXBEdnf1EN4vB_dlRUYANJkcP1TJ6Tk8T-FPOc/s640/typography+64.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Designer: Carl Dair</b><br />
<b>Firm: Cooper & Beatty</b><br />
<b>Date: Early 1950s</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 62<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfeeJJ2BjL0u1dXXqzOSJ6EtD3_RzTq5ecXfLzX3jYd4XYqeMn72NlyOfiLCMIsI3drhkNFB9oqPNJkKRQ3dmPt-NJna8qjRaAANyDCrGrqlKbm7TAc9kZB0aG01NZaEG4EzgPcbWUcO0/s1600/cooper+and+beatty+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfeeJJ2BjL0u1dXXqzOSJ6EtD3_RzTq5ecXfLzX3jYd4XYqeMn72NlyOfiLCMIsI3drhkNFB9oqPNJkKRQ3dmPt-NJna8qjRaAANyDCrGrqlKbm7TAc9kZB0aG01NZaEG4EzgPcbWUcO0/s400/cooper+and+beatty+logo.jpg" width="363" /> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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<b>Cover image of: <i>Idea</i>, June 1960 </b><br />
<b>Designer: Theo Dimson</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 67<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs5j_f2jY79z6ry5xKLKXCvnirX8kxXVr8IbPgw3252gPOyFhbr2sMAU5o1jaCb_ZdqhRo90uDE5BSWGsTzdURBqlPVRd2XmJg6zsdMuCr6XiP1SFkiA768TjCh8FA9qfnqXMrYVxIRNE/s1600/Theo+Dimson+Idea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs5j_f2jY79z6ry5xKLKXCvnirX8kxXVr8IbPgw3252gPOyFhbr2sMAU5o1jaCb_ZdqhRo90uDE5BSWGsTzdURBqlPVRd2XmJg6zsdMuCr6XiP1SFkiA768TjCh8FA9qfnqXMrYVxIRNE/s640/Theo+Dimson+Idea.jpg" width="443" /></a></div><br />
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</div><b>Designer: Allan Fleming</b><br />
<b>Client: <i>Mayfair Magazine</i></b><br />
<b>Date: 1957</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 66-7<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIZBAtJuPG3jRaGTpKp-0Kv52x3uZEBEs3Z5W4uWSiATJPkouVbfeEG3fE_bqAYOZWl8YrCN2cxQ8GbPj2cYAoouPPTcIa5nYOqS-irL95LudUMUUstKOFLfGcL7LPm0GATjCk6_KMjoY/s1600/fle132.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIZBAtJuPG3jRaGTpKp-0Kv52x3uZEBEs3Z5W4uWSiATJPkouVbfeEG3fE_bqAYOZWl8YrCN2cxQ8GbPj2cYAoouPPTcIa5nYOqS-irL95LudUMUUstKOFLfGcL7LPm0GATjCk6_KMjoY/s640/fle132.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />
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</div><b>Designer: Allan Fleming<br />
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<b>Client: <i>Maclean's Magazine</i><br />
</b><br />
<b>Date: 1962</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 66-7<br />
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</div><b>Designer: Paul Arthur</b><br />
<b><i>Expo 67 Guide Book</i><br />
</b><br />
<b>Client: Expo 67<br />
</b><br />
<b>Date: 1967</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 74<br />
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</div><b>Designer: Paul Arthur and Associates</b><br />
<b>Client: Expo 67<br />
</b><br />
<b>Date: 1967</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 74<br />
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</div><b>Designer: Stuart Ash, Paul Arthur and Associates<br />
</b><br />
<b>Client: Canadian Centennial Commission<br />
</b><br />
<b>Date: 1966</b><br />
"Government by Design" - page 74<br />
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</div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-41357985033977689332012-01-04T08:06:00.000-08:002012-01-04T08:06:02.537-08:00Art and Work / Angela Davis (1995)<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Angela Davis, <i>Art and Work: A Social History of Labour in the Canadian Graphic Arts Industry to the 1940s</i>, Montreal: McGill University Press, 1995.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis begins her book by explaining that Canadian art and certain elements of Canadian popular culture were not simply the descendants of the European fine art tradition as it was transported to Canada. Rather, it was also strongly affected by Canada's graphic arts industries of the late eighteenth, the nineteenth, and the first half of the twentieth centuries. This graphic arts industry, while involving elements of the European fine arts tradition, was driven, not by a need of the artists to express themselves for emotional, religious, or patriotic reasons, but by an economic demand for visual imagery to enhance products of an increasingly mechanized and commodified society. While hiring artists to create the necessary imagery, those artists worked within an industrialized environment, much like that of other workers, in which their work was mechanically reproduced. As Davis explains, her book traces the origins of this commercial illustration and graphic arts industry from Britain to Canada, showing the role which illustrators, engravers, photo-engravers, and lithographers came to play in the printing and advertising industries. However, she also shows how their role eventually led to a change in their status and how the commercial illustrators and graphic artists came to alter their own understanding of their trade.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">CHAPTER 1: Introduction</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis begins her introduction by defining the subject of her study, commercial art, which is also referred to as illustration or graphic art, as arts which are "reproduced, printed, published, and circulated to a mass audience." (page 3) However, she is clear to explain that she is not simply interested in commercial artists and the creation of such art, but that she also wishes to examine the history of its reproduction, the commercial and technical aspects of that reproduction, as well as the businesses involved in the commercial art industry. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While the first printed visual images date back to 1471 when the Augsburg printer, Gunther Zainer produced the first illustrated book, Davis claims that in what became Canada, the reproduction of images began in the eighteenth century when several artists who were visiting the Americas created steel and copperplate etchings which were reproduced by early North American printers. This was the beginning of what Davis understands as two distinct periods of Canadian reproduced illustration. The first period, which lasted until the 1860s, saw artists, etchers, and engravers create printable illustrations which were used for travel books and landscape albums, as well as by a few specialized printers who produced maps, charts, and landscape prints for private individuals and governments. The second period began in the 1870s when changes in the printing industry allowed for the faster and more flexible reproduction of images, and when a number of Canada's illustrators, engravers, and lithographers, as well as printers, photographers, and photoengravers, established workshops and commercial art studios, or houses, in several of the country's major centres.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Unlike today, when graphic designers, photographers, printers, and computer technicians are all considered to be part of the graphic design industry, and are even part of the same union (the Graphic Communications International Union), this situation has only existed since the late 1960s. Indeed, before their amalgamation those dealing with the creation and design of text and those working with illustration were understood as working in very distinct fields. Furthermore, during much of the second period of the history of Canadian graphic art, printers, lithographers, and engravers worked separately, and there were specialized unions for photo-engravers, lithographers, bookbinders, printers, and stereotypers. Furthermore, there did not exist training programs for the commercial or graphic arts in Canada up until the 1940s, and even later in some places, such as Quebec.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis does not pass judgment upon or compare different styles of illustration, but is principally concerned with the changing perceptions of the task, craft, or art of graphic design. As she notes, when illustrations were first introduced into popular magazines in Britain in the 1830s the engravers of those images believed themselves to be artists or highly skilled craftsmen. Indeed, they were often referred to as "art workmen." However, as the printing industry grew and output had to be produced more quickly, and was reproduced by faster presses of the industrial revolution for the growing clientele, the printing industry needed large numbers of such engravers. Thus, regardless of the quality of their work, a division was created between "commercial" artists, who worked as labourers or employees, and "fine" artists. With this division between the "fine" and "commercial" arts, and the related division between "high" and "popular" culture, artists who worked as illustrators, engravers, and lithographers for the printers of popular publications were viewed as being inferior to fine artists. The commercial artist's work, in being commissioned, was understood to be tainted or compromised. Indeed, commercial art was often dismissed as even being an art form. Importantly, Davis notes that this division of the arts and culture had definite class foundations, where those who could afford not to rely upon their art to survive were viewed, and viewed themselves as being true artists, where as someone who may have had the same level of talent, but not as much money, was almost stripped of the right to understand himself/herself, or be viewed by others, as an artist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Given that graphic art refers to the creation and reproduction of visual images from one medium to another, the field has evolved with the technologies that developed to allow different kinds of images to be produced and reproduced with different levels of ease. In the eighteenth century images were transferred to paper principally by means of steel plate and copperplate engraving, as well as etching. With the discovery/creation of lithography at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that process was used extensively for the reproduction of colour images. In addition, the first half of the nineteenth century saw a revival in wood engraving with the introduction of new methods of showing texture and shading. Because of the cheapness of wood, this became the most widely used means of illustrating popular materials. During the second half of the nineteenth century, with the rise of "art posters", first in European cities, and eventually in North America, such posters and advertisements were increasingly printed through lithography. In addition, by the 1880s traditional engraving came under threat by the development of photo-engraving, a chemical process by which a photographic image is transferred onto a piece of copper plate or woodblock which can be used to reproduce the image. However, as Davis explains, this new technology did not see the immediate end of woodblock engraving, but led to many publications being illustrated through a combination of woodblock and photo-engraved images. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The commercial art and typographic design companies which did exist in Canada prior to the Second World War were relatively small in size, started by individual or small groups of designers, and often inherited from one generation to another. It was only with the growth of mass communications following the war that several of these firms became managerial-run concerns, opening branch offices in other Canadian cities so as to be able to serve the national market. However, while larger in size and increasingly corporate in character, Davis argues that none of these firms ever became socially or politically influential, although some were eventually purchased by larger, influential media companies. Like larger companies, including railways, lumber concerns, or steamship lines, as these companies became increasingly industrialized, they also became less linked to individual owners or directors. Furthermore, with new developments in technology and larger demands from clients, these companies had to ensure they were using the latest technology and employing, not just their family members, but external workers who could help them fulfill their growing orders. Yet, those employees were also increasingly being asked to specialize and use technology which increasingly mechanized their craft. This furthered the division between artists or craftsmen and "commercial" artists. These developments led in 1904 to the creation of the International Photo-Engravers Union, which defended the jobs and skills of its members and led to conflict with management which was typically in favour of increased mechanization that could see more products being produced by fewer people. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In looking at the role of art in society, Davis notes that during the industrial revolution a change occurred in art's status. Initially understood as having qualities which were understood by and intended to influence society as a whole, it eventually altered to be something which was created for its own sake. Thus, there was a separation of art from common life, which was challenged by the efforts of John Ruskin in the 1840s and William Morris in the 1870s and 1880s, who called for a reintegration of fine art and society as a whole. However, since the creation of commercial art and the development of popular culture have often been understood not to be part of the art world, art historians have tended to neglect the history of commercial artists, their work, and their profession. Furthermore, they have ignored the ways in which art has played a role in people's everyday lives. Reproducing a quotation by Alan Gowans, Davis notes that in determining what counts as art, it might be better not to try and define something as being art on the basis of its aesthetic qualities, but what it does. Thus, Davis does not propose to examine the culture of "high art," but commercial art and the role it played in a popular culture which consumed printed works, such as posters, advertisements, logos, etc. Being appreciated by large audiences, Davis claims that, while partly responsible for the division between "high" art and popular culture, the development of the graphic arts industry also created an opportunity to foster an integration of art and common society. It offers the opportunity to move away from a trend in art history to focus upon individual artists, make aesthetic judgments about works, and treat works of "art" in isolation from their place in society. Although she acknowledges that there have been studies of the growth of nineteenth century mass communication's influence, its ability to persuade, as well as to perpetuate middle-class hegemony, little work has been done on the industry itself. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">According to Davis, nineteenth century mechanization and commercialization were ultimately responsible for the form of commercial art and for spreading it to a public for whom art was often out of reach and foreign. It also allowed the public to recognize, the importance and influence of visual communication. Furthermore, commercial artists can also be understood as having been important players in the establishment of popular culture. However, unlike in older European societies, Davis notes that in Canada the development of popular culture was intertwined with the development of a fine art culture. Indeed, she claims that commercial art and fine art were originally one and the same thing in Canada since the same artists were involved in producing both. Given that Canada lacked distinct traditional working class and upper class cultures, and because cultural development occurred at the same time as industrial development, there were no clear distinctions in Canada between commercial artists and fine artists. Indeed, at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth the majority of Canadians who considered themselves artists were employed as engravers, illustrators, photographers, or display artists, or they attempted to survive as art instructors. While some did endeavor to remove themselves from the field of commercial art as soon as possible, so as to avoid the possibility of not being taken seriously as a fine artist, others had no such concerns, and believed that as long as they produced good art, their work in the commercial field would not harm their reputation. (p 12)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In a further attempt to break down the barriers between high and popular art, Davis notes that, while often not acknowledged by art historians, many of the great masters of the past were either paid for or commissioned to produce their art. Thus, there is little difference between how they approached and executed their work and how work was done by commercial artists. The only major difference was that the latter's work was reproduced for commercial purposes. Indeed, prior to the Industrial Revolution, artists were often employed by patrons or the church in the same way that a designer or illustrator of the nineteenth century may have been employed by a publisher to design the layout and/or illustrations for a text. Rather, it was only with the distinction of the Industrial Revolution between "gentlemen" and those involved in the trades that there came to be a parallel division between commercial and fine artists. In the case of Canada, Davis argues that to study the creators of Canadian fine art without reference to their careers in or connections to the world of commercial art is to be unhistorical. Recognizing that their fine art careers were influenced by commercial art is the only means of doing a proper social history of Canadian art. Those artists were employed by industry, participated in commercial art production, and helped to create Canadian popular culture. In addition, Davis suggests that recognition of the connections between high and popular Canadian art can play a role in reintegrating art into popular culture.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis justifies the cut-off date of her study by changes in technology and business practices which occurred following the Second World War. She also explains that throughout her study she uses the terms "popular illustrator" and "commercial artist" to refer to anyone who created images which were reproduced. She also uses the term "illustrator" to refer to anyone who painted or drew works which were intended for reproduction, as well as etchers, engravers, lithographers, and photo-engravers who recreated works so that they could be printed. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis' study begins by reviewing the reproduction of the first images in print in England through wood engraving, the development of the popular printing trade, as well as the social status of engravers and the other artists who produced images to be engraved. She next looks at how these technologies and trades were transferred to Canada, first with visiting etchers and engravers, as well as the creations and difficulties of those who stayed. Yet, Davis stresses, that the main concern of her study is in the role of illustration as part of the modernization and industrialization of Canadian life. This covers the creation of a Canadian popular press, packaging, advertising, the retail trade, as well as the establishment of graphic art houses. However, she recognizes that her study is somewhat hampered by the limited written accounts left by commercial graphic artists outlining there views, problems, and concerns about their place in society and/or their profession. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Chapter 2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While late nineteenth century and early twentieth century popular illustration in Canada was heavily influenced by styles and approaches of the American advertising and printing industries, the initial development of the commercial illustration in Canada was the result of English styles and English reproductive techniques. This industry began in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, when many artists, wishing to reproduce their work, made etchings on metal plates. Yet, it was not this medium which became the foundation of the commercial graphic illustration trade, although such copper etchings were used to produce prints and illustrations for special printings of books. Rather, the early English industry of printing images in books, on broadsides, and in other formats was based upon wood engraving. In addition, while initially thought of as an art or a craft, with the creation of a close connection between wood engraving and the industrialization of the printing trade, as well as the division of labour amongst engravers, wood engravers came to be understood as commercial employees, in contrast to independent craftsmen or artists. However, this change did not occur quickly, but in parallel with the connected transformation of the printing industry from a craft or an art to a trade and the related class divisions between those involved in industry and the gentry, whose creations were allegedly not made for commercial gain and out of an intellectual, emotional, or spiritual interest in a subject.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The transformation of engraving from an art to a trade occurred as a result of a number of complementary factors. The British government's relaxation on the tax on paper, combined in increase in literacy, which was furthered with the introduction of mandatory education for children (1870), saw a rise in the number of newspapers, books, and magazines being printed and read by an increasingly literate public. Similarly, there was a increase in the amount of advertising which could be economically printed on paper and read by the public. However, with the rise in the volume of printed material, there was also a recognition by printers, publishers, and advertisers that text accompanied by visual material could enhance the communication of the written message. Thus, by the 1950s, illustrated newspapers and magazines had become popular, as had illustrated scientific periodicals, illustrated books, and advertisements which incorporated illustrations. While all of these publications called for engravers to produce images, printing technology had evolved to allow for the reproduction of larger and larger amounts of material in less time. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While woodblock illustrations had been printed with text since the fifteenth century, such illustrations, which were either included within the text or offered separately, were typically black and white, of a uniform texture, and if coloured, were usually coloured by hand. However, with improvements in wood block engraving and metal etching technology at the beginning of the nineteenth century, improvements in printing technology, as well as the popularity of English landscape painting, several of Britain's major landscape painters began engraving their own work, or hiring professional engravers to reproduce them. They then issued reproductions of their works either as individual prints or as bound collections. At the time there was no distinction between popular and high art. Rather, leading artists such as Turner, John Constable, John Sell Cotman, and David Cox made use of reproductive illustration so as to further disseminate their works and were not beyond developing and making use of a mixture of what would later be viewed as fine and applied artistic skills. The same was true for lesser artists who needed such a range of skills in order to earn a living from their artistic talents. Indeed, artists who were well known and whose works were not in demand often had to sell their skills in a number of related fields, including drawing, miniature painting, portrait painting, sculpting, engraving, lithography, printing, bookbinding, theatre scene painting, sign painting, and even house painting. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As Davis explains, involvement in such occupations meant that artists occupied ambiguous social positions between visual artists whose principle concern was the creation of art which could then be sold, and those artistic skills were employed on demand or focused upon the reproduction of existing works which could be reliably sold. As Davis notes, this division between established artists who made use of reproductive technology and those who were not well known and forced to focus upon the application of their artistic skills to more immediately lucrative pursuits foreshadowed the clear division between the high and applied arts which would develop later in the century. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">A further example of the beginning of this distinction can be seen in the Royal Academy and its admission of only certain kinds of artists. While created in 1769 with the purpose of furthering the social position of visual artists, Davis notes that the academy viewed painters as being "a special group of imaginative, creative people," while those who were employed as engravers were understood to be mere copiers and not worthy of membership. (page 17) Furthermore, the general public, which was buying the works of engravers and illustrators in books, magazines, and who commissioned such artists to execute work that would enhance their businesses, and which hired those illustrators and engravers to reach painting and illustration, was simultaneously excluding those same artists from the social category of true artists, which Davis claims was understood as including "special people," and certainly not those who painted, illustrated, or engraved for commercial purposes. She argues that this was the beginning of the "myth of the artist" as being someone who did not create principally out of financial need, but as a form of emotional expression. However, since few artists received royal or governmental patronage, or were of independent means and could pursue their art outside of any economic constraints, most artists were compelled to produce what the market demanded.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Illustrated newspapers and magazines began to appear in the early 1840s, and the illustration process of choice was the woodcut. Metal engraving, while effective, was difficult to print with metal or wood press type. In addition, although lithography was suitable for printing with text, the process was never popular with the British publishers of mass publications for much of the nineteenth century. Rather, woodblock engraving was used for the first "penny" story magazines and newspapers such as the Penny Weekly Dispatch and Bell's Penny Dispatch. Recognizing the popularity of such illustrated publications, the newsagent Herbert Ingram founded the <i>Illustrated London News</i> in 1841. His approach of having illustrations accompany the publications major stories was reproduced in other major magazines of the second half of the century, including the Penny Magazine, the Mirror, Punch, the Saturday Magazine, and the Graphic. Furthermore, this demand for illustrations led to an increase in the demand for skilled woodblock engravers. The illustrators for these publications were recruited from many different specialties including watercolour painting, typographical draughting, military survey draughting, and painting. However, the engravers were essential to the reproduction of their illustrations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Engraving of the period differed from that of earlier centuries due to a new engraving process developed by Thomas Bewick. The Newcastle apprentice to the engraver Ralph Beilby, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century Bewick developed a form of engraving which allowed for shading and detail which had not been seen before, with earlier engravings largely having been of a single shade. Most earlier engravers carved their images out of wood which was cut with the grain, removing the wood from between drawn lines. Bewick, however, engraved in wood which was cut across the grain, and used tools similar to those of a metal engraver to carve this harder surface. Since he was not carving against a grain, which was the case with woodcuts, Bewick was able to make much more detailed engravings. Those taught by Bewick, and those who followed his approach to engraving, were able to create very detailed and well executed end-grain engravings which, unlike traditional woodblocks, were durable enough to be locked into printing frames and used to produce thousands of copies of the same image.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The development of wood engraving, combined with the introduction of both steam powered bed and roller presses at the beginning of the nineteenth century allowed for the production of type and images at much faster rates. This, combined with the reduction in the cost of paper brought about through the mechanization of the paper making process and the introduction of cheaper wood-pulp paper, saw a lowering in the cost and an increase in the availability of printed material. However, as Davis notes, while printing had traditionally been understood to be an art, as the process was mechanized and its products became more abundant and readily available, printers came increasingly to be understood as merely workers in an industry.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While the industrialization of printing can partially account for the rise in the growth of the popular press during the nineteenth century, as mentioned above, these were not the only reasons. Davis also notes that, while the British government had introduced a tax on newspapers in 1819 so as to reduce the threat of the publication of seditious material, this tax was reduced in the 1830s and finally abolished in 1855. Also, during the 1840s the cost of paper production dropped by half. Thus, by that decade it was possible to produce all of the books, magazines, and other printed material the public desired and, with the rise in public literacy, there was an increasing demand for such materials. While, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British education system was largely geared towards only educating those who could afford to pay, by the 1930s the majority of people in England were literate. This increased as the century progressed, with the introduction of compulsory education for children, as well as the creation of charitable and trade related adult education programs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Illustrated material in the popular press began to be used as early as 1832 when the educational and religious magazines, <i>Penny Magazine</i> and the <i>Saturday Magazine</i> began including illustrations to accompany their content and reinforce their subject matter. In 1841 <i>Punch</i> magazine was launched, and in 1842 the <i>Illustrated London News</i>, both of which included political cartoons, reproductions of the famous, and illustrations which accompanied many of their stories. In the case of newspapers, illustrations were not used regularly until the end of the nineteenth century. As Davis explains, it was only in 1890 that the <i>Daily Graphic</i> began to use wood engravings and also began to make use of the newer processes of photo-engraving and half-tones, and it was only in 1904 that the <i>Daily Mirror </i>began using half-tone blocks which were made from photographs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The industrial environment in which engravers and illustrators found themselves working, while increasingly seen as being apart from true art, did lead to the establishment of the graphic arts industry. It was the demand for illustrations and engravings of those illustrations that eventually led to the establishment of commercial engraving houses and commercial art studios. Those artistic workshops, fed by a constant demand for illustrations and engravings from clients, allowed for the reliable and constant stream of images being produced for and reproduced by periodicals and newspapers. Yet, as Davis notes, while Bewick had argued in his memoirs that the use of engraving would never be limited and that it would become the most available form of art in the world, it was its very ubiquitousness that led to it being demoted from an art form to a trade. Those who were involved in engraving rarely produced images of their own making, and the illustrators from whose work they copied, like the engravers, were rarely recognized for their work. Furthermore, payment for the work of both engravers and illustrators was usually determined by the printers. Indeed, Davis claims that many of the master engravers of the nineteenth century should have, in her opinion, been viewed as both gentlemen and artists given the quality of their work and contributions to the profession.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In order to meet demand, within the engraving and illustration fields individuals came to specialize in specific kinds of illustrations and engravings which they could produce more quickly and more reliably than others. Unfortunately, this furthered the notion of the work of engravers and illustrators as being industrial and mechanical in character, and thus, not artists. Some concentrated upon faces, others clothing, some landscapes and others machinery. In addition, by the 1850s a process had developed where blocks, upon which illustrations had been traced, could be broken up, worked upon by specialists of the images found in the various sections, and then bolted back together again. The success of an engraving firm would depend upon such approaches since the firm would be judged upon both the speed of its work and quality of the resulting engravings.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis notes that one of the major engraver/illustrator critics of the diminished social position of both illustrators and engravers was W.J. Linton. Born in London in 1812 and learning engraving in the tradition of Thomas Bewick, Linton was taught by the engraver George Wilmot Bonner how to prepare his own blocks, draw and sketch, and how to reproduce those images in wood. Opening an engraving firm in 1842 with the fellow engraver John Orrin Smith, Linton and his firm produced engravings for the Illustrated <i>London News</i>, <i>Bell's Life of London</i>, and other publications. In the 1850s his firm was the first to design the harmonious integration of type with illustrations, using the images of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and other artists to illustrate an edition of Tennyson's poems. Davis claims that such works were the first to be produced in the manner of a modern graphic arts business in that it made use of the skills of illustrators, engravers, typographers, and printers. Using the same approach the firm also produced an illustrated edition of Shakespeare and a guide to the Lake District. However, despite his success, Linton was discouraged at the status of engravers and illustrators in England, and thus, immigrated to the United States in 1866, where he lived for the rest of his life. In the United Sates he was finally recognized as an artist and also made significant contributions to the development of American illustration and engraving.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Linton's views reflected those of John Ruskin, the early Victorian art critic who was the first such commentator to recognize the distinctions which were being created between "high" and "popular" art. In addition to being the first major critic to recognize the merits of Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the ideas of perception which would later fuel the French Impressionists, Ruskin argued that a division between the fine arts and the useful arts would result in a society where only the elite, to whom exposure to the high arts would be restricted, would be encouraged to contemplate the creativity and innovation of art, and where those producing the useful arts would not feel encouraged to produce innovative works. Referring to Ruskin's essay "The Nature of Gothic," Davis notes that Ruskin held that there should be no distinction between artists on the basis of their being referred to socially as an "artist" or a "workman," where one produced what was considered fine art and the other produced useful art as a specialized worker in a commercial studio. Rather, he claimed that artists should only be distinguished according to their experience and skill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Ruskin's disciple, William Morris, focused upon the idea of good art requiring experience and skill by emphasizing a return to hand-craftsmanship and the craftsman having numerous skills so as to allow him/her to fully create a work of art.<span> </span>For Morris the true artists did not simply produce a particular element of a work, or rearrange pre-fabricated products, but was able to truly produce the item, or as much as is possible, from start to finish, thus having full control over the entire creation process. Furthermore, given that only skill and experience distinguished the good from the bad artist, Morris also rejected the idea of there being a hierarchy of arts. Like his contemporary, Arthur Mackmurdo, Morris agreed with Ruskin that allowing the idea of "art for art's sake" to be the guiding principle of the arts would lead to a decline in creativity and innovation, and would result in alienating most people from the arts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Regardless of the views of critics such as Ruskin and Morris, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century engravers and illustrators were largely known as artist-craftsmen and were typically regarded as skilled commercial tradesmen. In the 1880s, with the widespread introduction of photoengraving, wood engravers either had to become knowledgeable in the new photoengraving process, or remain dedicated to a dying field of manual wood engraving. As for the illustrators/designers of wood engravings, they were largely excluded from the new process, replaced by the photographer. Some, however, became advocates of the arts and crafts movement, through which their skills were still appreciated, or turned their attention to printing and print design. They would eventually become the "commercial artists" of the twentieth century. Such commercial art studios, graphic art firms, and agencies dealing with reproductive technology attracted both engravers and illustrators, and, as Davis notes, by the beginning of the twentieth century, association with such an institution often led to the presumption that an illustrator or engraver was an inferior artist, and probably of the lower-middle, or lower class. While possibly believing in Ruskin's notions concerning the inappropriateness of ranks of artists, many illustrators and engravers took jobs in such establishments in order to make ends meet. Indeed, so many were employed in this way that by the late nineteenth century the publishing industry was the chief employer of artists in England.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Chapter 3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Given the low social status of artist-craftsmen in England in the second half of the nineteenth century, caused by their involvement in the industrial production of images, Davis suggests that it is not surprising that many immigrated to countries where they hoped their artwork would not only be in demand, but would also garner them more respect and a high social position than that of a skilled industrial worker. In the case of Canada, few illustrators immigrated before the establishment of an industrial base which could support an illustrated popular press. Rather, at first most were simply visitors accompanying exploring and surveying parties. They were often armatures from amongst the military officers on exploration parties, but were occasionally professional artists who had accompanied organized visits or incursions into what would eventually become Canada with the specific purpose of making a visual record of what they saw. Their often Picturesque work was typically printed in England and continental Europe as single sheet prints or in books and folios. Such prints helped to further the English fondness of travel books and for illustrations which were made in the Picturesque style. Furthermore, as Davis notes, their illustrations were often printed in the intaglio approach to engraving on copper or steel plates. An example of the influence and longevity of both this kind of print and the style is offered by Davis' discussion of William Henry Bartlett. Indeed, the often bucolic "views" and "scenes" illustrated by Bartlett for <i>Canadian Scenery Illustrated</i>, printed by the London publisher George Virtue in 1840, were similar in style and content to the later works of the <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i> and <i>Picturesque Canada</i> in the 1870s and 1880s. His work also reflected that of J.M.W. Turner since Bartlett used Turner's approach of making sepia drawings, which were allegedly the easiest for engravers to follow. In addition, three of the engravers who worked on Bartlett's engravings had been trained by Turner. Davis claims that these factors must have played a role in reinforcing the interest of Canadian artists in landscape-focused visual art.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Bartlett, however did not live permanently in Canada. Rather only visiting between 1838 and 1841, he worked as an artist-illustrator in England. Never attaining membership in the Royal Academy, unlike Turner, he was skilled enough in his interpretation of foreign places for the English domestic market that he was able to specialize, and was not required to perform a range of artistic jobs. Those early illustrators, engravers, and lithographers who did permanently immigrate to British North America typically worked for colonial or imperial governments or for the military. After the late eighteenth century they occasionally created single sheet prints in collaboration with local printers. However, in colonies with limited demand for their specific skills, they had to have or develop other locally practical skills such as map making, calling-card making, or jewelry engraving. Others, however, were not successful since they found that the British North American colonies were not yet ready for their skills. They required an environment with a paper manufacturing industry, an increasingly mechanized and industrialized printing industry, the development of urban centres and concentrated advertising markets, and a largely literate public in order for a popular press to develop which would make use of their illustration and engraving skills.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Printing presses did not arrive in Canada until the mid-eighteenth century, and even then, they were largely unsuitable for the printing of detailed visual images. The first press in Canada was that brought to Halifax in 1751 by the Boston printer Bartholomew Green. Used by John Bushell after 1752 to publish the <i>Halifax Gazette</i>, its prints were not traditional newspapers, but rather broadsides which offered proclamations and public announcements. Similar early publications were produced by the presses established in Quebec City beginning in 1764, in Montreal in the 1770s, in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island in the 1780s, and in Upper Canada in the 1790s. However, as Davis notes, when the work of engravers and lithographers did begin to be published in British North America they followed the same general geographic pattern as the establishment of printing, beginning in Nova Scotia and Lower Canada in the 1790s and reaching Upper Canada by the beginning of the nineteenth century. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The process of urbanization which was required for the establishment of printing presses, the textual and illustrated products of which would be consumed by concentrated and growing populations, began following the end of hostilities between Britain and France in 1760. With military stability and a gradual increase in the number of immigrants arriving from Britain and the United States, the commercial and military character of the colonies began to change. No longer an imperial outpost, the main importance of which was supplying Britain with fish and furs, Canada's economy began to diversify and develop domestically. As communities grew large enough to support either a government-owned press or an independent printer, local newspapers and gazettes began to be produced. With the arrival of these presses and regular publications, colonial engravers and lithographers were able to not only have their work reproduced domestically, but eventually received work from local publishers and newspapers to produce illustrations and engravings. Thus, once John Bushell established his press in Halifax, or Samuel Neilson set up his in Quebec City, there was a means for local illustrators, engravers, and lithographers to have their work reproduced. Indeed, the first illustration published in Canada was done on Bushell's press. It was a view of Halifax Harbour by Anthony Henry published in the <i>Nova Scotia Calendar </i>in 1776. Thus, it was not only the first published illustration in Canada, but had been incorporated into a published book. Henry had taken over Bushell's print shop upon the latter’s death in 1761. Like Bushell he ran it as the King's Printer, a dubious distinction given the poor pay such printers received from the colonial government for producing gazettes and political broadsides. However, beginning with Bushell's press, King's printers developed across British North America, as did a number of independent printers. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In Quebec City printing began with the establishment of a press by two American printers, William Brown and Thomas Gilmore. Becoming the King's Printer and also printing religious and secular works, the firm was inherited by Brown's nephews Samuel and John Neilson in 1793. Producing the <i>Quebec Gazette</i>, <i>Quebec Magazine</i>, the firm also produced almanacs, directories, as well as French, English, and Latin religious works. John Neilson was eventually elected to the Assembly of Lower Canada, transferring control over the publication of the <i>Quebec Gazette</i> to his sons. Situated at the centre of commercial and economic power in British North America at the time, the Neilson workshop became the centre of printing in the Canadas for approximately half a century and, according to Davis, its apprentices were largely responsible for spreading printing and illustration throughout Upper and Lower Canada. The first illustration known to have been drawn in Canada (the physical origins of the Bushell image are not clear) was made and engraved by an engraver employed by Samuel Neilson, John George Hochstetter. This view of Quebec City was the first illustration in Canada which was produced in the style of English and European printers, as single-sheet prints, included as a bonus with the <i>Quebec Magazine</i> in 1792. Hochstetter, like those which would be influenced by Bartlett in the next century, produced works in the Picturesque style which was popular among English engravers and artists. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Regardless of these early eighteenth century engraved and printed illustrations, few printers made significant use of illustrators and engravers until the 1830s and 1840s, by which time the concept of an illustrated press was becoming popular in Britain and began to be tried in British North America. For example, the engraver Charles Torbett, who according to Davis was a productive and respected Halifax engraver who practiced in the city from 1822 to 1834, was unable to survive upon his illustrating/engraving commissions. Rather, he was also known as an engraver of maps, bookplates, treasury notes, and book illustrations, as well as being a silversmith. Despite his success as an engraver, Davis posits that he likely moved to Boston in 1834 where he found a larger market for his work. In addition to the British North American market being relatively small, Davis argues that many of the early presses used in the colonies were not suitable for printing finely engraved images. She also argues that engravers who were not also talented illustrators suffered from a lack of images to reproduce for what market may have existed for printed illustrations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Another example of an engraver who was forced to leave British North America in the first half of the nineteenth century was James Smillie. Born in Scotland, Smillie had immigrated to Quebec City in 1822. The son of a jeweler, Smillie apprenticed as a jewelry and picture engraver. In his father’s jewelers, and then in business with his brother as a jeweler and engraver, most of Smillie's engraving work was for military officers, although some did have them engrave their watercolours. Producing several engravings of single-sheet illustrations, book illustrations, and maps while in Quebec, and often for little money, his greatest success was his commission to engrave the illustrations for <i>Picture of Quebec</i>, the city's first illustrated guidebook. Also not lucrative, Smillie was only able to see the work completed because it was printed in New York. According to Smillie, there were no presses in Quebec which were capable of adequately reproducing the images. Recognizing the greater opportunities for an engraver in New York while visiting the city for the publishing of <i>Picture of Quebec</i>, Smillie moved there in 1830, quickly establishing himself and eventually becoming a respected American engraver and father of the American landscape engraver James David Smillie.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While Smillie had been frustrated in the 1820s by the lack of both a market for illustrated prints and printing presses suitable for printing illustrations, by 1850 suitable presses did exist in Quebec and the demand by the public and printers for illustrated material was growing. In the case of lithographic printing, presses existed in British North America by the 1820s. This process, which allowed the illustrator to draw with water-resistant material (such as wax) directly on a smooth stone surface, removed the need for engraving. The image could also be drawn on specially treated paper which, when applied to the stone, could transfer the reverse of the image in water resistant material to the stone. This removed the need for the illustrator to draw the desired image in reverse directly on the stone. Government lithographic presses were found in both Quebec and New Brunswick in the 1820s and were being used to reproduce sketches for government reports. In Upper Canada a private lithographer, who was also a jeweler, Samuel Oliver Tazewell, established himself in Kingston in 1829. Moving to York in 1832 in anticipation of being appointed lithographic printer for the colonial government, a job which would have involved quickly and cheaply producing maps for immigrant settlers, Tazewell was never given the contract. Instead, as a result of political disputes over printing appointments, a printer who was ignorant of lithography was appointed to produce government material. Although he did produce some lithographic work for the <i>Canadian Literary Magazine</i> in 1833, for Richard Henry Bonnycastle's 1836 <i>American Journal o f Science and Arts </i>articles on North American geology, and a number of views of Canadian landscapes which he produced between 1832 and 1834, Tazewell eventually moved his family to St. Catharines in 1835 and reestablished himself as a jeweler and watchmaker.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Regardless of the failures of Smillie and Tazewell to become successful engravers and lithographers, Davis notes that by the 1850s an environment had developed in several Canadian centres which could sustain an illustrated popular press. Beginning on a large-scale in Montreal and Toronto, urbanization and industrialization gradually spread to most populated parts of the country. The factors which led to the development and acceptance of a popular press included a rising population; a related increased need for supplies and services; the spread of accessible and mandatory education for children; a related rise in literacy; the domestic mechanical manufacturing of cheaper wood pulp paper rather than paper from rags; the installation of steam driven high volume cylinder printing presses; transportation and communications systems, of which Montreal and Toronto were regional hubs, that could organize and transport popular printed material; and the growth of businesses which had begun to recognize the value of using advertising, including illustrated advertising, in the media to increase sales. While, in the case of literacy, compulsory education, which was introduced in the eastern colonies of British North America in the late 1840s, did help to increase the number of people who could read, there were other factors involved in this increase. By the 1860s all of the major Canadian centres had libraries, reading rooms, mechanics institutes, and literary societies. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Just as Britain had experienced a rise in literacy in the 1840s, followed by a rise in the demand for popular publications, the increased reading in Canada was responded to and encouraged with newspapers and magazines that could be transported further afield on the colonies' growing rail transportation networks or through the mail as postal rates fell. George Brown, owner of the Toronto <i>Globe</i>, had already imported steam-powered cylinder presses which could produce many more papers than his older presses. Now in the 1860s, much like the British press in the 1840s, Brown, and publishers such as </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">George-Édouard Desbarats in Quebec began to incorporate engraved and lithographic illustrations into their publications. This illustration work also provided employment for the itinerant skilled engravers and lithographers already in Canada.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While Smillie and Tazewell had failed to successfully establish themselves as printers of illustrations, Davis notes that there were several publishers who, already successful in the publishing trade, were able incorporate illustrations into the material they had printed.<span> </span>These included Napoléon Aubin, publisher of the political newspaper <i>La Fantasque. </i>Aubin claimed to have established the first lithographic press in Quebec City in 1840. With this press he published a successful series of prints of views of Quebec City. Similarly, in the 1830s a set of views of the City of Montreal were printed by Adolphus Bourne. Due to their success, the prints were produced again in the 1840s. Such publishers did employ printers artists, engravers, and lithographers to produce their illustrated prints, but not on a full-time basis in those early years. Rather, as noted above, the illustrators, engravers, and lithographers needed to have some additional means of income in order to survive. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It was not that there were not printers who could have printed benefitted from including illustrations in their products by the 1840s. Indeed, by that decade there were music publishers, stationery manufacturers, book publishers, and other kinds of publishers in each of British North America's major centres. As Davis argues, all of these publishers would have benefitted from the addition of illustrations. However, there was a reluctance amongst publishers both to trust the illustrative work of colonial printers, engravers, and lithographers, as well as to accept the benefits which would arise from adding illustrations, which would mean an additional cost, to their publications. However, as Davis notes there were some examples of publishers in the 1840s and 1850s who did take the risk of incorporating illustrations into their publications. These included the partnership between the British immigrant printer and publisher Hugh Scobie and the printer John Balfour from 1846 to 1853, as well as the British immigrant William Walter Copp who, after apprenticing with Scobie, established Copp, Clark and Company in 1869 with Henry James Clark. Both of these firms advertised themselves at various times and in various situations as booksellers, stationers, printers, lithographers, engravers, bookbinders, publishers, and map printers. Reproducing images was not necessarily their primary focus, it was amongst the services they provided and one for which they regularly required the skills of engravers, printers, illustrators, and lithographers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While not based in the popular press, the foundations of the Canadian commercial graphic arts industry was laid by a number of printers who, starting in the 1840s, were able to establish themselves as either general printers who could also print illustrations, or as illustrative printers, whose work could range from fine pictorial engraving for advertising, to stationery, maps, visiting cards, and even heraldic crests and seals. One such firm was Ellis and Company of Toronto, established by the English engraver John Ellis in 1846 after having worked as a steel engraver in Toronto from 1842. A highly skilled engraver, Ellis and his firm printed portraits, landscape views, and even the first Canadian printed bank notes. However, the firm's greatest profits came from its maps and engravings for heraldic and other commercial purposes. While having to diversify in order to succeed, Davis claims that Ellis' firm was successful, being sold to the English engraver, Joseph Rolph in 1867.<span> </span>Rolph had come to work for Ellis in 1857 and renamed the business J.T. Rolph Engravers after the purchase. In 1870 it changed to Rolph, Smith and Company when he partnered with his brother and another engraver, David Smith. This firm became one of the major illustrative reproduction companies in Canada during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, although its name would change again to Rolph and Clark, and then finally in 1917 to Rolph, Clark, Stone, Ltd. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Chapter 4</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis begins by explaining that with the urbanization and industrialization of Canada between 1870 and 1914 great changes occurred for Canada's artist-craftsmen. With the introduction of new technologies, mechanization of older hand-crafts, and new kinds of business, some artisan-craftsmen, were able to profit from these new developments, expanding their workshops to become larger businesses which produced large numbers of products. In many cases, the owners of these businesses, while originally artisans, gradually became more businessmen, yet, retaining their craftsmen skills so as to train, and manage his employees, making decisions as to the direction of the business which were fundamentally based upon a detailed understanding of the craft. In the case the artist-craftsmen who were employed by such firms, those who made up the vast majority of artist-craftsmen, they gradually lost the need for their original artistic skills. While the first nineteenth century graphic arts firms employed wood engravers, these were eventually joined by photo-engravers. Each kind of employee was typically limited to only practicing those skills for which he/she was hired and not a diverse range of related jobs. Although some of the wood engravers did learn the new engraving skill, some did not, just as some of those only trained in photo-engraving knew very little about wood engraving. This led to divisions in the field of graphic art reproduction, a process which gradually limited the artisans to very specific positions in particular kinds of companies, and limiting their ability to make use of diverse, yet related, skills. Furthermore, Davis notes that those who were only trained in the new process did not refer to themselves as artists, craftsmen, or even "art-workmen," but simply as workers, leading to a class division between the "artisans" or "craftsmen" and those who were employed in the more mechanized processes of graphic reproduction. Furthermore, illustrators, or "artists," were increasingly separated from the specialized artisan-craftsmen engravers, as well as the photoengravers, and all of three of these different groups of commercial artists were separated from management, forming distinct unions through which to protect their seemingly distinct interests. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">One of the successful publishing firms which hired engravers, lithographers, printers, and illustrators was the Montreal concern of George-Edouard Desbarats. Inheriting his father's Ottawa printing business in 1865, which was the printer to the Lower Canadian government, Desbarats expanded the printing and publishing firm, only to have it destroyed by fire in 1869. Relocating to Montreal, he proceeded to reestablish the business, finally printing a collection of the writings of Samuel de Champlain, which consisted of type and lithographic plates, that was being completed at the time of the fire. He also launched an ambitious and ground-breaking serial publication, the <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i>. Before the launch of this magazine, the only other publications to make extensive use of illustrations in Canada had been farming magazines and a hand-full of short-lived journals. In the 1840s and 1850s the <i>Canadian Agriculturist</i>, the <i>British American Cultivator</i>, and the <i>Canadian Farmer</i> had all used the engravings of the British engraver Frederick Lowe, who had been trained by followers of Bewick. In the 1850s and early 1860s the engraver John Allanson produced engravings of the Toronto Industrial Exhibition for the Canadian Journal. In addition, the engravers G.A. Binkert and Edward Roper rendered illustrations for a journal from Hamilton, Lower Canada, which was also named <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i>, but which was not a success. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Desbarats' new magazine, which was illustrated with the works of William Leggo, contained not only woodblock engravings produced from the illustrations of skilled artists, but it was the first journal in the world to make use of the new technique of photoengraving. Photoengraving replaced the need to engrave images by hand, but allowed them to be transferred to a block through a chemical process. Photoengraving had been developed during the 1850s, and Leggo had been trained in the new technology in Munich before establishing Leggo and Company in Quebec City. Creating his own version of the process, he patented it in 1865 as the Leggotype. In 1869 he moved to Montreal and joined with Desbarats to produce the images for the <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i>, including an image of Prince Arthur for the cover of the first edition. He also provided the images for the <i>New York Daily Illustrated</i>, which Davis explains was allegedly the first illustrated daily newspaper in the world. However, the process of photoengraving was expensive and time consuming and Desbarats eventually found that it was not practical for the <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i>, which, having become popular, required a regular and prompt supply of illustrations. Thus, after its first several years of publication, the <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i> came to rely upon wood engraving for its illustrations. With Desbarats declaring bankruptcy in 1872, the magazine continued to be published by a stock company until 1883. It was followed in 1885 by another publication launched by Desbarats, the <i>Dominion Illustrated News</i>, which was also an illustrated publication printed on glossy paper rather than newsprint. Surviving for ten years, this second publication was evidence of the popularity of such illustrated newspapers and magazines once they were introduced to the Canadian market. Yet, they were so popular that photoengraved images could not be produced fast enough to meet the demand. Thus, even at the end of the nineteenth century wood engraving and lithography remained the most common means of producing such images. These older techniques would, however, eventually be replaced by photoengraving once faster and cheaper processes were perfected. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As Davis notes, Desbarat's publishing firm, revived in the 1880s and employing illustrators, engravers, lithographers, and printers, survived up until the 1970s. It is thus an example of the new kind of printing and engraving firms which developed in the second half of the nineteenth century and through which many graphic artists were employed. Davis claims that initially, in the 1860s and 1870s there was little social distinction between engraving and printing firms and those whom they employed. Using the example of Toronto engraving and printing houses to illustrate her point, she notes that during the 1860s and 1870s the city was home to a<span> </span>number of such firms, including Copp, Clark and Company; Rolph, Smith and Company; the Toronto Lithographing Company; Bengough Brothers; and Beale Brothers. All of those companies were based within the relatively small city, which was only approximately ten square kilometers in size. They were located along side banks, law offices, the provincial legislature, factories, and warehouses. Furthermore, the houses of the wealthy were not geographically separated from business areas of the city of from the accommodations of the less wealthy. Rather, employees and employers, high and lower classes lived in close proximity to one another. Intermixed with the other business of the city, many of Toronto's engraving and printing firms continued their practice of advertising themselves as the providers of various services, including printers of different kinds of materials, book binders, publishers, and embossers. Yet, from the 1870s on, these firms began to become increasingly specialized. Some came to offer only specific kinds of illustration reproduction services, such as the Toronto Engraving Company (originally Beale Brothers), while others came to focus more on specific areas of business, such as the design and production of stationary or illustrations and advertisements for publications for newspapers and magazines. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The growing use of illustrations and illustrated advertisements in newspapers and magazines in the 1870s and 1880s corresponded with other forms of commercialization of illustration, including extensively illustrated catalogues, such as the Eaton's catalogue, first published in 1884. Furthermore, Canada's first advertising agency, opened by Angus McKim, opened in 1889, offering advice and services to help companies attract customers, furthering a departure from traditional Canadian newspaper and magazine advertisements that largely avoided the use of illustrations, as well as extravagant claims, immodesty, or excessive self-praise. With this specialization and growth, the original owners of printing and engraving firms evolved from being senior artisan-craftsmen, who worked with others whom they employed to assist them with their work, into business owners, who employed skilled, but largely anonymous and replaceable employees. This growing divide between the owners/managers and the employees was occurring as the city itself was expanding, and as clear distinctions between the social realms of the elite and mere wage earning employees became much more evident. The growing demand for illustration reproduction, and the resulting reorganization and increased division of labour occurring at companies including Bengough Brothers (which changed its name to Grip Printing and Publishing Company in 1882), Rolph, Smith and Company, the Toronto Engraving Company, and the Toronto Lithographing Company, saw these printing and engraving firms expanding even during and soon after the Long Depression starting in the 1870s.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Continuing to expand in size, the number of Toronto's engraving and printing firms also began to grow during the 1880s and 1890s so as to meet the increasing demand for illustrative work. Davis notes that in 1884 there were sixteen engraving firms listed in the Toronto Directory, a number which had grown to thirty-one by 1889. Furthermore, the firms began to specialize in specific kinds of engraving and image reproduction, with some offering the new process of photoengraving, while others identified themselves as dealing in lithography, brass, general, half-tone, metal, or wood engraving. This period also saw the introduction of other new technologies. In the case of typesetting much of the laborious work was removed with the introduction of linotype and monotype machines. Printing presses were also improved with the introduction of curved stereotype plates for rotary presses, allowing for the printing on both sides of paper at once. Photoengraving, while invented in the 1850s and further developed by Leggo in the 1870s, was not accepted as a reliable technology until the late 1880s and 1890s. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Photoengraving would eventually replace wood engraving, although graphic arts firms in both the United States and Canada did not immediately abandon the older technology, but used a mixture of engraving processes for many years. These included traditional wood engraving where designs were drawn onto woodblocks, a process where photographs were printed onto woodblocks which were then engraved, as well as the new photoengraving process which allowed for the reproduction of images on light sensitized zinc and copper plates. In the case of line cut drawings (or those which did not have changes in colour) a photograph negative of the image would be placed upon a zinc plate, exposed to light, and then the exposed parts of the plate would be etched away by an acid bath, leaving an accurate copy of the photograph on the plate which could be inked and printed. In the case of something other than a linecut illustration, the photograph would be prepared as a half-tone photograph negative -- a negative consisting of small dots made by taking the photograph through a screen or grid. Exposed to light upon a light sensitive copper plate, the resulting etching would accurately reproduce the shading and shapes of the photograph. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">All of these processes required the combined work of illustrators, photographers, engravers, photoengravers, lithographers, and printers. While some firms were specialized, in that they offered only some of these reproductive processes, others, such as the Toronto Engraving Company, had dedicated working areas for wood engraving, illustrators, printing, photography development and shooting, and photoengraving. (p 68-9) Each of these means of illustrative reproduction had become a specialization, as had different types of typesetting, with traditional typesetters sometimes replaced by specialized operators of linotype and monotype machines. Thus, while specialization and mechanization allowed for increases in the output from graphic art firms, the firms were often employing more people, many of whom were only skilled in limited aspects of image creation and/or reproduction. For example, in the complicated process of photoengraving, divisions existed between artists, photographers, etchers, routers, finishers, proofers, strippers, and blockers, all of whom had apprentices. However, as Davis notes, each of these processes was not necessarily carried out by separate people. (p70-1, 78-9)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The introduction of specialization and new technology within the graphic arts also led to changes in labour organization. In Toronto, the Toronto Typographical Society had been formed in 1834, concentrating the collective efforts of its members upon maintaining consistent wages<span> </span>and stopping employers from hiring young apprentices who would accept lower wages. In 1866 it united with the International Typographical Union, as would other Canadian printers. However, these early printers wee skilled in all of the elements of the printing trade of their time. As Davis notes, with the introduction of different kinds of presses and typesetting technologies, "printers" began to divide into different kinds of workers, with the first division being between typesetters and pressmen. And while the International Typographical Union did include such diverse groups as pressmen, stereotypers, electrotypers, bookbinders, and photo-engravers by the 1880s and 1890s, it had allowed them to form separate craft associations, which eventually evolved into autonomous unions. Between 1889 and 1922 pressmen, bookbinders, stereotypers and electrotypers, and the photo-engravers all came to form separate unions. (p 76-7) Thus, by the early twentieth century the owner of Toronto Engraving Company, Brigden, no longer ran a company which was staffed by a family of artworkmen, as had the workshop of W.J. Linton where he had trained. However, the unionization of the various groups involved in the graphic arts trades can also be seen as a counterforce, or a reaction, to their being deskilled and/or socially and economically impoverished. Maintaining certain wages and working conditions, allowed them to retain a certain level of social and economic status, upon which they could build with greater union strength, as Davis notes occurred in 1904 when the Toronto Engraving Company accepted the demands of the Photo-engraver's Union, being the first to do so in Canada.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis concludes the chapter by noting that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Toronto had emerged as the major graphic arts centre of Canada. In the 1860s, with the emergence of publications such as the <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i>, Montreal had been the major Canadian centre for printing, graphic artists, and illustration reproduction. However, despite the advances made by William Leggo, the city's graphic arts industry was slow to adopt new technology, with most firms, including that of Desbarats, continuing to use the older processes of lithography and wood engravings for several more decades. In contrast, Toronto firms were quick to embrace larger and faster presses, as well as both half-tone photoengraving and electrotypography. These Toronto firms began to change and expand rapidly in the 1880s and 1890, benefitting from new opportunities in printing and advertising which made use of these new technologies. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">CHAPTER 5: Changing Perceptions of Art Artists and Commercial Artists, 1870-1914</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis begins the chapter by pointing out that it is inaccurate to claim that the pre-First World War period did not see the development of any art that can be defined as "Canadian," as she claims is often claimed by art historians. She argues that the idea that a truly Canadian style only emerged with the Group of Seven in the 1920s, is based upon a view that ignores the realm of commercial art. It was during the 1870 to 1914 period of industrialization that a division occurred between those artists connected with business and those who were connected to new organizations such as the Royal Canadian Academy and the National Gallery of Canada. As had occurred in Britain decades earlier, the former came to be seen as commercial artists, while only the latter were understood as "true" artists. This distinction had not existed in the 1870s when the Ontario Society of Artists was founded as part of an attempts by largely Toronto based artists to found art institutions which emulated those which existed in Europe. The society and its membership would eventually contribute to the establishment of the Royal Canadian Academy, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. However, in the 1870s there was no perceptible shame in or distinction perceived between artists working independently or for commercial enterprises. There was also no perceived social difference between those who were involved in the mechanical process of photography and those who painted or illustrated. Both professions were understood as being acceptable elements of Canadian art.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis claims that the foundations of Canadian art can be understood as beginning with the Montreal and Toronto photography studios of William Notman. The studios included galleries where not only photographs, but paintings by Notman's artists would be displayed. The studios, beginning in 1856, were amongst the first in North America to produce landscape and portrait photographs. In addition to producing high-quality photographs, the studios also hand coloured photographs, retouched photographs, created backdrops for portraits, and created realistic composite photographs. As many of the artists employed by Notman were also painters, they benefitted from having their paintings displayed in the Notman galleries along with the photographs the firm produced. Benefiting from his exposure were artists such as Henry Sandham, Charles Way, Otto Jacobi, John Arthur Fraser, and Robert Duncanson, all of whom worked for Notman Studios. Indeed, Notman's John Fraser was central to the formation of the Society of Canadian Artists in Montreal, and many of the Toronto Notman studio artists were founding members of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1872. But even this society, founded by members of a photographic studio, and which made use of the studio's premises for its exhibitions, began, in the 1870s, to reflect a division between the "mechanical" and the "handmade," with the latter being considered art and the former increasingly seen as the work of a technician. In 1873 the society banned works which were based upon photographs from its exhibitions, a decision which had also been made by the Art Association of Montreal in 1870. Davis notes that these decisions were made at a time when such paintings were actually very popular. Many who had their portraits painted desired paintings which looked almost as realistic as photographs. Indeed, at least in portraiture, the technique of painting from photographs persisted into the twentieth century. However, as Davis also notes, with the growing influence of institutions of high art, mechanical means of reproducing images was increasingly viewed as almost a technical trade rather than an art, as was the manual production of images from photographs. As the distinction between fine art and commerce became more pronounced, it influenced the social status of the different kinds of graphic artists, how they earned their living, and what institutions they were invited to join. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In the case of the Royal Academy of Arts, established in 1880, allowance was initially made for engravers, designers, and architects amongst its forty full members. However, Davis notes that the representation of both engravers and designers fell after the first few years of the academy's establishment. Given that the works of the members were used to populate the National Gallery of Canada, which was also established in 1880, the underrepresentation of members who identified themselves as commercial-oriented graphic artists only further accentuated the division between such artists and those painters and sculptors who came to be seen as true artists. Yet, as Davis also notes, many of the other members of the academy were connected to advertising and engraving firms, providing them with illustrations to be reproduced. However, unlike engravers and designers, those artists did not identify themselves as being primarily involved in commercial art. Davis explains that this relationship between art and business was widespread, with many members of organizations such as the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy both exhibiting works at their exhibitions while also working for advertising agencies and commercial art studios. Artists such as J.W. Beatty, friend of the Group of Seven and First World War artist, had done work for an engraving firm,<span> </span>as a cartoonist for the <i>Canadian Magazine</i>, and taught at the Ontario College of Art. Similarly, Fred Challener had worked for the lithography company Stone Limited and taught art, as did C.W Jefferys, who also worked as an illustrator for several newspapers. Yet, regardless of these connections between the commercial and artistic worlds, by the 1880s and 1890s commercial work was increasingly being understood in Canada as a stage through which one might need to pass en route to becoming a "real" artist.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As Davis notes, several members of the Group of Seven, who for many years have been understood by many art critics as the first expression of a unique Canadian style, began their careers in commercial art, although they too viewed their commercial beginnings as merely a necessary, although very useful, stepping stone to their fine art careers. A member of the Toronto Art Students' League, the oldest original member of the Group of Seven, J.E.H. MacDonald was employed as an engraver for the Toronto Lithographing Company and then between 1895 and 1922 as the head designer for Grip Limited. MacDonald also produced designs for books and magazines, for the calendars of the Toronto Art Students' League, and for posters that were used for the plays and exhibitions of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. As is noted by Stacey in <i>The Canadian Poster Book</i>, MacDonald claimed that his commercial training had offered him experience and the development of skills which were necessary in the execution of his later work. The same was true for the rest of the original members of the Group of Seven, with the sole exception of Lawren Harris. However, with the except for Tom Thomson, who was never formally a member of the Group of Seven, all of the group's members did eventually abandon their commercial work at agencies in order to pursue their fine-art on a full-time basis, although they continue to both teach and produce illustrations for publications. Yet, as Davis also explains, in Toronto during the first decades of the twentieth century the social distinction between successful commercial and fine artists was not always clear. The Graphic Arts Club, which succeeded the Toronto Art Students' League, as well as the Arts and Letters Club included both established fine artists and commercial artists.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The lack of discrimination between fine and commercial artists in membership in the various Toronto and Ontario artistic associations was continued with the Ontario Society of Artists. The only major exception to this trend being the admission of Fred Brigden, artist for the Toronto Engraving company and son of its co-founder. While a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, the Arts and Letters Club, and the Graphic Arts Club, Brigden was excluded from the Royal Canadian Academy, a inconsistency which Davis simply ascribes to the seemingly arbitrary nature of admission to the academy. If there was any reason for his not being made a member it was likely not his artistic skill or commercial connections. Rather, Davis suggests that it may have been his refusal to recognize there being any difference in importance between fine art and commercial art. Brigden was an outspoken opponent of the notion that commercial art was a means to an end. Reflecting the ideas of Ruskin and Morris, he noted that in the past there had always been a close connection between practical crafts and the arts, and that something was no less a work of art if it had a commercial and/or everyday use. Indeed, he noted that all artists do need to make a living. He did recognize that in the age of mechanization the hand of the craftsman/artist does not necessarily touch each piece, but he did not think that piece any less a work of art in that it was designed and executed by an artist. Brigden saw art as something which could be and was part of everyday life, not something which was limited to galleries and museums. This idea that art should be created with a purpose went against the prevailing view that true art was only "art for art's sake." Likewise, the painter and illustrator C.W. Jefferys argued that it would be everyday art which would be seen by future generations as the art of any particular time, especially the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not that which was restricted to galleries. Indeed, he claimed that the advertising poster, which was widely seen and distributed, with its attractive colours and designs, would likely be identified in the future as representing the styles of the time. (p 94-6)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">A similar division between fine and commercial art was occurring in the United States during the first years of the twentieth century, with many successful commercial artists resenting the often implied notion of commercial art being inferior to fine art. However, Davis also notes that, like in Canada, the distinction in the United States was also gradual. She quotes the American Howard Pyle who, working as editor of <i>McLure's </i>magazine in 1905, did not believe there to be a distinction between good illustration and fine art. Likewise, Davis notes Norman Rockwell's assertion that, when he attended the New York Art Students' League from 1910 to 1912, no distinction in status was made between classes in illustration or those in portraiture or landscape painting. Davis likens this development of a distinction between commercial and fine art to how Bewick and other early wood engravers were referred to as independent artist-craftsmen, but that those who would later work in wood engraving shops for newspapers and magazines were referred to as "mechanical" engravers, mechanically engraving a particular piece of boxwood without ever seeing the final result.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The division of labour which occurred with this mechanization of the illustration reproduction process allowed for even more specialized skills with the introduction of additional technology. When Brigden's firm first took on the job of producing the illustrations for Eaton's catalogue in 1893 many of the illustrations were from wood blocks. However, by the 1910s the Toronto Engraving Company (renamed Brigden's in 1911) was using photography and photoengraving, and were even colouring some of the images. Artists were hired to illustrate only particular kinds of clothing, be they boots, dresses, or hats. Others specialized in colouring the images, while still others focuses upon details such as buttons and stitching. Finally, there were layout artists who had to arrange, or design, the various images into a coherent and fashionable whole. Other commercial artists who worked for magazines were able to have more control over the illustration of whole stories or articles; however, even this work could be understood as being akin to that of an assembly line, and thus, "mechanical" like that of earlier wood engravers and photo-engravers. Davis notes that it is not unreasonable to consider that many of the artists themselves viewed commercial work as inferior to fine art, in that the latter gave the freedom to create on their own terms. Yet, she also notes, that many, such as Charles Comfort, claimed that their work in the commercial art studios gave them invaluable skills and experience upon which their later fine art careers were based. (p96-8)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">By the beginning of the First World War the graphic arts companies that were providing visual materials for the publishing and advertising industries had expanded to all of the major Canadian cities. The Toronto Engraving Company, which had changed its name to Brigden's Limited in 1911, established a Winnipeg branch office in 1914. The Toronto Lithographic Company merged with Rolph, Clark, Stone Limited in 1917 and John Bengough's engraving company had become Grip Limited in 1901. Others, such as Copp, Clark, and Company continued to expand. These companies employed skilled and often unionized photoengravers, printers, and other workers. As Davis notes, because of their specialized skills and unionized job protection, these workers retained a certain level of status. The arts employed by these companies, however, were not viewed as being of the same caliber as fine artists. In addition, Davis notes that they could not even be considered as being the "art-workmen" discussed by John Ruskin, in that they were separated from the actual tasks of reproducing their art, such as photography, photo-engraving, or printing. Rather, they were labelled "commercial artists." Yet, Davis argues that these artists were instrumental in creating a "popular," as opposed to a "high" Canadian art. Furthermore, since many later went on to fine art careers, she claims that the commercial arts industry can be understood to be a bridge between commercial and fine art.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">CHAPTER 6: Business and Art in Western Canada: The Spread of Commercial Ideas</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Focusing her study of the development of the graphic arts industry in western Canada on Winnipeg, the largest city in western Canada at the beginning of the twentieth century, Davis explains that prior to and following Confederation, most graphic artists who went west of Upper Canada only did so as either recorders or reporters with survey crews or exploration teams. Very few stayed in the largely unsettled west. Indeed, it was only with the rise in the acceptance and popularity of illustrated newspapers and magazines that artists and engravers came to settle in the cities of the west, and like in the east, the industrial processes which made large circulation illustrated publications possible also saw them experience the same specialization and loss of artisanal skill which had occurred in the east. Furthermore, as in the east, the graphic arts industry provided employment for many of the local photographers and photo-engravers, as well as aspiring young artists, who otherwise may not have had a steady source of employment. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">By the First World War Winnipeg had all of the elements required for sustaining a graphic arts industry, including a relatively large and growing population, financial institutions, manufacturing, and a printing industry. All of this industry sustained and supplied not only the city, but also much of the expanding west. Since the fur trade the settlement had been the supply hub for the region, also becoming the regional transportation hub with the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s. Furthermore, the city was expanding rapidly. Although the population was only 241 in 1871, it had climbed to 136,035 by the census of 1911. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Printers had existed in the Winnipeg area since as far back as 1859 when the Reverend Griffith Owen Corbett published the <i>Headingly Press</i>, a political broadsheet. The same year two printers/journalists, William Buckingham and William Coldwell, started the newspaper, the <i>Nor'Wester</i>. Having worked for the <i>Globe</i> and the <i>Leader</i> in Toronto, their newspaper was named after the North West Company, which had been the unchartered Montreal-based competition/rival fur trading company to the Hudson's Bay Company before the latter absorbed the former in 1821. In keeping with its namesake, the <i>Nor</i>'<i>Wester</i> was largely used by its editors and publishers as a means of voicing dissatisfaction with the Hudson's Bay Company's control over Rupert's Land, including the Red River Colony. By the mid-1860s control over the paper had been purchased by John Christian Schultz, a businessman and speculator from Upper Canada who advocated western expansion and English-oriented settlement, and the end of fur trade-based rule by the Hudson's Bay Company, which he and his supporters viewed as an impediment to settlement. Not supported by much of the population, including the Métis, Schultz sold the paper and the press in 1868, although it was confiscated and the <i>Nor'Wester</i> outlawed by Louis Riel and his provisional government in 1869. The same fate befell another paper started by William Coldwell in 1869, the <i>Red River Pioneer</i>. As Davis notes, other papers were started after the establishment of the Province of Manitoba. Indeed, between 1859 and 1884 ten dailies and twenty-two weeklies or semiweeklies were started. However, by 1885 there was only one daily, the <i>Manitoba Free Press (</i>later the <i>Winnipeg Free Press</i>), and for weeklies. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">One of the major factors in the development of the graphic arts industry in Winnipeg at the beginning of the twentieth century was the establishment in 1905 of a branch of Eaton's department store. Built to be the an enormous factor in the retail and catalogue shopping trade in the expanding west, the new store had five and a half acres of floor space and employed 800 people. While disastrous for its retail competition, the arrival of Eaton's and its western Canadian mail order catalogue, which was to be designed and executed in Winnipeg, featuring goods which were suited to the needs of western Canadian farm families, as well as those in the growing towns, was very beneficial for the Winnipeg graphic design trade. To benefit from this situation, Brigden's, the commercial art firm which did much of the work for Eaton's in Toronto and the eastern Canadian mail order catalogue, opened a Winnipeg office in 1914. There already did exist a number of commercial art firms in Winnipeg before the arrival of Bridgen's. These included Stovel's, Bulman's, Buckbee Mears, Campbells, Commercial Engravers, the Ransom Engraving Company, and the Reed-Thompson Engraving Company. However, so as to take advantage of some of the established business, Brigden's bought Reed-Thompson in 1913 and then took over much of the building housing the magazine, the <i>Farmer's Advocate</i>. It became one of the largest and most influential firms in the city, continuing the lucrative Eaton's catalogue work done by its eastern parent firm.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Brigden's, like the other commercial art firms in Winnipeg, relied upon artists to create many of the images which it supplied to clients. Davis claims that, while being home to numerous artists, Winnipeg's artistic community has often been ignored by Canadian art historians, possibly because many of the city's artists had close connections with the field of commercial art. This is the same argument she offered for many art historians ignoring much popular Canadian art prior to the establishment of the Group of Seven. Those in Winnipeg worked as art teachers, newspaper cartoonists, engravers, and graphic art illustrators. These artists included Victor Long (Buckbee Mears), Frank Armington,<span> </span>Hay Stead (cartoonist for the <i>Manitoba Free Press</i>), E.J. Ransom (founder of the Ransom Engraving Company), Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (member of the Group of Seven), William winter, Charles Comfort, Walter J. Phillips, and Eric Bergman. Furthermore, Armington, Stead, and Ransom helped form the Manitoba Society of Artists in 1903, exhibiting in private homes and at public fairs. The Winnipeg Art Gallery was established in 1912, and the next year the Winnipeg School of Art was opened as a school of art and design, offering training in both fine and commercial art. Indeed, Davis notes that, despite the recognition which came from attendance at the art school or having works displayed in the gallery may have offered local artists, in the years before the Second World War, Winnipeg's commercial art firms were essential to allowing many local artists the ability to earn a living, as well as apply and develop their artistic skills. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Other graphic art firms of note in Western Canada during the pre-Second World War era discussed by Davis include the Hammond Lithographing Company in Calgary, as well as King Show Print, one of Canada's most successful printers of circus and show posters. Started by the printer and publisher of the <i>Rouleau Enterprise</i> of Rouleau, Saskatchewan, Andrew King, in 1912, King Show Print continued producing posters until 1958. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">CHAPTER 7 Factors for Change: Labour and Art, 1914-1940</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis begins by noting that the First World War provided the Canadian graphic arts industry with various contracts for Victory Bonds and other government war-related material. Once again concentrating upon the Toronto-based firms, Davis claims that, as the largest graphic arts centre in the country, Toronto and its firms can serve as an example for the rest of the country at the time. Furthermore, after 1918 improvements occurred in technology to ensure that the industry was more efficient, and thus, not significantly harmed by the fall in government contracts. However, while beneficial for the owners of he firms, the improvements in efficiency were not always good for the workers. Working conditions, pay, hours, and the introduction of technology such as offset printing and new photography processing created tension between workers and their employers. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Although Davis offers a considerable amount of detail concerning different labour disputes in the graphic arts trade during the 1920s and 1930s, what is significant is that the various job actions were often taken by different segments of the workforce, each of which were members of a different union. Furthermore, the different unions did not often strike in solidarity, a fact which must have only strengthened feelings of separation between different sectors of the graphic arts. For example, the printers and typographers were part of a typographical union, which was separate from the pressmen's union, the bookbinders' union, or the photoengravers' union. (p 123-4) Indeed, in discussing the introduction of offset lithography in the first and second decades of the century, Davis notes that the pressmen's union actively encouraged its members to take courses on learning how to use the new offset presses, as well as the new photographic processes involved in offset printing, so as to stop lithographers or photoengravers from being the first and only group to master, and benefit from, the new technology. (p 124-5)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The first firm in Toronto to adopt photo-lithography was Rolph and Clark, the former Toronto Lithographic Company. Installing a photocomposing machine by 1912, it was followed by Brigden's soon after. However, Davis notes, that photo-lithography was not economically feasible to use on a large scale until the later 1930s, by which time the process and technology had been further refined to reduce time and labour. (p 126)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Whereas the printers, lithographers, typesetters, and other workers at graphic arts firms were unionized, Davis notes that the same was not true of the artists at those firms. They did not undergo unionized labour disruptions, but continued to be trained as apprentices or attended art school. Following their artistic education they would either be hired to work on regular publications or to illustrate catalogues, publications, and advertisements. However, Davis also claims that during the 1930s a reaction began to grow within the Canadian artistic community to the dominance of the nationalism and landscape paintings of the Group of Seven. While, starting in the 1920s, the group was seen both nationally and internationally as representing Canadian art, other Canadian artists began to resent this situation, especially since the dominance of the Group of Seven caused the national and international public to ignore other examples of Canadian art as being real art. Reacting to the nationalism and landscape-focused works of the Group of Seven, other artists began to focus upon international issues and painted in the style of other international movements. Indeed, during the 1930s Canadian artists debated over the notion of art being created either for arts sake or for a purpose. Many of those reacting to the Group of Seven supported the views of Ruskin and Morris that art should not be separated and removed from the public. Rather, they claimed that movements such as abstraction and modernism only helped to create art which could be appreciated by only a few, a position which was all the more popular during a period when elites were often seen as being out of touch with the realities of society. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis also notes that while many, largely younger artist were becoming interested in "social art," and viewed established institutions like the Royal Canadian Academy and the Ontario Society of Artists as elitist organizations which did not reflect their concern for social issues or their desire for radical expressive innovations, their opinion was that of the minority of Canadian artists. Referencing Charles C. Hill's <i>Canadian Painting in the Thirties</i>, Davis claims that some of Canada's more renowned art historians have perpetuated the myth that most progressive Canadian artists supported the "social art" ideals espoused by members of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water-Colour, while established organizations like the Ontario Society of Artists was "more and more dominated by commercial artists, repeating in slick and superficial work the 'Canadian' themes of the Group of Seven." (p128) Noting Hill's derisive use of the term "commercial artist," Davis claims that while intended to dismiss the work of the membership of such organizations, it actually reflected the fact that many non-commercial artists were increasingly making use of the tools of the graphic arts, including drawing, wood engraving, and lithography. She also suggests that the acceptance of these mediums gave the graphic arts a legitimacy in the larger artistic community which it had not had since the separation between the commercial and fine arts during the nineteenth century. However, she also suggests that media such as watercolour, black-and-white drawing, and wood engraving were also inexpensive, which could also account for their being adopted by many non-commercial artists during the 1930s. (p 128) Furthermore, Davis notes that only the most successful of Canadian artists did not have some connection to the commercial world during the 1930s. Commercial work was necessary at a time when even established members of the Royal Canadian Academy and the Ontario Society of Artists were selling few, if any, works. Although not all such artists worked for commercial art firms, others taught, worked as freelance commercial artists, or as artists for businesses, such as department stores. (p 129)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis dismisses the claim made by Barry Lord in his <i>History of Canadian Painting</i> that commercial art and fine art had been understood as equally reputable in the early days of the Group of Seven, and that they had only separated when too many fine artists began to distain commercialism and when commercial artists began to look upon independent artists as artists who would do freelance commercial artwork, and thus, undercut full-time commercial artists. Rather, she argues that the separation dates back to the industrialization of the country and illustrators and engravers being made to work in situations where clients did not necessarily need the highest artistry or the best craftsmanship, but a regular and reliable supply of acceptable illustrations and engravings. (p 130-1)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis also notes that the situation for artists in Canada during the Great Depression was not that of their American counterparts. The Canadian government did not offer a program comparable to the American government's Works Progress Administration, but rather, did nothing to actively support Canadian art. Furthermore, where as a school of "social realism" developed in the United States which reflected the social and economic conditions of the decade, no such activist school of artists was formed in Canada. While some Canadian artists were influenced by the American movement, their failure to form a cohesive national school may have been due to their lacking any kind of binding progressive association similar to the Lithographic Artists', Engravers', and Designers' League or the Poster Artists' Association in the United States. (p 129)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The prevailing attitudes concerning commercial art began to change with the Second World War and a new realization by both government and commerce of the value of such art which is produced for specific needs. With the beginning of the Second World War the Canadian government recognized the value of graphic art in furthering the war campaign. Furthermore, as of 1941 the federal government offered support to a national artists organization. Formed as a result of the Canadian Conference of Canadian Artists held at the Queen's University in June 1941, the Federation of Canadian Artists worked to coordinate artists, art workers, and interested laypeople in promoting common aims and furthering the place of art in Canadian life. While not actively supporting Canadian artists as a whole during the 1930s, the federal government, recognizing the value of art in strengthening national unity and furthering the war effort, recognized the value of taking advantage of the popular support of the war among the public and many artists. Many artists benefitted from this support through programs such as the Victory Bonds campaign and Ottawa's commissioning of official war artists. (p 131)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In the case of advertising agencies and the graphic arts community, they both began to recognize that the skills of a graphic artist are not necessarily those of a financially strapped independent artist creating fine art, but that the graphic artist has skills of presentation and approach which are highly specialized and should be valued. Graphic artists began to recognize that their work as illustrators, designers, and typesetters largely concerned the communication of information by visual means. Gradually, as the field of graphic art began to be defined as separate from fine art, and not simply its poor cousin, Canadian graphic artists began to professionalize, beginning in the 1940s. This occurred through the creation of specific graphic arts courses, as well as the establishment of professional organizations. Referencing Stacey's <i>Canadian Poster Book</i>, Davis notes that this transformation of graphic design into a well defined profession began with the formation of the Toronto Art Director's Club in 1949, followed by the establishment of similar clubs in Montreal, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. These clubs held annual exhibitions to judge the various kinds of graphic art, including newspaper and magazine advertisements, publication illustrations, page layouts, stationary design, and posters. In fact, by the mid 1950s they were even judging television advertisements. (see 1956 Toronto ADC annual). These same organizations, including the TDC, took steps to advance the training of graphic artists in Canada. All of these developments worked to solidify the position of Canadian graphic artists as being related, but quite separate and distinct from fine artists, and thus, not judged in relation to those who were identified as practicing fine art. (p 131-2)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">CHAPTER 8: Conclusion</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Davis dedicates her last chapter to offering a brief overview of the positions she advanced throughout the book. She begins by explaining that one can date the beginning of Canada's graphic arts industry to the 1870s and the establishment of a small number of artisanal engraving and lithographing firms in Eastern Canada in the 1870s. These firms had been preceded by individual engravers and printers who had either come to and left Canada, or had needed to find other means of employment when they discovered that they were unable to support themselves through printing, engraving, or lithography alone in British North America. However, by the 1870s, with the growth of Canadian cities, a popular press, growing literacy rates, better transportation systems, and the increased mechanization and industrialization of the printing process, retailers and publishers began to recognize the value of illustration and designed layouts in the selling of goods, newspapers, books, and magazines. However, while the engraving, printing, and lithographing firms grew, they also lost their status as small enterprises run by individual artist-craftsmen, or art-workers. These original founders of the firms had begun working on their own, or with one or two other artist-craftsmen, and had been intimately involved and knowledgeable of the entire process of engraving, lithography, and/or printing. As their firms grew with increased demand for their services, the creation process began to be divided amongst different workers, each of whom came to hold an increasingly limited range of skills and/or were regularly involved in only a portion of the creative process. This was not unlike other industries where demand for products resulted in the division of labour and an increase in production. While, initially, many of the people employed by the expanding firms were often just as skilled as their employers, and thus, could perform a wide variety of tasks, by the 1890s and the introduction of photography, photo-engraving, and eventually colour printing services, those charged with specific tasks occupied specific work spaces and were needed to concentrate on those specific tasks.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Even with the division of labour, the graphic arts industry always required the skill of artists. Although the engraving, lithographing, printing, typesetting, and photoengraving processes did involve elements of repetitive physical labour which could be assigned to workers who were only trained/skilled in those narrow tasks, the illustrators and engravers who could visualize ideas and transform them into graphic representations which could then be mechanically reproduced were always needed. Even when wood engraving was replaced by the mechanical process of photoengraving, illustrators, photographers, and layout artists were still required to create and arrange the images which were to be reproduced. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The original founders of engraving, lithographing, or printing firms were intimately involved in all aspects of their enterprises. They produced, accepted, or commissioned the graphic material to be reproduced, acquired their own tools, kept their own premises, advertised their skills, and reproduced images and text themselves. Yet, as the value of their work began to be recognized by newspaper publishers such as George Brown of the <i>Globe</i> and retailers such as Timothy Eaton, they began to expand, acquiring larger staffs, more machinery, and specifically designed premises. As circumstances demanded or allowed, different firms also merged so as to both grow and expand their graphic arts services. However, not all graphic artists, many of whom originally had many of the same skills, came to own or run their own firms. Rather, while some were owners, most were only ever employees. Davis argues that this was simply because there were only a small number of skilled artist-craftsmen who had the resources to start their own firms. Others, although just as skilled, simply lacked the financial resources necessary to found their own firms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As firms grew, labour was divided, and processes were increasingly mechanized, there came to be a separation between art and craft. The artist and the engravers, the photo-engravers and the printers, all became separated, as did commercial art from fine art, the latter of which had no "purpose" and the former was increasingly viewed as art on demand which could not challenge ideas or simply exist for its own sake. Those who were the first "technically skilled" employees in the graphic arts included photoengravers and printers. While technically more complicated than wood engraving, the new process of photoengraving, involved less artistic skill and so was able to be easily broken up into a number of technical steps that were carried out by individual workers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In the case of the artists employed by commercial art firms, while they were increasingly seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as being inferior to artists producing fine art, Davis argues that they often had the same skills as fine artists and that many artists worked in both the commercial and fine art fields during this period out of economic necessity. Indeed, in the nineteenth century Notman's photography studio, and other similar studios, employed many of the country's artists, as did commercial art firms in the early twentieth century, as in the case of Grip Limited which employed several of the future members of the Group of Seven. Davis argues that the division between fine and popular art was the result of fine art being based upon the concept of "art for art's sake," which caused it to be increasingly personal and esoteric. Commercial artists, on the other hand, worked to develop art which was easily understood by the general public, and thus, succeeded in communicating specific ideas to their audience. (p136-7) Indeed, Davis notes that, prior to the development of the idea of "art for art's sake" in the nineteenth century, art had always been seen to have a purpose. Referencing Alan Gowans' <i>The Unchanging Arts</i>, she claims that art traditionally, "served four major functions: recording, beautifying, publicizing ideas or convictions 'intended to persuade people to new or different beliefs,' and illustrating in order to disseminate information." (p 140) From the creation of the first printed images in the fifteenth century, reproduced graphic art served the purpose of communicating ideas for a specific purpose, and was simply an extension of purpose-based individual works of art. The mechanization of the reproduction process in the nineteenth century with Thomas Bewick's white-line wood engraving technique merely made it possible to disseminate such purpose made images to large numbers of people. (p 141) Furthermore, Davis argues that one can argue that the work of illustrators and engravers found in publications such as <i>Picturesque Canada</i> (1882), the <i>Canadian Illustrated News</i>, and the calendars of the Toronto Art Student's league offered a form of national art which preceded the Group of Seven. The landscapes and everyday representations of Canada presented by these artists and engravers may have, as was suggested by William Colgate in his 1943 book <i>Canadian Art</i>, greatly contributed to fostering an interest and pride in Canadian scenery and Canadian pictorial art, and, as Davis suggests, would have offered shared visions of Canada to a population which largely had little understanding of the rest of their vast country. (p 141-2)</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"></span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-58489924441483929142011-12-13T14:59:00.000-08:002011-12-13T15:14:03.755-08:00Tyopmundus 20 / International Center for the Typographic Arts<span style="font-size: large;">International Center for the Typographic Arts, <i>Typomundus 20: A Project of the International Center for the Typographic Arts (ICTA)</i>. New York: Reinhold, 1966.</span><br />
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Organized in 1963, Typomundus 20 was to be a competition and exhibition of the best typographical design of the twentieth century, up to 1964. Organized by the International Center for the Typographic Arts, the competition/exhibition was originally scheduled to be held in New York. However, because several of the competition judges were from communist countries, they were not allowed to enter the United States. Thus, the judging of the competition was conducted in Toronto in October 1964. The exhibition of the winning designs, however, was staged in New York the following year. The catalogue, <i>Typomundus 20,</i> was created as a record of the competition, outlining the ideas behind it and the criteria upon which entries were judged. The catalogue also offered the judges a place to voice their views concerning the competition.<br />
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Several features are obvious about the competition, even from a cursory inspection of the catalogue. The first is that, while intended to have been a competition/exhibition of typographic design from the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century, the vast majority of the entries are from the years between 1960 and mid-1964, when the jury stopped accepting new entries. Second, as can be seen in the Typography annuals of the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada, there appears to be confusion/debate about whether the main focus of the profession is typographic design or graphic design more generally. While entitled Typomundus, the entries from the different judges suggest that some of them had different understandings about what should be the focus of their profession. <br />
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In addition to reproducing the initial October 1963 call for entries to the competition/exhibition, the book begins with a statement by the Director of the International Center for the Typographic Arts, Aaron Burns, to the jury members. Printed, like the rest of the sections of the text, in English, French, and German, Burns begins by explaining that each of the twelve jury members were selected on the basis of their national and international reputations in the field of typographic design, as well as on the basis of their representing different styles and approaches to such design. Furthermore, Burns rejects any need for the jury members to debate what constitutes "typographic design," claiming such a discussion unnecessary, a position which he claims was justified by the, "reputation and professional status of each of you[.]" (page viii) However, he then continues by explaining the specific rules of eligibility for entries in the competition, and thus, seemingly, what constitutes legitimate typographic design. He explains that the only materials which were eligible were, "letterforms, either calligraphic, typographic or written." Thus, it is clear, that the International Center for the Typographic Arts was still, in 1964, placing an emphasis upon type, and not recognizing that type was only one element of the designs created by typographic, or graphic, designers.<br />
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A problem with the international judging process raised by Burns was that not all of the members of the jury were fluent in the languages or cultures of the typographic material being judged. Thus, there would be elements of some of the almost 10,000 submitted designs which particular members would not appreciate, but which might be understood by someone who reads that language, or is familiar with the culture, as significantly enhancing or taking away from the overall design. Burns, however, did not think this linguistic barrier to be a significant problem and claimed that the judges could fairly judge the material, "on the basis of its own form, beauty, appeal and excellence of typographic artistry." (page viii) While he also recognizes that, in addition to overcoming the cultural and linguistic barriers, each judge would be making subjective judgments. Yet, Burns claims that it was the quality of their subjective judgment which caused each judge to be selected to participate in the jury in the first place, and thus, their subjective judgments were valued and respected. He concludes his statement by hoping that the Typomundus exhibition/competition would help set international standards of typographic excellence and encourage the creation of quality designs.<br />
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Burns' comments are followed by those of a member of the International Center for the Typographic Arts' Publicity Committee, Marilyn Hoffner. He outlines the development of the Typomundus exhibition, claiming that its entries were intended to represent the typographic design of the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. Hoffner does not address the problem that most of the submissions were from the 1960s. However, he does outline the judging process, noting that the linguistic differences of the judges sometimes resulted in particular judges being unable to discuss the merits of particular designs. Like Burns, Hoffner did not think that this was problematic, but claimed that "one simply found someone who could talk the language or else 'talked' without words." (page x)<br />
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Like Burns, Hoffner concludes with the hope that Typomundus 20 would assist in establishing high international standards in typographic design. He claims that the exhibition/competition's success would be continued in future Typomundus exhibitions/competitions, including one which was scheduled for 1967. No evidence has been found that the 1967 exhibition ever occurred. <br />
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Next, the catalogue offers short biographies of all of the jury members, followed by short statements by each. While many of these statements merely outline the judging process and thank the efforts of the International Center for the Typographic Arts, as well as the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada for hosting the event, some do offer insightful comments into the state of the profession, the dominance of particular design styles, and problems or issues with the exhibition and/or judging process. <br />
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In his comments, Oldrich Hlavsa from Czechoslovakia claims that the exhibition not only acted as an overview of the various typographic design styles of the twentieth century, but it also showed how different styles and trends had changed and evolved. In particular, he notes that, while there had been a "modest" revival of the constructive typography of the 1920s and 1930s, he claims that the influence of that style was actually diminishing. <br />
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The American judge, Louis Dorfsman, claims that, contrary to the view of some typographic designers, typographic design is an art rather than a trade. Furthermore, he argues that it is one of only two practical arts, the other being architecture. While emphasizing the role of type in visual design, Dorfsman's comment suggests that his notion of typographic design was broad than that of Burns. Such a broader definition is explicitly argued for by his fellow judge, Hans Neuburg from Switzerland. At the beginning of his comments he claims that, while a laudable idea, all of the judges apparently came to the conclusion that it would have been better, "to have a wider selection [of designs] on a more than typographic basis." (page xxiv)<br />
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In his comments, the German judge, Hermann Zapf, argued that, while the 612 entries which were selected for the exhibition by the jury offer a good survey of typographic design over the first six and a half decades of the twentieth century, the work of many significant and influential designers were not included. In particular, he notes that works by Dwiggins, Updike, Rogers, Mardersteig, Schmoller, Trump, and Schneidler were not included because nobody submitted them to the competition. Thus, while including many laudable designs, one could criticize the competition of a presentist bias.<br />
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Finally, Piet Zwart of the Netherlands argues that, in addition to being subjective, and complicated by linguistic and cultural barriers, the judging of the works submitted to Typomundus 20 were also influenced by convention regarding "good" typographic design. Recognizing that influential designs are often initially understood as "crazy," he also notes that, while many of the radical designs submitted to the competition may not have been selected for the exhibition, their significance would become apparent with time.<br />
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Interestingly, the comments of the one Canadian judge, Carl Dair, largely only praise Typomundus 20 and the International Center for the Typographic Arts for their goal of creating high international typographic design standards. However, he also recognized that, while one might design with skill and to high standards, a talented designer may not be recognized if he/she does not have access to resources which will adequately exhibit or do justice to his/her designs and effort.<br />
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Following the introductory passages and the comments by the judges, the rest of the catalogue is dedicated to reproducing the entries which were selected for inclusion in Typomundus 20. Interestingly, unlike the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada's<i> Typography 64</i> competition/exhibition of the same year, <i>Typomundus 20</i> is not dominated by the International, or Swiss, Style.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-19738601295866542012011-12-12T07:47:00.000-08:002011-12-12T07:47:17.529-08:00The Canadian Poster Book / Robert StaceyRobert Stacey. <i>The Canadian Poster Book</i>. Toronto: Methuen Press, 1979.<br />
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Stacey produced this book to accompany an exhibit of a century of poster design and printing in Canada which was mounted by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1979. He begins the book's introduction by arguing that, as of 1979, little work had been done on the history of Canadian illustration, graphic design, typography, or poster design, and that while some Canadians may have been aware that some contemporary Canadian poster designs had been shown and awarded prizes at international design competitions, few would know that the 1880s poster craze which began in France, and then moved to Britain and the United States, also affected Canada at the same time. Indeed, he argues that galleries, museums, archives, and other public institutions have largely ignored both Canada's relatively very rich poster design history, let alone its graphic arts history.<br />
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Stacey explains that in Canada, prior to the development of modern posters, public announcements were limited to engraved or letterpress broadsides. These began to appear in the late eighteenth century and continued to be used throughout the nineteenth. Consisting of advertisements and public notices, broadsides were largely limited to type. Desiring more visual and attractive means of communicating information, printers began to seek out alternative means of printing. The middle of the nineteenth century saw the answer to this search for the printing of graphics with the arrival of lithography in Canada. Lithography not only allowed the printing of colour graphics, but also depth and perspective. <br />
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Lithography had likely been invented by the German, Aloys Senefelder in 1818. It was then integrated into a rotary press in 1837 by Brisset. Both versions of the technology involve the reproduction of an image on a porous limestone block or zinc plate. With either technology, there are several processes by which the image can be reproduced on the surface. The free-hand drawing of the image onto the plate, in reverse, is auto-lithography. Chromo-lithography is the redrawing of a professional artist's work. Finally, photo-lithography is a process by which an image is photographed on a sensitized plate or stone. While the process was able to be used with faster presses printing increasingly large images as the nineteenth century progressed, in Canada, most lithographs were produced on a small scale by immigrant German and British lithographers, who had been trained in their home countries, and who carefully reproduced images by hand. While impressive, Stacey also argues that their work also, "tended to stiffly mechanical over-elaboration."<br />
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What Stacey terms the "modern art poster" originated with the French lithographer Jules Chéret. Taking the technology of hand-drawn colour lithography from London to Paris in 1869, Chéret created designs for theatrical, concert, and dance hall advertisements. He drew his designs on stone and introduced numerous colour through the process of over-printing. According to the art historian, Alan Gowans, there developed from Chéret's technique three different kinds of posters: "workaday posters," "art in advertising," and "art posters." Furthermore, Stacey notes that, according to Gowan, the poster should be understood to be a kind of fine art since it was largely obsolete by the 1890s, when most advertising was no longer taking the form of outdoor posters, but rather interior newspaper and magazine advertisements. The introduction of cylinder-printing which made use of unbroken rolls of wood pulp paper in the 1880s made advertising in newspapers and magazines more cost-effective. While poster advertising was effective, advertising in newspapers and magazines allowed larger numbers, over larger areas, to see the advertisements. Furthermore, Stacey argues that the poster was also understood to be too "arty" in that, while its colours and artistic elements did get the public's attention, it was believed that the public was often more drawn to such artistic elements than to the specific message that the poster was designed to convey. <br />
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While the "art poster" was not created until 1869, the technology to produce many single colour posters very quickly, the cylindrical press, was invented by 1848. Perfected for colour poster production by the 1860s, the cylindrical press could produce posters that were three metres high or more, supplanting the earlier flatbed presses used for lithographic work. In Paris, the large artistic posters by artists such as Chéret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec transformed the city, with the array of advertisements being a kind of gallery. Chéret was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1890 for his contribution to the look of Paris and the printing industry. In response to this, in Toronto the editor of The Week wrote that, "all artists and persons of artistic taste will rejoice that encouragement is shown at least in one country to an artist who subdues to his skill and taste those hideous placards that disfigure so many places." Encouraged by the popularity of posters, as well as the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts styles in which they were being produced in Europe and America, Canadian printers also began teaching themselves the art of, and tooling themselves in the machinery required for, large art poster design and printing. However, where as large-scale Parisian posters advertised music halls and cafés, the early Canadian versions of the 1880s and 1890s typically advertised newspapers and magazines. Wishing to increase circulation, these publishers would produce large-size versions of their illustrated publications for store owners and news agents to attract customers. Stacey also notes that another reason for the smaller size of Canadian posters compared to, say, Paris, was the narrowness of Canadian city streets, the lack of outdoor public posting space, and a market for such posters amongst collectors, who would not have wanted enormous posters which they could not display indoors. In addition, many of these posters were often done in styles reminiscent of European poster artists.<br />
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Discussing the reception of large poster design and printing in Toronto during the 1880s and 1890s, Stacey notes that awareness of European and American poster trends was "registered" by the Ontario Society of Artists and the Toronto Art Student's League. The membership of the latter organization, founded in 1886, consisted of professional illustrators, lithographers, and art students, all of whom realized that they would most easily be able to make their living working for commercial art studios, as illustrators/artists for newspapers and magazines, or for printing companies. Interestingly, Stacey notes that the main objective of the league was to have Canadian artists make use, and have the public appreciate, the Canadian landscape as artistic subject matter. The ways in which many of the leaders of the league were influenced by late nineteenth century trends in French Impressionism, the modern Scandinavian landscape school, and art nouveau. While disbanded in 1904, the league would later be reincarnated as the Graphic Arts Club (which was later renamed the Canadian Society of Graphic Art) and the Canadian Society of Applied Arts, which was founded in 1903. The latter organization was supposed to follow the example of William Morris in that it encouraged original design and exploration in crafts, furniture, textile, or print design. However, Stacey also notes that a Canadian style of poster, or graphic, design never emerged. Rather at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century Canadian artists and designers often went abroad to study or gain employment, returning with the styles to which they had been exposed. At least, in this, in Stacey's words "rescued our artists and designers and their sponsors from chronic isolation[.]"<br />
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Stacey is careful to emphasize that, while there were "modern-style" illustrated posters being produced in Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where advertisements were "couched in the simplified, suggestive mode preferred by artists who adapted the flat, flowing patterns of the Japanese woodblock print to the lithographic poster." Rather, most either consisted only of type or were large-scale renditions of a company's logo or an image of the product. Where the product could not be rendered visually, the company's headquarters were often shown instead. Furthermore, following orders from the clients to maintain consistency, poster printers would reproduce the same images and slogans year after year, using the same graphic techniques and lettering, even when these different elements were long out of fashion. However, the growth of cities like Toronto did allow for the introduction of some variations on these basic formats. Yet, these were definitely the minority of posters which were consumed by the public.<br />
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Although many engravers and lithographers did not have aspirations to produce fine art, some did. Poster illustrators who would later become well known artists, including J. D. Kelly, C. W. Jefferys, F. H. Bridgen, F. S. Challener, and J. E. H. MacDonald all used the design industry to make a living which could support their fine art. They worked for companies in Toronto such as the Toronto Lithographing Co., the Toronto Engraving Co., and Grip Ltd. During the last years of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth these companies had been hiring artists and designers who images and layouts which would conform to their clients' wishes. This arrangement of having draftsmen, photographers, plate-makers, layout-artists, copywriters, and advertising salesmen all working together a cohesive company, or studio, was a radical idea at the time. Indeed, the concept was imported to Britain from Toronto by four members of the Toronto Art League and former Grip Ltd. employees. Founding Carleton Studios in London, A. A. Martin, W. T. Wallace, T. G. Greene, and Norman Price had the goal of allying the design values of William Morris and the Beggerstaffe brothers to the printing of text and graphics. By the 1920s, Carleton was considered the largest advertising agency in the world.<br />
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Political use of graphic posters began with the 1891 federal election campaign and a series of colour posters were produced for the Conservative party. The success of Macdonald's Tories convinced the party of the usefulness of such political propaganda. While billboards had been introduced in the 1870s to promote travelling circuses and fairs, Stacey argues that they did not have a significant impact until a regulatory body was established in 1912. The Poster Advertising Association, which later became the Outdoor Advertising Association, was an industry association which set standards and promoted the use of posters and billboards as a form of advertising. The effectiveness of the organization was suggested through the success of the First World War Victory Bonds art poster and billboard campaign which raised millions for the war effort.<br />
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Following the war, Canadian poster art was very slow to reflect the influence of the post-war typography and graphic design movements, including the Purists, the Objectivists, the De Stijl and Bauhaus functionalists, or the Soviet Constructivists. Although these movements did influence North American design, Stacey argues that that influence was slow to arrive, partly because of poor communication between European movements and North American designers and artists, but also because of the conservatism of Canadian advertisers. Where as Canadian poster designs were traditionally text and decoration-heavy, the European design solutions made use of sans-serif text, asymmetrical design and layout, photograms, and symbolism. Conservative Canadian designers were largely not interested in experimenting with symbolic approaches to advertising, where shapes and text were streamlined or reduced to essential elements, and where shapes and text were interwoven and/or where text largely only supported images so as to offer the audience an idea or feeling rather than a rational or irrational text-based argument. Rather, Stacey claims that much of the streamlining and simplification of images seen in Canadian graphic designs from the 1920s and 1930s was more often the influence of the car industry and the increasingly streamlined designs of its cars. Furthermore, he notes that larger, simplified posters could be easily absorbed by the increasing number of passing motorists and public transit riders.<br />
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According to Stacey, modern symbolist design styles of France's A,M. Cassandre and American E. McKnight Kauffer were specifically introduced to Canada through the Montreal designers Raoul Bonin and Allan Harrison during the 1930s. Bonin went to Paris, studying under Cassandre, while Harrison studied in London, working for Shell Oil, London Transport, and other design studios. Yet, as Stacey notes, even with this training, most Canadian advertisers and advertising agencies refused to part from traditional approaches to graphic design. This intransigence was further accentuated by the depression and the threat that untraditional approaches to advertising could lead to ruin. However, by the late 1940s, thanks to the efforts of other designers, including Clair Stewart, Eric Aldwinkle, Leslie Trevor, Charles Fainmel, Henry Eveleigh, and Carl Dair, alternative, modern poster design was finally embraced by a growing number of advertisers. Some of those modern posters which did appear during the 1920s to 1940s contained elements of the art deco style of the time, Stacey argues that the most lasting influence of the era was the work of the Group of Seven. Indeed, Stacey suggests that the group's characteristic bold colours and often simplified landscapes appear, and have been said by others to appear, "posterish." Stacey points out that this might not be understood as being particularly surprising since most of the members of the group, as well as many of their contemporaries, had first been employed as designers and illustrators, with MacDonald, Thomson, Lismer, Varley, Johnston and Carmichael all having worked for Grip Ltd., and then for Rous and Mann, which had been established in 1912. Others from Grip Ltd., including Carmichael and A.J. Casson (who replaced Franz Johnston in the Group of Seven in 1926), went to work for the silkscreen printing company Sampson, Matthews Limited, which Stacey claims was possibly the leading silkscreen poster printing firm in the country between the two wars. All of these artists did not only try to reflect the Canadian landscape and modernist design styles in their fine art, but also in the illustrations and travel posters they created as commercial artists.<br />
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With the beginning of the Second World War the Canadian government established the Department of Public Information, which was later renamed the Wartime Information Board. The Department hired artists to create propaganda for the war effort. However, a consistent poster design program was not fully realized until Harry Mayerovitch (aka "Mayo") was placed in charge of the design department for the Ministry of War Services National Film Board, which was charged with making graphic materials and films to inspire and inform Canadians of, and encourage support for, the war effort. Following the war the government did not maintain a peacetime poster program. Rather, many of the artists who had worked in the service of the country during the war returned to working for advertising agencies or commercial art studios. However, influenced by American trends, photographic or illustrated posters were often sporting crassly calculated sexual or "human interest" themes. The artists and designers were often simply following the instructions of art directors, committees, experts in efficiency, and market analysts. Stacey notes that, while imagery came to be of secondary importance in poster design during the late 1940s and 1950s, "too often, texts and images contradicted rather than harmonized with one another." In addition advertising revenue was being transferred by many advertisers to radio and television. Furthermore, new modern architecture made little space for public postering.<br />
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Public awareness of all kinds of advertising, including poster design and illustration, was enhanced in 1949 with the establishment of the Art Directors' Club of Toronto, which held a yearly exhibition/competition to judge printed advertising design. Similar arts directors' clubs were also established in Montreal, Vancouver, and Winnipeg in the 1950s. However, these organizations began to deteriorate by the late 1960s. The 1950s also saw the establishment of the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada. Established in 1956, the TDC was created to increase public appreciation of commercial and editorial typographic design, ensure the maintenance of design standards, and, above all, help define typographic design as a distinct profession. However, as visual communications design began to rely increasingly on images and less upon type, the TDC changed its name to the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada in 1968.<br />
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Stacey suggests that the kind of illustration which emerged in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s, while not a unique Canadian style, was unique in its approach. "The best designers managed to tread the narrow line between glib flashiness and cold impersonality[.]" The ability to balance the precision of European modernist design and nostalgic revisionism, while abandoning the domestic themes of the 1950s, was seen in the work of designers like Allan Fleming, Theo Dimson, and Jim Donoahue. They did not exclusively embrace one style of design, but borrowed elements from several styles, so as to make appealing and eclectic designs. While these designers were all based in Toronto, Stacey notes that French-Canadian designers were more receptive to Bauhaus-influenced European style, suggesting that this could be explained by the fact that many Quebec designers studied at European colleges, or that a number of influential European immigrant designers settled in Montreal and Quebec City. Stacey argues that this European influence can be clearly seen in the posters designed for both Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympic Games. However, by the mid-1970s many within the design community and the public were growing tired of the International Style, where form follows function. Stacey claims that in many cases the style was used as an excuse for a lack of real imagination and inventiveness in design. Indeed, Stacey notes that, while Allan Fleming did not deny that International Style designers such as Rolf Harder, Ernst Harding, and Gerhard Doerrie had made important contributions to Canadian design, by 1964 he complained that their approach was having too much influence, and that the homogenizing nature of an allegedly neutral form of design would result in the loss of more exotic means of expression.<br />
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According to Stacey, during the 1960s Canadian poster making divided into four different styles or trends. The first was the fine-art poster, which was able to continue to be produced with the help of demand from theatres, galleries, and other cultural institutions. Advertising posters and those for government institutions also survived, benefitting from events such as the Canadian centennial celebrations. The fourth type was the short-lived "rock poster” which inspired by similar creations from places like San Francisco and London. These posters, often referencing art nouveau or Jugendstil design, had characteristics including, "[d]a-glo colours, barely legible 'organic' lettering, erotic or hallucinatory imagery, and a modicum of revolutionary rhetoric[.]" While often produced cheaply and only contributing in a minor way to international poster design, Canadian rock posters showed that the genre of poster design and printing was not wholly controlled by advertising. However, Stacey finds the dependence upon American rock poster influences "distressing."<br />
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As of the late 1970s, according to Stacey, the decade's penchant for referencing art deco style was still strong, with the "self-indulgent" style of the rock poster having been largely abandoned. Stacey concludes his introduction by discussing the likely challenges for poster design and the study of its history during the last twenty years of the twentieth century. The then dedicates the rest of the book to examining various kinds of posters, including their developmental history.<br />
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Broadsides<br />
Stacey's first specialized section is dedicated to the broadside, which he defines using the Oxford English Dictionary as a large piece of paper, printed on one side. In Canada, the first examples of broadsides date to the earliest printing presses in the British North American colonies, with printing introduced to Halifax in 1764 and to Montreal in 1776. Most early printed matter produced in these centres were government proclamations and bills, although there was some commercial advertising. The design of these government posters and proclamations did not change significantly for almost a century and a half, with many of the same layouts and typefaces being retained up until the 1930s. Not regularly illustrated, broadsides did often feature a crest or seal at the beginning of the proclamation or bill.<br />
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Fairs, Exhibitions, and Shows<br />
In discussing posters dedicated fairs and exhibitions Stacey does offer a brief overview of the history of Canadian fairs, particularly the country's agricultural exhibitions. However, the majority of his chapter is dedicated to the evolution of the posters advertising the Toronto Industrial Exhibition/Canadian National Exhibition and Expo 67. Of the later event, he explains that most of the posters were created by Montreal designers who created the vast majority of them in the International Style, which he terms as being "austere." Furthermore, he argues that the choice of that approach was biased by the selection of the modernist Univers typeface as the official Expo 67 typeface. Stacey believes that, had the poster designers created designs which were more "typically Canadian," rather than attempt to achieve a universally acceptable look, the designs would have been more memorable. In the case of the photographs selected for many of the posters, he writes that the, "images selected to represent or symbolize various artistic attractions were too abstract to be compelling, and probably confused the casual visitor instead of exciting curiosity." (page 8) In contrast, Stacey lauds the posters created by Vancouver's Ted Larson for the La Ronde section of the park, which gave, "a feeling of the swinging sixties (psychedelic lettering, Da-glo colours, flowing patterns, more than a hint of art nouveau) and of the naughty dance-hall nineties." (page 8) Yet, overall, he claims that Expo 67 was "something of a graphic disappointment," although he does acknowledge that it was very beneficial for the graphic design industry of Montreal.<br />
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Travel, emigration and Tourism Posters<br />
Stacey explains that, prior to the opening of the CPR in 1885, most advertisements for travel, emigration, and tourism were in the form of newspaper advertisements, posters, hand-bills, and illustrated trade cards. If illustrated, these works usually consisted of wood-engraved images or "vignettes" of the means of transportation, be they ships, trains, or train cars. Furthermore, these print advertisements were very text heavy, offering numerous details about costs, travel times, and destinations. With the opening of the CPR, which did not have any competition, the railway began to produce posters which were designed to attract immigrants to the Northwest. These multilingual posters, which by the 1890s had become colour lithograph posters, were produced in multiple languages and distributed throughout Europe. Yet, after the 1890s the CPR began focusing less upon advertising its rail service, and more upon its steamship service. Furthermore, the posters became increasingly more reliant upon images rather than text. Many of the posters followed the style of the British poster designer Frank Newbould, in offering the central image of a strong, friendly, central figure, possibly, as suggested by Stacey, with the purpose of dispelling the rumors of immigrants facing hardship and isolation on the Canadian prairies. Similar, simplified poster designs were produced by Canadian National Railways (created in 1918) during the 1920s and 1930s, especially by the designer J.E. Sampson. These posters, Stacey claims, were representative of both the stylistic approach and social attitudes during the inter-war years, "from complexity to simplicity, from representation to suggestion, from telling everything to hinting at much yet conveying the minimum of hard information." (page 14) Yet, by the mid-twentieth century travel poster design was dying out as advertising revenues were being diverted to television and radio, which could reach larger audiences.<br />
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Military Posters<br />
The first military posters produced in what became Canada were text-heavy broadside recruitment announcements and pronouncements warning the population about threats of invasion. Common during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these posters typically took the form of government proclamations, lending them an air of, or reinforcing their, official legitimacy. They also made use of an array of attention-grabbing typefaces, so as to imply urgency and importance. However, as Stacey explains, the transition from such official proclamation-like broadsides to sophisticated photo-lithographic posters, as used in the First World War, was relatively fast.<br />
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The first example of creating and printing images of military conflict came in 1885 with the North West Rebellion, which Toronto's Globe newspaper illustrated through The Canadian War News which it produced in conjunction with the Toronto Lithographing Company. While produced using hand-carved wood-engravings, shortly after photographic halftone blocks were introduced, followed by colour lithograph for the reproduction of illustrations. This was the process used for military posters during the first war. These posters were at first produced by private business and the advertising industry, which donated money, as well as billboard space for recruitment notices and Victory Bond drives. Some commercial art studios produced posters, either from their own initiative, while others received specific commissions. In other cases competitions were held between freelance and commercial studio artists for the creation of posters. Yet, initially there was no coordination of poster production, possibly explaining the range in the quality of the different posters produced. Thus, the federal government established the War Poster Service to publish material which would be distributed across the country. The posters were created for government agencies including The National Service, the Food Board, Victory Bonds, and the Volunteer Home Guard, all of which had either educational, recruitment, fund-raising, or morale-raising ends. Significantly, following the conscription crisis (passage of the Compulsive Service Act) in 1917, the service focused upon home-front concerns including thrift, charity, conservation of resources, and higher productivity.<br />
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War Poster Service posters were typically produced by the commercial art and design studios of printing and typesetting firms, the only such design studios in existence at the time. Based upon the poster campaign of the British government's Parliament Recruitment Committee, Stacey claims that the Canadian War Poster Service would come to act as a model for the American government's Division of Pictorial Publicity under the Committee of Public Information when the United States entered the war in 1917. Yet, while influential, Stacey notes that, of the artists commissioned to create posters for the Canadian government, few "academic," or fine-art illustrators and designers were asked to participate. For example, the members of the Group of Seven were not asked to create official government propaganda.<br />
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In discussing the style of Canadian First World War posters, Stacey notes that, unlike German posters, which had a sense of urgency and energy, and which made use of sans-serif capitals, thus helping to lay the groundwork for the "functional typefaces created in the 1920s and 1930s by associates of the Bauhaus," Canadian posters maintained strong nineteenth century design elements. While relying upon imagery more than many Victorian posters, they still retained traditional typefaces and melodramatic/domestic scenes. While some critics judged the posters to be ugly, others praised the large colour posters for, not only the job they did, but for adding large colour images to otherwise restrained and drab Canadian cities. Furthermore, the advertising industry praised the posters for highlighting the how billboards could be highly successful means of advertising.<br />
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As in the case of the first war, the Second World War poster campaign began in a rather uncoordinated manner. Different government departments commissioned posters as they needed them and to different standards. With the establishment of the Office of the Director of Public Information, which was later followed by the Wartime Information Board, the Minister of National War Services coordinated poster production and distribution through the National Film Board. The NFB also worked closely with other departments when they required different kinds of graphic materials. This centralized poster production process ensured government control over the quality and content of the posters.<br />
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While posters were produced for the Department of Munitions and Supply, the Department of National Defence, the Finance Board (which controlled the Victory Bonds, Victory Stamps, and Victory certificate campaigns), and the Canada Food Board, the Director of Public Information's main concern was with advancing recruitment. While some posters encouraged the public to support the war effort through their actions, as well as through buying war bonds, or discouraged military members from participating in possibly destructive activities, the purpose of the majority of the posters, according to Stacey, was to convince people to sign up for different services. To accomplish this end the poster designers made use of various tactics employed by other countries, including borrowing the image of the pointing soldier, imploring individuals to help defend their country. This same image was also used during the First World War.<br />
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Again acting as a model for the American propaganda campaign after the United States joined the war, the American government found that the most effective Canadian posters were sentimental designs. Posters containing abstract, factual, or humorous elements were seen as much less successful. One of the most effective of such emotional posters was that of the wounded soldier lunging towards an unseen enemy designed by Henry Eveleigh. In addition to the Victory Bond campaign of the National War Finance Board and "factory posters" (designed to promote thrift in use of resources), the NFB also produced the posters of the Walls Have Ears Organization, an nongovernmental association of American and Canadian artists and writers. One of the organization's members was the NFB's Harry Mayerovitch, or "Mayo", whom the founder of the NFB, John Grierson, had hired on the strength of his cartoons and paintings.<br />
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Circus and Carnival Posters<br />
Stacey begins this section by explaining that as travelling carnivals and circuses became increasingly popular in North America during the 1880s to 1910s, their advertising proliferated across the continent. At the time this advertising was limited to billboards, placards, handbills, and posters. Furthermore, as large-scale colour lithography was introduced, carnivals and circuses were quick to make use of images to depict their attractions. Indeed, as Stacey notes, Jules Chéret had claimed to have been heavily influenced by American circus posters of the 1850s and 1860s in the creation of the Parisian art poster. Like his posters, the primitive images of the early American carnival posters had elements of illusion and suggestion rather than literal realism. While Canada had few of its own circuses and carnivals, it did have a small number of printers who produced the posters for such shows. In discussing these, Stacey dedicates much of the section to Andrew King and his King Show Print company of Estevan, Saskatchewan.<br />
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Sports Posters<br />
Stacey begins by explaining that up until the 1930s most posters advertising sporting events were advertising armature events. Thus, rarely were such printed posters ever more sophisticated than woodcut and type decorated broadsides or simple billboards. However, apart from such basic opening remarks, Stacey dedicates most of this section to the poor organization and poster design for the 1976 Olympic games.<br />
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Political, Election, and Protest Posters<br />
Initially, during the first decades of Confederation, political posters looked more like proclamations. Understood as one of the only points of contact between the voter and the candidate, the poster, which was very text-heavy, supplied the public with the facts and figures required to understand a candidate's position. What illustrations were included were usually engravings. The first posters to use lithography were those of the Conservative Party in the 1891 federal election. Supported by business interests such as the heads of the CPR and the Industrial League, the Tories campaigned using a series of posters created by the latter organization. The posters made use of detailed images which illustrated the prosperity which the country would have under the Conservatives' national policy, as well as the ruin which would befall the country should the opposition Liberals be allowed to introduce a free trade agreement with the United States.<br />
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Book and Periodical Posters<br />
Stacey begins by noting that, while it may seem that posters advertising books and magazines appear to be a relatively minor element of poster design and printing, it was actually this area of poster design which first revolutionized the field in the United States in the 1890s, and introduced the simplified and stylized art nouveau "art poster" which had been seen in France, Belgium, Italy, and England by the late 1880s. In the United States, this style was first seen in Lippincott's magazine covers by Will Carqueville, the publication's chief designer, and in covers of The Inland Printer which were designed by Will Bradley. Bradley's 1894 "The Twins" cover for The Chap-Book is, according to Stacey, the first art nouveau poster printed in North America. It, like many of the other magazine covers of the style, was also printed as a window-bill for news agents and book sellers and was quickly bought up by collectors. The style used by both Carqueville and Bradley was, according to Stacey, "that peculiarly American combination of William Morris's neo-medieval arts and crafts ornamentation and the sensuous sunuosities of art nouveau as filtered through the pen of Aubrey Beardsley." (page 41) Other American artists who were inspired by the work and format of Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrac, and Alphonse Mucha included Edward Penfield, Maxfield Parrish, Louis Reed, Ethel Reed, Frank Hazenplug, J.J. Gould, Ernest Haskell, J.C. Leyendecker, John Sloan, Charles Woodbury, Florence Lundborg, and Robert Wildhack. Most of these artists produced their work through lithography, creating a plate through a photo-mechanical transfer. The poster work of these artists was so popular, that the 1890s even saw the launching of several magazines which were dedicated exclusively to exhibiting and discussing publication illustrations.<br />
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With the rise in popularity of American periodicals featuring "art poster" covers, several Canadian newspapers began publishing special colour lithograph covers and illustrated prints which were inserted into special weekend editions. Papers such as the Toronto's Globe, The Mail and Empire, and Toronto Saturday Night hired Canadian illustrators, including William Cruikshank, G.A. Reid, C.M. Manly, J.D. Kelly, W.V. Alexander, F.H. Brigden, and Robert Holmes, all members of the Toronto Art Students' League, at a time when many of the leagues members were having to live in the United States in order to find employment as commercial artists. Such artists included C.W. Jefferys, who moved to New York in 1892. His reputation as an illustrator for the Globe and other Toronto papers soon secured him a position at the New York Herald where he contributed to the paper's highly illustrated Sunday edition. Returning to Toronto in 1901 and establishing his own studio, Jefferys was soon hired as the art director for the Toronto Star, for which he produced illustrations for special publications such as the 1903 and 1904 Summer Resort Directories.<br />
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Government Agencies, Institutions, Societies, and Organizations<br />
The federal government made use of posters for the first time on a large scale with attempts to lure European immigrants to settle in Canada. Initiated after confederation, the immigration poster program was enhanced after 1896 under the command of Clifford Sifton and with the introduction of colour lithography. The federal government would not become involved with any other large scale poster design and printing campaigns until the First World War. However, even after the war, few government departments made widespread use of posters until the Second World War. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s and the country's centennial celebrations that the government would commission large numbers of posters and that many design firms would develop the ability to meet those design needs. However, Stacey argues that following Expo 67, the federal and provincial government would often only commission graphic material which was understood to be conventional and acceptable in its design. He writes that following 1967, "the bulk of publicity commissioned by provincial and federal government agencies smacked of compromise and timidity; mundane, safe, and unexceptional, it revealed the logic of bureaucrats who consistently awarded contracts to the same design agencies and advertising houses, which could be expected to come up with a reliable if uninspiring product." Furthermore, some departments, recognizing that graphic design could enhance the reception of their message, established their own design sections.<br />
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Stacey recognizes that much government graphic material produced since the 1960s has used the Swiss, or International Style. He explains that this is understandable in that the style is typically clear and neat, allowing a great deal of information to be conveyed in a relatively small space. Those federal government departments which Stacey notes as having been particularly concerned with pictorial publicity include the National Museums of Canada, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, the National Capital Commission, the Department of Industry, Trade, and Commerce (which in 1979 oversaw the Canadian Office of Design and Design Canada), and the Department of External Affairs. Also, he notes that as of 1979, Ottawa was the third largest advertiser in Canada, spending $9.5 million to advertise its policies and programs to Canadians and the rest of the world. However, Stacey argues that the effectiveness of federal efforts to disseminate information was lost with the closing of Information Canada and federal government bookstores in the 1970s. Where as Information Canada was charged with providing government information to Canadians, and the bookstores stocked many of the posters produced by the federal government, as well as additional federal publications, with the closure of these institutions, "the government has deprived itself of one of its few truly national distribution points." (page 46)<br />
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Art Exhibition Posters<br />
Only briefly discussing this form of poster design, Stacey notes that before the 1950s and early 1960s, there were few Canadian examples of posters advertising art exhibitions. However, he does recognize that this was in keeping with international trends in poster design. While the 1890s had seen members of Paris' Salon des cents create posters to advertise exhibitions of their own work, posters advertising such exhibitions did not become common in Europe, and then North America, until after the Second World War. He admits that there were some examples of the "artist's poster" during the 1920s and 1930s, but it was not until the post-1945 period that such posters became common place.<br />
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Entertainment and Cultural Events<br />
Although Stacey claims that posters for theatre productions stopped being largely typographic in character and started relying more heavily upon graphic design by the end of the nineteenth century, he also claims that there exist few surviving examples of Canadian theatre posters from between 1900 and 1950. Of the post-1950 period threatre poster designers of note included Bernard R.J. Michaleski's work for the Manitoba Threatre Centre, Theo Dimson's posters for Toronto Workshop Productions, Heather Cooper, Paul Gilberts work for the Penguin Performance Company, Stefan Czernecki's posters for the Alberta Ballet Company, Barry Zaid's (later an artist at Push Pin Studios) 1960s poster designs for Neptune Theatre in Halifax, and Gilles Roberts designs for Le Théatre du Nouveau Monde.<br />
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Recognizing the explosion which was occurring in the late 1970s in poster design for "underground groups" which made use of cheap offset and photocopying technology, Stacey laments the loss of, "a radiance which blossomed briefly during the psychedelic sixties and early seventies", when silkscreening technology allowed for the production of detailed and brightly coloured posters. Noting that Montreal and Toronto were the centres of the "psychedelia," he explains that the movement was led by designers including John Parsons, David Chestnut, Alex Macleod, Bruce Meek, Arnaud Meggs, donna Brown, Harold Kilnder, and Brian Spence. He also recognizes the influence of Vancouver's Bob Masse and his west coast, San Francisco-inspired style.<br />
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Product and Service Advertising Posters<br />
Of product design, Stacey notes a distinct change in approach in the early twentieth century, which saw a break with the "overly detailed representational style of the Victorian era" to tidyer, sparser, and increasingly stylized approach in the 1920s and 1930s. He argues that part of the reason behind this change could have been the training in direct and simple message delivery taught to many commercial artists involved in the First World War's poster design campaigns. However, he also notes that the emerging European modernist design movements, as well as the Group of Seven, would also have affected the approach of Canadian commercial advertisement designers following the war. In the case of the Group of Seven, he notes that its members were likely highly influential in moving many commercial artists away from photographic realism since they had themselves worked within the industry at Grip Ltd., Rous and Mann, and at Sampson, Matthews. Yet, while influential, post-impressionism, symbolism, asymmetric design, and sans-serif text was not immediately embrace by Canadian advertisers following the First World War. Rather, these modern, avant garde approaches slowly overtook Canadian design, starting with particular advertising designers, such as Raoul Bonin of Montreal, who had studied under A.M. Cassandre in Paris. <br />
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Following the Second World War Art Directors' Clubs were established in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg so as to encourage innovative advertising design, including designs which borrowed from modern European styles. However, at least up until the late 1950s and early 1960s much of the material produced for the Canadian market mirrored that produced by American advertising firms. This material was, "safe, bland, inoffensive and unimaginative advertising[.]" (page 70)<br />
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One of the areas of Canadian advertising design which Stacey argues was not burdened by conservatism was self-promotional work created by artists, typesetters, printers, and art studios. However, much of this material was never seen by the public, but was only issued to clients so as to showcase the innovative design possibilities a particular establishment could offer. Noting that there exists little self-promotional design material from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s which has been preserved by archives, Stacey then offers an overview of the work by Allan Fleming for Cooper and Beatty during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Fleming was eventually replaced at Cooper and Beatty by Anthony Mann, whom Stacey explains introduced the use of Helvetica into the promotional pieces of the typesetting company. Mann was then followed by Jack Sneep, and then by Jim Donoahue from 1969 to 1974, designer of the Canada Wordmark as well as numerous posters which make use of a mix of modern and nostalgic elements.<br />
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The Billboard Jungle<br />
Following a short section on health and safety posters, in which Stacey merely discusses a number of examples from the 1970s, the book's final section deals with the development of one of the main means by which posters have been displayed in Canada during the twentieth century: billboards. He explains that North American billboards were introduced with the large-scale circus poster during the mid- to late-nineteenth century. The first of these outdoor posters were three-sheet billboards produced for P.T. Barnum's circus. With standardized poster stands appearing in the United States in 1872, the typical billboard poster eventually came to consist of 24 sheets. The size of the posters became standardized in 1912 when a 26" x 39" poster size (28" x 41" paper size) standard was agreed upon by a joint committee of the Poster Advertising Association, the Printed Bulletin Advertising Association, and the National Association of Employing Lithographers. Sizes of billboards were then based upon multiples of these dimensions. As of 1979, most billboards consisted of twelve separate sheets in these dimensions, and Canadian standards were determined by the Poster Advertising Association of Canada, which was affiliated with the Poster Advertising Association of America.<br />
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The two leading outdoor advertising companies in Canada during the first decades of the twentieth century were Ruddy Signs of Toronto and Claude Neon Ltd. of Montreal. These two companies eventually merged so as to offer customers comprehensive neon lighting, lithography, and advertising design services. One of their major rivals in the area of printed posters was the Canadian Poster Company Ltd. of Montreal. The success of these outdoor advertising companies began in the 1920s with the post-First World War proliferation of both automobiles and public transit. As increasing numbers of commuters were making use of Canada's growing number of roads and transit services, billboards appeared in increasing numbers so as to try and sell those commuters goods on their way to and from work. While initially unregulated, "over the years" the introduction of government restrictions has limited the number and size of outdoor billboards, ensuring that the desire of advertisers to sell products does not compete with citizens' ability to enjoy their cities.<br />
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Beginning as early as the 1920s billboard printers, designers, and distributors were interested in determining the best shape and size for billboards. They recognized that passing motorists would be best able to digest the information presented if the images were simple, bold, and large. Stacey notes that the best billboards of the inter-war years were horizontal in design, with bold colours, and recognizable shapes, so as to allow the motorist to understand what was being advertised without being overly distracting. Largely conservative in their designs, some billboards would include projections, so as to break away from their standard two-dimensional format. During the Second World War, billboards were widely used to show the poster designs of the recruitment, Victory Bonds, and War Savings Stamps campaigns discussed above, as well as to attract volunteers and support for organizations such as the Red Cross.<br />
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Unlike in the United States, most Canadian provinces have banned the use of billboards on the major highways constructed following the Second World War. While it has been argued, by their proponents, that the presence of billboards keeps the driver alert, Stacey claims that studies have indicated that motorways with billboards have considerably more accidents than those where they are banned. However, regardless of their safety, Stacey concludes the section by noting that billboards are more effective than aural advertisements in that, as shown by studies conducted for the advertising industry, well designed, simple visual advertising is highly effective in having the viewer retain both the name of the product and the reasons why it should be purchased.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-63639512474948050942011-12-11T21:09:00.000-08:002011-12-11T21:09:54.976-08:00Graphic Art and Design / Robert Stacey<span style="font-size: large;">Robert Stacey, "Graphic Art and Design," <i>The Canadian Encyclopedia</i>.</span><br />
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Stacey begins his Canadian Encyclopedia entry by explaining that both graphic art and design are different kinds of visual communication. They are related to other fields such as commercial art, publication design, typography, and type design, all of which are considered "applied arts" rather than fine arts since their primary aim is to express a predetermined message rather than a message determined by the artist. They are also related to industrial design, the main purpose of which is to create physical objects which fulfill a particular purpose. Furthermore, graphic design is sometimes referred to as being a part of "visual communications" or "information design," in that they are designed graphic elements which communicate specific information.<br />
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Formal training in graphic art and design did not begin in Canada until well into the twentieth century. Up until the 1870s and 1880s the only art which was taught in Canada was either technical drawing, required for the conception of products, and watercolour painting. Following 1867 the fine-art colleges in Canada's larger centres added classes in commercial art, lithography, engraving, lettering and illustration. These classes provided the country commercial artists, typesetters, printers, and engravers who could fill the need for such tradesmen in the printing and publishing trades, as well as the art departments of advertising agencies, the first of which was opened in Montreal in 1889. Prior to the introduction of training in these skills the printing and advertising industries had to rely upon the skills of often self-taught craftsmen. However, their ability to keep abreast of the latest and best technologies, as well as how to properly use them, became increasingly difficult with the industrial revolution and the numerous subsequent technical developments in printing technology. These developments included the introduction of lithography (which had been invented in 1796, but was brought to Canada by the 1840s), chromolithography, photographic line and halftone plates, and steam-driven rotary presses. All of these innovations sped up the printing process and/or allowed for the printing of images and text in ways which were previously not possible. <br />
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In the case of lithography - a printing process which involved etching images and text into a wax-coated smooth plate - Canada's first lithographers were often immigrants from Germany, where the technology had emerged. In contrast, the country's line engravers were often from Britain. Stacey suggests that one of the more notable line engravers was John Allanson, who immigrated to Toronto in 1849. Allanson had been a student of the British wood-engraver Thomas Bewick. He was followed in 1873 by Frederick Brigden, who had been taught in Britain by another of Bewick's former students, W.J. Linton. Brigden started the Toronto Engraving Company, which eventually changed its name to Brigden's Limited. Followed in the business by his son, Frederick Brigden Jr, the company hired numerous local Toronto artists who would create drawings which were later engraved by the company's engravers on boxwood or on metal plates through photo-engraving. A second office in Winnipeg also hired several local Manitoba artists for the same purpose. Other prominent engraving and lithography firms included Alexander and Cable, Barclay, Clark and Co, the Canadian Photo-Engraving Co, and the Thomson Engraving Co. <br />
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The establishment of several illustration reproduction firms and the arrival of numerous immigrant lithographers and engravers caused the publishers of Canadian newspapers and magazines, as well as advertising firms, to begin to experiment with the technology. This started with small illustrations and decorations which grew in size during the 1870s and 1880s. This was followed by the introduction of artist-reporters at some newspapers. These were journalists who would not only describe what they saw in words, but would produce accompanying illustrations. The newspaper which first made use of these illustrative elements was the Toronto Globe. During the 1880s the Globe, working with the Toronto Lithographing Company, then the country's largest and most advanced lithography company, produced advertising posters as well as illustrated special publications. These special publications included The Canadian War News which reported on developments in the North-West Rebellion.<br />
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The Toronto Lithographing Company's artists included Octave-Henri Julien, a painter and illustrator from Montreal, who would create illustrations for the Canadian Illustrated News before becoming the art director for the Montreal Star in 1888. He was particularly well known for his cartoons of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Another was Charles William Jefferys, who had emigrated from Britain. He eventually worked for the New York Herald before becoming chief illustrator for the Toronto Star (1905) and then art director for The Star Weekly (1910). Leaving the Star to work as a freelance illustrator, he also taught at the University of Toronto's School of Architecture (1911-1939). Jefferys is often recognized for his illustrations, or "visual reconstructions," of historical, and pre-historical, Canadian scenes. Toronto Lithographing also employed the brother, William, of the political cartoonist John Wilson Bengough. John Bengough founded the satirical weekly publication Grip in 1873, and the magazine eventually produced an off-shoot commercial art firm, Grip Limited. The commercial artists who worked for Grip Ltd. during the 1900s and 1910s included Jefferys, future Group of Seven members Franklin Carmichael, Arthur Lismer, and J.E.H. MacDonald, as well as the group's associate Tom Thomson. In addition, several of the artists working for Grip Ltd. eventually followed the Grip art director, A.H. Robson, to go and work for Rous and Mann Press Limited, also of Toronto. Rous and Mann specialized in commercial typography work for newspapers. Others from Grip Ltd., including Carmichael and A.J. Casson (who replaced Franz Johnston in the Group of Seven in 1926), went to work for the silkscreen printing company Sampson, Matthews Limited.<br />
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The Toronto Lithographing Company's main competition in engraving and lithography during the late nineteenth century was Rolph, Smith and Company, established by the British-born watercolour painter, J.T. Rolph. Rolph, Smith and Co. eventually merged with another firm, Stone Limited, to form Rolph-Clark-Stone in 1917. In the case of Grip Ltd., it also underwent mergers, becoming Rapid Grip and Betten, and then Bomac Batten before being taken over by the Laird Group.<br />
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Stacey claims that Montreal was not as developed as Toronto during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in terms of lithography and commercial art production. While there were lithography and engraving companies, they tended to be English owned and run, typically only employing English-Canadian illustrators and designers. Most other Canadian cities would have graphic art establishments by the start of the twentieth century. However, Stacey stresses that these were typically not independent studios, let alone advertising agencies. Most of the time they were sections of printing companies, department stores, or serial publishing companies such as newspapers and magazines. <br />
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Stacey notes that at the beginning of the twentieth century much Canadian graphic art and design was still being influenced by the Victorian trend towards conservativeness and overdecoration. Younger artists and designers working for the country's printing and lithography firms, designers who were familiar with newer European and American approaches to design, began to challenge accepted standards by creating designs which reflected the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau design. As Stacey notes, Arthur Lismer and F.H. Varley at Grip Ltd. had both been trained at the Sheffield School of Art and were very familiar with these styles, while others had received training from teachers who had immigrated from abroad, had travelled to the United States and/or Europe where they were exposed to newer styles, or were seeing such styles reflected in imported publications. For example J.E.H. MacDonald, while born in Britain, had immigrated to Canada in his youth, attending the Hamilton Art School in his teens. However, he eventually came to study the approach to art and design of William Morris when working for Carlton Studios in London, which had been established by three former employees of Grip Ltd. in 1903: A.A. Martin, T.G. Greene, and Norman Price. According to Stacey, the three founders of Carleton Studios later claimed that its establishment marked the introduction of the design, or commercial art, "studio idea" to Britain. Furthermore, he claims that by the 1920s Carleton had become the largest such design/commercial art studio in the world.<br />
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In discussing various uses of graphic design during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Stacey explains that, apart from advertising and news coverage, graphic design was used for political propaganda as of the 1890s. Indeed, the first federal election campaign posters were created by the Toronto Lithography Co. for the Industrial League in support of Sir John A. Macdonald's election campaign. According to Stacey, this also began a history of political parties, and connected organizations, having advertising and graphic art companies produce material for political propaganda. With the defeat of the Conservative government in Ottawa in 1896, the new Liberal Minister of the Interior, Cliford Sifton worked with Canadian Pacific Railways to have posters designed which would help encourage western settlement. This settlement/political advertising arrangement between the federal government and the railway would continue into the 1920s. Furthermore, other transportation companies, including Canadian National Railways (created in 1918) and steamship lines transporting immigrants from European countries began designing highly visual colour lithographic posters, similar to those of the CPR, in order to compete for both domestic and international customers.<br />
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With the First World War the Canadian government further expanded its use of graphic art and design services, as it required visual materials designed and produced to encourage recruitment, sell Victory Bonds, and encourage other forms of support for the war effort. To these ends Ottawa created the War Poster Service. The service coordinated the government's various poster campaigns, hiring various printing and graphic art companies to design and print material, which included colour lithographic posters, newspaper and magazine advertisements, and large billboard advertisements. As Stacey explains, during the Second World War, coordination work was done by the Wartime Information Board. A federal agency, which succeeded the scandal-ridden Bureau of Public Information, the board's General Managers included John Grierson. Grierson was also Commissioner of the National Film Board which produced both propaganda films and posters for the war effort, employing several commercial artists who would later become important figures in the development of graphic design as a distinct field. Designers and illustrators working for the NFB during the war included Leslie Trevor, A.J. Casson, Eric Aldwinckle, Albert Cloutier, William Winter, Alex Colville, Philip Surrey, Rex Woods, J.S. Hallam, A. Bruce Stapleton, and Henry Eveleigh.<br />
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As Stacey notes, during the first half of the twentieth century many commercial artists were not individuals who wished to dedicate their lives to communicating the ideas of clients through images and type. Rather, many were fine-artists who had taken up commercial art, illustration, and typographic design so as to finance their fine-art careers. During the 1940s and 1950s English-Canadian artists who supported themselves through commercial art, illustration, and typographic design, and who would eventually be recognized as accomplished artists, included Bertram Brooker, Carl Schaefer, Clare Bice, Fred J. Finlay, Jack McLaren, John A. Hall, Jack Bush, Oscar Cahén, and Harold Town. Artists who continued to do such work into the 1960s included Joyce Wieland, Michael Snow, and Louis de Niverville. Stacey claims that in Quebec, many artists found similar supplementary employment working on church commissions and as art instructors at various colleges. He also notes that this need for many accomplished artists to support themselves through commercial art work, art directorships, or positions as editorial artists was only lessened in the 1960s with the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts and various provincial arts councils. These councils provided grants to assist artists to dedicate their time and energy to their fine-art careers. Significantly, as is noted by Stacey, with the release of many artists from the need to work in the advertising and design field, a new community of professional designers, whose primary interest as visual communication, was able to develop. <br />
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In discussing graphic design during the post-war years, Stacey notes that the 1950s and 1960s were marked by the arrival of numerous graphic designers and design school teachers from Europe, often bringing with them the revived modernist movements which had begun following the First World War with the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements, the typography of Jan Tschichold, the grid system, and the preference for sans-serif fonts, all of which were especially popular amongst designers of German, Dutch, and Swiss extraction and training. Hired by design departments, advertising agencies, commercial art studios, and typesetting agencies, many of these immigrant designers also taught at Canada's art schools, thus further spreading the influence of the rigorous, rational, and essentialist International Style. Often working in Ottawa and Montreal during the 1960s and 1970s, prospering from contracts with a federal government which was attempting to adopt a new, modern look; the high-tech manufacturing and pharmaceutical industry; as well as from the large-scale design projects of Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympic Games, European immigrant designers such as Peter Bartl, Horst Deppe, Gerhard Doerrie, Fritz Gottschalk, Rolf Harder, Walter Jungkind and Ernst Roch came to heavily influence the government and corporate designs of the era. Furthermore, given that many of those designers, as well as many of the large-scale design projects, were based in Montreal, Quebec also produced a number of native-born graphic designers who were steeped in the International Style, including Georges Beaupré, Laurent Marquart, Pierre-Yves Pelletier and Jean Morin.<br />
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Stacey claims that in contrast to Montreal, Toronto was heavily influenced by the British typographical tradition. More restrained than the International Style, and heavily informed by the history of typography and type design, the Toronto graphic design community was led by figures such as Carl Dair, Allan Fleming, Clair Stewart, Leslie Smart, Carl Brett and John Gibson. While Carl Dair is often portrayed as the most conservative of these designers, believing that good design could only be achieved with a thorough understanding of the history of printing, typographic design, and type design, the most prominent Toronto designer during the 1950s and 1960s was Allan Fleming. First working for typesetting companies, by the late 1960s Fleming was in charge of design for University of Toronto Press, radically altering book design at the press, giving careful attention to overall book design, ensuring that designs compliment and enhance the written text. Similar attention was given to book design by Frank Newfeld and V. John Lee at McClelland & Stewart, Peter Dorn at Queen's University Press, and Robert Reid and Ib Kristensen at McGill University Press. While known for his book designs during the later 1960s and the 1970s, Fleming was most well known for his influential 1960 redesign of the Canadian National Railways logo. Not averse to modern design (the CN logo being very geometric and essentialist in appearance), Stacey notes that Fleming believed that a single style should not dominate in design, and that both humour and humanism were positive qualities found in Canadian design that should be maintained.<br />
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As a distinct group, Toronto's uniformly English speaking graphic design community was the first such community to try and professionalize graphic design as a distinct field. In 1956 four of the city's English-born designers established the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada (TDC). The aim of its founders (Frank Davies, John Gibson, Frank Newfeld and Leslie (Sam) Smart) was to exhibit what was understood amongst the leaders of the community as quality works of design so as to both celebrate the work of their creators and to inspire other designers and encourage them to aspire to match or exceed such levels of design. In addition, as is explicitly stated in the annual catalogues of the society's annual exhibit/competition, the TDC was also created to legitimize the field of typographic design (or graphic design) as a profession which was distinct from the advertising, printing, or publishing industries. Significantly, the first meeting of the TDC was held at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, which had been the meeting place of the Group of Seven, as well as the group's artist and designer colleagues.<br />
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The first exhibition and competition of the TDC was held in 1958 and was sponsored, as were all subsequent TDC exhibitions, by the Rolland Paper Company. The competition was divided into three sections including book design, business printing design, and magazine design, and the results and the entries were documented in Typography 58. Similar exhibitions were held and annuals published until 1964. Stacey claims that through these annuals, "the increasing professionalization and internationalization of graphic design in Canada can be traced." It was also during the first year of the TDC's annual design exhibition and competition, 1958, that the society was legally incorporated and in 1960 it began a fellowship program which granted a fellowship to the designer who had made the greatest contribution to design during that year. In addition, the TDC pressured the federal government to support Canadian design, resulting in the establishment in 1961 of the Design Council and Design Canada. The council and its activities wing were to encourage Canadian design, design education, and cooperation between designers and industry through publications, exhibitions, as well as research into necessary design standards. <br />
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Stacey notes that, as a good indicator of the development of different styles and approaches to graphic design in Canada during the late 1950s and early-mid 1960, the TDC's Typography annuals are a good means by which to judge tensions and disagreements within the Canadian design community. While noting the increase in the influence of the International Style upon the entries to the annuals, Stacey also notes that the publications' accompanying commentary often provided views which contradicted position which the large number of Swiss inspired entries suggested. For example, in his written contribution to Typography 64 Fleming argued that, while the European immigrant designers had contributed to Canadian design, Fleming "also cautioned that this 'international style', characterized by the ubiquitous use of sans-serif types like Helvetica and Univers and the pursuit of an impersonal 'corporate' or 'institutional' look, militated against the emergence of a specifically Canadian design identity." As mentioned above, Fleming called for a mixture of regulated and humanistic, serious and humourous approaches to design. He believed that this eclectic mix was the most appropriate means of ensuring a healthy Canadian design community. Others (whom Stacey does not identify), however, saw the apparent lack of an established graphic design tradition in Canada, and the arrival of the newer European styles, as an opportunity to borrow only those elements of older approaches to design which were seen as useful in the creation of a new Canadian style. Yet, throughout the 1960s and 1970s different designers used various means to communicate visually and an overarching "Canadian" approach to type and layout design was not developed.<br />
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By the late 1960s, it was becoming increasingly apparent to designers that type was only one element of graphic design. Stacey claims that this was made clear through the success of many different kinds of visual design prepared for Expo 67, and, as one might also suggest, the visual designs created for other centennial year celebrations. Furthermore, regardless of various attempts to present itself as a bilingual organization through the later additions of Typography, the TDC was still a largely Toronto-centric, English speaking organization. In an attempt to change its image so that it conformed more to the dominant notions of two-dimensional visual design, as well as Canada's national linguistic makeup, the TDC changed its name in 1968 to the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada/Société des graphistes du Canada. In 1975 various national chapters were established, and in 1976 legal documents were filed and a national charter was granted. <br />
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As is indicated by the TDC Typography annuals, while largely dominated by Torontonians and other English-Canadians, the TDC had, by the 1960s, attracted numerous French-Canadian graphic design participants to its yearly exhibitions, as well as many of the prominent immigrant designers who had settled in Montreal. (This last fact is overlooked by Stacey.) However, by the early 1970s Quebec graphic designers had formed a separate professional organization to accommodate their increased numbers and prominence, largely resulting from the large amount of local graphic design work created by both Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympic Games. Formed in 1972, the Société des graphistes du Québec represented a more closely knit design community than the GDC, but, as Stacey notes, it was still heavily influenced by the European immigrant designers, several of the most prominent of which had settled in Montreal, including Rolf Harder, Ernst Roch, and Fritz Gottschalk.<br />
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While the many Quebec-based designers had been hired to work on Expo 67, the exhibition also employed several designers from outside of the province. The director-general of graphics and for the fair was Georges Huel of Montreal. While he also designed the official Expo poster, Guy Lalumiere created the posters for the cultural pavilions. The "Man and his World" symbol for Expo 67 was designed by another Montrealer, Julien Hébert. Yet, apart from these Montreal-based designers, others from outside of Quebec were also hired to play significant roles in the design of signage, publications, and identity programs, including Paul Arthur and his Ottawa design firm, Burton Kramer, Frank Mayrs, and Neville Smith.<br />
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In the case of the 1976 Olympic Games, Stacey argues that the design of all of its elements was not only strictly controlled by the design team, but that it was thoroughly modernist in style, a fact which he suggests may have arguably harmed or benefitted the games. Adrian Frutiger's Univers typeface was selected as the typeface of the games and many of the events graphic, fashion, and physical elements were coordinated by a team of eight full-time designers and over one hundred freelance design consultants. The director-general of design, Georges Huel, designed the games' signage, furniture, uniforms, and other elements. P.-Y. Pelletier was the deputy-director general and was in charge of all printed materials. In addition, Fritz Gottschalk was in charge of the Design and Quality Control Office. In the case of the Italian-born Montreal designer Vittorio Fiorucci, he submitted poster designs to the head designers of the games, only to have them rejected. In reaction he silkscreened his own posters.<br />
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In discussing the organizational relationships and working conditions of Canadian graphic designers Stacey notes that the 1960s and 1970s saw the establishment of a number of influential partnerships and studios. Those in Montreal included Rolf Harder and Ernst Roch's Design Collaborative, Penthouse Studio, and Studio 2+2. Those in Toronto included Gottschalk and Ash, Graafiko, Fleming and Donoahue, Burns and Cooper and Eskind-Waddell. Ottawa was host to Paul Arthur & Associates, while Winnipeg was home to MacDonald, Michaleski and Associates. Yet, in the 1980s and 1990s the trend amongst designers was away from agencies and more toward flexible arrangements which allowed individuals to specialize and/or work in a number of different areas of graphic design. However, many older and establish firms did continue to flourish, especially as the result of lucrative government contracts. Smaller firms and freelance designers have often tended to concentrate on cultural commissions, such as those offered by exhibition brochures, exhibition catalogues, reports, posters, and books. In addition, with the advent of computer-based typesetting, photo-manipulation, printing, and other related digital tools, smaller designers do not require the resources which only larger firms could provide in the past. Yet, as Stacey also notes, "the 'democratization' of type and print through desktop publishing software and hardware, and the attendant access of thousands of typefaces, increases rather than decreases the need for taste, discernment and restraint to be brought to bear on the management of textual and visual materials."<br />
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Further discussing the professionalization of Canadian graphic design, Stacey suggests that the legitimacy of the claim to the field being a distinct profession gained credence in the 1960s and 1970s with both the public's increasing awareness of the prevalence of graphic design in Canadian society, and with the introduction of design programs at various Canadian universities and arts colleges. In addition, Stacey notes that changes in "communications technology and consumption" from the 1970s and 1980s has seen a decline in the number and influence of Canadian art directors' clubs. The yearly competitions of the Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver clubs were designed to encourage innovation in and quality of design, commercial illustration, and photography.<br />
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The rise in the public's consciousness of design, which allowed for the decreased importance of the various directors' clubs was partly the result of efforts by Ottawa during the 1960s and 1970s. Through government departments such as Information Canada and Design Canada, the federal government attempted to not only highlight the importance of design, but it tried to use design to both improve the public's perception of the government, as well as Canadians' recognition and understanding of the information provided by the Ottawa. Yet, Stacey claims that these agencies were marred by both the indifference of officials who did not appreciate how they did, or could, affect the public's understanding of the government or its messages, as well as by official opposition to the agencies as being unnecessary and wasteful expenses. However, the head of Information Canada's Federal Identity program, Ulrich Woodicka, and his colleagues were able to develop and implement standardized signage and identity programs in many different federal departments during the 1970s. When Information Canada was dissolved in the mid-1970s responsibility for the identity program was adopted by the Treasury Board. Stacey also notes that while many of the provinces also developed identity programs, they only did so after the federal government's lead. He argues that such programs, if developed with "intelligence and sensitivity," can serve as models for the private sector in that they enhance public recognition of government departments and agencies, while also clarifying the messages those organizations may wish to communicate to the public. Yet, he also argues that the successful implementation of such identity programs requires "the removal of duplication and confusion at the bureaucratic and administrative level."<br />
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The rest of Stacey's encyclopedia entry is dedicated to discussing developments since the 1980s and 1990 in Canadian graphic design, or what since the 1990s has increasingly been called visual communication design. He concludes the article by mentioning the lack of material, published and unpublished, dedicated to tracing the history of Canadian design. He believes that a thorough understanding of the history of the profession is necessary for its members to be able to confidently and authoritatively direct the development of design in the new computer-based media of the 1990s and 2000s, rather than have technicians, accountants, and sales people choose safe and unchallenging computer, website, and program designs.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-11693244237391328942011-12-01T20:12:00.000-08:002011-12-01T20:12:16.572-08:001001 symboles du Québec / Gérard Bochud<span style="font-size: large;">Gérard Bochud, <i>1001 symboles du Québec</i>, Montreal: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1994.</span><br />
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This is the second book concerning Quebec symbols written by Gérard Bochud, a professor of design at the Université de Québec a Montréal. The symbols, logotypes, and signatures it highlights come from the work of graphic designers at design firms, freelance designers, art directors, and advertising and communication agencies. While the author tried to identify all of the designers whose works are included, he was unable to identify them all. Some design agencies and companies refused to offer the names of the designers of specific works, while other organizations no longer existed, making identification of specific creators more difficult. Those works for which the creator could not be identified are labelled as "unknown." However, Bochud claims that he did, where possible, try to identify unidentified creators by comparing symbols with unnamed designers with the style and aesthetic qualities of other designs for which the creators were known.<br />
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In his brief discussion of how one can judge the quality of symbols, Bochud notes that interpretations vary. He simply claims that the most important quality should be legibility. <br />
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While the book was compiled by Bochud, the introduction is by Gilles Robert. Robert begins by noting that symbols are designed to convey certain messages through their use, combinations, and manipulation of text, drawings, textures, blank spaces, and illusions. They allow for the communication of sentiments, and not just words or typical images which represent an institution or organization. Robert also notes that each symbol reflects a particular approach to a topic, a kind of business, an institution, or a cause, as well as the design styles of different eras. Referencing Philip B. Meggs' History of Graphic Design, Robert notes that the designer of each symbol was also informed and influenced by the approaches and creations of earlier symbol designers. <br />
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Robert explains that the use of stylized symbols, used to represent particular individuals, groups, or institutions dates back thousands of years. Ancient Roman bricklayers would sometimes identify their work through a stylized marking of their name, as did potters. Referencing a sixteenth century merchant from Dijon, Robert explains how this businessman devised a signature which incorporated numerous symbols of hidden meaning. He also notes that, from the Middle Ages on, noble families devised coats of arms as recognizable symbols that would allow people to identify the family’s property, presence, or influence. <br />
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Robert next examines the different words often used to describe different symbols so as to ensure that each term, and how it is employed in the text, is thoroughly understood by the reader. The four branches of signs are: symbols, logotypes, signatures, and pictograms. He defines symbols as a "[g] raphic element more of less complex in its structure, more or less abstract in its treatment which, in itself, in intended to call to mind a service, a company or an organization." (p 10) Symbols can include initials as part of the larger image, but they are typically stylized images which are designed to bring to mind the activities of the service, company, or organization in question. An effective symbol references ideas which are commonly held by the public. Such ideas are not always easy to determine and the design process can involve long and costly marketing strategies. As Robert notes, while one may design impressive symbols, they will be ineffective if they do not reference commonly held ideas.<br />
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While Robert admits that in common parlance, the term "logo" is often use to identify any graphic design which is used to identify a particular company, product, or service, the term "logotype" is much more specific. It refers to a word, a small group of words, or an abbreviation which is rendered in a specific manner so as to create a personalized, and standardized, form of graphic identification. While a preexisting typeset can be used, the arrangement of the characters, and any other stylistic alterations, are consistently maintained in a manner which causes the characters to, not only act as characters, but also as part of an illustration or in a manner which suggests a specific form, and not simply a feeling or attitude. However, Robert also notes that, while logotypes can consist of modified characters, the greatest effect is often achieved with the least, and most subtle modification(s) possible. Robert interestingly claims that English is especially well suited to successful logotypes, possibly since the designer does not need to be concerned about the inclusion of accents which can unbalance words. Yet, regardless of the alleged greater usefulness of English, he offers examples of, what he judges to be, good French and bilingual logotypes created by Quebec designers. <br />
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While having the same purpose as symbols and logotypes, signatures are either combinations of characters and images where the text and the image are not interlaced, or simply characters which have been stylized so as to suggests a specific attitude or feeling, but not a particular visual image, as in the case of a logotype. In the second case, the text can be accompanied by a symbol. Thus, as Robert argues, signatures are combinations of symbols and logotypes.<br />
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Robert declines from discussing pictograms, the case of the last category of signs, claiming that they are irrelevant to Bochud's study. This is because pictograms are rarely used as signs for companies, organizations, or services, but are typically used to represent a specific thing or kind of thing. They are typically not designed to represent the ideologies or activities of particular groups of people. Examples of pictograms include instructional signs, which are designed to represent particular activities which one should or should not do, or can or cannot do.<br />
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Following Robert's introductory section, the rest of the book offers 1001 examples of symbols designed by Quebec graphic designers. For each symbol Bochud gives the name of the designer (if known), the name of the client, and the year it was created.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-86737521865692047212011-11-30T19:10:00.000-08:002011-11-30T19:10:18.909-08:00Le Design au Québec / Marc H. Choko, Paul Bourassa, Gérard Baril<span style="font-size: large;">Marc H. Choko, Paul Bourassa, Gérard Baril, Le Design au Québec: industriel, graphique, de mode, Montreal: Les Éditions l'homme, 2003.</span><br />
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In his preface to Marc Choko, Paul Bourassa, and Gérald Baril's Le design au Québec, Michel Dallaire explains that, while he wanted to be an architect in the early 1960s, his lack of a classical education and his father's anticlericalism kept him shut out of Quebec architecture school. However, he was able to go into industrial design at the Institut des arts appliqués de Montréal. From there he went to Sweden to work and gain experience. Upon his return to Montreal Dallaire found that there was lots of work for designers, including those from all over the planet. Industrial designers, signage designers, graphic designers, urban designers, fashion designers, interior designers, they all were able to find work designing for the new Métro system, Expo 67, etc.<br />
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As Dallaire explains, following Expo 67 there was a lull of work for several years until the preparation for the 1976 Olympic games. However, most of the work done by designers following the heyday of Expo was for American manufacturing companies or their Canadian subsidiaries. There was also some work for local small and medium sized businesses. Also, during the 1970s the teaching of design underwent several years of neglect, leading to businesses becoming unwilling to pay for the development of locally produced industrial, graphic, or other kinds of design. While they would invest in new technology, they would not invest in new designs for their products, choosing instead to invest their money in copying their competition rather than risking anything on new, innovative designs. However, Dallaire claims that things had changes so that, at the time he was writing, businesses knew that, at least in the case of industrial design, good design is required from the start of the conception process. While economizing and streamlining production are important, what is more important is seducing the public to want the product. Sales cannot happen without the seduction of the public.<br />
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The forward of the book is written by Marc H. Choko, who simply thanks the other authors for writing the other sections of the book and for participating in the project. He also notes that the book was the second such history of design project, following upon L'affiche au Québec (The Poster in Quebec).<br />
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Choko is also the author of the introduction, which he begins by asking "What is design?" Before examining the history of Quebec's design community and the areas upon which it has focused, Choko explains that the authors began their conceptual process by going out onto the street (specifically Boul. St. Laurent, in the heart of the fashionable Plateau Mont-Royal) to ask people what they thought design was. While they received a number of responses, including claims that it was a superficial treatment of things so as to make them more attractive, many claimed that design is what makes things, and thus life, beautiful. <br />
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Choko next offers a brief overview of the history of design in general before introducing the book's three sections on industrial design, graphic design, and fashion design. He begins by noting that, while the word design was used prior to the industrial revolution, it was really with that explosion in the production of products on a mass scale, for all of society, and in a manner which reduced the production process to a series of disjointed steps, that design developed as a trade. Furthermore, as the industrial revolution began in Britain, so did the field of design. Offering a number of dictionary definitions of design, Choko suggests that the word "design" can range from meaning the plan for a work of art, to the conception of some product and its integration into the chain of production. He recognizes that issues such as art or technique, form and use, craft and industrial production are all issues of contention in reaching a definition of design. For example, while there was a report on the fabricated arts at the Great Exhibition of 1851, which examined the design of mass-produced objects, this was answered by the rise of the Arts and Crafts movement with its desire to design and create high quality crafts by hand and not by industrial means. Yet, their distain for industry meant that few people could afford their labour intensive products. Rather, it was with the Deutscher Werkbund, established in Munich in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius after a long trip to England, that the first real attempts was made to remove the divide between art and society. Working with modernist artists including Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, and Henry Van de Velde, the Deutscher Werkbund tried to not only make products which were practical, but which also offered a degree of pleasure.<br />
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This was followed, in 1908, with Adolf Loos' book Ornament and Crime in which he argues that cultural progress occurs with the removal of all ornamentation from utilitarian objects. This idea was central to the modern movement's notion of form following function, where that which is wholly functional is beautiful. This notion of glorification of the purity function was accompanied in 1909 with the publication of Filippo Marinetti's Futurismo, a manifesto which glorifies both speed and the machine.<br />
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The realization of utilitarian objects, and thus beautiful art created for the masses, came with the Soviet Revolution of 1917. Focusing upon creating an efficient state which produced the most efficient materials of equal quality for all, the revolutionaries were preoccupied with graphic design, architecture, industrial design, and even style, which would not only be efficient, but would be beautiful in it efficiency. This led to research done in the USSR by El Lissitsky (Lazar Markovich), Alexander Rodchenko, Igor Tatlin and the Vesnin brothers, among others, and which was carried out at the same time as the Dutch avant-grade De Stijl movement in 1917 by Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld, Hans Arp, Gino Severini, and Piet Mondrian. Some of the soviet Vkhutemas (the graduate workshops of artists and technicians) soon came to argue for utilitarianism at the expense of any aesthetic, claiming that any ornamentation was bourgeois. Ornamentation was seen as a waste of resources, and thus a crime against the society. Rather they held that form must follow function, remaining honest to the materials, including adding little colour.<br />
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In Germany an art and design school, opened by Walter Gropius, was established in 1919. Named the Bauhaus, it attracted instructors including Johannes Itten, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Theo van Doesburg. The school followed the Arts and Crafts movement in merging a school of fine arts and a school of applied arts. It advocated reconciliation between function and aesthetics. However, especially after relocating to a specially designed campus in Dessau in 1925, the school evolved more towards emphasizing the industrial arts and industrial design, with a renewed unity between art and technology.<br />
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The period from 1920 to 1930 saw the rise of the functionalist movement, which acted to raise public support for a society which was dominated by scientific and technical progress, as well as to embrace an aesthetic of the machine, including the beauty of the expression of functions. However, this also led to contradictions. In both Europe and the United States industrial design was often used to dress products in the garb of modernist design. For example, Raymond Loewy and his aesthetic creations, based upon the streamline styling which was central to American design from the 1930s to the 1950s, did not necessarily create or inspire practical designs. <br />
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The Second World War constituted a turning point, when technology was employed to develop new materials, and when design needed to make use of the most efficient materials in the most efficient ways possible. Not only did it mark the dominance of form conforming with technological capabilities, but it also established the United States as the dominant force in industrial production. Furthermore, the war and its aftermath saw the word "design" enter common language. In 1944 the British government established the Council of Industrial Design, while 1954 saw the establishment of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale in Italy. Finally in 1959 the word was included in the Robert dictionary, entering the French language. Initially associated with industrial design, the word soon came to be used with the development of objects, furniture, and interior decoration. <br />
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The return to utilitarian, practical design came with the establishment in 1955 of the Ulm School in Germany which had the objective of making daily life more human, paying attention to environmental conditions and human needs and incorporating them into designs. The school aimed at coordinating social, technical, and aesthetic concerns.<br />
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The Emergence of Design in Quebec<br />
In Quebec, up until the Second World War, design, which did not yet exist as a specialty or a program, was part of what was taught and learned by people in fine arts and architecture programs. It was also practiced by those who taught or attended technical and crafts schools, as well as by people who were self-taught and working in fields including furniture making, printing, and the clothing industry. The field developed as instructors learned more and more about the field of design and as those practicing design began to coordinate themselves within organizations and associations. The main objectives of such organizations were to promote exchange between practitioners, as well as to have the elites of society, as well as the general public recognize their works, which was accomplished through publications and exhibitions.<br />
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The first step in the development of Quebec industrial design was the establishment in 1930 of a cabinet-making program in Technical Schools. This was followed in 1935 with the École du meuble de Montréal, which offered vocational training in the fields of interior design and the applied arts, and which was inspired by the French decorative arts. However, this craft-oriented, woodworking-focused program did not incorporate industrial design which made use of new materials or mass production. Thus, its impact remained limited. Indeed, it was only in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, with the creation of the industrial design section of the Faculty of Management at the Université de Montréal, as well as the environmental design program introduced at the Université du Québec a Montréal that the teaching of modern industrial design was truly introduced to Quebec.<br />
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In the case of graphic design, the one related field in Quebec up until and after the 1940s was commercial art. In the 1940s programs in commercial art were taught at the School of Graphic Arts, the Art Association of Montreal, the School of Fine Arts, and Sir George Williams College. As in the case of industrial design, it was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s when distinct courses in graphic design were introduced into the province's colleges and universities.<br />
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Finally, in the case of fashion design, a provincial fashion profession was actually started by the Quebec government in 1946 with the opening of the École des métiers commerciaux de Montréal, Later many other colleges, including the LaSalle College Group, would open similar programs.<br />
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In addition to the establishment of teaching programs, the twentieth century saw the establishment of several professional design associations. In 1933 the Association of Interior Decorators was established, becoming the Société des décorateurs-ensembliers du Québec in 1948, the Société des designers d'intérieur du Québec in 1992, and finally the Association des designers d’intérieur du Québec in 2003. In addition, the Association des designers industriels du Québec was founded in 1958.<br />
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In the case of graphic design, the Art Directors Club of Montreal was established in 1951 and the Société des graphistes du Québec was founded in 1974, becoming the Société des designers graphiques du Québec in 1994. Finally, in the case of fashion, the Association des couturiers canadiens was established in Montreal in 1954.<br />
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An essential part of the penetration and diffusion of the different fields of design within Quebec, and their recognition in shaping society was accomplished through advertisements and journals. Such Quebec design journals included Fashion Magazine (1945 to 1949), Culture vivante (1955-1973), Élan (1967-1993), Décormag (since 1972), Grif Design (in the mid-1980) and Intérieurs, Graphisme Québec, and Grafika. Many of these publications also promoted exhibitions of designed works. Furthermore, following the Second World War the federal government became involved in promoting design in an effort to encourage the development of Canadian products which made use of new products and mew methods of manufacturing, so as to increase domestic consumption and export of Canadian products. Beginning in 1945 a number of articles appeared in Canadian Art selling the merits of design for both industry and the consumer. In 1946 the National Gallery and the National Film Board organized a travelling exhibition entitled Design in Industry. The catalogue of the exhibition was created by Donald W. Buchanan of the NFB. In 1947 an industrial design section of the National Gallery was created, as was the National Council of Industrial Design. The council was to identify and publicize "good design", as well as award annual prizes for the best achievements in the field. Finally, in 1953 a new "art gallery", called the Design Centre was opened in downtown Ottawa by the Design Council to showcase examples of good Canadian design. Directed at the customer, the manufacturer, and the retailer, the gallery was to honor "artists" who created the items of everyday use. It stressed that such everyday objects can be looked at as not just useful objects or merchandise, but also as works of art.<br />
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In 1961 the National Council of Industrial Design was made part of the federal Department of Trade and Industry. The department then opened another design centre in Toronto in 1964 and another in Montreal in Place Bonaventure in 1966. However, both centres were eventually closed in 1970.<br />
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Provincially the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Musée de la civilisation du Québec have all held various exhibitions on design in the decades following the Second World War. As of 2003 the main venue for design in Quebec was the Centre de création et de diffusion en design of the Université du Québec a Montréal, which was launched in 1981 at the behest of instructors at the university. The centre teaches graphic design, industrial design, architecture, and fashion, showcases the work of Quebec designers, and also presents exhibitions from Quebec and abroad. <br />
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GRAPHIC DESIGN<br />
Also written by Choko, the second section of Le design au Québec is dedicated to the history of graphic design in the province. As Choko explains, up until the 1940s graphic design in Quebec was left largely to the hands of small-scale, unprofessional artisans, and was not a separate profession. It was only following the Second World War that large agencies began to be developed, as was the profession itself. Teaching adapted as the profession became specialized and began to be taught in colleges and universities. From typography to photocomposition and computer graphics, technical resources also changed and revolutionized roles and practices. <br />
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Choko explains that one of the main problems of writing a history of graphic design in Quebec is that many of the creations of the field are often considered ephemera. Many of the works passed from designer, to art directors, to clients, to printers, but in many cases, it was not thought important to keep any copies of the original work for posterity. At the time, no one considered that the field would be of historical interest. Thus, it is as though many of the main participants have died, since much of the original work no longer exists. Wile not an excuse, it does explain the difficulty in uncovering archival material on many pieces. Choko also notes that much of the history he will be presenting is centred on Montreal, which he explains is only because it was the centre of Quebec's graphic design industry, although there are some studios elsewhere in Quebec. As the economic centre of the province, Montreal was where many of the companies hiring graphic designers were located. He further explains that, for the different periods of Quebec graphic design history presented, he discusses the best and most influential works. Thus, he admits that his history does not represent the entire spectrum of graphic design which has been produced in the province.<br />
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In addition to not covering all of Quebec graphic design, Choko explains that he has largely excluded poster, which he covered in L'affiche au Québec as well as logos, which were covered by Gérard Bouchud and Gilles Robert in their book 1001 symboles du Québec. He also left out graphic design used for websites and for television, as well as much of the corporate work to which twenty-first century graphic designers dedicate much of their time. In the case of corporate work, Choko also notes that he considers much corporate work relatively boring and staid, in keeping with the desires of many corporations, and thus not creations which can be seen as revolutionary or experimental. Finally, he did not include graphic design which was used for packaging, believing that such material could form the basis for an additional study. Furthermore, he expresses regret that he was unable to include works by designers whose creations could not be reproduced accurately.<br />
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Understanding that it is very fashionable to claim that any history of a field of current interest in Quebec did not begin before the 1960s and the Quiet Revolution, the arrival of Expo 67, and Quebec's opening up to the world, Choko argues that for a true understanding of the history of graphic design in Quebec one must begin back in the 1940s and 1950s. Choko divides the history into five sub-periods. The years 1940 to 1950 are marked by the freedom of the post-war period and the establishment of the first commercial art courses in Quebec. The second period, 1950 to 1960, saw the arrival of the international style, or the so-called Swiss school, in Quebec, driven by European-trained designers whose work reflected a revision of the ideas of the first European modernists. The third period, saw local designers, heavily influenced by the work of the International Style, create influential and iconic works for both Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympic Games. The period from 1980 to 1990 was marked by a new beginning with the rise of postmodern design, as well as the introduction of early computer graphics. Finally the contemporary period, the 1990s and 2000s, is that of a revolution of computer-based design as well as an explosion of multicultural stylistic influences.<br />
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The Beginnings of Modern Graphics<br />
Choko explains that graphic design began with the birth of printing and the illustration of printed notices, newsletters, and posters, composed of largely type which was enhanced with woodcuts. Layouts had already been important to the work of pre-printing scribes, whose works were simply rapidly multiplied with the arrival of the Gutenberg press and typography. Graphic design involves the ordering of information, of ideas, of format, so as to create clear and imaginative communication, as well as to attract the attention of the audience. Choko references Brain Donnelly's Graphic Design in Canada Since 1945 in claiming that graphic design has differentiated itself from the work of advertising agencies, of commercial art departments, of printers, of printing, engraving workshops, and typography. While it is derived from the art of typography, over time it has evolved to include much more than typographic design and typesetting design, including the design of the page layout, the creation and arrangement of illustrations and photographs, ensuring the legibility and proper positioning of words or characters, so as to create pieces of effective overall communication.<br />
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Although Choko does acknowledge the influence of Germany's Jan Tschichold and his modernist creations of the 1920s upon modern graphic design, he argues that one must not forget the earlier influence of the works of the Englishmen William Nicholson and James Pryde (referred to as the Beggarstaff Brothers) in the late nineteenth century, of the German poster design and theoretician Lucian Bernhard in the first decade of the twentieth century, of the Dada movement which began in Zurich in the 1910s, of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, of the advances of Keller Ernst in Switzerland, Herbert Bayer in Austria, of the Hungarian Laszio Moholy-Nagy in Germany, of Peter Zwart in Holland, or of Adolphe Mouron Cassandre and Jean Carlu in France during the 1930s.<br />
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Terminology of the field<br />
The term "graphic design" was first used in 1922 by the American type and book designer William Addison Dwiggins. In Canada, prior to the 1960s when the term became common, graphic designers worked in commercial art, and they were referred to as graphic artists, typographers, commercial artists, and layout artists. Commercial art was very closely related to illustrated advertising and very much inspired by the American school, and had rather pejorative connotations for modernists. Allan Harrison, like Charles Fainmel and Henry Eveleigh in Montreal or Clair Stewart in Toronto would use the term "advertising art" instead, borrowing from the French term "l'art publicitaire." It was also the title of a long series of articles published in 1948 by Gérard Perrault, director of the advertising department of the École des arts graphique de Montréal. Furthermore, in 1945 Allan Harrison declared in Canadian Art that one should not become what is known as a "commercial" artist, or the kind of artist for whom painting is "serious" art. Rather, he claimed that all art was serious. That same year, when Harrison had his works exhibited at the Art Association of Montreal his graphic creations were seen to be paintings. In addition, in the introduction to a 1977 book on the work of Rolf Harder and Ernst Roch, Harrison claimed that art is only about quality, not about ambition or compensation, rejecting the notion that one's work is not real art if it is created for a particular purpose, or that there is a difference between the applied arts and the fine arts.<br />
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In the article "The Proper Function of Advertising", published in Canadian Art in 1947, Charles Fainmel and Henry Eveleigh claimed that the artist is to play a service for society, blending art and business, talent and theory. The artist must use his creative abilities to create and have their clients believe in the highest quality functionalism and symbolism. As Choko notes, this and other comments showed that, during the 1940s, there was unrest amongst "advertising artists" who were involved in design and were agitating for a separation into a distinct profession. <br />
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Not all advertising artists felt the same way. Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, artistic director of Alliance graphique in Paris claimed that painting was an end in itself, and that a poster was a form of communication between a merchant and the public. Such posters did not create messages, they simply forwarded them. The artist's job is to forward those messages clearly, powerfully, and accurately. However, this position was not shared by either Allan Harrison or Henry Eveleigh, who both eventually quit commercial art to take up painting.<br />
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The term graphic design finally came into widespread use in Quebec in the late 1960s and 1970s with the opening of design programs which were fully separate from fine arts programs. By 2003, when Choko was writing, it was the most commonly used term.<br />
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Choko explains that analysis of typography, and the encouragement of experimentation, began in Quebec between the wars with attempts to promote the benefits of advertizing for businesses. For example, 1926 saw the launch of the French-Canadian illustrated magazine Le Clé d'or, which was dedicated to visual advertising. Supported by some advertising agencies and the Rolland Paper Company, the periodical contained many ads which were largely very conservative in character, and appeared to be of an earlier time. The typography of a number of the advertisements, however, was more advanced. This was partially the result of advances in the technology used.<br />
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To further advance the state of typographic design, the Club des gradués en typography, which later became the Club typographique de Montréal, was established in 1928. Having a dozen members, it was attached to the École technique de Montréal, and by 1938 its numbers had grown to 60. Its review, launched in 1928, and which often included texts by Belgian and French collaborators, only lasted two years.<br />
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During the 1920s local, bold, and decidedly modern works were rare, and when they did appear they were often made in the popular European Art Deco style. This European influence was particularly strong among Quebec graphic designers, such as Omer Parent, who was educated at the École des beaux-arts de Quebec and then received further training in Europe, particularly Paris. Returning to Quebec, Parent worked briefly with Raoul Bonin (1928 to 1929, a period from which no material appears to have survived) before becoming the interior designer and decorator for the Henry Morgan & Co. department store on St. Catherine Street from 1929 until 1936. He eventually returned to Quebec City where he spent most of his time teaching. <br />
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Advertising of the 1930s was celebrated in 1939 and 1940 by both the advertising industry and Quebec paper companies who owned Les éditions Le Droit, which published L'Annuaire de la publicité et de l'imprimerie (press, radio, art graphiques) in 1939 and 1940. Choko notes that the advertising shown in the 1939 edition underlines the position of large advertising agencies in North America at the time. In Canada the first advertising agency was established in Montreal in 1889 by Anson McKim. Run by Anglophones and dealing largely with English ads, such English agencies were followed in 1908 by the first francophone agency, la Canadian Advertising Agency. In 1910 the Advertising Sales Executive Club of Montreal was created, and from the 1930s it offered courses in collaboration with McGill University. It was not until 1959 that the Advertising Club of Montreal was established. All of these advertising agencies and organizations dominated visual design at the time. They were the mediators between designers and clients, and they certainly did not push for innovation or experimentation in design, but rather were very conservative, largely only allowing designers to borrow from styles which had been successful in other markets.<br />
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The Precursors of Modernity in Quebec<br />
By the 1940s a small number of designers were attempting to advance a new kind of modern design in Quebec. While often inspired by European designers, influenced by magazines, or through trips to London and Paris, their design developments came to stand on their own. However, the first major opportunity for Quebec graphic designers (more accurately, those doing what came to be understood as graphic design) to experiment and not follow convention came from outside Quebec. Many of these designers were hired during the war by the newly created National Film Board of Canada, which was directed by John Grierson. In addition to creating films which supported the war effort, the NFB created posters, publications, and other wartime propaganda. To create these works Grierson hired a number of talented designers, including Harry Mayerovitch (Mayo). According to Donnelly, these designers also included others, such as Carl Dair and Henry Eveleigh.<br />
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Following the war, when the government was beginning to promote the importance of design, especially in the case of industrial design, the journal Canadian Art was launched and dedicated numerous articles to discussing the achievements and theories of design in Canada. In articles by Allan Harrison, an admirer of the poster designers Cassandre, Carlu, McKnight Kauffer, and Bayer, expressed his hope that Canadian designers might soon be free from the dominant style of American realism, and instead turn their imagination more towards an inventive symbolism. Referencing the works of the Montrealers Raoul Bonin, Charles Fainmel, and Ian Lindsay, Harrison hoped to see the birth of a new Canadian school of design.<br />
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Harrison had been born in Montreal where he studied at the École des beaux-arts. From 1933 to 1935 he lived in London, working as a graphic designer before travelling to Paris, where he was able to meet Cassandra. Returning to Montreal before the war, Harrison became the artistic director at the advertising agency of J. Walker Thompson, which would eventually send him to work in its offices in Rio de Janeiro from 1946 to 1947, and then in New York during the 1950s. The few surviving works by Harrison show his evolution towards a modern style of design, combining a thorough understanding of typography with that of geometric composition and photomontage. However, in the early 1950s Harrison left graphic design to concentrate exclusively on painting.<br />
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In the case of Charles Fainmel, Choko explains that he and the other authors were not able to find very many examples of his work, and while what they did find suggests that he worked largely on commercial projects, the work that was found had various "good" qualities. His works mix geometric designs and collage, reminiscent of the Soviet constructivist movement, as seen in the work of Russian designers such as the Stenberg brothers. However, Fainmel also drew, painted, and sculpted, and by the 1920s he had exhibited his work with the Art Association of Montreal, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Royal Canadian Academy. He even had his sculptures shown at the Salon d'Automne and the Société des artistes indépendants in Paris in 1932. In 1946 the Art Association of Montreal devoted an entire show to Fainmel, displaying not just his fine art, but also his graphic advertising work as well. When asked by a Montreal Standard journalist at the time of the 1946 show to comment on the difference between European and Canadian graphic work, Fainmel claimed that there are only two criteria for judging graphic works, they are either very good or very bad. In Canada, he claimed that one only found the latter. <br />
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According to Choko, little is known of Ian Lindsay or his work except for a poster he designed for the National Film Board to illustrate an article by Harrison. <br />
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Finally, the last designer of this first era of design was Raoul Bonin, about whom little is also known. He was born in Montreal, and eventually took correspondence art courses offered out of Chicago. He eventually attended the School of Fine and Applied Arts in New York, completing his studies with two years in Paris. While some of his works have survived, nothing is known of his pre-war creations. Those examples of his wartime and post-war work show the obvious influence of Cassandre and Jean Carlu, although Bonin had developed his own style, and did not simply reproduce examples of their work. However, Bonon's influence ended early in the development of Canada's graphic design profession. He died in 1951. Importantly, as was noted by Allan Harrison in a 1958 article in Vie des arts dedicated to Bonin (inaccurately titled "Raoul Bonin, 1904-1949"), Bonin was aware, as were many European designers of the time, that design did not need to be crowed with detail, but that ideas can often be referenced more easily through simple symbols than through multiple scattered details. <br />
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In addition to marking the beginning of modern graphic design in Quebec through their work, some of the influential designers of the period also began teaching during the 1940s. In 1945 Allan Harrison taught advertising art at the Art Association of Montreal's School of Art and Design. (The Art Association of Montreal became the Montreal Museum of Fine Art in 1948.) Charles Fainmel also instructed in the Association's design program. In addition, beginning in 1947, Henry Eveleigh headed the commercial art program at Montreal's École des beaux-arts. However, in addition to teaching, each of these designers continued their creative careers, often being hired by Montreal companies, including the city's successful high-tech industry, to create designs which matched the innovative spirit of the companies' products. These companies included Ayerst, McKenna & Harrison, Abbott Laboratories, Canadian Celanese, EB Eddy Co., Canadian Aviation Electronics, and Canadian Industries.<br />
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One of the designers who worked on these corporate designs, who had worked for the National Film Board, and whose work and influence would extend into the 1950s, was Henry Eveleigh. Eveleigh had been born in Shanghai, but was raised in London, attending the Slade School of Fine Arts. He had begun his career as a printer, designing, typesetting, and printing posters for a living. He immigrated to Montreal in 1938, working briefly for Woodward Press, thanks to the help of Charles Fainmel, whom he had come to know. He then worked as a freelance designer. He would eventually set up a studio with Carl Dair in 1947 following their work at the NFB. Dair began his career as a designer for the Stratford Beacon Herald, becoming an itinerant printer during the 1930s. In 1940 he moved to Montreal where he became art director for a department store before becoming director of typography at the NFB in 1945.<br />
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While taking the radical step of opening a studio which was specifically focused upon design, and which was not part of a larger advertising firm, Dair left the business in 1951, a year after the firm's name was changed to Cossman, Eveleigh, Dair. Following Dair's departure, Eveleigh increasingly concentrated upon his painting and teaching. Of the pair, Dair appears to have been more oriented towards design and typography, while Eveleigh was more of an illustrator and artist-philosopher. Eveleigh was fond of abstract shapes, curves, and advertisements which bordered on animated design, and which was oriented towards classical informative modernism. In contrast Carl Dair was a master of rigorous geometry, balanced composition of space, playful typography, clear lines, and complete design.<br />
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While all of these post-war developments were significant, the most important event in graphic design in Quebec directly after the war was, according to Choko, the 1946 opening of a department in the École des arts graphiques dedicated to advertising art. Established in downtown Montreal opposite the École des beaux-arts, in space owned by the École technique, the department was given the blessing of the Archbishop in August 1942, but it was not announced until March 1944 that it would actually be opening. Named the École des arts graphique, its purpose was to train both artisans and technicians of the various steps involved in printing so that they are able to illustrate and work in the printing and binding trade. <br />
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The new school was headed by Gérard Perrault, who published a series of four articles between December 1946 and May 1947 in technical journals highlighting all of the ambiguities which he saw between good design and the realities of the printing, publishing, and advertising trades. In particular, he makes the distinction between the fine and applied arts, where those involved in the fine arts are able to work with few restrictions, while one who is involved in commercial art is limited in the interpretation and approach he or she can take. He does praise the influence of European commercial artists who either moved to America or whose influence was widely felt there (including Cassandre, Carlu, Klinger and Binder), recognizing that their work has inspired the quality works of the Canadian commercial arts such as Charles Fainmel, Omer Parent, Henry Eveleigh and Carl Dair. However, he also despairs that there is a large amount of poor quality commercial art being produced in Quebec and Canada. He argued that much commercial art in Canada often makes use of awkward and outdated graphics, and typically involves too much text. This approach to commercial design did not borrow any of the lessons offered by contemporary art. A similar criticism of Canadian commercial art was made by Toronto's Clair Stewart in his 1948 Canadian Art article "Advertising Design in Canada." Stewart argues that there were two main reasons for the low quality of Canadian commercial art. The first was that most print ads, so he claimed, were not produced by designers, but draftsmen, who are quite capable of expressing mediocre ideas on paper. The second reason was that most designers were employed by design workshops that were dominated by art directors, and that the designers rarely had direct access to customers. Thus, rather than fight to advance good design ideas, he claimed that many talented designers simply left Canada for work elsewhere where their ideas would be acknowledged.<br />
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Two of the pillars of the École des arts graphiques were the artist Albert Dumouchel and the typographer Arthur Gladu. Thanks to their connections in modernist graphic advertising , Les Ateliers d'arts graphique (No. 3) was published in 1949, highlighting some of the work of both Carl Dair and Henry Eveligh, as well as some of their ideas concerning design. While Dair claimed that typography should be understood as an abstract art, Eveleigh argued that one could, and should, consider the work of commercial artists, be it magazine cover designs or brochures, to be works of art. However, Choko claims that the words of Eveligh can Clair were not always followed, as could be seen by examining the issues of the journal Impressions during the 1950s, which often published the work of student commercial artists. However, one must also note that other advertising artists did take something away from both Dumouchel, Gladu, and the surrounding environment of the time, so as to produce works which contain experimental elements. Choko notes examples from Impressions by Roger Cabana (1945 ), Raymond Bellemare (1949), Gilles Robert 1950), Georges Huel (I95I) and Réal Séguin (1952), all of whom attended the École des arts graphiques. Furthermore, an example of the changing atmosphere concerning illustration in Quebec can be seen with the cartoonist Robert LaPalme's 1948 cover for a special edition of Canadian Art dedicated to the "Quebec Scene". The image, although not by a commercial artist/designer, suggested, with its devilish artists who are laughing at the churches surrounding them, that change was coming to the traditionally conservative Quebec fine and applied arts scene. <br />
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Another event which occurred during the same era as Les Ateliers d'arts graphique was the establishment in 1949 of the Art Director's Club of Toronto. That same year the organization organized an exposition of the best Canadian graphic advertisements, publishing the entries in the first of its Annual of Advertising and Editorial Art. From the first year of its publication the annual included numerous Montrealers. Among these were Eveleigh and Dair's studio which had redesigned the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's Canadian Business as well as the work of Harry Stanfield, the designers working for both Eaton's and Morgan's department stores, Raoul Bonin, Charles Fainmel, Yalonde Delorme-Cyr, Albert Dumouchel, and Arthur Gladu. The second exposition of the Art Director's Club of Toronto was shown in Montreal in October 1950. Inspired by the Toronto Club, the Art Director's Club of Montreal was established in 1952, holding its first exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art.<br />
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One of the participants in the first Toronto exhibition, Yolande Delorme was somewhat unique in a Canadian graphic design community which was overwhelmingly dominated by men. Born in Coaticook, she took evening classes in drawing at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal and was soon hired by Merchants Advertising. In 1945 she was hired as a graphic illustrator in fashion by Arnold G. Evans, the owner and director of Fashion Magazine. Then in 1950, becoming what was likely the first female artistic director in Canada, she partnered with Tancrède Marsil to form Y & M Studio, which by 1955 was employing twenty-five designers, including individuals who would come to be very influential in Canadian graphic design, such as Gérard Caron and Ernst Roch. The studio also employed Jean Fortin, who left for Paris in 1956 where he would spend the rest of his career.<br />
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Yolande's partner, Marsil, was from Montreal and had gone to both the École des beaux-arts, as well as the Université de Montréal, where he had taken journalism. In 1949 he had done an internship at Publicis in Paris, and was then briefly artistic director at Eveleigh/Dair. He would go on to become the public relations director, as well as one of the partners, at Y & M Studio.<br />
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Like the Art Director's Club of Toronto, the Montreal version eventually also had its exhibition participants published, with Canadian Art dedicating a 1958 issue to 141 of the 206 entries in the 7th Annual Exhibition of Advertising and Editorial Art. The exhibition had been held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in June of that year. The entries included the work of designers from across the country, showcasing both good and bad design. The celebrated designers in the exhibition included Frank Lipari, who had been born in Montreal and had studied art at Sir George Williams College. After briefly working for an advertizing agency he began a career at The Gazette, which became increasingly administrative in nature. Other Quebec designers whose work was showcased in the special edition of Canadian Art included Gérard Caron (of whose other works Choko was only able to find a few examples) who worked for Y & M, as well as Hector Shanks, one of the partners of Kon & Shanks.<br />
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In the 1950s the most representative and influential centre of commercial art production was the Commercial Art Centre. The Centre was created in 1951 by Gaston Parent. Parent had briefly studied at Montreal's École des beaux-arts, but learned about photography, printing, and layout through on the job training. Through his connections and business talents, he was able to build a flourishing business which was involved an all sectors of commercial art, including graphic design, photography, typesetting, and reproduction. The Commercial Art Centre touched the careers of numerous Montreal designers, employing more that a hundred people or different levels of ability by the 1950s. Even Arnaud Maggs, the self-taught Montreal graphic designer who had worked in New York, Toronto, and Milan, briefly worked for the Commercial Art Centre in 1959. That year he created a series of small contemporary, childish, cartoon-style banner ads for Parent. <br />
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Choko ends his section on the 1950s by arguing that, largely unknown to the rest of the world, Quebec's influential post-war graphic designers, while capable of radical and experimental design, inhabited a world which was often much more interested in enjoying the benefits of the new mass consumption society and not challenging conventions, or at least internationally acceptable style, in promoting the products, services, or organizations of that society. Thus, several of the most experimental, or modern, of these designers eventually left the profession. Some, like Yolande Delorme and Jean Fortin went abroad where they could better employ their skills (Yolande left in 1955). Others, such as Harrison and Eveleigh eventually gave up design for teaching and painting. Of the Quebec designers featured in the 1960 special edition of the Japanese graphic art magazine IDEA dedicated to "Visual Communications in Canada," Eugenie Groh, Frank Lipari and Arnaud Maggs all moved to Toronto. Only Ernst Roch remained in Montreal. Quebec graphic designers mentioned in the special May 1960 graphic design edition of Canadian Art included Ernst Roch and Gérard Caron, Y & M Studio, and Rolf Harder.<br />
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The Emergence of the International Style<br />
Choko begins by explaining that the International Style did not only arrive in North America in the late 1950s and 1960s. Rather, he argues that it could be seen as early as the 1930s when several architecture and poster exhibitions held at New York's Museum of Modern Art reflected the geometric formalism and search for a universal abstract language of design. Influenced through journals and visits to New York, London, Paris, Zurich, and Berlin, young Canadian designers began to incorporate elements of this rational, geometric approach to design. While Quebec designers such as Raoul Bonin, Charles Fainmel, Henry Eveleigh and Allan Harrison were all influenced by this style, as Choko argued in his previous section, they were all too early to be able to take full advantage of this new, radical approach. This, he argues, explains why they are almost universally neglected by commentators who tend to focus upon the young European immigrant designers who arrived in Montreal during the 1950s and 1960s, who were very much in touch with contemporary developments in the International Style, which was growing in international popularity, and who were thus able to be recognized in Montreal, Canada, and abroad for their designs. Furthermore, both Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympics, building upon, what was seen as the radical International Style creations being produced in Quebec, would cause the majority of commentators on Quebec and Canadian design to forget about the modern advances made by earlier Quebec designers. Within Quebec and abroad, Quebec design began with Expo 67, which put the city in the spotlight and made it the focus of numerous journals, radio, and television programs.<br />
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Three people in particular are often associated with the International Style, or the Swiss Style, in Montreal: Ernst Roch, Rolf Harder and Fritz Gottschalk. However, only Gottschalk was actually from in Switzerland and can be directly identified with the Swiss School. Born in Zurich, he studied at that city's École des arts appliqués, as well as in Basel. Immigrating to Canada in 1964, Gottschalk first worked in Ottawa for Paul Arthur & Associates. The company had a contract to develop several of the graphic elements of Expo 67, to which Gottschalk contributed. Moving to Montreal in 1965, where he established his own studio, he was joined by the Hamilton native Stuart Ash in 1966, who had also been working for Paul Arthur and who brought to the studio a passion for typography. The two designers eventually opened Gottschalk + Ash International in New York in 1976 and then in Zurich in 1978 where Gottschalk returned to settle. They also had an office in Milan which closed in 1992. In a 1990 interview with Graphis, Gottschalk claimed that "The message must be transmitted without any frills or unnecessary overhead, but not without imagination. The recipient must be informed of the main features of the product and the services in question without the use of gags or fireworks." Choko argues that Ash and Gottschalk provided clients with the necessary tools, including the revolutionary Helvetica, which Ash has claimed was first introduced to Canada through their studio. While, in their early years, they always employed the geometric rigor of the International Style, yet with the addition of, what they believed, were necessary, playful elements, which should not be understood as unnecessary decorations, but important elements of their designs. Yet, according to Choko, as Gottschalk + Ash International grew to become a major communications company, their designs became more conservative, lacking in personality. While the International Style was seemingly objective and well suited for international communications, it helped lead to the "crisis of Helvetica", where design of the International Style came to be viewed as cold, uniform, and lacking in personality.<br />
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Ernst Roch, by contrast, was born in Yugoslavia in 1928 to Austrian parents. He studied design in Graz and then immigrated to Canada in 1953. He first briefly worked for Rapid Grip and Batten before joining Y & M Studio in 1954. Being given a large amount of freedom to design in, what was seen in Quebec, as quite experimental styles, he remained at Y & M until 1959. Working briefly as the artistic director of James Valkus' Montreal office in 1960, he soon left to open his own studio. Finally, in 1965 he opened Design Collaborative with Rolf Harder, as well as Anthony Mann and Albert False, both of whom operated the firm's Toronto office. The Toronto office closed after only two years when Anthony Mann left to take up the position of Director of NSCAD.<br />
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Roch's partner, Rolf Harder, was born in Hamburg, Germany, studying at that city's Academy of Fine Art. Remaining in Germany after graduation, he worked for different German companies as a graphic designer from 1952 to 1955. He then moved to Montreal for two years, and then again permanently in 1959. First establishing himself as a freelance designer, with the studio Rolf Harder Design, he eventually joined forces with Roch in 1965. As is explained by Allan Harrison in his introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition The Graphic Design of Rolf Harder and Ernst Roch, the two designers were similar in both their design and their approach to the profession. Both had worked in advertising agencies, but they had both quickly left these jobs which had limited their contact with customers and which had restricted their ability to work at exploring the problems and requirements of functional design. In addition, they both found working directly with clients more rewarding and challenging, since they had to both devise ways of meeting the client's design needs and convince the client of the soundness of their proposed solutions. Choko also claims that Roch and Harder introduced designs which were not only very modern in their shapes and layout, but which also challenged the dominant graphic design colours of red and black. As Choko argues, the designs produced by Design Collaborative were always clear and based on simple geometric forms, only offering essential elements in an exciting manner. <br />
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In discussing the work of Roch and Herder in Graphis, the Swiss designer Hans Neuburg has claimed that their work is "a combination of constructivism with a penchant for playful experimentation." (page 170) Furthermore, Choko claims that their approach to graphic design is somewhere between the above mentioned positions of Cassandra and Harrison. Where as Harrison despaired of the constraints placed upon artists who do commercial art work, going so far as to claim that one should not become a commercial artist, Cassandra believed that the advertising artist was simply they conveyor of a message for the client. Cassandre claimed that a piece of advertising art did not create a message, it merely forwarded the message of the client to the customer. Harder and Roch, however, believed that if the job of the graphic designer was to communicate a particular message, his or her job is not just to "forward" that message, but to find the optimal means of communicating it. Thus, for them, the graphic designer's job was to reduce the message down to the most essential elements, laid out in the most effective way possible, and to convince the client that the design is the best solution to their design problem. Choko also mention's Colin Naylor's citation of Ernst Roch in Contemporary Design, where Roch claims that the designer's task is not to decorate, embellish, or express his or her feelings. Rather, he claimed that the designer is to examine the design problem realistically and develop and implement the best solutions possible. In the case of Harder, Naylor references him as claiming that the designer is not an artist who is striving to create a work of avant-garde expression. Rather, the job of the graphic designer, according to Harder, is to solve a communications problem, and to be pragmatic, avoiding the urge to complicate the design with personal ideas which could confuse the message. Furthermore, according to Choko, Roch and Harder claimed that they were working to use their works to improve their environment, and the ability of man to communicate in that environment.<br />
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The work of Harder and Roch was celebrated both within Canada and abroad throughout the 1960s, with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts holding an exhibition of their work in 1970 entitled "Rolf Harder and Ernst Roch, Design Collaborative. During the 1970s their work was celebrated at numerous international design exhibitions. Finally, in 1977, with the support of Design Canada, the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Canadian Council on Industrial Design, Ottawa launched an exhibition of their work which was to travel to eleven different Canadian cities over a two-year period. Harder and Roch entrusted Allan Harrison to write the text for the catalogue.<br />
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The Impact of Government Organizations<br />
As discussed above, the federal government had furthered Quebec and Canadian graphic design, including during the war through the NFB, then with the publication of Canadian Art and the establishment of Design Centres in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal. However, in the case of the NFB, by the 1950s and later decades its influence upon graphic design had declined significantly. A few works which contradict this trend include the posters for the films Élément 3 and Jusqu'au coeur. The later poster was designed by George Beaupré who was briefly artistic director for the NFB during the mid-1960s. Significantly, it was Beaupré who designed the board's celebrated "seeing eye" logo. He had studied commercial art at the École des beaux-arts in Quebec City before following additional studies in Zurich, and then eventually returning to Canada to work with Paul Arthur & Associates in Ottawa. Starting his work for the NFB in 1966, he left the board and the position of artistic director in 1970. He was replaced by the Verdun born Pierre Fontaine. Fontaine had joined the board in 1967, after having been trained at the Institut des arts graphiques. Following his work at the NFB, Beaupré opened his own studio in Montreal, eventually joining forces with a colleague from Quebec, Jean Arcand, in 1972. In 1974 he was the founding president of the Société des graphistes du Québec. <br />
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The other crown corporation which had a reputation for advancing graphic design was CBC/Radio-Canada, however, as with the NFB, even its contributions to the field during the post-war years were minimal. The corporation did commission some notable annual report covers, as well as a poster for the fifth anniversary of CBC/Radio-Canada television in 1957, which was designed by Pierre Fiore and was selected for the Art Directors Club of Toronto's 1958 exhibition. While the new CBC/Radio-Canada logo created by the Toronto designers Burton Kramer and Allan Fleming does appear on the cover of the 1974-5 CBC/Radio-Canada annual report, it does not represent the contribution of a Quebec designer. Choko claims that, while one would think that the brochure commemorating the opening of Maison Radio-Canada in 1977 (this appears to be inaccurate, since the building was actually built in 1973) would have been an influential design, CBC/Radio-Canada archives failed to keep a copy, even though some 500,000 copies were printed.<br />
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Thus, while crown corporations did have an influence upon Quebec graphic design, it was Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympic Games which gave international recognition and employment to many Quebec graphic designers. Locally design contracts concerning both of these events were handled by the Jean Drapeau administration, and the firm which largely benefited from such contracts were the printers Thérien frères, established in 1960. The artistic director and vice president of the firm was Georges Huel. Born in Saskatchewan, but living in Montreal since his childhood, Huel graduated from the École des arts graphique and had been in charge of graphics for Jean Drapeau's 1957 mayoral campaign. He also designed the logo selected in 1972 for the 1976 Olympic Games and was made general manager of design and graphics for the games. His partner at the firm was Pierre-Yves Pelletier, who was born in Montreal and had studied at the École des arts graphique. After working for Thérien frères from 1960 to 1962 he was appointed head of publications design and promotions at Socété Radio-Canada. From 1973 to 1976 he acted as the adjoint director general of graphic design and the director of publications for the 1976 Olympic Games committee. Similarly, Raymond Bellmare, having a graphic arts degree in advertising from the Montreal École des beaux-arts, worked with Huel at Thérien frères, and then with Pelletier at Radio-Canada from 1971 to 1972 before being made director of graphic design for the Olympic Games committee.<br />
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Other Montrealers involved in design for the 1976 games included Guy Lalumiere, a graduate of Montreal's École des beaux-arts, who created a series of posters for Expo 67, was hired as a freelance designer for the Olympics, probably through connections with Pelletier. Yvon Laroche, who trained at the Intitute des arts graphique, and who worked as a designer for Radio-Canada from 1966 to 1995, was also hired for freelance work, along with Pierre Fontaine (mentioned above), whom Pelletier hired in 1974. Finally, two other Montrealers who had also worked for Thérien frères, Roger Cabana and Réal Séguin, two of the partners of Cabana, Séguin Design (along with Roger Cabana's brother, Marcel Cabana) founded in 1959, were responsible for designing and producing all of the programs for the pre-Olympic competitions held in Montreal in 1975.<br />
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Roger Cabana had graduated from the École des arts graphique, followed by a year of study at the Pratt Institute of Design in New York, eventually became a lecturer at the École des arts graphique for ten after returning to Montreal, all the while also practicing as a freelance designer. It was at École des arts graphique that he met Réal Séguin, who was his student. Roger later became the creative director of the graphic art studio of Thérien frères, which was established in 1952, making Séguin his adjoint.<br />
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Interestingly, all of the designers responsible for the design of Expo 67 and the Olympics were locally trained. Choko suggests that this was because of the growth and increasing coherence of the Quebec graphic design community, which formally established itself in 1972 with the first committee created to discus the creation of the Société des graphistes du Québec, which was created in 1974, after the initial formative meetings attracted the attention of several hundred graphic designers from both Montreal and Quebec City. Furthermore, the late 1960s saw a growth in the number of graphic design training programs in Quebec. In addition to the pre-existing École des beaux-arts, in 1969 programs were established at the CÉGEP du Vieux-Montreal and the Université de Québec à Montréal. In addition, in 1970 the CÉGEP Ahuntsic created the Institut des arts graphiques.<br />
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Choko ends the section by noting that while the Quebec designers of the 1960s and 1970s were thoroughly educated in the International Style, being influenced by the immigrant designers, trade magazines, and international travel and training, their colourful creations did not correspond to what was internationally thought of as Canadian design. For example, in issue 143 of Graphis Hans Neuburg characterized Canadian design as being austere and almost puritanical in form.<br />
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Individuality and Multiple Influences<br />
Between the 1950s and 1970s there were many graphic designers working in Quebec, however, there were some who largely avoided the teachings and trends of the popular International Style. The most well known and independent of these was Gilles Robert, who was from Montreal and attended the École des arts graphique. Following graduation he also learned his trade on the job as an assistant to the artistic director at Benallack Press, Maurice Picard, from 1951 to 1956. Although his work showed the influences of his predecessors, including Arnauld Maggs, Fainmel, and Saul Bass, Choko argues that they also remained personal and easily fused gaiety and pleasure.<br />
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Vittorio Fiorucci, like Ernst Roch, was born in Yugoslavia in 1932, immigrating to Canada in 1951. He began his career as a cartoonist and then a photographer before beginning a career designing posters. Always working as a freelance designer, his work eventually gained notice. His clients included the Montreal Museum of Modern Art. A good designer, following the American modernist trends of the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as the work of Saul Bass, one of his main weaknesses was his selection, placement, and manipulation of type. <br />
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In discussing the work of the Montreal, Swiss born and educated designer Gérald Zahnd, Choko begins by mentioning a 1967 article in Print entitled "Graphics in Canada" by the Toronto designer Leslie Smart in which Smart discusses the pro- and anti-Swiss positions in Canadian graphic design. Choko then explains that Zahnd was born in Vevey, Switzerland and studied at the École des beaux-arts in Lausanne, followed by the École suisse de céramique Chavane Revens. He then began a career in poster design, a job which he continued for several small theatres after he moved to Montreal in 1964. He began to do more corporate work as of 1960, for which, as is demonstrated by some examples selected by Choko, his style of design began to reflect the dominant Swiss approach. Eventually, be the 1980s, he abandoned poster and other forms of design, focusing exclusively on his painting career.<br />
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Another Swiss émigré was Frédéric Metz. Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1944, he was trained at the École des arts appliqués in Bienne. Moving to Montreal in 1966, he first worked for several advertising agencies before devoting most of his energies to teaching. Very much of the Swiss school, his work was not constrained by that style, but would incorporate simplistic geometric elements with less regulated components. <br />
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Yet, in addition to there being young Quebec graphic designers of the 1960s and 1970s who were not slaves to the rules of the Swiss school of design, there also developed a reactionary brand of graphic design which was influenced by both psychedelic drug culture, as well as Pop Art. Examples of this approach to graphics and illustration could be seen in the comic book -like reaction against functionalism, as seen in the magazine OZ and the 1968 Beatles film Yellow Submarine. This new style made use of illustrative elements found in works of Art Nouveau, including the scroll style "noodle." As Choko notes, some graphic designers adopted this style of design simply because it was popular at the time, and he suggests that it was fortunate that they only did so temporarily. While he admits that the approach could sometimes result in well-done and understandable designs, their comic-like approach could often lead to confusing and quickly outdated creations. He even goes so far as to claim that most of the designs of the era were not of a very high quality, claiming that, "one only has to browse through collections of members of the Société des graphistes du Québec from between 1979 and 1983 to be convinced." (page 200)<br />
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Did You Say Postmodern?<br />
While the International Style, or the Swiss School, had an impact upon the development of Quebec graphic design, it was nothing, in Choko's opinion, to the influence of the postmodern school during the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The influence of the Alchimia and Memphis movements, superimposing touches of vivid colour and baroque compositions, was felt throughout Quebec graphic design. These movements also allowed for the development of a renewed language of graphic design. At the centre of the postmodern design revolution was the graphic design centre at the Université du Québec à Montréal, as well as several other diploma granting colleges. In addition, as Choko explains, part of the particular influence in Quebec came through the arrival of several European designers at UQÀM's École de design. <br />
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As mentioned above, Frédéric Metz was born in Switzerland, but immigrated to Canada in 1967. He then briefly worked for Publicité RMF and then Omniplast before designing for Guy Lalumière et associés from 1969 to 1972. From 1972 to 1977 he worked as a graphic designer and as the artistic director for GSM Design, and then in 1977 he was made a professor in the École de design at UQÀM. In 1980 he was made the head of the graphic design program at the university. Holding that position until 1985, he was again made head of the program from 1997 to 2000, and then again in 2003. At UQÀM Metz created the Laboratoire de graphisme Bretelle with Alfred Halasa and Georges Singer in 1980. This lab was one of the postmodern creative centres at the university. <br />
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Metz coworker, Halasa, was made a professor at UQÀM in the same year as Metz. Polish by birth, he trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and then in Paris. One of the most prolific teachers in the graphic design school, he designed a large number of posters, many of which were successful, and few of which were ever of the same style. <br />
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Another Swiss-born designer at UQÀM's École de design is Gérard Bochud, who was appointed to the school in 1988. Born in Bulle, he attended the École cantonale des beaux-arts et des arts appliqués in Lausanne and then immigrated to Quebec in 1968, working for several agencies, including Cossette Communication-Marketing. In 1972 he became director of graphic design at Hydro Quebec, and he also worked on publications for the 1967 Olympic Games. Like Metz, Bochud has also acted at the director of the graphic design program at UQÀM.<br />
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Appointed as a professor at UQÀM the same year as Bochud, Angela Graueholz was not trained in graphic design but in literature and philosophy. Born in Hamburg, she studied at the Kunstschule in Amsterdam before moving to Montreal. In the mid-1980s she worked with Anne Delson and contributed significantly to the graphic design of several journals including Parachute and Section A, the latter of which was created in 1983 to promote debate about contemporary architecture in Quebec. <br />
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Three years after both Bochud and Graueholz were hired at UQÀM the department recruited one more graphic designer with postmodern tendencies. Nelu Wolfensohn, born in Bucharest, Romania in 1943, had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Jerusalem, obtaining a degree in graphic design and another in art history. He then continued his studies at the University of California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before coming to Montreal in 1976 and then being made the artistic director at the engineering firm, Lavalin, the following year. Creating graphics for the company and its subsidiaries, Wolfensohn worked with other Montreal designers, including Lucille Poirier, Pierre Ferland, Pierre David, Lise Charbonneau-Gravel and Luc Parent.<br />
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The Computer and Multicultural Eclecticism<br />
As Choko explains in this final section of the graphic design segment of the book, the mid-late 1980s saw the introduction of computer technology which revolutionized the graphic design industry, making the realization of ideas easier to do as it also increased the resources available to individual designers. In 1985 Adobe Systems created the Postscript language, which allowed computers to print creations on a laser printer or an imagesetter. This allowed type and images to be easily reproduced and it was soon being used to reproduced computer edited photography and layouts. As Choko claims, by the early 1990s as many as 75% of designers had acquired computers which were allowing them to produce and manipulate images, and to enhance their layout typography with a choice of hundreds of different fonts. However, with these new tools came the problems/challenges of having the right equipment and the training required to use it. There was also the challenge that many people who were not trained as graphic designers suddenly had the tools to try and design for themselves, a threat which Choko largely dismisses, suggesting that individuals who are not trained in design, and who lack any design talent, simply create bad designs.<br />
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In addition to the new design possibilities opened up by the introduction of new computer technologies since the late 1980s, the past twenty years has seen a growth in the cultural diversity of Quebec, and those various cultural influences have all affected the creations of Quebec designers. Furthermore, the introduction of the internet in the 1990s has allowed Quebec designers instant access to cultural sources from around the world. Choko claims that the form of graphic design which has emerged since the 1990s is not dominated by any one style, but it also does not reject any styles. All media, all trends, and all cultures are seen as legitimate influences, and all historical styles, including the once-despised and overused Swiss School of the 1960s, are used, augmented, or combined in different ways.<br />
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Choko ends by noting that increasingly designers are working for advertising agencies and communications companies. Their positions at these companies, as well as the increased use of computers, is leading to their having less real interaction with their clients. Especially in the case of those working for advertising or communications firms, while having tools which make them more productive, they are sometimes denied the ability to take, or sell clients on taking, risks or marketing their good designs. However, he also notes that there are still some less restrictive organizations which encourage creative design. These not only include smaller design firms, staffed with and run by designers, but also places like the Centre Design at UQÀM, which has been led by Choko since 1999 and which hosts exhibitions of talented Quebec designers.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-31529768980403620032011-11-22T21:25:00.000-08:002011-11-25T08:58:15.860-08:00Mass Modernism: Graphic Design in Central Canada, 1955-1965<b>Brain Donnelly, <i>Mass Modernism: Graphic Design in Central Canada, 1955-1965</i>, 1997 (THESIS)</b><br />
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Donnelly begins his thesis by explaining that it is his contention that modern design in Canada emerged as a synthesis of several well known and well understood international design influences, and that it did not merely copy those influential traditions, but both questioned them and adopted what were understood to be useful elements. He also notes that as a synthesis of different variants of modernism, Canadian modern graphic designs of the 1950s and 1960s cannot be understood to be copies of influential sources, but rather, a combination of their styles and unique Canadian developments. Donnelly notes that, as in other countries, modernism has played a large role in the mass culture, economic development, and mass production. If the role of the modern typography which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century was to transmit ideas through clear and universal semiotics, then the role of modernism in commercial design appears to be compatible with the movement. What is more, its success during the century suggests that it should not be dismissed as a style which is now out of fashion, but one whose tools of expression are still important and effective.<br />
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History First<br />
Donnelly begins by clarifying that his study does not offer a history of the entire history of Canadian graphic design. Instead, he focuses upon the ten years from 1955 to 1965 during which he claims the field saw "the greatest qualitative change". He claims that it was during those years that graphic design became clearly understood to be a separate field and means of cultural expression from typography or other art forms. However Donnelly also notes that the one person who does not fit this ten-year period was Carl Dair. Dair played a large role in the establishment of the field, but he had been working with international trends and establishing his own approaches to graphic design prior to 1955, and his later contributions to the emergence of the field cannot be fully understood without examining his earlier work.<br />
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In describing the modern style which emerged by the mid-1960s in Canada, Donnelly explains the version of modernism which came before it by quoting Lesley Jackson's <i>The New Look: Design in the Fifties</i>, who defines the modern graphic style of that decade as "Rococo Modernism" which was composed of "wayward forms" leading to a "regression into fantasy [which] had gone so far that the cry arose in the age of reason for a return to control and discipline.'' (page 5) Referencing Penny Sparke's <i>Design in Context</i>, Donnelly suggests that this style arose in reaction to the practical demands of the war and reconstruction. They were replaced by a turn towards the fantastic which the public, and its power of choice, demanded. Sparke argues that success and growth of the profession was, following the war, closely tied to the visual satisfaction of the public's consuming desire. In examining just how design became a powerful tool in the economic reconstruction of Canada, Donnelly claims that his thesis will also examine the social conditions which made that possible, the growth of the industry, and how modernism itself was changing from its pre-war version.<br />
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Donnelly claims that there was a major shift in modern graphic design during the decade in question (1955-1965) away from concerns of and concentration upon illustration, image, and taste towards design and rationality. He views this as a shift from commercial art to graphic design, where the emphasis changed from creating illustrations so as to sell products, to creating controlled and rational designs that would convey specific universal messages to the audience. While designers were increasingly concerned with type, other elements including space, form, and colour, illustration, photography, imagery, and fantasy were still employed. All that changed was that these elements of design were increasingly guided by rational rules or abstract formal qualities.<br />
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While dealing with many of the main trends and actors in the Canadian design world of the 1950s and 1960s, Donnelly recognizes that his study concentrates largely upon developments in Canadian graphic design which occurred in the Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal areas, and that graphic design in Canada was not limited to these three cities, although they did have a significant influence upon the rest of the Canadian profession. He also recognizes that his study largely focuses upon designers who lived and worked in Toronto, while also discussing two Anglophone designers who lived in Montreal and two from Ottawa. Thus, his history of Canadian graphic design can largely be defined as a history of English-Canadian graphic design in central Canada from 1955 to 1965.<br />
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Although design was not limited to Toronto, during the decade in question Toronto did have the largest printing and advertising industry in Canada, and it also had the strongest links with other major printing and advertising centres, particularly New York. However, during this period the designers in Toronto not only moved to distinguish themselves from the printing industry as a distinct profession, but they also began looking more to Britain and Europe for sources of design inspiration, and less to the closer American advertising and magazine industry.<br />
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Donnelly next offers an overview of the various designers covered by his study, beginning with Carl Dair, whom he claims was one of Canada's first designers to form a good understanding or, and connections to, continental European designers. While Britain had long had an influence upon Canadian typography/graphic design, it was the styles of modernist design which emerged out of interwar Europe which would eventually have a significant influence upon the styles of design which emerged in Canada between 1955 and 1965. However, while influencing Dair's work, he would eventually and increasingly abandoned Die Neue Typographie (the New Typography) in favour of more traditional styles. Indeed, he would later come to be an outspoken critique of the later version of Die Neue Typographie, the simplified and analytical Swiss or International Style.<br />
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The main Canadian (and largely English-Canadian) professional graphic design organization (the TDC) was not founded by Dair, however, but by four immigrants from Britain. While modern in style, these immigrants brought with them the ideas that design is central to both the typographic and printing trades, and that it constituted its own profession. As a profession, Donnelly argues that Canadian graphic design was heavily influenced, especially after 1960, by the development of what has come to be called the International Style. This self-consciously modern style, which rejected eclectic and fantastic elements of modernism, was more geometrical, rational, and constructivist in form than what had come before. While some innovations were made in this style by Canadian designers, the style largely emerged in Germany and Switzerland in the 1950s. The importation, emergence, and development of this style in Canada is largely explored through an examination of the work of Ernst Roch and Rolf Harder, the two European immigrant graphic designers who were the greatest exponents of the style in Canada of the late 1950s to the 1970s. The internationalist approach of Roch, Harder, and others focused upon clarity and rational, essential ideas of visual communication. Many of their colleagues, however, continued to make use of the popular eclecticism which dominated design in the 1950s. The rational and organized qualities of the international style also fit well with government and corporate design programs, where such qualities were used to reinforce ideas of such organizations being well controlled and efficient. Yet, while popular, this approach did not match with the ideas or experimentation and freedom from regulation which dominated the 1960s counterculture. (However, this contradiction could be explained through Alan C. Elder's article "When counterculture Went Mainstream" in Made in Canada in which he explains that the counterculture did not really go mainstream until the late 1960s and into the 1970s. In addition, the use of this style by government gave the impression that the government was accountable and transparent, which would have appealed to those who were wary of the state. Also, the counterculture did begin to die out in the early 1970s, and thus did large-scale opposition to all authority and institutions.) Furthermore, the international style never did come to fully dominate the field of Canadian graphic design, a fact which Donnelly, agreeing with Penney, claims could be attributed to mere market demand, where not all people appreciated the cool and rational approach of the International Style.<br />
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The last graphic designers to be examined by Donnelly are those who were born in and developed their careers within Canada. These designers, including Allan Fleming, Theo Dimson, and Gerry Moses synthesized the styles and approaches of those mentioned above, creating designs which were "neither purely analytic nor merely synthetic and eclectic; neither constrained by strictly defined communicational demands nor solely dedicated to the pursuit of difficult innovation; neither blindly professional nor avowedly popular; neither narrowly international nor widely local: a truly complex and unpredictable modernism." (page 9) Although, as Donnelly notes, none of the existing (1997) general histories of graphic design discuss Canadian graphic designers or Canadian trends in the field, the country was not the design backwater which one might conclude from this lack of representation. Influenced by many of the same economic, political, and cultural trends as other countries of the era, Canada, like those other countries, developed a unique design community with its own unique solutions to graphic communication problems, solutions which grew into and merged with other styles. However, according to Donnelly, Canada's lack of a large international publishing, printing, and typesetting industries meant that little international attention was ever paid to Canadian modernism, and thus, it had a limited effect upon international design trends. He suggests that Canada's lack of an international reputation for a certain kind of modern design also led Canadian designers to maintain broad and synthetic approaches to design, which might have been more narrow had they had international reputations for certain kinds of design.<br />
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In defining modernism, Donnelly explains that as the movement was transported to North America after the war there was a separation between the avant-garde ideal of having art and life be one. Rather, a form of high modernism was developed which was inaccessible to most people. In being inaccessible, modernism changed from being that which is based in, and simply attempts to create, differentiation, to an isolated and autonomous position, removed from the low-arts which are consumed and understood by the masses. However, Donnelly argues that modernism can be saved from this isolation as a high-art through examining how it has been used in mass culture, such as in modern design. Indeed, Donnelly claims that modernism is an artistic reaction to economic progress of mass, modern, technological society (i.e. to modernization), and so exists to challenge ways of understanding the mass-cultural world. Given that definition, he then suggests that postmodernism, in its rejection of there being particular ideas or forms which can arise out of modernization, is simply a continuation of the modernist distain for mass culture. (This is a position which accords with Bruno Latour's claim that We Have Never Been Modern.) Finally, through examining the views of Walter Benjamin and Marxist use-value theory, Donnelly claims that modernism continues to exist in the restlessness of mass culture. Design of the 1950s and 1960s, for him, is a form of popular modernism which inherited the approaches and examples of pre-war and post-war modernism.<br />
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In explaining his sources, Donnelly explains that <i>Canadian Art</i> (started as <i>Maritime Art </i>in 1943) is a useful resource in that the articles by designers such as Donald Buchanan, Fred Haines, Allan Harrison, Carl Dair, and Paul Arthur show the beginning of the idea of a field of graphic design in Canada. These articles, which appear from 1945 to 1960, show the relationships and connections between the different fields of typesetting, printing, engraving, illustrating, interior design, product design, and advertising. After 1960 Buchanan no longer headed the journal and it began to focus almost exclusively upon fine art.<br />
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Donnelly also used the Annuals of Advertising and Editorial Art (1949 to 1964) of the Art Directors Club of Toronto. These, along with the six catalogues of the Typography exhibits of the Typographic Designers of Canada (1958 to 1964), demonstrate what designers thought about their field and how their own perception of the field evolved from one of typography to one of graphic design.<br />
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Chapter One: Carl Dair - In search of design history<br />
Donnelly begins his first chapter by noting that, while printing had been brought to Canada in the late 18th century, it was not until after the Second World War that the design of the printed page was seriously considered as something to be closely analyzed and considered. It was with the writings of Carl Dair during and following the war that typographers began paying attention to how type could be used by designers to say more than just what is said by the text. Dair, born in 1912 in Welland, Ontario, began his design career in 1930 when he was employed in the advertising department of the Stratford Beacon Herald. His first job was designing a layout for an advertisement for a local drugstore. Throughout the 1930s he had numerous jobs as a typographer and printer, often being employed to make hand-lettering. He moved to Montreal in 1940, where he worked as a freelancer and as the art director for several department stores and for Ronalds Printing. In Montreal, Dair was aware of influential trends, including the typographic style which had come out of the Bauhaus and from its teachers and graduates. He was also familiar with the work of Jan Tschichold and his book, Assymetric Typography, which set out the principles upon which modernism in typographic design was based. By the end of the war Dair was working as an illustrator at the National Film Board. The board, along with the Wartime Information Board, had produced much of the government's propagandistic wartime graphic advertising.<br />
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Along with a colleague from the NFB, Henry Eveleigh, Dair established Eveleigh-Dair studio in 1947, a unique typographic design business which offered design outside of the traditional advertising industry. They were not a section of a larger advertising firm, but an independent agency which would be hired for specific design jobs, often working for advertising agencies which wanted to use their specific skills and strengths. This would later be the model for many other Canadian typographic design firms, and was a significant step in the formation of typographic (of graphic) design as a unique profession. The firm did not need to worry about selling advertising space or selling concepts. However, Donnelly notes that, at least in the case of Eveleigh, the agency did not view itself as an art studio. Eveleigh believed that avant-garde artists were the explorers of the art world, and that typographic designers used preexisting artistic tools to make a point or express a message. For him, design as more of an applied art. (page 16-7)<br />
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The work of Eveleigh-Dair was explained in a small booklet produced by the firm. They explained that they took an "engineer's approach," paying close attention to typeface, format, organization of material, and layout. They claimed that a good design occurs when the final form follows the function of the work. This echoes the rational approach of the pre-war German typographic tradition, and while Dair's redesign of Canadian Business was not as minimalist and structured as the work of his European predecessors, it was still very clean and rational in design compared to the work of many of his contemporaries. As Donnelly notes, other works by Dair from the period offer even stronger examples of the influence of European modernist typography, including the use of bold sans-serif lettering, asymmetrical design, and the strong use of white space. Giving examples of an invitation to a 1951 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition, as well as advertisements for the E.B. Eddy paper company, Donnelly notes how they echoed elements of Bauhaus constructivism and the rational, restrictive, and asymmetric work of Tschichold.<br />
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However, all of Dair's work was not dominated by typographic modernism. As is evidenced by the trade mark he designed for Cooper & Beatty in the early 1950s, the largest typesetting firm in Toronto, serving many national advertising agencies, he could and would also produce designs which contained older, traditional elements of design that could be used to reference specific ideas. The design for Cooper and Beatty featured the name and description of the firm in Futura (the most popular modern sans-serif, developed in the 1920s) around a centre which contained the firm's initials in a calligraphic typeface. Thus, he used Futura to refer to modern design, while the calligraphic type references more traditional approaches, thus, highlighting the range of work carried out by the Cooper & Beatty. As Donnelly notes, Cooper & Beatty, the eventually employers of Allan Fleming during the period when he would design the new logo for Canadian National Railways, would come to play a significant role in influencing both Canadian typographic design and its establishment as a profession.<br />
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Donnelly claims that Dair's openness to using elements from the whole history of printing and print design was emphasized in his later work and writings. He would eventually abandon what concentration he had made upon radical, geometric constructivism in favour of a more complicated, tradition-based form of modernism.<br />
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According to Donnelly, the most significant contributions of Dair to the development of the design profession and its education was a series of pamphlets on printing made for the E.B. Eddy Paper Company of Hull, Quebec, and advertised to the printing industry. The design of these pamphlets not only reflect Dair's views on Design, but their subject matter highlight his knowledge of the history of typography and the printing industry. "Type Talks," for example, not only outlined this history, but also Dair's central rules of design, including a need for unity of design, the need for restraint, and the use of static and balance to obtain particular ends. He claimed that the typographic designer, while gaining knowledge through experience, also needs to experiment in his creations to be sure of obtaining the correct balance and unity. As Donnelly notes, this idea of experimentation conflicts with both Eveleigh and Fleming's (see Typography 59) ideas that typographers are not avant-garde artists, but tradesmen. Yet, the extent to which Fleming truly believed this is questionable since, as Donnelly notes, Fleming later admitted to having read "Type Talks" as a teenager and being inspired. Donnelly suggests that this idea of typographers being experimental artists broke with ideas, common among typographers and printers, that typographic design was simply a trade, with no real artistic value. Rather, their work was often seen as to merely reproduce the written word as efficiently as possible. This idea of the field having artistic value likely, according to Donnelly, inspired typographers who worked unnoticed in printshops. It was this revelation which assisted in the professionalization of the field and its separation from both commercial art and advertising. <br />
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In addressing the need for experimentation, Dair wrote an influential article for <i>Canadian Art </i>in 1947, condemning the lack of Canadian typographic innovations. Titled "Direction - A Canadian Typographic Idiom", the article was printed in Futura, so as to distinguish it from the more conservative elements of the journal. In the article Dair explains that, while Canada's printing and typographic tradition stretches back to the late 18th or early 19th century, there had only ever been one Canadian typeface developed: that made by the Methodist minister, James Evans, in 1841 for the Cree alphabet. He claimed that this lack of innovation helped to explain the public's almost complete lack of understanding about who typographers are and what they do. He claimed that because Canadian typographers imported their printing technology, including their presses and type, they lacked many of the design skills of type design and being able to manipulate type at the most basic level. This, he believed, showed in the fact that design was not seen by most as a distinct position, but just a set in the print production process, along with illustration and typesetting. Indeed, Dair called design "an abstract art", quoting the former Bauhaus instructor, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Dair believed that particular expertise was required to create good pages, and that one needs to be aware of, and have the skill to manipulate and experiment with, the formal elements of page design. According to Donnelly, this position was one of the foundational articulations of the need to have typographic/graphic design understood as a unique profession.<br />
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Donnelly claims that Dair's essays, in which he outlined the formal aspects of design, as well as the history of print and type, were geared to assisting in the development of a new profession. Donnelly believes that this educational approach had come from working under Louis Blake Duff of the Welland Port Colborne Evening Tribune. Duff not only had an extensive knowledge of typography and printing, but he had researched the European traditions upon which Canadian typographers drew, even meeting with Tschichold on one occasion. In 1952 Dair published his Design With Type, a book which was based largely upon his teaching notes from classes he gave at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Ecole des Arts Graphiques, and informal workshops with Montreal designers and printers. Teaching for much of his life, including at the Ontario College of Art after he moved to Toronto, and later in Jamaica, Dair left Montreal in 1951 after his views on the status and role of graphic design began to conflict with those of his partner. Eveleigh wished to turn Eveleigh-Dair into more of an advertising agency, a move which Dair rejected, given that he understood advertising agencies to be institutions under which typographers were relegated to the status of a department carrying out a particular task or trade. Agencies typically treated creative as subordinate elements of the advertisement creation process, often outsourcing such work, and thus, not treating it as central to the communication of particular messages.<br />
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Donnelly suggests that Dair's relationship to modern typography was balanced, with Dair abandoning his early enthusiasm for modern experimentation. He recognized that Canada lacked its own typographic tradition and that, if a profession was to develop in the country, it would need to be grounded in the several centuries of international typographic traditions of which most Canadian typographers were ignorant. The isolation of Canadian typography, as well as the lack of proper training, meant that, without a thorough education in the traditions and history of the field, most Canadian typographers would remain ignorant of what could be done in the field, and thus, would harm its development into a unique profession.<br />
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In Toronto, Dair continued to both teach, work, and influence the development of typographic design in Canada. In 1956 he participated in the Liber Librorum competition to redesign the first page of the Gutenberg Bible. Displayed as a show at the Royal Ontario Museum, along with the other entries, James Evans' Cree bible, and other examples of early printed work, Dair's design was another example of his mixture of new and old elements of typographic style. His design made use of the modern Palatina font in a manner which made reference to a late fifteenth century typeface. The show was accompanied by a text by Allan Fleming, in which Fleming gave an overview of the history of printing and typography that concluded that Canadian typography was at the stage of English typography in the mid-nineteenth century, "not a period of bad taste, but of no taste at all." (page 28)<br />
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Donnelly suggests that Dair's mixture of emphasis upon experimental and contemporary graphic design, and the field's long history, helped to encourage an eclectic approach among Canadian designers. For him, as arguable for much of the rest of the Canadian field, what was important was effective communication, not style. Thus, any style could be employed if it was well used, communicating not just the meaning of the words, but also not taking away from that meaning or the reader's ability to understand it.<br />
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In 1956-7 Dair obtained a grant from the National Gallery to study type design at the Joh. Enschedé en Zonen foundry in Holland. During that year Dair chose to learn how to hand punch dies, an antiquated and time consuming process. Donnelly suggests that through his choice of subject, Dair was trying to singlehandedly gain at least some of the typographic design experience which was missing in Canada. In addition, this experience of the details of punch making informed his eventual design of the Cartier typeface, which he released in 1966/7. Historical in style, and highly detailed, Cartier was ironically first released, not for metal typesetting machinery, but as a phototype font.<br />
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Donnelly notes that Cartier and Dair's writings mark a transition point in Canadian typographic design. Those who had come before, such as Clair Stewart, Eric Aldwinckle, and Allan Harrison, had primarily been illustrators. Dair, however, caused the post-war generation to focus upon type and the role it played in print design.<br />
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While in Europe during 1956 and 1957 Dair met with Tschichold, whom Dair found had abandoned his New Typography of the interwar era. As the art director of Hoffman-La Roche, Tschichold refused to return to Germany, believing that many former Nazis still held positions of power in the new federal republic. He had come to identify the asymmetric and angular typography which he had championed before the war with Nazism and the military machine of the Third Reich. This contrasts with other designers who had suffered under the Nazis, such as Hurt Schwitters, who believed that the experimental typography of the Weimar period was anti-Nazi since its use was often suppressed by the Third Reich. Dair, however, did not completely agree with Tschichold. He agreed that the experimental German typographic modernism of the 1920s was not the final development in typography, but he did think that it could play a role in typographic design. According to Donnelly, Dair's modernism was not fundamental, but eclectic. <br />
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Returning to Toronto in 1957, Dair organized another show at the ROM, this time featuring rare printed works which he had collected in Europe. The show was designed to mark the second anniversary of the TDC. Entitled "Type Today" the show drew the TDC's members Dair, Paul Arthur, Leslie (Sam) Smart, the President of Cooper & Beatty, Jack Trevett, and the agency's chairman, Frank Davies. All of these members sat on a panel organized for the show, and as Donnelly notes, they all shared similar views about typographic design in Canada, wishing to improve the quality of the field rather than propose any radical breaks with the past. In fact, the all believed that a more thorough understanding of the field's past was crucial to ensuring that it developed maturely. While some were pessimistic about the state of the field in Canada, while others emphasized that it could be brought up to the standards of other countries with proper training programs, they all admitted to, at the time, following the then current trend of using decorative Victorian typefaces, as well as old-fashioned engravings and illustrations. For his part, Dair, who gave a lecture on hand-punching type, called for Canadian typographers to take up the trade of making their own type. He believed that such a skill would allow a typographer to get in touch with classical printing standards. Donnelly claims that Dair envisioned the new TDC being more of a closed guild than a national professional association for an evolving field. However, Dair had not been part of the establishment of the TDC, which had been founded while he was in Holland. Eventually, his vision for the TDC was more closely realized through the Guild of Hand Printers, which Dair founded in 1959. This organization was composed of a handful of enthusiasts who owned their own hand presses. Their skill and intentions varied, and, apart from a few impressive and interesting works, the organization, based upon old technology, did not become a centre of innovation.<br />
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In 1960 Dair won the silver medal at the Leipzig International Book Fair for "A Cry From An Indian wife," and Sam Smart won the bronze for his printing of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew." That Canadians won two of the top three prizes showed that Canadian typographic design was achieving international standards. Neither of the winning works could be described as being experimental. Their only truly modern element was the sparseness of their designs. Referred to as the "dean of Canadian typographers in the 1960s", Dair was acknowledged for his emphasis upon knowledge of the field being necessary in order for it to evolve into a real profession. Dair had been one of the main members of an advertizing agency in Toronto, Goodie Goldberg Dair Ltd., in the early 1960s. He also designed annual reports for Rio Tinto Zinc Co., and was a typographic consultant with the printing company Cape and Company. In early 1963 Dair received the Royal Canadian Academy medal from the Art Gallery of Toronto.<br />
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Between 1963 and 1965 Dair performed, what he called, "missionary work" when he taught at the Jamaica School of Arts and Crafts, covering many of the topics he had focused upon in his writings and lectures during the 1940s and 1950s. This included "Gestalt psychology and optics, basic design elements, symbols, letter forms, problem solving, the art of seeing (pattern, texture, and detail explored by photographic assignments), vision in motion, techniques of reproduction". (page 36) As Dair explained in a letter to Gem-Moses, he believed that Jamaica was evolving from a preliterate culture to television, without developing a literary and printing tradition. This, according to Donnelly reflects Dair's conviction that it was necessary for one to develop/experience all of the steps of printing and design in order to have a full understanding of what it does and what it can do for the client/producer and for society.<br />
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Dair's contract to teach in Jamaica was not renewed after two years because his communist politics led him to sympathize with the anti-colonial sentiment sweeping the country by the mid-1950s. Donnelly does not believe that Dair was ever a full member of the Communist Party of Canada, but he does suggest that his communist leanings were partly responsible for Dair's desire to work in a developing country, as did his understanding that typographic design could further political change if used appropriately.<br />
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In Dair's final lecture, delivered the night of his death in September 1967, he stressed that, regardless of the advancing typographic technology, which was removing constraints from the typographer and allowing him/her to try different styles and experiment with his fonts, how he used them, how he placed them, etc, he claimed that the best typography should be invisible and subliminal. He called for a standardized typography, where practitioners would be constantly searching for perfection in their invisible and subliminal design. Dair believed that the best of such design would constitute a modern art form. It was individual invention, guided by history and tradition, and judiciously making use of available technology.<br />
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According to Donnelly, Dair's modernism was not simply the adoption of one of the European modernist formulae. Rather, he recognized that all of these approaches were limited. He moved beyond them, to suggest an inclusive and historically informed form of modernism. He was postmodern in that he was open to borrowing from all traditions, historically situating each. However, he was still moving towards a modern, and thus, an ideal, form of typography. As Donnelly suggests, younger designers, including Allan Fleming, would provide a contrast to Dair's historicism in that, while the long printing tradition can enrich a designer's approach, good design does not necessarily need to make use of traditional sources or historical references. Rather, whereas Dair viewed everything through what had come before, others saw there to be advantages in breaking with the past.<br />
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CHAPTER 2<br />
Toronto of the 1950s saw the entrenchment of a British design tradition brought to the city by four men in particular. they had been trained as typesetters, through technical college training and apprenticeship. Design had already begun to emerge in Britain as designers began to take over control of the complete look of the printed page. They defined design as a distinct profession, one the practitioners of which were acutely aware of the power of type and how it could be manipulated and used to accomplish specific ends. Donnelly claims that it was their understanding that design could constitute a visual language that made their work modern rather than classical. <br />
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These four English emerges (Leslie (Sam) Smart, John Gibson, Frank Davies, and Frank Newfeld) were responsible for the establishment of the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada in 1956, what Davies identifies as one of the most important steps in the professionalization of the field.<br />
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Leslie (Sam) Smart<br />
Smart, born in 1921, had been trained at the Portsmouth college of Art, but after graduating, he recognized that the post-war economic depression in Britain was harming his chances at employment. Thus, he immigrated to Toronto in 1954, obtaining a job at the MonoLino Typesteeing Company, and teaching art at Ryerson College in the evenings. Within two years he was working full time at MonoLino while also fulfilling freelance work. By 1966 he had established his own design business, Leslie Smart and Associates. <br />
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Some of his early freelance work was for Oxford University Press. Smart had turned down work in advertising agencies, believing that such work would restrict his freedom to design. Instead, he concentrated on book design, an area which had been identified as lacking in Canada. Book design was also more closely related to his training as a typesetter and an area where he could have more freedom to experiment. He began his experimenting by copying the approach of popular Scandinavian interior design by minimilizing all elements of his work. In the late 1950s Smart began writing a regular column for Canadian Printer and Publisher in which he outlined his minimalist approach. In reviewing Carl Dair's own stationary, Smart noted that four key guiding points: 1) any superfluous elements should be removed, 2) the physical condition of the print is important (paper, printing), 3) that the type should not just be set, but that attention should be paid to the shape and form it took, and 4) that one should recognize when typeblocks can be seen as abstract elements, and not just letters, and thus, when they can be simplified, or moved, to form a single unit or shape (thus helping to divide the page into different parts). Smart's suggestions and criticisms of Canadian typographic design was not always welcomed by organizations such as the Toronto Art Directors' Club, which Donnelly describes as a self-congratulatory organization. However, Donnelly argues that Smart was encouraging those involved in typographic design (the typesetter, the layout artist, or the art director) to pursue a logic and an originality in their designs, and not to simply copy the styles or approaches of others. He believed that by applying his principles of simplicity in a logical way, new and original designs would emerge where the form followed the function, and where no superfluous elements which took away from the purpose were present. His work was praised by Dair in that he was not committed to extreme simplicity, but he made use of traditional approaches in ways which avoided unnecessary use of traditional elements.<br />
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John Gibson<br />
Born in 1928, Gibson received his training in typesetting at the London School of Printing. Following his graduation he taught at the school, while also following a seven year apprenticeship with a hand compositor and acquiring skills in photograph composition at the time the technology was becoming more widely available. Moving to Toronto in 1952, and then again in 1953 after a brief move to Calgary, he was employed by Howarth and Smith, establishing a distinct design department. At the time Howarth and Smith was one of the main typesetting companies in Toronto, along with Cooper & Beatty and MonoLino. In 1956 he was hired by Cooper & Beatty and sent to help establish a new office for the company in Montreal. In Montreal focused upon the interpretation and specification of the requirements of clients, and not so much design composition. This involved very precise specification of work to be done for CN. Such specification allowed for the creation of designs which fulfilled his desire to simplify designs, so that the product expressed the specified needs (the form completely fulfilled the function) as much as possible. This close specification work continued after his return to the Cooper & Beatty Toronto office in 1964. <br />
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Gibson stayed at Cooper & Beatty until 1969, often working as the organizing and guiding influence on many projects, in the background, and not taking credit for the final designs himself. He played a similar role in his direction of Typography 64, the last of the TDC's Typography exhibitions. Not only organizing the exhibition, but also the accompanying catalogue, Gibson was given the project by the TDC's president Dem-Moses, who was preoccupied with organizing Typomundus 20, the exhibition of the International Centre for the Typographic Arts, which was to be held in Toronto that year. In the catalogue, which was actually designed by Tony-Mann, but credited to Gerhard Doerrie, Gibson was not credited for his organization and guidance. Rather, he orchestrated the event and the publication from the background.<br />
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In the TDC Gibson played a major role in developing the professionalization of the field. He was voted president of the TDC in 1967, just before it altered its name to the Graphic Designers of Canada. He was again elected president for 1976-8 when the GDC was reorganized as a truly national organization. <br />
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While Gibson did not produce a large amount of work in the 1950s and 1960s, but rather, worked largely behind the scenes, one example of his work is that for trade publications such as The Printing Review. Working for a typesetting firm such as Cooper & Beatty, which frequently did work for advertising agencies, any other work for clients could have caused a conflict of interest. In comparing his redesign on The Printing Review and Ernst Roch's Alcan News, Donnelly notes that, while Gibson's design is also sparse and clean, it is less geometrically based, and more rooted in traditional typographic practices.<br />
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Frank Davies<br />
Davies arrived in Canada before both Smart and Gibson, but he had also gained more, and varied experience before leaving Britain. He was born in Nottingham in 1923 and had trained at the Nottingham College of Art. Unlike Smart and Gibson, Davies had not apprenticed as a typesetter, but first worked in London as an exhibit designer for the Royal Navy, including work on an exhibit concerning radar which was taken to Canada. He also worked for large London advertising agencies as a junior, and then as a senior designer and art director for a music magazine called Tempo. He also worked on several publications produced by the Royal Opera House.<br />
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Davies moved to Montreal in 1951, using contacts he had made at the NFB during the radar exhibit tour. He worked for the Herald Press, a subdivision of the Montreal Herald. However, after a year he moved to Toronto to work at Rolph Clark Stone, where both Clair Stewart and then Ted Morrison worked. Stewart and Morrison would go on to found the design agency Stewart and Morrison in 1960. In 1954 Davies was made the art director of a sister magazine to Saturday Night, called Liberty. While Davies did not like the work he was forced to do at Liberty, through the magazine he made numerous literary and intellectual contact within English-Canada. Among these contacts were Sam Smart and Frank Newfeld. Discussions between Smart and Davies eventually led to the idea that they should establish a Canadian type society to help typographic design grow as a profession in the country.<br />
<br />
Tired of his work at Liberty, Davies applied for a position of being in charge of design for the trade publications produced by McLean Hunter. Given the job in 1956, Davies was in charge of design for all 47 of the companies trade publications. Each trade publication had its own unique design, and thus, its own format. Davies changed all of the publication to have the same size and arrangement of columns of type. While he admitted to Donnelly that this approach was purely logical, it did result in increased productivity at McLean Hunter. While seemingly not a modern approach, in that uniformity ignores the subject matter of the various designs, Davies argued that uniformity of column and type size led to efficiencies. Such efficiencies could then allow for the introduction of design elements which were well thought out. By beginning with a clean template, the company's designers did not need to expend a great amount of time and effort on altering content for the various publication formats. This left them the time and space needed to develop good design elements for the various publications.<br />
<br />
Modern type design was not widely employed by many Canadian type designers in the mid-1950s, and the need to improve how printing and publications thought about what they produced was encouraged by international pressure, including an article in the Manchester Guardian which likened Canadian book design to that of the Soviet Union. This comparison, as well as a 1956 exhibition of Soviet book design held in Toronto, that led Davies, Newfeld, Smart, and Gibson to have the first meeting of the TDC at the Arts and Letters Club in 1956. Their initial ideas was to organize one exhibition of Canadian design so as to both unite the Canadian design community and showcase the best of Canadian design, hopefully encouraging others to aspire to similar high standards.<br />
<br />
Donnelly notes that while some of Davies designs did make use of European modernist approaches, following the dictates of Sandberg or others, many Canadian typographic designers of the period avoided modernist approaches if the work was to be used to communicate with non-designers. Indeed, Donnelly notes that many Canadian designs which did make use of a European modernist approach were aimed at other members of the design community, such as much of the promotional work done by Allan Fleming for Cooper & Beatty.<br />
<br />
Remaining at McLean Hunter until 1960, Davies also taught at the Ontario College of art, first as a substitute for Carl Dair. He was creative director for Cape & Co. printers and founded his own design company, the Design Unit, in 1962. Working with Carl Dair, Davies produces several graphic identity programs for Cape & Co. to be used for a number of Canada's new universities, including Trent, Laurentian, and York. Davie continued this corporate identity work throughout the 1960s, working on programs for Clairtone, and the Bowring retail store chain. Increasingly his work was focusing upon corporate identities, signage, and related real-estate identity design. All of his work reflects the modernist notion that design should be rational, organizing ideas and concepts in a visual, and almost subliminal way. <br />
<br />
Frank Newfeld<br />
Newfeld was born in the Czechoslovakia in 1928 and was taught art at the Brighton College of Art in Britain, where he concentrated on illustration, painting and design. Immigrating to Canada in 1954, and while he did continue to produce paintings, he was not confident enough to show his work in public. Instead of producing works which required him to provide both the subject and the content, he was more comfortable designing, where he had the task of communicating a given specific idea. Newfeld did not follow the trend of the time and produce realistic images for his designs. Rather, his approach was more expressive, a fact which the clients for his first commission did not appreciate. Charged with producing the cover for the Dec. 1954 issue of Farmer magazine, the magazine did not appreciate the design they were given. However, the design did win the Toronto Art Directors' Club's black and white illustration of the year award. Newfeld went on to work as an illustrator for Maclean's magazine, illustrating stories for the week in only a matter of hours. <br />
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In 1954 Newfeld opened his own studio in 1954, which became a local gathering place for local fine and commercial artists, including Michael Snow. At this time, Newfeld also began to form friendships with other British designers in Toronto, including Sam Smart, Frank Davies, and John Gibson. Also, by the later 1950s, the amount of illustration Newfeld was producing had shrunk as he increasingly concentrated upon book design. Given that, as the time, book publishers rarely had full time designers on staff, Newfeld was able to get a significant amount of freelance work. While working for publishers such as Nelson and Gage, in 1956 Newfeld began to do work for McClelland and Stewart. While he only did under ten books in 1957, by 1967 he was working full-time for McClelland and Stewart and designing up to 200 books every year. <br />
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Donnelly also points out that the small Toronto-centred design community, as well as the Toronto-centred TDC, allowed for professional connections which helped designers, such as Newfeld, build their careers. As an example, Donnelly notes that when Allan Fleming was asked to design a new corporate identity for the Royal Ontario Museum, a conflict of interest caused him to give the job to Newfeld. He told Newfeld just not to tell the ROM that he had ever done such a project before. As a result, Newfeld ended up designing several catalogues and publications for the ROM. The first such publication won an award at the 1960 Toronto Art Director's exhibition.<br />
<br />
Like in the examples of his work for the ROM, Donnelly notes how Newfeld was determined that books not be overdesigned. In the case of his books, he often spent the first several pages developing a feel or setting a tone for the work, that were often referred to as his "prelims." He was dedicated to removing all clutter and unnecessary ornamentation. When images were used, he ensured that they did not conflict with, or take away from, the type.<br />
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Also in 1960 Newfeld designed the catalogue for the TDC, as well as that for the Toronto Art Director's Club exhibition. Larger than all previous yearly catalogues, the 1960 art director's annual, the design marked a break with the rather conservative approaches of the past. Newfeld's use of bold, often oversized, fonts on a larger format book with a tinfoil cover marked a radical break with what had come before. The exhibition also marked a change from the dominance of Allan Fleming, which was obvious for the years 1957 to 1959, to include a growing number of designers who recognized how to make the greatest possible impact through design. <br />
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In 1963 Newfeld and his studio were bought out by McClelland and Stewart, which wanted Newfeld to be its permanent art director. This was the first time that a major Canadian publisher had hired a designer in such a way, and it represented a new commitment on the part of Canadian publishers to achieving good book design. Newfeld stayed with the company until 1970. In the 1960s and 70s Newfeld also did catalogue work for both the National Gallery in Ottawa and the Art Gallery of Ontario.<br />
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Donnelly concludes the section on Newfeld by noting that his work did not have a characteristic style. However, like his other British colleagues, he was dedicated to employing type in a distinctly modern way, recognizing how its arrangement and form can be used to emphasize a print or publication's message, not just through words, but also through type's visual dimension. His use and knowledge of illustration, patterns, and other visual elements allowed him to synthesize the usefulness of newer developments in typography which marked a break with the past, and older traditional elements of the field.<br />
<br />
The Establishment of the TDC<br />
The TDC was, according to Donnelly, largely born out of the earlier design societies of which the British design emerges had been members back in England. Sam Smart had been a member of the Society of Industrial Artists, as well as the Royal Society of Artists. Frank Davies had been a member of the Royal Society of Artists, while John Gibson had joined the London Society of Compositors. Now in Canada, these three, along with John Newfeld, believed that such a society would be worthwhile in Canada. It would allow them to emphasize what they viewed as the important place which design played in their work. They viewed themselves as being quite distinct from the advertising art directors who were represented in the Toronto Art Directors Club, and whose focus was not upon the art of communication, but enticing the public to purchase particular items. A professional organization would also allow them to encourage members to attain certain levels of standards. Holding is first meeting at the Arts and Letters Club in 1956, the organization was a success, gaining support from Carl Dair, who was in Europe learning punch making at the time. However, Dair did encourage Fleming and Franklyn Smith, both at Cooper & Beatty, to support the ideas of the new British arrivals. Dair particularly liked the idea of an organization which would raise standards of design. He also noted that, not only were a growing number of people describing what they did as design, but the profession lacked any kind of code of ethics or opportunities for professional development. In the case of Fleming, Dair suggested that the formation of a professional society might also ensure that Fleming was not interpreted as an anomaly, but as someone who influenced and inspired others. <br />
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Initially the society considered imposing fixed prices for the services offered by its members. However, this appeared to its legal advice as being akin to price-fixing, a practice which was illegal and subject to fines. Instead, the society settled on holding regular exhibitions of members' work so as to inspire others and establish standards which other would attempt to meet or exceed. The society also organized meetings, lectures, and publications, all with the same goal of inspiring designers and others, and further growing the field.<br />
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Additional supporters of the TDC were the Globe and Mail art critic, Pearl McCarthy (who believed it was one of the healthiest developments in Canadian art) and Robert Fleming, who both knew Fleming and wrote several articles on the TDC, Fleming, and design in Canada. Furthermore, in May 1960 <i>Canadian Art </i>dedicated a special issue to the TDC as part of the journal's attempt to expand the definition of Canadian art beyond simply painting and sculpture, to include architecture, interior design, and graphic design. According to Donnelly, by 1960 the TDC had succeeded in creating enough interest and participants in the field of graphic design to claim that it could be legitimately be considered a profession in Canada.<br />
<br />
The "Typography" Exhibitions, 1958-1964<br />
Carl Dair was responsible for using a contact at Rolland Paper to convince the company to sponsor a juried exhibition of design works in 1958. The first of the catalogues indicated the small size of the graphic design community in Canada at the time, with half of the entries having been typeset at Cooper & Beatty and many of the award winning pieces by Allan Fleming. The 1959 catalogue was similar in content. <br />
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The Typography 60 catalogue differed in that it contained a number of essays by founding members of the TDC, as well as others. These included a paper by Frank Newfeld on book design, one by Keith Scott on magazine and newspaper designs (all of which he found lacking except for trade publications, which he believed were given more design liberties in helping them establish an image as modern companies), and Jack Birdsall, who argued that design was becoming increasingly more important for the general public. The main article of the catalogue, Davies' "What's all this fuss about typographic design?", explains the existing situation for typographic designers in Toronto at the time. He explains that Canada is not a centre for type design, nor was it a hub of book design or new graphic arts trends. However, he notes, all of those international forces were influencing Canadian graphic design and Canadian culture. <br />
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Importantly, Donnelly questions, with the establishment of the TDC and the growth of the graphic design community in Canada, why were designers, both in Canada and throughout the rest of the world, focusing upon "typography" when they were increasingly involved in many different elements of design. According to Davies' Typography 60 article, the Canadian typographers were still only beginning to examine the context of the text they designed. They were only starting to recognize that, they could use, or design, the type to reflect, emphasize, or add to the content of the texts for which they were designing. Thus, they were realizing that their job was not just to decorate or reproduce the text in a pleasing manner. Donnelly argues that, "Typography became design when it began to exploit the potential of visual means themselves to enhance the message, and in so doing, to fashion a new, more powerful message, rather than (in traditional craft practice) making at best a cursory stylistic reference to an historical period through the choice of a typeface designed in that period." (page 60) According to Davies, there may have been various schools or styles of design, including the rational and measured Swiss/International style, the "dull and ethical" British style, or the, what was seen as, exciting and stimulating American style. However, Davies argued that the job of the designer was not to uncritically follow one of those schools, but to use his (and they were all male) reason and creative abilities to synthesize the various design solutions offered by all of these styles. According to Donnelly, Davies' article shows that Davies viewed to top Canadian designers as being conscious of all of the influences available to them and borrowed from all of them to make the best designs possible. Indeed, Donnelly suggests that Davies' article offers a good definition of the expanded version of modernism which was evolving in Canada at the time, "simultaneously aware of stylistic innovation and typographic tradition; visually yet consciously and critically eclectic; socially rooted in the professionalization and organization of design". (page 60)<br />
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As Donnelly notes, Davies also mentioned in his essay that, while increasingly important, many Canadians, including many of the country's typesetters, commercial artists, and printers, were not exposed to the latest developments in graphic design. The lack of resources, such as public libraries and proper design programs, which could expose them to such developments and explain what they meant, was hindering both the field's use of and involvement in such innovations, as well as the public's acceptance of them. Carl Dair voiced a similar concern in 1959 when he made a submission to the Canada Council, arguing that fellowships, scholarships, publications, and design education needed to be funded by the government to ensure the visual and graphic literacy of Canadians and Canadian designers. Donnelly argues that the poor support for design in Canada helps to explain the slow growth of the profession, as was evidenced by the membership of the TDC. The 1961 version of Typography only listed a membership of approximately 50, including only six student members. While the number of submissions to the exhibition for that year was almost three times that of the 1958 exhibition, the prizes were dominated by a hand full of established Canadian designers, several of which had moved to Canada during the preceding decade. Yet, Donnelly also notes that the winners of the three sections - Allan Fleming's CN logo, Frank Newfeld's design of a Leonard Cohen book of poetry, and Ernst Roch's design for the Rolland Paper annual report - illustrated that Canadian design was moving in a minimalist direction and that, despite the limited number of Canadian designers, design was increasingly affecting numerous elements of Canadian life. The radically minimalist CN logo graced the trains of a crown corporation from coast to coast; book design for popular writers was now being carefully considered so as to reflect elements of the text itself; and traditionally conservative resource companies were allowing themselves to be portrayed as sleek, modern enterprises. A Donnelly writes, these prize-winning designs, showed that design "was capable of critically adapting typographic tradition; that it was fully a part of the shifting flow of the international modernist current; and finally that, even when producing work more obviously based in traditional solutions, styles, or typefaces. Modern graphic design was defining itself as such by its critical, innovative responses and<br />
systematic manipulation of older approaches." (page 61)<br />
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Typography 62 was staged as a travelling exhibition, visiting destinations across the country before ending at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto in October 1963. As Donnelly notes, it was again an expression of just how Canadian designers were modern in their approach to design, borrowing useful elements and design solutions from various schools of design. If Canadian graphic designers were following the modern ideal of having form follow function, it was, as Donnelly notes, there was no universal agreement on what particular form(s) could support particular functions. Referring to a 1963 review by Gilles Héneault of the 1962 travelling exhibition in Canadian Art, Donnelly notes that it was by 1963 that Canadian critics began to note how Canadian designers were taking this eclectic attitude and not falling universally into one, or a hand full, or limited styles. While lacking a large graphic design community, Canadian graphic designers were still part of an, "international, critical, and intellectual discourse in contemporary, modernist issues." (page 62)<br />
<br />
The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada<br />
Donnelly begins this section by noting that, as the speaker for the luncheon celebrating the 1960 Typography exhibition, Marshal McLuhan had the skills being developed by Canada's typographers were part of a wider communications revolution. Donnelly notes that by that point the members of the TDC had revolutionized the profession by moving beyond the traditional approaches of page design. Following the modernizing trend in the field, they had acquired new skills not held by typesetters, and had absorbed elements of the new modern trends in typographic design. Furthermore, by exploring new ways that type could be used, transformed, and arranged, Canadian typographic designers were expanding the potential of printed material design. In so doing, they were increasingly moving beyond type alone as means by which the function of printed material could be supported, emphasized, or enhanced. As type increasingly came to be seen as just one element in the form a design would take, the president of the TDC began canvassing members to give their opinions on what constituted design, and whether they saw their work as including much more than typography. This inquiry, launched by John Gibson in 1967, received a range of responses. Carl Dair agreed that other elements of print design were playing an increasingly large part in the work of Canadian typographical designers, and that that concerned him. He believed that this lessening of the focus upon type was partially the result of admitting members into the TDC, and thus the profession, who had little knowledge of the printing and print design tradition, or different typefaces, and of the traditional methods of typographic design. For Dair, other kinds of design was more the realm of communications and media studies. Thus, he suggested that a separate typographic society might need to be formed, which was be solely dedicated to the study and execution of type design. Others, however, including Frank Newfeld and Tony Mann, suggested that the TDC's mandate to deal with type design was out of place in a time when printing was far from being limited to the use of small number of fonts and the insertion of the occasional image. Indeed, Mann called for a new, more inclusive organization which was interested in all elements of print design and which placed more emphasis upon educating new designers.<br />
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Following what appeared to be the majority opinion of TDC membership, the organization renamed itself the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) in 1968 so as to reflect all elements of graphic communication. While still sharing the TDC's original focuses upon improving the technical abilities of its members and uniting the profession together, the GDC recognized that the members of that profession were interested in using type as only one of several tools which could be employed to communicate particular ideas.<br />
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In celebration of the renaming of the society, and the official change in its focus, an exhibition was held at the Design Canada centres in Toronto and Montreal. Eight years later, when the national organization was legally incorporated, there already existed a number of regional chapters across Canada. The organization, founded by the British immigrant designers in 1956, had helped show Canadian designers that one could creative and skillful modern variation to traditional ways of printing so as to enhance publications. Furthermore, as evidenced by the winners of its competitions, especially after 1960, it allowed designers and others to recognize the growing importance and influence design was having upon society. <br />
<br />
In contrast to the eclectic modernism of the TDC, Donnelly notes that the 1960s also saw the spread within Canada of focused and rigorously analytical style of graphic design which had been developed in continental Europe. This style offered a much more precise definition of modern design.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER 3: The European Modernists<br />
In 1959 a new design Journal called New Graphic Design was started in Zurich. It was edited by three Swiss graphic designers, Hand Neuberg, Joseph Müller-Brockmann, and others. The publication concentrated upon a specific kind of modern design, one which was minimalist, geometric, and rigorously analytical. This Swiss, or international, style was different from the modernism which had been advocated by Carl Dair and the British immigrants who had started the TDC. Whereas they had advocated a critical adaptation of different elements of international modern styles, the international style advocated by Rolf Harder and Ernst Roch, both immigrants from German speaking countries, was much more strict and tied to a specific school of thought. However, as can be seen in the contributions to the later Typography competitions, their approach was increasingly influencing the work of other Canadian graphic designers. Indeed, Donnelly begins his third chapter with a quotation from a 1959 article in the Swiss journal <i>Graphis</i> by Hans Neuberg in which Neuberg argues that, while the "austere and almost puritanic form-language" of international design had only been embraced by a limited number of American graphic designers, it had almost become a dominant influence in Canada. However, Donnelly argues that this is only partially true, and that in Canada international modern design was adopted in a similar manner to other modern styles, in that it was not adopted wholesale, but a critical and complex way.<br />
<br />
Ernst Roch<br />
born in German-speaking Yugoslavia in 1928, Roch was influenced by the work of his father who was a printer, print maker, and designer. Roch Attended the State School of Applied Arts in Graz, Austria between 1948 and 1952. Arriving in Montreal in December 1953, Roch soon found work at the Rapid, Grip, and Batten art office. This office provided layout, lettering, illustration, and photography services. However, these services were not offered in a manner akin to a creative graphic designer, but rather in a production-line fashion. The creation process was directed by a "layout man", who saw to it that the artists working under him would produce works that would faithfully follow proven artistic formulae which were approved by the company salesmen and art director. Remaining at Rapid, Grip, and Batten for eight months, Roch was eventually included in a round of layoffs which forced him to take up freelance work which, according to Donnelly's interviews with Roch, included "doing labels for socks, retouching photographs, and other 'boring tasks'." (page 67)<br />
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In 1954 Roch joined the Y & M studio run by Gerard Caron, Yolande Delorme-Cyr, and Tancrède Marsil. All of these designers had trained at Montreal's Ecole des Beaux Arts, and both Marsil and Caron had previously worked for the Eveleigh-Dair studio. In the case of Delmore-Cyr, she had been a fashion designer, the typical form of employment of female designers at the time.<br />
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Roch stayed at Y & M until 1959, believing that it was one of the most progressive and demanding studios in Canada at the time. Having a maximum staff of 10 people, including its senior partners, Y & M offered Roch a level of creative freedom which he could not have had at one of Montreal's large advertising or commercial art agencies. As Donnelly notes, in the late 1950s Roch had encouraged Caron to attempt to get the contract to redesign the logo for Canadian National Railway, a contract which was eventually given to the New York industrial designer, James Valkus. While Valkus then hired Allan Fleming, in Toronto, to work on the design, Fleming was not willing to move to Montreal, which was necessary to ensure that his new, modern minimalist design was applied throughout the crown corporation. Roch believed that the commitment to the modernist project which was implied by the new design required its complete application across the company, regardless of pressure from company executives to retain more traditional visual elements of the company. Under Valkus, Roch pressured that the design had to be employed consistently throughout the corporation, so as to give the impression that CN was a thoroughly modern, well organized, and efficient organization, a message which was implied through the simplicity and clarity of its new logo.<br />
<br />
Donnelly argues that Roch's experience working on the CN account inspired him to thoroughly embrace the modern approach of the international minimalist style. Between 1960 and 1965 he ran his own studio in Montreal, consciously applying his Swiss-influenced style to work and influencing others to follow his approach. That approach included a renewed interpretation of constructivism and rational functionalism, reduction to minimal forms and the representation of essential elements in the simplest ways possible. However, this approach was not always appreciated or understood by the public, and even Roch's work in 1960 was not devoid of other approaches. However, Roch was able to increasingly move towards a version of the international style as he gained increasing design freedom in increasingly small studios. His transition was also aided by the kinds of clients he was able to attract. One early example was the in-house corporate newsletter of Alcan. Headed by a Swiss-educated editor, the Alcan Ingot was plagued with loose layouts, many illustrations and decorative elements, and highly subjective organization. Roch was asked by the publication's international style-friendly editor to transform it into a logical and rational looking publication which would project the idea that the company embodied such traits. Roch renamed the publication Alcan News, tightly cropped photographs, emphasizing geometric lines in the images; employed sans serif type throughout; narrowed the margins; established a set horizon on the cover and each page which was never to be breached; minimized headings to the same size as the text, making them as standardized as possible and only identifiable as headings by their being in bold and at the beginning of articles; and, most importantly, Roch divided up each page into a geometric grid which directed the placement of images and text, giving the publication a highly organized and planned look.<br />
<br />
Donnelly argues that there were close parallels between the international graphic design style of the period and the international architectural design style. Like a modern office tower, surrounded by large, open, and empty plazas, the international design publication made use of large areas of white, or negative, space so as to increased attention to the main structure of the design. A modern office tower was a grid of windows and floors rising into the sky, while the designed page of the international style imposed a grid which dictated where elements of the page could be placed, even confidently placing them close to the edge of the page with the assurance that they were correctly positioned and held in place by the grid. Furthermore, the regularity of the design layout, like the facade of a modern tower, ensured that all of the available space is incorporated into the design. Also, as with a building, where there is positive space, or designed areas, there is a lack of ornamentation, but instead rational horizontal and vertical regularity, furthered through the use of standardized column widths and sans serif type.<br />
<br />
Roch won an award from Typography 61 for a similar design of the Rolland Paper annual report, thus demonstrating that, while disliked by some, his approach to design was winning support within the Canadian design community. In an untitled essay in the 1970 publication, Graphic Design Canada, Roch argued that he viewed the job of graphic designers as "stripping down a message" and striving to use "minimal means" to obtain "maximal clarity." In 1962 Roch was able to apply this approach to the very public realm of postage stamp art, winning the competition to design the five-cent "definitive" stamp. The stamp featured a minimalist profile of the Queen surrounded by negative space. The only other elements of the design were the necessary type, which was placed at the extremes of the grid which dictated placement. The resulting design gave the desired image of simplicity, strength, and even authority. As Donnelly notes, while only a very small item, this new, minimalist stamp, was the first example of the federal government's policy of using clear, minimalist, and simplistic design in order to communicate with the public. As Donnelly explains, this minimalist, geometric approach to graphic design was to dominate government and corporate design for the next two decades.<br />
<br />
"Over the next two decades the use of geometric logos, simplified, gridded layouts, and the systematic (if not always inspired) application of aspects of the style Roch and others developed were to dominate the design of government and corporate communication, as surely as rectangular geometry dominated in architecture." (page 72)<br />
<br />
Donnelly argues that, while following the style of the rational international design school, Roch was also expressing a personal taste and approach. His work, while removing all decorative excess, also highlights his own design strengths. The international style, while building upon the modernism of Tschichold and of Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union of the 1920s, was also very different from those styles. Donnelly argues that those differences emerged both in Europe and in Canada during the late 1950s, with designers such as Roch using their own tastes, and not some kind of internationalist formula, to create their designs. Yet, Donnelly also notes that the popularity of the approach is ironic in that, while claiming to liberate design from traditional approaches, the style offers an alternative of strict conformity to geometric simplicity, the removal of unnecessary elements, and the use of sans serif type. It was also being adopted at a time of considerable social and political change, including a countercultural movement which balked at authority and top-down control. Indeed, the success of the approach in Canada marked a move away from domestic, emotional, and fanciful imagery of the 1950s. However, Donnelly also implies that this move away from tradition, sentimentality, and fanciful imagery could have been part of its appeal. In addition to stressing the authority, control, and success of governments and corporations in a time of economic success, the international style also offered an image of objectivity and clarity. At a time when the public was increasingly calling for increased citizen participation in government and corporate decision making, the international style gave the impression that such institutions had nothing to hide and they were communication to the public "without sentiment, fantasy, smoke, or mirrors." (page 73)<br />
<br />
Donnelly also notes that, originally, the international style was largely unpopular, both with the public and designers. However, as its elements became increasingly understood, it became very popular and was employed by the majority of Canadian graphic designers at one time or another to solve particular communications problems. By the early 1960s it had become the signature style of Canadian graphic designers, a development which allowed the public to become increasingly comfortable and familiar with it was it became ubiquitous. the style was popular because it was functional, effective, legible, and easy to understand. As it became ubiquitous, it was also adapted and mixed with other approaches. Its familiarity also led to designs in the style also became recognizable and tied to ideas and experiences, thus imbuing such modernist designs with emotional meaning, conjuring up ideas of progress and prosperity. As Donnelly notes, this emotional connection, or traditional connection, to designs made in the international style was exactly the opposite result of what had been originally intended, a move away from the "smoke and mirrors" or traditional irrational meanings which were attached to domestic, fanciful, and sentimental designs of the 1950s.<br />
<br />
Rolf Harder<br />
Harder was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1929, attending the National Art Academy in that city for four and a half years. At the academy he was trained in typography (drawing, metal and woodblock typography) and printing technology. He was then employed at a Hamburg advertising agency from 1953 to 1955 as something akin to a designer, employed to do illustration and produce other visual and textual elements to enhance advertisements. With the dream of coming to work in North America, and New York in particular, Harder came to visit and work in Montreal for two years, 1955 to 1957. In Montreal, Harder briefly worked for Y & M, where he first met Ernst Roch. However, Harder soon lost the job after he unsuccessfully produced an illustration of a refrigerator for an advertisement. (He was unfamiliar with what North American refrigerators were supposed to look like and the kind of advertisement illustration which was expected at the time.) Following his time at Y & M Harder did some freelance work and also travelled around North America, returning to Hamburg from 1957 to 1959, where he continued to work and got married. Returning again to Montreal in 1959, and only intending to stay long enough to secure a work visa to the United States, so that he could work in New York, Harder soon developed a large client base in Montreal. Assured of work in Montreal, Harder stayed. His clients included the pharmaceutical company Hoffman-LaRoche, Alcan, the Royal Bank, Inter City Papers, and International Paints. In the case of Hoffman-LaRoche, the company's Swiss-educated design-buyer understood the importance of effective advertising and packaging design, and had seen how other pharmaceutical companies were using trends in German and Swiss design to portray themselves as innovative, scientific, and rational. As Harder explained to Donnelly in interviews, the establishment of his thirty-year relationship with Hoffman-LaRoche was abnormal in the late 1950s and early 1960s as design was typically attained by such companies through larger advertising agencies, not through freelance designers. <br />
<br />
While often borrowing from the internationalist design school for his works, Donnelly argues that Harder was not formulaic in his designs. He would use elements of internationalist design, including sans-serif type, type and images which are cropped close to the edge of the page, and abstract geometric shapes which were often presented in flat or solid colours. However, his work could also make use of historic or traditional images (such as Victorian woodcuts), as with his 1959 Hoffmann-LaRoche "Vous Pouvez" booklet, or give the impression of there his not using a design grid, as in the case of his 1962 annual report for International Paints. As Donnelly notes, many of these elements of Harder's designs are discussed in a 1961 article on Harder in International Advertising Art (issue 31). Other works, such as the "Librium" advertisement, make use of singular cropped, perfectly staged images presented in a field of white with bold sans-serif type. This approach, which was starting to be used regularly by New York City art directors, was designed to offer a "big idea" with emotional impact. It stood in contrast to copy and illustration-heavy ads which were still dominant in the advertising of the early 1960s.<br />
<br />
Harder's approach made use of geometry, abstraction, and simplicity, and, like internationalist modernist architecture, it made use of all of the available space, even interlocking images so as to make the most of available space, but confining those images to a strict, measured, and rational grid. However, according to his interviews with Donnelly, Harder did not formulaically apply the tools of international design. Rather, he always started with a central visual idea. He would then use the tools of international design to offer structure and to filter out noise and unnecessary details. The result would be a measured and rational presentation of the original idea. However, Harder noted that without a good original visual idea, any design would become boring and uninteresting. Furthermore, Harder stressed to Donnelly that his and Roch's internationalism was not imported directly by them into Canada. While influenced by the international style which was developing in Switzerland and Germany in the late 1950s, and owing much to the geometry of both constructivism and Swiss typeface design, including the publication of the journal New Graphic Design and the introduction of the Helvetica typeface. However both designers had been in Canada since before these European developments had occurred. They had worked for Canadian clients and pre-existing Montreal design firms. They had been exposed to the standards and expectations of Canadian design, and had learned of internationalism while working and living in that milieu. Thus, their internationalism synthesized the new European approach and the traditions and restrictions of Canada.<br />
<br />
Typography 64<br />
The last of the TDC exhibitions was widely acknowledged to have been heavily influenced by internationalist graphic design. As is clear from the catalogue, Carl Dair was correct to complain in a letter to Gerry Moses from early 1965, that the exhibition had "gone all Swiss." The minimalist and rationalist trend of the exhibition is apparent from the catalogue, the cover of which consists of black and blue sans-serif text that begins with the full title of the exhibition, Typography 64, and, in a number of steps, removes all extraneous elements of this title, resulting in "T64". However, as Donnelly notes, while Dair may have despaired at the extent of internationalist design in the show, the rise of that style of design corresponded with a general rise in an interest in graphic design. The number of entries in the 1964 exhibition was almost ten times that of 1958. Allan Fleming agreed with Dair in a Globe and Mail article on the exhibition, that it was dominated by "international, modern types of typography." (Kay Kritzwiser, "Seven Artists Win Typography Awards," 1964) In an essay, "An Appreciation," within the catalogue, Fleming condemned the excessive use of Swiss design, claiming that it gave the impression of a "homogenous, safe, society" which was no better than a society of roaches or ants. This continued Sam Smart's argument in Typography 1961 that internationalist design was formulaic and could only be beneficial in that it did introduce some discipline into routine design, and could improve high-volume design creation. Thus, as Donnelly notes, the reaction of the Canadian design community to the rise of the analytical, precise, and rational Swiss approach was mixed. Toronto designers, including Smart, Fleming, and Dair expressed a different version of modernism, one which Donnelly describes as being, "a more immediately synthetic logic, and retained a broader, more inclusive vocabulary." Thus, as Donnelly argues, it is not really surprising that support for the internationalist approach was much stringer among Montreal designers than those in Toronto.<br />
<br />
Paul Arthur<br />
Donnelly characterizes Paul Arthur as something of an anomaly in the development of modern internationalist design in Canada in that he was born and educated in Toronto. Attending Upper Canada College and then the University of Toronto, Arthur did not study typography or art, but English literature. It was his interest in the content of books which led him to work in the printing and publishing industry in England after he graduated from university. It was while working in England that he chanced to meet the editor of the times Literary Supplement, Stanley Morison, who recommended him to the editor of <i>Graphis</i> magazine in Zurich, Walter Herdeg. Arthur worked at <i>Graphis</i> from 1951 to 1956 during which time the publication was beginning to focus upon the simplified, constructivist-influenced style of design emerging out of Switzerland and Germany. Arthur also wrote articles for <i>Canadian Art</i> on the development of design in Europe. In his 1952 article "Advanced Design - As Seen from Europe" he claimed that North American advertising of the period was too complex and strove to be earnest while making use of many superlatives. In contrast, European design was becoming more sparse and direct. He also suggested that there was a difference between advertising and design, where advertising was interested in using the more effective marketing and style so as to sell products, while design strove to communicate essential ideas as clearly as possible. He suggested that Canadian designers should not learn about the developments in European design through immigrant designers, but by travelling to Europe and learning first hand.<br />
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Arthur returned to Canada in 1956, becoming the director of Publications at the National Gallery of Canada (1956-1967). In a review of the eighth annual exhibition of the Art Directors Club of Toronto in <i>Canadian Art</i>, Arthur noted that while interest and participation in the country's design community had grown, but still conscious of the adjectives and earnestness of North American advertising, he wondered it the products of the field had only become louder and not more precise and effective in communicating ideas to their audience. In particular, Arthur was very critical of government publications, which he viewed as very ineffective in using anything other than the written word to communicate ideas or information to the reader. In another <i>Canadian Art</i> article from May 1960 Arthur compared much Canadian promotional advertising to "litter," a sentiment which was shared by the English immigrant designer Tony Mann, who worked at Cooper & Beatty and who would come to design the internationalist cover for Typography 64. Mann complained in a letter to Dair in 1965 that Canadian advertisers and agencies continued to demand earnest advertisements which were full of superlatives while Canadian designers were attempting to develop approaches which lacked these gimmicks and focuses upon effective communication.<br />
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Using both his position at the National Gallery, as well as his position, as of 1958, as managing editor and designer for <i>Canadian Art,</i> Arthur was able to promote his vision for the field of graphic design, including a call for higher standards and for the field to be recognized for its distinct qualities, and not just seen as commercial art or glorified typesetting. In the case of <i>Canadian Art</i> he not only increased the publication's content concerning graphic design, but also revised its layout, borrowing heavily from <i>Graphis</i>.<br />
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However, while Arthur wished to increase the public's and the profession's understanding and appreciation of design, he also wished Canadian design to follow the European of reducing graphic designs down to their essential elements, making them "standardized, anonymous, and functional." (page 82) However, this ideal which Arthur was trying to encourage was the opposite of the loud and busy imagery which the public seemed to prefer at the time. Yet, one area where Arthur has had a significant influence creating and influencing the creation of designs which were reduced to only their essential elements was in international signage. According to Donnelly, Arthur created the terms "signage" and "wayfinding" in the course of his defining and refining the purpose and approach which should be taken in designing signs which are to be universally understandable, and thus, communicate particular messages to people from almost any culture. Following the a United Nations Geneva protocol of 1949 which called upon countries to design uniform traffic signage, Arthur was hired in the late 1960s to help design a signage system for highways in Vermont. He was also charged with designing signage for the Winnipeg and Edmonton airports in 1962. Then, later in the decade, Arthur was hired by the federal government to design pictograms, directional signage, and even the exterior street furniture for Expo 67. This not only allowed him to employ his experience creating unified signage systems, but allowed him it further the idea, to an international audience, that public spaces should make use of effective, universally understandable signage. <br />
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During the 1960s Arthur was operating his own studio in Ottawa. The studio was increasingly busy, largely as a result of the work he was commissioned to do for Expo 67. He also took advantage of his training/schooling in modern European design and his connections and proximity to federal government agencies to land additional work. Many government departments and agencies at the time were increasingly interested in adopting overwhelmingly modern designs. Furthermore, many of the people who worked for his studio during those years would create for him, and then would go on to create, significant Canadian government and corporate designs. These included Gerhard Doerrié, Burton Kramer (CBC), Fritz Gottschalk (stamps, Royal Bank Logo, etc.), and Jean Morin (Quebec Hydro and Bell Canada). However, the amount of time the studio had to dedicate to the Expo 67 contract led to other clients being neglected. Following Expo 67 several of Arthur's designers left to start their own studios, and Arthur himself moved to Toronto to rebuild his practice. In addition, in 1967 Arthur was asked to produce ten final issues of <i>Canadian Art</i>, which was being renamed artscanada. All of these issues were published on looseleaf and other materials and sold in a transparent paper bag. Not only did this allow the magazine to be produced more quickly, but it also challenged conventions of publishing, as well as conventional ideas of designers being conservative and professional. Donnelly suggests that these untraditional issues of artscanada were a prelude to the influences upon graphic design of the broad social and cultural changes occurring within Canada from the mid-1960s into the 1970s. While the period from 1956 to 1965 had been about creating higher professional standards and placing more importance upon effective communication rather than style, the later 1960s and the 1970s would see an emphasis upon removing constraints upon the profession.<br />
<br />
Gerhard Doerrié<br />
Doerrié was (1997) a teacher at both the Ontario College of Art and NSCAD, known at both institutions as an avid promoter of the international style. Born in Celle, Germany in 1936. Trained as a typesetter in Paris, he was inspired to come to Canada after reading an article by Ernst Roch in a German graphic design journal. Contacting Roch, Doerrié was encouraged by the Montreal-based designer to come to Quebec in 1960 to work on the redesign of the CN identity program with the Valkus studio. Then in 1964 Doerrié moved to Ottawa to work in Paul Arthur's studio. Fond of the international style of design, Doerrié was well suited to work with the former assistant editor of <i>Graphis</i>. In Ottawa he worked on a number of projects for the federal government's Design Canada, all of which used the international design elements of sans-serif fonts and grid structure so as to give government communications a strong, logical look, reinforcing the idea of the federal government being a rational and well organized institution. Noting the experimental nature of his internationalist style, as seen in his entries for Typography 64, Donnelly claims that Doerrié's central concern was solving problems of communication, believing that if framed in the right way the solution would clearly expressed the single, desired message. However, as the international style became ubiquitous, Doerrié became disillusioned with it, seeing it as a tool to attain design perfection, and solutions to problems, which is often used in the absence of a problem or purpose. In the early 1970s Doerrié held positions at a number of studios, and also became head of the department of visual communication at NSCAD. However, because of his perfectionist and demanding temperament, as well as a drinking problem, he was working as a freelance designer again by 1974. He died in 1984, having returned to Germany.<br />
<br />
Tony Mann<br />
While Mann also eventually taught at NSCAD, his career was considerably less tumultuous as Doerrié's. Mann was educated at the Manchester College of Art and the London Central School of Arts and Crafts. He then ran his own design firm in London for a decade before moving to Toronto in 1962, where he replaced Allan Fleming as creative director at Cooper & Beatty. Unlike Fleming, whose style was eclectic and playful, Mann was an adherent to the increasingly popular international style, with its geometric qualities, preference for sans-serif typefaces, and solid colours. Thus, with his arrival the look of the designs put out by the typesetting firm took on a more "European" look.<br />
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After three years, Mann left Cooper & Beatty in 1965 to establish Design Collaborative with Ernst Roch, Rolf Harder, and Alfred Faux. However, as Rolf Harder had noted to Donnelly in interviews, Mann, and the new Design Collaborative, were not simply applying the completed international style formula to the work they did in Canada. Rather, they drew inspiration from the principles of the international style. By applying the international design standards to the Canadian context they were creating a Canadian style. As Donnelly argues, indeed, no style is a finished product. Rather, each is a combination of influences and examples, the application and reproduction of which are constantly evolving and borrowing from the environment in which they are used or applied. This is especially true in the realm of graphic design which uses recognizable references, references which are often more recognizable to specific local audiences than to others, to communicate particular ideas. "The mass, applied art of design necessarily draws on a synthesis of sources, and takes event the most radically reduced approach and coheres it, through familiarity and repetition, into a familiar and evocative style." (page 88) Yet, as Donnelly also notes, the international style was not the only new modern style developing during the 1950s and 1960s which adopted and synthesized references, symbols, and emotions. These are the subject of his fourth chapter.<br />
<br />
CHAPTER 4<br />
Donnelly claims that if, as he argues, and as the designers themselves claim, there was a distinctly Canadian characteristic to the international form of modern practiced in Canada, even among émigrés and those Canadians trained in Europe, such Canadian particularity and subjectivity was even more pronounced amongst those designers who were raised and schooled in Canada. As noted above, designers, such as Dair, felt a knowledge or the history and tradition of typographic design was required to have the necessary tools, and knowledge of how to use the, to fashion the most effective designs. Others, such as Newfeld, believed that a wide range of influences was important. However, amongst these influences were links to illustration and the fine arts, given the small scale of the Canadian profession, the lack of proper training programs, and thus, the diverse backgrounds of its membership. In Britain and Europe there existed training programs, art, and printing schools, as well as apprenticeship programs. Yet, these were lacking in Canada. Also lacking was a type founding and type design industry. Furthermore, the printing industry was relatively small. Thus, Canadian designers drew on a wide variety of sources for their education and inspiration. However, this also meant, according to Donnelly, that Canadian designers were synthesizing ideas in a unique way, which he claims is the essential basis of modernism.<br />
<br />
Allan Fleming<br />
Unlike many of his contemporaries in design, Allan Fleming did not have a fine art background. Rather, he had only taken two years of art at a Toronto technical school, which he completed at sixteen. Fleming then found work in the Eaton's mail-order catalogue department, working as an illustrator. Up until 1953 he worked for several small Toronto studios, including Art Associates. At this time Fleming's style was heavily influenced by the graphic design found in American magazines, and he consciously imitated the work of Paul Rand. Through studying these designs, Fleming's interest in illustration eventually gave way to a desire to work with type and how it was presented, or laid out.<br />
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With an interest in typography, Fleming began to attend the workshops presented by Carl Dair after 1952. This intensive and detail rich training inspired Fleming to continue his education in printing and typography beyond what the workshops could offer. Following Dair's preference for the British typographic tradition, Fleming did not travel to New York or Zurich to study the newest and most radical developments in typography. Rather, he went to London where he found work at John Tait and Partners. Studying at the British Museum in his spare time, he tried to absorb as much as he could about the British typographic and printing industries, allegedly going so far as introducing himself to Stanley Morrison, the head of Monotype, and one of the leading figures in British typography at the time.<br />
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Fleming returned to Toronto in 1955, where he established himself as a freelance artist. According to a 1977 article from Quill and Quire, Fleming also caused some confusion amongst his contemporaries and clients by referring to himself as a graphic designer, a term which was not used at the time. Fleming was one of a few freelance designers in the city. These included Dair, Frank Newfeld, and others, such as Eric Aldwinkle, who had worked in the art and design community in the city before the Second World War. However, Fleming's designs attracted the attention of W.E. "Jack" Trevett of Cooper & Beatty, who hired him as the typesetting firm's creative director in 1957. <br />
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At Cooper & Beatty Fleming excelled because, according to Donnelly, of his self-motivation and his willingness to independently research new methods and styles of design. Much of his work consisted of the self-promotional advertising of the firm, designs which radically changed the look of the company and the expectations of its clients. At the time, the firm was doing typesetting work for all of Toronto's approximately thirty advertising agencies, as well other significant clients, including, at one time, all six of the country's major banks. The year after being hired at Cooper & Beatty the annual of the Type Directors Club of New York featured his promotional work for Cooper & Beatty, while he contributed several works to the first annual of the TDC, Typography 58. Furthermore, half of the entries in Typography 58 had been typeset at Cooper & Beatty, and thus, would have at least been affected by the judgment of the firm's creative director. Finally, in November 1958 Fleming held a show of his work and the Gallery of Contemporary Art.<br />
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Donnelly notes that in the late 1950s Fleming was at risk of overexposure. He was recognized by many in the design world to be possibly the most talented designer in the field and his work repeatedly took the highest prizes in competitions. As Robert Fluford noted, on various occasions, when Fleming had designed invitations and posters for exhibitions of graphic design his own designs often contained more artistic inspiration than the works in the shows. While often done with metal type punches, which are typically locked horizontally into a frame, Fleming's designs often broke from these constraints, making use of oversized letters, open space, and text placed at angles or inserted into shapes and patterns. To achieve his desired results Fleming had to mix and match the limited metal typesets which were available, printing designs in stages and photographically enlarging characters where needed. Flaming was also quick to make use of what Donnelly calls the "second generation" of typesetting technology, which consisted of photographic and optical distortion methods which were developed during the 1950s and 1960s. (The first generation was metal character presses and the third were the digital systems of today.) Fleming had the advantage, however, of having access to the resources of Canada's largest typesetting company.<br />
<br />
The Graphics Man is on the Way Up<br />
Donnelly argues that it was largely because of the playful way in which Fleming placed, mixed, and distorted letters and particular parts of text, graphics were increasingly seen by the Canadian design community as having more potential than previously considered and playing a larger role in contemporary culture. Robert Fulford, a close friend of Fleming, praised Fleming in a 1959 <i>Canadian Art </i>article for his mixing of reserved and traditional English typesetting with bolder and more energetic American styles. However, because many design clients were slow to recognize the potential of what the evolving design profession could offer them, much of Flemings most creative and innovative work was the promotional material he produced for Cooper & Beatty.<br />
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Donnelly notes that Fleming was also highly skilled at selling design to businesses as an important part of telling the public what their business was, not as just some marketing ploy. His charm and intelligence were highlighted in a 1961 article in Marketing magazine which uses his justifications to argue as to how businesses could and should embrace design. Central to his strategy, and something which he often employed when working with clients, was that he did not simply present a design to clients, but explained and justified the design, convincing the clients of the logic and soundness of the design. Fleming famously employed this approach in his work on the Canadian National Railways logo.<br />
<br />
THE CN LOGO<br />
In 1959 CN conducted a survey of Canadians on their opinions of CN. The crown corporation had spent the previous decade spending over a billion dollars upgrading its facilities and rolling stock, most significantly replacing its steam locomotives with diesel. However, the poll showed that most Canadians considered the company to be "drab" and even "Victorian" in character. The corporation's symbol did date from 1896 and its corporate slogan, "Serves all Canada", only existed in English. Thus, on a chance recommendation and a four a brief proposal, CN President, Donald Gordon, hired the New York industrial designer, James Valkus, to help modernize the company's image. The corporation initially believed that this exercise would simply result in a new trademark, however, Valkus argued that all corporate imagery had to be integrated into a systematic redesign. Given that the corporation was in the midst of restructuring its management structure, finances, and personnel, its management was fairly easily convinced to accept Valkus' complete image overhaul. This consistent design system was even affected the structure of the company. Valkus was not suggesting an image change where old logos would be replaced by a new one. Rather, in proposing a new, modern design image, the company had to take steps to take steps which would reflect the organized, efficient, and modern image the logo was to suggest. While the company's historic locomotives had recently been replaced by diesel, other elements of the railway were complex and antiquated. For example, the redesign affected the format of CN tickets and the more than 200 different kinds of ticket designs were replaced with 9 baring the new CN logo. The redesign also affected the very name of the corporation which, until then, had been Canadian National Railways. It was Allan Fleming, who had been hired by Valkus to design the new logo, who suggested that the organization adopt the bilingual Canadian National, thus helping to remove notions of the corporation being an English-dominated, or English-biased organization. <br />
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As Donnelly explains, Fleming was not the only person involved in the redesign of the logo. Valkus, Fleming, and others at their offices made attempts at the redesign. The different attempts show a caution on the part of many of the designers, including Fleming himself, as to how modern or experimental to make the design, or just how experimental or modern a logo the corporation would allow. One example, noted by Donnelly, was by Valkus and was a combination of the letters "CN" that made use of slab-serif characters and arrows. As Donnelly notes, this design is reminiscent of Herbert Matter's redesign of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railway in 1954 which made use of slab-serifs, or of Paul Rand's 1956 IBM logo. The use of such elements, which had successfully been used before, suggests that Valkus was attempting to use a somewhat conventional "modern" approach which could be justified by pointing to other, similar, successful logos. Similarly, one of Fleming's early proposals combines a "C" and an "N", where the C consists of a wide-sweeping arrow and the N is forward-leaning, suggesting motion. As Donnelly suggests, the design has a "popular, organic-modern feel to it." This use of arching curves, arrows, and light, open lines was a very popular illustrative approach in the 1950s. Thus, its fantastic, organic, even modern cartoon-esque qualities were actually quite traditional for the time.<br />
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Donnelly notes that the first version of the logo which approaches the final product was not done by Valkus or Fleming, but by of Valkus' staff artists, Carl Ramirez. Donnelly argues that, where as the two senior designers were rapidly sketching out their proposals in chalk drawings other media which would allow for broad strokes, Ramirez was using small pieces of Bristol board using rulers and compasses. With these tools he did not brainstorm, but slowly worked through the problem. Furthermore, unlike with brainstorming, where one's thoughts are inevitably affected by existing trends, Ramirez approach allowed him to carefully consider each angle, the thickness of lines, etc as he deconstructed and reconstructed his evolving design. The result was a much tighter, geometric solution. Furthermore, Donnelly notes that the real credit for the CN design should go to Ramirez since, had the senior designers already settled on an idea, they would have simply asked for variations of their idea. They would not have adopted something wholly new. And while Ramirez shape was not the final product (in that the inside corners were sharp and not curved, and the "C" was elongated, not placing the middle of the logo at the first up-stroke of the "N"), it is undeniably very similar to the final design. Yet, according to Fleming's own telling of the story, he came up with the design in a flash of inspiration while doodling on a napkin in an airport lounge. (found in the Fleming archives, noted in Donnelly p 101)<br />
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However, because the design did undergo several adjustments, and because it was the result of a detailed and complex attempt to get the best out of numerous designers, all working together, the final product was a simple design from which all subjective or personal elements had been removed. As Donnelly notes, the central idea of modern design is the pure visual communication of ideas which are not confused or complicated by individualistic or subjective ideas which could be misinterpreted by the intended audience. This is central to all modern design. While not created by designers who were staunch advocates of the international style, one can see definite parallels. The logo is highly geometric - possibly, as suggested by Donnelly, simply a result of the tools and approach of Ramirez. Furthermore, it only contains the absolute essential elements and nothing more, which Donnelly explains was the result of being created through the input of several designers and through a long process which had also considered many other approaches. However, regardless of the source of its genesis, one could argue that the final logo, while fulfilling the modern demand of attempting to only offer pure communication, may have also furthered business, government, and public acceptance of the international style. <br />
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While Donnelly suggests that a large, diversified, corporation like CN chose an abstract symbol would be to represent the abstract nature of their activities (they are more interested in making money than in what they really do), he admits that that is not the main reason why such organizations came to adopt abstract symbols in the 1960s. Rather, he explains that Fleming and Valkus were struggling with the idea of modern design and mass appeal. The essentialist modern logic of design pushed towards a stripped-down, rational, geometric, singular solution, or the one "right answer." The problem was not whether the designers could come to such a solution (which would be almost internationalist in approach), but whether should they come to such a solution. This, as Donnelly notes, was a question of both whether the client was modern enough. However, what is not mentioned by Donnelly is that it was also a question of whether a geometric design would identify the two designers as supporting, and possibly fueling the increased use of international design. As Donnelly notes, both designers were familiar with geometric designs, including the 1951 CBS logo, the railway and IBM symbols by Matter and Rand, and Ernst Roch's O’Keefe Fisheries logo. Yet, neither designer was a committed proponent of the developing internationalist school of design. Furthermore, as Donnelly argues, they were also concerned about whether the CN management would accept the design, whether the management would understand that this logo was part of a modern trend towards simplification, and whether the population would be accepting of such as design. As Donnelly notes, while Valkus and Fleming could try, and did, argue that the design was in line with many other new international corporate designs, and that the simplicity of the logo could easily make it iconic, they could only guess at whether the public would accept the design.<br />
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As Donnelly notes, not only did opinion polls show that the public both liked the new logo and had changed its perception of CN as being a progressive organization which was efficiently run, but the received praise from designers across Canada and beyond as being one of the best examples of good design in Canada. Others commented that it would lead to a significant increase in similarly minimalist logos and designs being created by Canadian graphic designers, and accepted, if not demanded by Canadian corporate managers. Furthermore, Donnelly argues that the CN logo has created a graphic design myth that the unveiling of that one logo established a particular trend or vision of high modernism in Canadian graphic design and corporate management. It is an internationalist-esque design which implies the worldliness, internationalism, rationalism, and efficiency of the corporation. Similar internationalist-esque designs have been used to suggest the same ideas about other large corporations, and thus, about global capitalism in general. <br />
<br />
AFTER CN and COOPER & BEATTY<br />
While influential and successful, Donnelly notes that Fleming's CN logo was something of an anomaly for the designer. It is true that he did design other, similarly internationalist-looking symbols for Ontario Hydro, Design Canada, and Grey Coach Lines, these few designs are very dissimilar to almost everything Fleming designed in the 1950s and 1960s. Fleming, in fact argued against the notion of modernism which the CN logo is often understood as implying, that one can attain a perfect design, from which all extraneous elements had been removed and which will only offer the audience a single message. Furthermore, unlike many of his colleagues, he never joined the movement towards international modernism. While had commented in 1959 in the article "Uppercase 2" published in the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Journal that Swiss design was offering a refreshing change from neo-Victorian typography, he also claimed in his essay in Typography 64 that the increasing ubiquitousness of the design style was leading to Canadian design developing an uninteresting and homogenous look, or that of a homogeneous world wide society. According to Donnelly, Fleming even disparaged the CN logo at times as a "tapeworm rampant," referring to his despair at the influence it had upon some designers to adopt the similar style of international design unquestionably. Thus, Donnelly concludes (on page 105) that, while Fleming could make use of an international-esque approach to design when it suited him, he always remained critical of it, and never viewed it as some kind of design panacea. <br />
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Fleming left Cooper & Beatty in 1962 and went to work for Maclean's magazine. However, he only remained as the magazine's design director for nine months. As Donnelly notes, while Fleming was very comfortable with producing smart and effective individual projects, he did not perform well under the weekly deadlines of the magazine, and did not create any significant works there. While he did redesign the layout of the magazine, he was not finding the useful single solution to a design problem, but just hastily producing content for a magazine which required content.<br />
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Leaving Maclean's, Fleming went to work for MacLaren Advertising, a decision which many of his contemporaries found surprising in that it was a large corporation. Unlike at Cooper & Beatty, Fleming would only be able to contribute to the work produced by MacLaren, not dominate it completely. Furthermore, under the pressure of the advertising firm to please its clients, Fleming’s work became more anonymous-looking and similar to the other visual work produced by the company's designers. As Donnelly notes, in a retrospective of his work compiled by Fleming and displayed at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1977, nothing was included from his five years at MacLaren. Thus, Donnelly suggests that during the mid-1960s, Fleming's influence and prominence in the Canadian design community decreased significantly. <br />
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Fleming's version of modernism was eclectic in that it was heavily based in history. As quoted by Robert Fulford in the 1976 Saturday Night article "Notebook: My Letterhead, Allan Fleming, and the Look of Canada", Fleming believed that one needed to know the history of design so that that history informs one's choices, suggesting, almost automatically in the designer's mind, what could enhance a design and what could potentially reduce its effectiveness in communicating a particular idea. However, while similar to Dair, in his history-oriented outlook, Fleming did not believe that one need be constrained by the past. this could explain why, in the case of the CN and other logos, he did willingly make use of a minimalist, simplistic approach. As Donnelly points out in a discussion of a debate with Carl Dair in the pages of <i>Canadian Architect</i> in 1961, while Fleming did agree that the classically-inspired typographic revival in Britain during the 1920s was beneficial in that it ended the excessive "vulgarity" of Victorian typographic design, he did not believe that typographic designers should try to prolong the style of that revival. Rather, as he claimed in the March 1961 edition of the journal, while the approach of the revival was tidy, "tidiness can be a bore." (Donnelly, page 106) Indeed, Donnelly argues that there was no single style which can be attributed to Fleming. While he was extremely knowledgeable about approaches to design, and could convincingly justify the use of particular approaches for his designs, he was more interested in the design fulfilling its purposeful function. His modernism was not based upon a strict uniformity, analysis of the design and approach, or rationalism. However, he did believe that designers could use the various tools at their disposal, including a knowledge of the history of design, to reference ideas in people’s heads, or create new ones. Donnelly argues that this approach was shared by two other designers of the period, Theo Dimson and Gerry Moses.<br />
<br />
Theo Dimson, Gerry Moses, and "The Imperial Oil Review"<br />
Born in Toronto in 1930, Theo Dimson was, according to an interview with Donnelly, attracted to commercial art of all kinds when he was young. This included antique Victorian illustrations, comic books, American magazines, and many other available sources. He took a four year commercial art course at Danforth Technical Highschool and then went to the Ontario College of Art, where he graduated in three years rather than four. After graduating he was quickly recognized as a talented new designer, as he won several awards from the 1951 Toronto Art Directors exhibition. He was also hired by Art Associates, replacing Allan Fleming as the junior designer. At the design agency much of the work was for advertising agencies, where, while having some creative freedom, he have to produce designs which would be somewhat similar to the client's wishes. However, the job also would occasionally produce jobs which offered almost unfettered creative license. After staying with the company from 1950 to 1953, Dimson left to pursue freelance work, which, as he recalled to Donnelly, offered much more creative freedom and was much more lucrative. <br />
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As a freelancer Dimson developed his own recognizable style, doing work for journals including Mayfair, Canadian Home Journal, and Liberty. He was gaining a reputation as being a specialist in manipulating and integrating period designs and prints within modern designs. However, it should be noted that his version of modernism was not internationalist, but a more eclectic which attempted to achieve the end of communicating one particular message via various visual means, not a particular, analytical style. In the mid 1950s, Dimson's most well known work was his contract to design and illustrate the entire 25th anniversary edition of the Imperial Oil Review. Using woodblock prints with well-integrated text, he was able to give the entire publication a period look. <br />
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In 1958 he produced one of eight full page advertisements which were placed in the Stratford Festival program of that year. His ad was an organized collage of antiqued photographs and Victorian engravings and was included with other works by Harols Town, Graham Coughtry, and James Hill. That same year Dimson returned to Art Associates, having been offered a better position and pay. There he further developed his style of combining and manipulating period images and typography to produce eye-catching and somewhat satirical designs. In the case of a trade advertisement for Art Associates, in which Dimson highlights the wide range of services the agency offered, he made use of multiple sizes of antique fonts, including exaggerated Victorian slab-serif and fat face in order to give the impression of a busy and somewhat confusingly designed Victorian hand-bill. However, the top of the design offers the headline for the ad in a distinct band of white at the top of the advertisement, and set in a much smaller modern sans serif. Similarly, his cover for the June 1960 issue of IDEA, which was dedicated to Canadian design, uses a Victorian engraving of a pair of eyes which are partially set in a large area of white space, and partially used as a prop for the title, which again is set in a sans-serif font.<br />
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Donnelly argues that Dimson's approach suggests that he was not fundamentally interested in carefully selecting and setting type to communicate a particular message or to create a pleasing layout. Rather, he was more interested in creating a whole picture. His eagerness to combine images and type, or to use type to create an image, emphasizes the growing move of typographic designers away from being fundamentally interested in type, and more towards a general interest in visual print and publication communication, or graphic design. This is seen in both this early work from the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as his better-known later work, such as his poster designs for Toronto Theatre Productions. As Donnelly notes, his approach emphasizes a particularly Canadian relationship with international modern styles. "The eclecticism and edginess, and the illustration-based approach of much of his work (even when he is using only type), underline the way in which Canadian awareness and acceptance of modern experimentation were often enhanced by an engagement with traditional styles (such as Victoriana), humorous and ironic contrast, and a variety of visual styles and media, including illustration." (page 109)<br />
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Gerald (Gerry) Moses was Dimson's senior, being born in Toronto in 1913. In 1930 he gained the position of art director at Baker Advertising. During the Second World War he joined the navy, where he received training in photography, leading to an interest in still photography and film. Following the war he made use of his training and his interests at the art director of the Imperial Oil Review, as a member of the Art Directors Club of Toronto, the Arts and Letters Club, the TDC, and the Aspen International Design Conference. However, it is his work at the Imperial Oil Review for which he is best known. The publication was produced in Toronto for the employees and shareholders of the corporation, and during the late 1950s it underwent a period of design experimentation with Moses at the helm. This experimentation began when Moses started using designs by Toronto designers for more stylish covers. However, given the stylishness of the Toronto design community, he soon began using their designs throughout the publication. These included the childlike illustrations by Arnaud Maggs, which emphasized the stress upon bold colours and domestic themes of the 1950s. Other illustrators included Michael Snow and Theo Dimson. In 1961 the typographic designer John Richmond was hired to work on the publication's staff, adding stylish layouts and a use of nostalgic elements to the journal's visual designs, approaches which were similar to the work of Theo Dimson. Like Fleming, all of these designers used many different visual tools, including traditional and mass media references, arranged and combined in new and modern ways, to communicate ideas. Some of these approaches, as with Fleming's work, depended upon new developments in printing technology, while at times also making use of illustration and the fine arts. <br />
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At the end of the chapter (page 113) Donnelly notes that the various individual designers he had already discussed each had different approaches to their work, all of which they called, and which are usually viewed as, modern. While each approach was a reaction to the idea of modernism, Donnelly dedicates his final chapters to examining what modernism is as an abstract idea within which the approach of each of the designers he discussed can be understood as fitting.<br />
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CHAPTER 5: Defining Mass Modernism<br />
Donnelly begins his fifth chapter by briefly retracing the history of Canadian graphic design. He begins by defining what graphic design is. He defines it as being, "concerned with surface, with the way in which appearance changes and enhances the function of a given commodity." (page 114) Donnelly stresses that the surface in question has traditionally been print, but that with new and evolving media, surfaces have come to include television, exhibits, packaging, public spaces, and even clothing. Furthermore, given the date of Donnelly's thesis (1997), one could subsequently add website design. Furthermore, he notes that the field of design had its origins in printing and typesetting. With the division of labour in these fields, specialists emerged who were primarily concerned with how the final product appeared. This began with how the letters and what images which could be included were arranged. However, with the evolution in printing technology and techniques, they were able to make new demands of style upon the medium. As the field evolved, the experts in design began to see design as something separate from the typesetting and printing from which it emerged. It was not the sum of the typesetting or printmaking process. While heavily reliant upon those trades to create a finished designed product, the trade/art (depends upon whom you ask) of design was understood as a separate intellectual pursuit which could then be expressed through print.<br />
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The advertising industry was quick to make use of the skills of designers as graphic design began to develop as a separate field. However, advertising was quite different from graphic design. The main aim of advertising is the successful marketing of someone else's product. In contrast, the main aim of design is enhancing a surface to communicate a particular idea, or particular ideas (implicitly, explicitly, or both). Designers in the printing and advertising industry began to separate themselves from those industries, both figuratively or literally, when they began to realize that the time they dedicated to carefully studying what text and other visual elements should be used, and how they should be arranged, should not be simply included as part of an advertising or printing service. While printing firms concerned themselves with the practical aspects of printing, and advertising agencies came up with overall approaches and how they could be marketed, the selection and arrangement of the best visual elements could not, for those involved in the profession, be considered a subsidiary role. Thus, designers moved from, what Dimson called the supermarket of advertising agencies, or the printshop floor, to the office or studio settings.<br />
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Donnelly argues that as designers realized that they could bill for their work separately from printers and advertisers, small design firms which relied upon the specialized approaches of their members began to appear, along with separate design departments within larger advertising and typesetting firms. Designers also distinguished themselves from commercial artists, which included the more high profile professionals of illustrators and photographers who created elements of publishing layouts, but did not combine all of the visual elements of publications.<br />
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Donnelly argues that the "differentiation" of design from the industries of advertising, printing, and typesetting is the essential definition of modernism. Modernism for Donnelly is the self-conscious differentiation from what came before. Different from the development of a style, the concept of differentiation can be understood as the Enlightenment project and is identified in the writings of Kant and Weber. In art, modernism is defined, according to Donnelly, as a self-aware and self-critical differentiation of the practitioner as choosing approaches and modes of experimentation which are separate and distinct from tradition. In fine art, the post-war period saw both the increased publicity of fine art, but also the development of a less popular and harder to understand avant-garde. A similar development occurred in design, with the development of new modern forms which were hard to understand and based upon critical examinations of other forms of design. According to Donnelly, it was the prosperity of the post-war period, and its increased consumption which allowed, by the 1950s, there to arise increased division of labour within design itself. New small, professional studios were producing an internally consistent design language and a variety of styles, all of which led to the development of a distinct profession. The success of this language with governments and the commercial world only fed the development of the profession. <br />
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In Canada, the economic and intellectual self-differentiation of graphic design (which is the basic process of professionalization) was itself the motivation which allowed designers to overcome the traditions of the printing and publication fields. It was because they saw that they were and could do more than had traditionally been done by printers and typographers that the designers considered their work distinct, and it was because of this distinction that they also felt the freedom to experiment and differentiate themselves from the traditional role of the designer as just a part of the printing or typesetting process. "It is the process of the economic and intellectual self-definition and differentiation of graphic design, its definition as a profession, which compelled artists in the graphic art to overcome previous practice with modern forms, and change the look of our printed environment from the reproduction of traditional forms dictated by conservative craftsmen to a dynamically experimental and rapidly expanding art form. This professional, industrial, mass process is the modernist event itself." (page 117) Thus, modern design was not the result of designers removing the non-essential from design. It was the positioning of graphic design as a self-conscious element of mass media. Modern design was not the development of a single style, but a variety of visual styles put forward by the membership in national organizations, and their conscious use of the design process. Thus, from a Lyotardian perspective (which is not Donnelly's perspective), modern design is the imposition of the narrative that designers have specialized skills through which the designer can visually enhance the layout and arrangement of the visual elements of a print, publication, etc. The notion that one can enhance the printed text was not a new idea. Indeed, one could claim that printers had been doing so since the Victorian era. However, graphic design took this further by separating that skill from the printing or publishing process, and claiming that graphic designers had specialized skills which allowed them to efficiently and effectively communicate specific ideas through visual designs. From this position, different schools or styles of graphic design emerged which claimed that their approach was the most effective means of communicating such specific ideas.<br />
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As Donnelly notes, graphic designers such as Fleming and Dimson were the beginning of the differentiation process in Canada. They did not subscribe to specific styles of graphic design, claiming all others to be wrong. Rather, they simply self-identified themselves as designers, and thus, as individuals who believed that they understood and approached graphic design in a specialized way, and that they could communicate specific ideas more effectively and efficiently than the average printer or publisher. They also differentiated themselves from commercial artists and were scornful of those who wanted to create art for arts sake. Whereas many commercial artists were simply artists who had taken up commercial art for economic reasons, the designer is dedicated to advertising art, conscious of all of the visual elements of a design and the message(s) they communicate.<br />
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POSTWAR TRANSISIONS<br />
Donnelly explains that avant-garde modernism developed in Europe during the 1920s, primarily in Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union. It focused upon uniting art and life, which would be fully realized through a socialist, working class revolutionary movement. However, as revolutionary movements in both countries were crushed by authoritarian regimes, the influence of the modernist avant-garde of these countries also faded. After the Second World War these avant-gardes were taken in different directions. Following the war the oppositional position of the avant-garde modernism appeared to have failed. Modernism was increasingly identified with the economic and social success of the capitalist west, and any modern opposition to that world view was seen as outside of mainstream society. This resulted in a hierarchy of the arts with the avant-garde restricted to the high arts, and most of society was left with that which is recognizable, understandable, and unchallenging. As Donnelly argues, most designers understood themselves, given the commercial nature of their jobs, relegated to the lower arts, unable to offer clients challenging designs which the public and their clients might not understand or accept. However, as ideas of the avant-garde became more widely understood and accepted, approaches were borrowed by the design community. Donnelly notes how the design annuals of the 1950s contained a large number of references to members of the high-art world, including Calder, Mondrian, Pellan, and Picasso. However, Donnelly argues that because designers necessarily remained part of the mass art market, but were increasingly viewed as professional and distinct from commercial artists, commercial arts studios were increasingly doomed. During the 1950s and 1960s the division of labour in the mass art market increasingly meant that illustrators, painters, and photographers, like designers, would not allow themselves to be thought of as mere "creative" subservient workers who were part of the printing, publishing, or advertising process.<br />
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A high-modernist autonomy<br />
That modernism was differentiated from tradition, that it was a critical space for various fields, led to its being isolated from mass society, defined, by itself and by others, as artistic high-modernism. Thus, high modernism was understood as being autonomous from the modern mass culture from which it had originally emerged. Furthermore, high-modernist theory held that high-modernism was necessarily apart from mass culture because it formed an opposition to broader and widely accepted cultural symbols and ideals. While always having been critical of mass culture, the new distance of high-modern art did not allow for it to lead society in making cultural changes. Artistic experimentation was the domain of formal high-art professionals, and any union between art and life would only be on the terms of high-art, and thus, largely outside of the understanding or consciousness of mass culture. High-art also abandoned all popular art forms as of a lesser category, and this included design, which was an undeniably applied art, and thus holding a compromised position concerning pure experimentation. <br />
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However, Donnelly argues that the different forms of modern design which have emerged since the war contradict the notion that experimentation could not occur within the design profession. There is no one preferred design vision, but a range of solutions to various design problems. Each of the designers discussed by Donnelly had an understanding and/or training in typesetting and printing and they were all influenced by various media, historical traditions, and stylistic approaches. In addition, the increasing complexity and conscious development of design further challenged the notion of experimentation only occurring in high art. In addition, the role of designers was becoming less that of a subservient artist who responds to the demands of clients, and more that of an integral person in marketing and economic activity, a central figure in the print industry, and an individual with increasing control over the content of his/her work. All of these elements removed the notion that modern art was confined to "higher" art. Donnelly claims that modernism's critical aspect is its ability to challenge and/or reveal ideological elements of traditional practice which need to remain hidden in order to have any authority. (p 122) The ability of modern design to experiment was, however, tied to the investment climate of the post-war era. In a period of economic prosperity, companies, governments, and organizations were willing to risk money on challenging new design approaches which might not yield immediate or safe results. As Donnelly notes, "Culture is not always directly profitable: it involves a certain willingness to invest - whether through government funding, private speculative purchases, or artists themselves willing to take a financial lass - in long-term and often vague goals, such as greater ideological stability; international prestige, and the maintenance of intellectual experimentation generally." (page 122) Indeed, Donnelly ends the section by arguing that, for a period (the post-war period), which had allegedly seen the end of mass modernism, design has actually transgressed the boundary between the high and the applied arts. The professionalization of the applied arts has seen an increase in their stature and the ability of the applied arts to challenge tradition in a variety of ways.<br />
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Communication as Inherently Contradictory<br />
If the clearest form of communication is the repetition of patterns which are already understood, then design should not be able to be creative or innovative. Communication would be understood to be fundamentally contrary to modernism. This contradiction points to the tension in modernism between the analytic and the synthetic approaches to design. The first is the search for a single solution through careful analysis of the problem. The latter proposes a number of possible solutions by making use of various influences or design tools. There is a similar tension between professional design conception and its reception by the public. While designs may be designed to be understood in a particular way, how they are actually received may be quite different. Finally, there is a related tension between international design trends which influence Canadian designers and existing Canadian tradition. The existing tradition has and does influence the implementation of international trends. Thus, in the effort to produce effective communication, the graphic designer has to negotiate all of these tensions. <br />
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Donnelly notes that the modern aspect of design has always been subject to local or regional design practices, from the manner in which a local newspaper has traditionally designed its ads to traditional design social class distinctions. In order to create acceptable designs, graphic designers have always had to balance such regional demands with more abstract notions of how best to design. As modern design is always attempting to push the bounds of acceptable design through innovations about the best approaches to design, it must typically retain certain traditional visual markers, so as to allow the design to be recognizable and effective.<br />
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Modernism's ongoing attack on language<br />
Donnelly argues that in the history of modern Canadian graphic design, the more that designers emphasized that their task was to create objective, or pure, communication, the more that their designs became analytical and geometrically reductive. Other designers, such as Fleming, did not try and reduce their designs down to some form of pure communication language, but used design to synthesize ideas, exploding and experimenting with the language of design. However, in either case (the analytical or synthetic approach) Donnelly claims that Canadian designers "took an aggressive approach in defining and shaping and distinguishing the language of design." He notes that in a modern society, where traditional views are overturned by new attempts at structuring the world, has led to a new elasticity in language. New professions, dedicated to explaining the world in new and unique ways have led to language being used in ways never conceived of before. Modernism, has questioned traditional world views, and thus traditional ways of using language, including visual significations. The signifier and the signified have been separated and are constantly being reordered as new language games are created.<br />
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Modernism's basis in Modernization<br />
Many of the different examples of modern graphic design and designers discussed above cannot be easily classified as following one particular style. They even have varying relationships with traditional practices and approaches to design. While some made use of new technologies and completely new approaches to design, others incorporated elements of traditional images, fonts, and styles, and even used old technologies to create their final product, as in the case of Dair who used old printing technologies. <br />
This inability to easily classify modern design as being of a singular style is, as Donnelly argues, the results of modernism being a process and not a fixed style or end-product. Furthermore, this modernism should not be understood as being a complete rejection of tradition, but as an evolution away from tradition. He believes that clarification of this situation can be reached by examining the difference between modernism and modernization.<br />
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Donnelly defines modernization by referencing Perry Anderson's paper "Modernism and Revolution" from the book Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Perry claims that modernization is the economic process and expansion of the means of development in a capitalist system. Modernism, however, is the self-conscious artistic response that is provoked by this modernization process. As modernization expanded industry and other practices and activities associated with increased production and the means of production, other elements of society and the modern world were removed and/or destroyed. Often troubling, these modernizing forces and the traditional economic, social, and political relations which allowed them to occur came under increased scrutiny. Furthermore, Modernism is neither politically left nor right. (It was compatible with Fascism, through the futurism movement.) It is caused by one's feeling alienated from reality, and modern art is an attempt to find a new means of identifying with, or seeing that reality, or at least aspects of it. <br />
In terms of visual representation, Donnelly argues that conventions and traditions of such representation are the result of needs and necessity, but they often go unexamined and unquestioned, being conveniently accepted as the correct manner by which certain things should be represented. Modernism, however, is the process of consciously exposing those myths or conventions to public critique. This is accomplished by seeking out and discovering alternative approaches. This involves manipulating, controlling, and transforming traditional ways of representing the world. Thus, modernism depends upon tradition, in that it requires something to manipulate. Usable parts of the past are used in the present, altered and transformed using all available tools, including present technologies.<br />
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The Postmodern Discourse About Modernism<br />
Donnelly's argument concerning post-modernism is that it does not represent the denial of modernism, and that modernism still does motivate contemporary culture. This, I argue, is exactly what Lyotard claims in The Postmodern Condition, when he argues that postmodernism does not deny modernism. It simply points out that modernism will necessarily always fail at its attempts to try and expose reality, or some element of reality. However, postmodernism would also recognize that the only means of successfully communicating with other people who have diverse world views is to experiment and attempt by what ever means possible to find new means of communicating. Thus, while doomed to be imperfect, such modern communication is necessary. As Donnelly notes, in this way, postmodernism has affirmed the central arguments of high-modernism and maintained a division between the high and the low arts, taking a rather dim view of mass culture.<br />
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Donnelly suggests that postmodernism arose out of the institutionalization and policing of high-modernism in post-Second World War western society. The separation of high-modernism from mass culture emphasized how vastly different the views of most of society are and can be from avant-garde reactions against it. Donnelly argues that postmodernism emerged also partly because of increased study of popular cultural developments, and the persistence, and even reemergence, of low-cultural forms which were rejected by high-modernism. Furthermore, he notes that postmodernism can be understood to be a return to the original avant-garde modernism of the 1920s, where modernism was not separated from mass culture. Referencing Huyssen's After the Great Divide, Donnelly suggests that poststructuralism can be understood as discourse about modernism, and postmodernism can be viewed as a search for modernism without reference to high, or classical, modernism. In referencing Frederic Jameson, Donnelly suggests that postmodernism is a rejection of high-modernism. He writes that postmodernism takes the tools of high-modernism, including eclecticism, the manipulation of the popular arts, and irony, and uses them in the art of mass culture, or at least art directed at and made for mass culture. <br />
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However, Donnelly also states that postmodernism continues the project of high-modernism by having distain for mass culture. He argues that postmodernism is only seen as being a liberating position if one views modernism as having its roots in the enlightenment project of imposing a single world view. What Donnelly claims postmodernism misunderstands, or "misses", is the energy and call for change which is exemplified by modern design. Donnelly argues that postmodernism starts from a position of pessimism about the transformative element of mass, modern spectacular, commodified culture. He even claims that Lyotard argues that the consensus which exists in mass culture concerning art is a great evil. However, this is a terrible misreading of Lyotard, who does argue that what often passes for the art of mass culture is the recognizable and the unchallenging, but he does not claim that modernism is evil. Rather, he recognizes that all modern art fails in it project or attempting to reveal new truths about the world, but argues that the modern artist simply needs to recognize that fact, not that they should stop what they are doing or that there is no creativity in modern art. Even Donnelly argues above that modern design is constantly striving to overcome and transform traditional means of representing the world. This is no different from what Lyotard is calling for. Furthermore, as has been seen, modern Canadian graphic design organizations, such as the TDC through its Typography competitions, regularly attacked designers for using clichés or gimmicks and not being creative and challenging traditional views. Design which failed to challenge and only used accepted standards and traditions was often labelled by commentators in the TDC annuals as "bad design." The TDC even introduced an "experimental design" section to its competitions, which encouraged change. Thus, if anything, one could argue that modern Canadian graphic designers of the 1950s and 1960s were somewhat postmodern in their views.<br />
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A pronounced fear of mass culture<br />
Donnelly also attacks the Marxist position that commodity production, including that of art, removes the qualitative element between people and things, and replaces it with quantities. Thus, the meaning of modern art is changed from something which is supposed to expand one's consciousness to the production of new commodities which can be sold. Their newness only entices people to buy them, they do not alter peoples' understanding of reality since the public is only looking to buy new things, not to alter the way they look at the world. They are invariably trapped in a commodified world, and the modern art, as an instrument of commodification, fails to challenge that position. Donnelly argues, however, that while mass culture does not often express resistance, it can. This is what he sees in modern design. It takes the form of mass culture but, as he notes above, from high-modernism, "suggesting the possibility of overcoming the fetishizing power which the commodity-form of production exerts on our lives." (p 133) Donnelly accuses Marxist theorists, such as George Lukacs , of refusing to recognize this possibility and continuing to only identify with high culture, seeing mass culture as only being a source of the commodity fetishism and alienating power. Donnelly argues that Lukacs and other Marxists' views of mass commodification fail to see that what they are describing is simply modernization, which brought with it a dramatic growth in commodities of both high and low artistic quality. They fail to see that the artistic drive, such as experimental design, behind much mass modernist culture does have a potential to change people's views of the world. <br />
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Use-value, and Benjamin: restoring the commodity's value<br />
This art could be the source of a new world. Lukacs and others fail to see that modern life is not necessarily only based upon a fetish for commodities, where art's use-value has been replaced by an exchange-value. Donnelly claims that this is actually impossible since, in the case of design, one must recognize that the exchange-value of anything is based upon its use-value. The most valuable design, that with the highest exchange-value, is that which is more pleasurable and/or communicates in new and more effective ways. In its continuing relationship with modern, industrial society, modern design is constantly trying to come to terms with it. It is constantly questioning via experimental design. Donnelly argues that it is continually trying to capture the experience of modern life, which, he argues, is the whole point of modernism. As an applied art, design tries to avoid the formalism and distance of high-art. "As a mass modernism, graphic design has become a powerful cultural tool and a valuable commodity form." (p 136)<br />
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"The pressure, ubiquity, and seeming lack of individuality in our mass media are the necessary counterpoint to modernization's simultaneous brutality, and to the success of its enormously expanded level of production.<br />
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Popular culture has been marginalized by the assumption that a crude, direct relationship necessarily exist between the alienated condition of workers as a mass audience, and their experience of things. But what has been missed is the extent to which an increasing attention to appearance, to image, and to design in our culture, is driven by the mass demand for heightened pleasure and experience. However we may characterize the `quality' of mass culture (borrowing traditional terms of social and class value and distinction), it is impossible to deny that an awareness of design, film, interior and furniture design, and the many other cultural forms of mass modernism has penetrated to the roots of our society." (page 137)<br />
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Donnelly concludes his chapter by noting that the constant demand for unique designed goods is a demand for a reaction to modernization. In a world which creates an abundance of similar commodities, or an expansion of production, modern design strives to create difference, or for a better visual experience.<br />
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CONCLUSION<br />
Donnelly ends his thesis by claiming that modern design emerged as a profession with the recognition that design was a conscious, self-critical aspect of the printing and publishing trades. While self-critical design had been claimed by the high arts, and was often confined to galleries and museums, many involved in the print, typography, and publishing industries recognized that they too engaged in design as part of their position in the creation of mass commodities. They thus began a process of differentiating themselves from fields such as advertising and typography, identifying what they did as being quite different from mechanical reproduction, typesetting, or decorative illustration. Through experimentation, analysis, and an understanding of the traditions and history of printing and typography, Canadian graphic designers created new ways, or a new language, of visual communication. Furthermore, through developing professional organizations they not only came to share their ideas, but encouraged the public to understand their work as being significant and legitimate. He also concludes that postmodernism and Marxist theory are wrong to claim that modernism has failed to offer alternatives to a consumption obsessed reality, but that modernism, including modern design, contains the creativity essential to suggest alternatives. This conclusion, however, as I mentioned above, is based on a misunderstanding of postmodernism.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-19370935274866747342011-11-22T15:51:00.000-08:002011-11-22T15:51:23.461-08:00Helvetica and the New York City Subway System<b><span style="font-size: small;">Paul Shaw, Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2010.</span></b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiARrQrzH51pJt-lnni72RFvuRaTa9L15p-0VR1BjER7m5Elo_Bn1werdM8u7Nq1YDFNouwa8cVstODZhlbccsVkbyr4xjLoD89TRuSSt9Xb96pi90L_Y5kI3rC2W_WO0dRr0iwgZ7Jqj8/s1600/mit.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiARrQrzH51pJt-lnni72RFvuRaTa9L15p-0VR1BjER7m5Elo_Bn1werdM8u7Nq1YDFNouwa8cVstODZhlbccsVkbyr4xjLoD89TRuSSt9Xb96pi90L_Y5kI3rC2W_WO0dRr0iwgZ7Jqj8/s320/mit.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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As explained by Paul Shaw in the introduction to his Helvetica and the New York City Subway System, the book is a history of the subway system, of transportation signage, of Unimark International (the company which produced the signage system in the 1960s), and of Helvetica. Contrary to popular belief, the new, modern signage in the New York City subway system, signage which was introduced in the late 1960s, was not always in Helvetica. Rather much of it was in Standard. The story about why this was the case begins with an overview of the development of the city's subway system, as well as its signage. Both the system, which was eventually composed by 1940 of an amalgamation of three different companies that had operated separate lines, and the signage were, what Shaw terms, "a labyrinth." There was little uniformity to the signage of the various systems, with different typefaces, colours, and sizes used throughout. Signage was maintained if it continued to fulfill a function, often regardless of whether it was inconsistent with other signs. <br />
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The problem of the mess of signage in the subway system was first raised in 1957 by George Salomon, a typographic designer at Appleton Parsons & Co. Submitting an unsolicited proposal to introduce a standardized signage system, colour-code the subway lines, and remove any distinctions between the three original subway company lines, his report was largely shelved by the New York City Transit Authority, with the exception of his subway map design. The map had been heavily based upon that of the London Underground by Henry Beck. However the NYCTA did not colour code each line, but only made the three original separate systems different colours. The map which was used also ignored Salomon's suggestion to only use the Futura typeface, which he believed was the most legible typeface available at the time.<br />
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While Solomon's suggestions were largely ignored, they predated interest in the 1960s among urban planners, architects, and graphic designers in systematic signage for cities, highways, airports, railways, and subways. 1960 saw the publication of Nicolete Gray's Lettering on Buildings and 1961 Mildred Constantine and Egbert Jacobson's Sign Language for Buildings and Landscapes. While Grey did not discuss transportation signage and Constantine and Egbert largely focused upon above-ground signage when discussing subway signs, these books marked a rise in the design community's interest in how locations and directions for unified systems are presented to the public, including a recognition that systematic and clear signage allows people to easily recognize that certain signs deal with the same subject or system, and are therefore are to be paid attention to if one is interested in that subject or using that system.<br />
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Shaw explains that one of the reasons why Gray, Constantine, and Egbert failed to focus upon subway signage as examples was that there existed few examples of subway systems which has a unified signage system. Indeed, the only standardized system was the London Underground, which had made use of the Johnston Railway Sans throughout its system since 1916.<br />
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The first transportation sign system to embrace the idea of standardization in the 1960s was the system for the Oceanic Building (now Terminal 3) of London's Heathrow Airport. The signage was simple, consisting of black letters on a white background, as well as arrows. The typeface was a modified version of Standard which is very similar to Helvetica, which the designers, Colin Forbes and Matthew Carter, did not know already existed. Elements of the signage system of the Oceanic Building were reproduced in other transportation sign systems of the 1960s, including that of the Milan Metro, designed by Bob Noorda. Aware of the existence of Helvetica, Noorda modified some of its letters to create a unique typeface which was used on standardized, easily readable and identifiable signs.<br />
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In 1965 Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert of Kinneir Calvert Associates produced the Rail Alphabet for British Railway in 1965, which was a modified version of Helvetica. It was packaged with new arrows and a new British Railways logo as the corporation's new corporate identity in 1965.<br />
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Other signage systems of the period included that for Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and the Boston subway system. All of these signage systems either made use of Helvetica or Helvetica-like typefaces, the Boston redesign being the first to use Helvetica without any modifications.<br />
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Following the 1964/5 Worlds Fair in New York, the NYCTA was embarrassed into doing something to improve the image and information of its graphics and signage. In 1964 a map competition was launched to design a more usable and understandable map which, like the London Underground map, made use of colours for the different lines. However, of the only nine maps submitted, none were chosen as a winner. The best of the nine was viewed as too complex to be used by the general public. A professor of engineering at Hofstra University, Prof. Stanley A. Goldstein, was then hired to design a usable map which would overcome the system's problems. Six months later he submitted a report which not only offered ideas about a new map, but suggested the redesign of the train designations, car information, and station information. While the NYCTA did not immediately follow his suggestions, the report did influence the eventual hiring of Unimark International to redesign the system.<br />
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A comparison of the London, Milan, and New York City subway signage systems was conducted in the September/October 1965 issue of Print magazine by the industrial designer William Lansing. Lansing attacked the New York signage as dirty and disorganized, while praising both London and Milan. Interestingly, no comparison was made of the newly redesigned Boston system. In particular, Lansing praised Noorda’s use of a modified grotesque in the Milan signage design.<br />
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Unimark International, an international design consultancy, was established in New York by a Milanese graphic designer, Massimo Vignelli, along with Ralph Eckerstrom. The idea behind the company was to unite American marketing to European modernist design. Other founding members included Bob Noorda (designer of the Milan Metro signage), Jay Doblin, James K. Fogleman, and Larry Klein. The former Bauhaus student, Herbert Bayer, worked as a consultant, a connection that gave legitimacy to the organization which was claiming to have modernist roots.<br />
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Soon after the firm was established, it was approached by the NYCTA to advise the authority on signage and to help assess Prof. Goldstein’s report. The idea for the authority to approach Unimark had been advanced by Mildred Constantine, who was the Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the MoMA. Not only had Constantine been interested in public signage for many years, publishing Sign Language for Buildings and Landscape in 1961, but she was familiar with the members of Unimark and their work. Submitting a report by September 1966, Unimark designed a new signage system for the New York system based on a study of several of the city’s major stations. The system used three different sizes of type for different levels of information, and the different lines were colour-coded, as Goldstein had suggested in his report. The new modular signage system conformed wit the demand of the NYCTA that no structural changes could be made to the system’s stations to accommodate new signage. Once presented, however, this new signage system was apparently forgotten by the NYCTA, which did not move to advance the adoption of the new signage system.<br />
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Not having the money to have Unimark create a proper sign manual and implement the new signage designs, the NYCTA planned to try and follow Unimark's suggestions and have their in-house sign shop create new signage. The result was an improperly implemented and designed sign system. Unimark was not even allowed to give additional guidance or advice. While the in-house sign makers were intent on making the signs themselves, they were not particularly concerned with how they would function as an all-encompassing sign system. While lack of money is the main explanation for why the TA would not let Unimark oversee the implementation of the signage recommendations, Shaw suggests the predetermined decisions and plans of the TA bureaucracy, labour union rules, and other political forces would have played a role. In particular, he suggests that the TA would not have likely been willing to upset the transit worker's union, which could help feed labour disruptions similar to that of January 1966.<br />
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The new signage was introduced, along with colour-coded maps, with the opening of the Chrystie Street Connection in November 1967. However, without being overseen by people who were principally interested in signage systems and how they helped people find their way, the introduction was a disaster. Confusion reigned. Many old signs had not been removed, and hand drawn cardboard signage had to be used to let commuters find their way. Not only were there not enough of the Unimark inspired signs, but the letters and signs on the trains did not match the new signs. It was not enough for the TA to just install some new signs, it required the entire sign system proposed by Unimark. Furthermore, a symposium on transportation graphics was held at the MoMA on Oct 23, 1967 which was attended by members of the Unimark staff. It was thus, quite clear to the NYCTA that their signage was inadequate. Thus, either in the fall of 1967 or early in 1968 Unimark was rehired to create comprehensive guidelines for signage production and installation. The NYCTA carried out a survey of its existing signage and determined how many new signs would be needed and where they should be placed according to the guidelines. By the end of June 1968, new signs had been installed at over 100 stations and old signs were removed.<br />
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As Shaw explains, the font used for the signage was Standard Medium, which, according to the Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual was shown by research to be the best sans serif which can be read at any angle. That research also allegedly showed that a quickly and easily read sign is best if it is in a regular sans serif. However, Vignelli, the main force behind Unimark, has claimed that he had wanted to use Helvetica for the NY subway, but that it was not available. Indeed, in the film Helvetica he claims that he had been a life-long fan of the font. Given this confusion, Shaw attempts to explain why Helvetica was not initially used by examining both the details of the subway design project and the availability of various fonts in the United States during the 1960s.<br />
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In his section on "The Myth of the Helvetica Juggernaut" Shaw attempts to clarify the reality of Helvetica in the US which many seem to have forgotten in the wake of the celebration of its 50th anniversary. He explains that during the 1960s, European typefaces were imported by only two companies. Amsterdam Continental and Bauer Alphabets. Bauer Alphabets was owned by Bauersche Giesserei of Frankfurt am Main, which had been established in New York since the 1920s and had been responsible for introducing Futura to the US. Amsterdam Continental was a subsidiary of Lettergieterij Amsterdam, and it carried fonts by Berthold, Stempel, Klingspor, Haas and Nebiolo, as well as those produced by Lettergieterij.<br />
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Amsterdam Continental had begun importing Standard in 1957, and Baur Alphabets responded by advertising Folio to the graphics design community. In response to these European companies, the American Type founders started importing Univers, which became machinetypeable on monotype machines in 1961. ATF was also selling its popular News Gothic and Franklin Gothis. Likewise, Mergenthaler Linotype began to advertise Trade Gothic. <br />
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Helvetica, however, was not designed until 1957, when it was created by the Hass foundry, conceived by Eduard Hoffmann, and drawn by Max Miedinger. It was licensed in 1960 by D. Stempel AG of Frankfurt and renamed Helvetica from the original Neue Hass Grotesk. Stemple produced the foundry type, while German Linotype made it available in matrices in light and medium. As Shaw suggests, this is likely why Noorda was not able to find a usable version of Helvetica for the Milan Metro in 1962 and had to alter elements of Helvetica to get the desired effect.<br />
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In the early 1960s fonts were not computerized, but were physical. They were either physical lead stamps which needed to be forged, or they were in composition versions, where they could be reproduced by graphic designers. Designers could only use what typefaces were locally available through printers or type houses. Importing forged type was expensive, and European type punches also needed to be customized to fit American printing presses. The only sans serifs which were widely available in the early 1960s were Futura, News Gothic, Franklin Gothic, Standard and Univers. If sizes were not available, or the right letter could not be found, designers sometimes needed to use combinations of fonts for their work. <br />
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Helvetica was introduced to the American market in 1963, announced through an advertisement in the November/December issue of Print magazine. However, the font was not instantly successful, partially because of technical problems. Introduced by Stemple's pica-point system and Linotype's matricies, the matricies did not align with American ones and could not be used. This problem was fixed in early 1964 when Mergenthaler Linotype began producing the font in the United States. However, only the 10 pt stamp version was released at first. Other sizes were not completed for another year. Furthermore, the Visial Graphics Corporation began offering new typefaces which were similar to Helvetica and which could be used on their Typositor system. In response, Mergenthaler began work on Linofilm Helvetica in 1965 for the Linofilm system, but did not complete it until 1967. <br />
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Helvetica did not become widely used in the US until the late 1960s, and it even took New York designers several years to begin using it regularly. The font was used in highly praised advertisements and designs by 1965, but these were largely those done by Unimark, the CCA in Chicago, and MIT.<br />
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In the case of Unimark, Vignelli had brought his love of Helvetica with him from Italy. He liked how the letters could be easily set close together. The font, which was increasingly available in different sizes and which could be used with a growing number of typeface printing systems, soon became the house font of Unimark and was widely used by its graphic designers. It was thought to be more harmonious, and thus pleasing, in design than its main rival, Standard, because all of the terminals ended at right angles.<br />
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In his section "Standard, Helvetica and the New York City Subway System", Shaw explains that by the time Unimark had gained its initial contract with the NYCTA in 1966 Helvetica was widely available in New York in a number of formats. However, the producers of the signs, the NYCTA's Bergan Street Sign Shop created its signs by hand and by silkscreening, and it also produced the artwork for porcelain enamel signs. (The signshop did not produce the porcelain enamel signs. That was done by an outside vendor, the Nelke Sign Manufacturing Corporation.) The NYCTA sign shop likely based the Standard hand-cut stencils upon either font books or the fonts supplied by outside typehouses. Many of those type houses would not have yet introduced Helvetica given both the expense and that most people cannot tell the difference between the two typefaces. In addition, at the time, no American type book included Helvetica in 1966.<br />
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In the initial attempt at introducing the new signage, the sign shop had tried to make the signs themselves by hand-cutting the stencils used for the signs and painting them by hand. This led to some letters being inconsistent.<br />
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Within Unimark, Noorda was not as committed to Helvetica as was Vignelli. This is evidenced by Noorda's use of what is often described as a modified version of Helvetica for the Milan Metro, but which could also be described as a modified version of Akzidenz Grotesk (Standard). Given that the New York sign system was heavily based upon Noorda's Milan system, Shaw suggests that the choice of Standard was made by Noorda and that Vignelli likely agreed given both the technical problems of obtaining and using Helvetica at the time, as well as the greater importance he likely placed upon having the sign system implemented than upon using a particular font. While the typeface could have been changed with the new contract of late 1967 or early 1968, Vignelli again likely placed more emphasis upon having the sign system implemented than changing the font. Furthermore, with some signs already made in Standard, changing the font would only have introduced more inconsistency. Shaw also notes that Vignelli had other opportunities to use Helvetica while at Unimark. He was commissioned to create a signage manual for the New York City Planning Department, as well as the Washington Metro. Both signage systems were created without the input of Noorda and both used Helvetica.<br />
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In 1968 the MNCTA was absorbed into the newly created and larger Metropolitan Transit Authority. The MTA announced plans to extend the New York City subway system and to beautify the city's stations. While this should have led to more standardized and widespread implementation of the Unimark signage system, that was not the case. Rather, in the early 1970s the city encountered financial difficulties, having to be saved from bankruptcy in 1975. This, combined with the size of the system, led to signs only being replaced on an ad hoc basis. by the late 1970s the signage system was still not standardized, but was a mixture of new signs, old signs, as well as inadequate signage.<br />
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Along with inadequate signage, the 1970s also saw the deterioration of the New York City subway system. Overcrowded and dirty, suffering from financial difficulties, and plagued by graffiti, the MTA did not concentrate upon improving signage, but rather, simply keeping the system from falling apart.<br />
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In 1975 a new subway map was commissioned which would replace the one designed by Vignelli only four years before. The reasons for the redesign was to produce a map which was more geographically accurate and which would indicate part-time service. The new map required changes to the colours on the rest of the systems signage, as well as the addition of new signage symbols. Introduced in 1979, the new signs differed from the Unimark signs designed in 1966 and codified in the 1970 design manual. Routes were now indicated by both circles and diamonds and the black line at the top of the signs was removed. However, the font was still Standard medium. The colours of the signs were also reversed, with the letters now being black on white. While Vignelli explains this change to have been done so as to more easily fix signs which are tagged, the MTA claimed that it had been done for reasons of legibility, a change which the MTA had been contemplating since 1972. All of these changes were made, by hand, in the original 1970 design manual. A significant addition to the manual was a note which said that for the route disks and diamonds (diamonds indicating routes which are only serviced at certain times), if a "J" is used, the Standard "J" was to be replaced by the Helvetica "J". This is the first reference to the use of Helvetica in the signage system.<br />
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Launched in 1979, it took most of the 1980s for the new signage system to be fully implemented. Again, this slow and confusing process was largely the result of budgetary constraints and the size of the subway system. However, an improving economy in the 1980s and capital investment programs meant that by the end of the decade most of the revised Unimark signs could be found throughout the system. In the interim sticker decals were often used to improve the visibility of many of the signs.<br />
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Another revised version of the Graphics Standards Manual was produced in 1984. More detailed and professional than the 1979 version, the manual did not announce any changes in the typeface to be used. However, several of the examples make use of Helvetica rather than Standard, and Shaw suggests that this may have resulted in some new signs being produced in Helvetica, although he admits that this has not been verified. Furthermore, the Bergan Street sign shop was not involved in the production of subway signs by this time. Rather, all sign designs were made by the hired signage consultants, Michael Hertz Associates, who had created the 1984 design guide. The signs were produced by outside porcelain enamel manufacturers.<br />
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In the section "Helvetica Infiltrates the New York City subway System" Shaw explains that the myth that Helvetica was widely used in the New York City Subway began with a 1976 article in the Village Voice by Leslie Savan, "This Typeface Is Changing your Life." In addition to incorrectly claiming that Vignelli was responsible for the signage system, she failed to explain the role of Unimark and conflated the MTA's signage and printed material, the latter of which typically did use Helvetica. She claimed that the system used a mixture of Standard and Helvetica throughout. <br />
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Shaw explains that the use of Helvetica in the MTA's printed material stemmed from it's 1973 "MTA Gets You There" campaign, which was designed to increase ridership. This material used a mixture, consciously or not, of Standard and Helvetica. Furthermore, Vignelli, who was largely devoted to Helvetica, had used the font on his 1974 subway map as well as for the text of the 1970 Graphics Standards Manual. While he has claimed that he simply "forgot" to use Standard, Shaw suggests that Vignelli purposefully chose Helvetica so as to try and introduce it into the signage system. He claims that the MTA likely did not complain about this inconsistency since Helvetica had appeared sporadically in various printed materials since 1967.<br />
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In 1989 a new graphics standard manual was produced for not just the subway system, but the entire MTA system. Produced for the MTA Marketing and Corporate Communications Division by Michael Hertz Associates, the manual specifically forbade the use of any other typeface other than Helvetica. It was praised by the MTA Chairman as a step towards a system-wide standardization of signage. Older signs were allowed to remain where they still functioned, but all new signs were to be in Helvetica.<br />
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Shaw questions why Helvetica would have been chosen as the official typeface in the 1980s. By that point the widespread usage of the font in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s had caused many to view it as boring, unoriginal, and uninspiring. Furthermore, the rise of postmodern design had caused many designers to recognize that claims that the modernist typeface was "neutral" or "rational" were simply one perspective, and that such claims to universally recognized qualities were untenable. <br />
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However, in response to these reasons why Helvetica would not have been a popular choice at the time, Shaw points out that by the 1980s several other elements of the MTA's operations, particularly commuter rail lines, were already in Helvetica. A second reason for its adoption is that MTA busses increasingly had LED displays, which made the use of neither Helvetica not Standard possible. Finally, the design options for sign design were much broader by the late 1980s than they had been in the 1960s, but these options no longer easily allowed for the use of Standard. There existed a wide array of means by which signs could be designed, including computer based systems. Yet, the only typeface which was available on all of these systems (possibly because of its over-use in the 1970s) was Helvetica. Standard had largely disappeared as a widely available design typeface.<br />
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While officially introduced in 1989, the true Helveticization of the subway system did not occur until 1992 when a multi-year station renovation program was introduced that included systematically identifying older signage and replacing it with newer versions. Shaw concludes his book by noting that the Unimark signage, now sporting Helvetica rather than the original Standard (a change which would likely have been originally preferred by Vignelli) is now as much an integral part of the New York subway system's visual identity as the original mosaic signs.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-64161714752304069372011-11-22T14:23:00.000-08:002011-11-22T14:25:59.801-08:00Making "Pictures in Our Heads / Jonathan W. Rose<b><span style="font-size: small;">Johnathan W. Rose, <i>Marking "Pictures in Our Heads": Government Advertising in Canada</i>, Westport (CT): Praeger, 2000.</span></b><br />
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Jonathan Rose is a professor of political science at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario).<br />
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Rose begins his introduction by explaining that his book is concerned with the increasing frequency with which governments use advertising as a means of persuading the public of the acceptability and desirability of policies. Rather than listening to and acting in the best interests of the public, he argues that politicians are using advertising and advertising strategies to sell the public pre-packaged ideas. He claims that the use of such advertising tools suggests that there are significant problems in how governments communicate complex issues to the public. If complex issues are only presented in short, simplistic advertisements, Rose suggests that the public's understanding of their increasingly complex government institutions and the government's policies will likely be jeopardized. Such advertising does not aim to fully inform the public, but rather to persuade it to support a particular position without being properly informed. The manipulation of words, sounds, and images, so as to conjure particular emotional responses and convince the public to support a policy, does not encourage independent or critical thought.<br />
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In particular, Rose's book is concerned with how the federal government of Canada is (as of 2000) and has used advertising to sell ideas and policies to the public. While this method of attempting to bypass parliamentary debate and appealing directly to the public, which some have argued is merely a form of direct democracy, raises questions about the health and functionality of our parliamentary system, Rose is more concerned about how the use of 30 second advertisements destroys the relationship between governments and the public. Policies are no longer things that are to be explained to the public, but things which can be sold to the public in the same way fast-food is sold, and by using the same semiotic techniques of manipulation so as to appeal to basic human instincts. Advertisements are designed to increase compliance with government policies while discouraging real conversation concerning issues, both because they discourage people from asking questions about the policy though the use of semiotic tools and the lack of opposing positions, and because the medium removes the possibility of conversation.<br />
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Such government advertising is not restricted to election campaigns, and it does not always need to be about specific policies. Rather, government advertising which is ostensibly about non-political events acts to create an association between support or rejection of those events and the party in power. For example, a government advertisement praising the nation's athletes at an Olympic games or the military suggests that the party in power supports those groups since people identify the government of Canada with the political party which currently forms the government.<br />
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Thus, Rose's two major concerns throughout his book are 1) that the increasing use of advertizing to talk about politics debases our political system and our position as citizens, and 2) that scholars' and commentators' comments about the pervasiveness of advertising, including government advertising, ignores questions about how such ads actually manufacture consent. While spending more than any other advertiser in Canada, Rose notes that the federal government's advertising campaigns are only ever regularly attacked during election campaigns, and then only when government advertisements are seen as obviously biased in favour of the governing party. While there is often a general complaint that the advertisements are a form of propaganda, any analysis usually only takes one of two forms. The first are complaints about the cost of the ads and how public funds are being used for political ends. The second is usually about when the ads were broadcast during the campaign, and whether such timing was an obvious attempt to manipulate the public. However, all such analysis, while discussing whether the ads are effective, typically ignores the linguistic, visual, and audio devices and methods used to make the ad effective.<br />
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In the second section of the introduction concerning Rose's "Method of Study" he explains that his book looks at government advertising from the perspective of how such ads make use of semiotics and rhetoric. He then goes on to explain semiotics as being the study of signs (be they visual, textual, audible, olfactory, etc.) and how those signs are understood by the audience. All advertising consists of combinations of such signs. Each sign is chosen and used in combination with others so as to produce a particular response from the audience, and thus, communicate a particular message. That message, or the way those signs are interpreted, depends upon what the signs represent to the audience members, which can be different for any one individual, although members of the same culture tend to have the same, or at least similar, understandings of the same signs. Without shared cultural assumptions the meaning of the message may be lost on the audience. Semiotics is the attempt to study both the signs employed and their meaning for the target audience so as to understand the intended meaning of the message. This approach tends to focus more upon the individual receiving the message than the person or group transmitting it, since it is the interpretation by the audience which is in question, not the assumptions made by the creator of the message about the audience. Rhetoric, however, is the study of the tools employed by the sender of the message. Rose states that his book employs both rhetoric and semiotics to try and understand both what tools governments and their advertising agencies use to transmit specific messages (rhetoric), as well as why those messages are interpreted in specific ways by their audience (semiotics). He recognizes that neither approach to the examination of message creation or interpretation can ever offer objective findings, and thus explain exactly what either the creator or receiver of the messages were thinking, but they offer informed explanations about what was likely to have been thinking, and thus, show the interaction and process of message creation between the sender and receiver. To understand the interpretation of government advertising, Rose uses both the advertisements as well as a contextual/historical understanding of the culture/audience. These are then discussed in the light of semiotic analysis. The intended meaning, or the thinking behind the advertisements creation, is understood by both examining the ads themselves, as well as archival material which gives some information as to the intention of the government. Likewise, this evidence is then examined in the light of studies on the use and effectiveness of rhetoric.<br />
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Rose next offers a more detailed explanation of rhetoric and its use in advertising. Rhetoric is the art of using discourse, or some other meaningful sign, to inform, persuade, or motivate an audience in a particular way. It is based upon understanding the available means of persuasion in a particular context. Aristotle considered it to be the counterpart to both logic and politics, in that it is not based upon reason or debate.<br />
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Rose notes that for Aristotle there are two kinds of logical reasoning, deductive and inductive proof. Inductive proof relies upon examples, while deductive proof relies upon syllogistic or enthymatic arguments. Syllogistic arguments are those where both the major and minor premises are stated, and upon those a conclusion is formed. For example: A=B, B=C, therefore A=C. In the case of enthymemes, however, one of the premises is not explicitly stated and the conclusion relies upon its assumption by the audience. To illustrate this, Rose uses the example of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, where only one of two premises are explicitly stated. Dr. King stated that African-Americans were pursuing their fight for civil rights in a non-violent manner (premise), as well as the conclusion that God will allow that dream to be realized (conclusion). What he leaves out is the premise that God looks favourably upon, and rewards those who use non-violence. This premise is implied given the cultural background of his audience. As Aristotle noted, this form of enthymeme is the most effective because it involves the audience in the logical process. That the audience can provide the missing premise gives the audience a sense of having some kind of inside, or privileged, knowledge, and that they can supply it and complete the reasoning of the argument creates a sense of connection to and ownership of the supplied conclusion. They are made to feel smart in figuring out, or making sense of, the supplied conclusion. What is ignored, however, is whether the supplied or assumed premises are wrong, or if the supplied conclusion is wrong. Where as a syllogism simply leaves the audience to think about the supplied premises and conclusion, the enthymeme introduces an element of self-satisfaction or self-congratulation, which discourages the audience from challenging the premises or the conclusion.<br />
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For Aristotle, rhetoric was neither good nor bad, but was the legitimate way that anyone could persuade another of truths. Plato, by contrast, believed that rhetoric was merely a means of trickery, and that truth could not be arrived at through persuasion but through dialectic and arriving at certainties and transcendental truths. <br />
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A commonly used tool of rhetoric are symbols. They can be visual, audible, textual, etc. In the case of speech, commonly used phrases such as "time is money" are often used as rhetorical tools in that they are often understood by the receiver to be true since they are used so often in an unquestioning manner. Making a logical connection between such symbols and something else of which the speaker is attempting to convince the receiver will thus strengthen the speaker's persuasiveness since the assumed truth of the rhetorical symbol will suggest the truth of that which he/she is associating with it. In the case of the government, associations between the flag (which is commonly understood to be something which citizens should respect) and the governing party or one of its policies implies that, since a good Canadian respects the flag, a good Canadian should also respect and approve of the associated party or policy.<br />
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Rose explains that the way in which such symbols are used can be understood in terms of "tropes." A trope is a situation where words, or images, or some other signs, are used in a sense other than their literal meaning. As Rose notes, according to Burke, there are four main kinds of tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Rose argues that these four kinds of tropes "can be thought of as the linguistic building blocks of rhetoric." (page 9)<br />
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Metaphor is a literary sign which is used to represent a less sensible thing, quality, or idea. It is thus a figure of speech which attempts to describe one thing by forming an association between it and something else. Thus, the sentence "His financial advice is rock solid" tries to form an association between a person's financial forecasting abilities and the strength and stability of a rock.<br />
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Metonymy is a figure of speech where something is not referred to by its real name, but by something which is often associated with it. For example, "Detroit" is often used to refer to the American automotive industry, or "Ottawa" is used to refer to the federal government of Canada.<br />
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Synecdoche is a figure of speech where part of something is used to refer to the whole, or where the whole is used to refer to a part. An example would be "Canadians win world series," where the team that won the baseball tournament was the Toronto Blue Jays, but the whole country is used to refer to the baseball team, or part of that country. The implied message, however, is that all Canadians should feel proud because a part of that country won the baseball tournament.<br />
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Finally, irony is a literary device where the literal meaning of a statement is the opposite of its intended meaning. For example, saying "I'm so sorry" when it is clear that one is not, would suggest to the receiver that the sender is indeed not sorry and wishes to clearly indicate so while also saying the very opposite.<br />
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While often thought of in terms of words, all four of these tropes can be seen in the use of images, sounds, and other symbols. They are the basic tools of rhetoric. How symbols (tropes or not) are put together, is centrally important to advertisements which rely upon forming the correct images in the minds of the audience in a small amount of time. How these signs are interpreted by the audience is the realm of semiotics. While the sign (or the signifier) can be intended to mean one thing, the received meaning (the signified) can be something completely different. The meaning of the signifier depends upon the worldview of the person who is exposed to it. Placed out of context, or devoid of some argument explaining its meaning, the sign will not stand for anything other than what it is.<br />
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Given the tools of rhetoric, tropes, and semiotics, Rose claims that his book will show (1) that ho scholars and the media discuss government advertising is too narrow and does not examine important questions about our democracy, and (2) that one can clearly show how symbols are used in government advertising and why then they can be understood to be contentious. Rose does recognize that not all government advertising works, and that some of it is viewed as being largely uncontroversial. Ads which promote exercise or safe driving, or ads where the link between the visual and the argument cannot be challenged are typically understood to be harmless. These ads are often referred to as "hard sells" because they do not try to manipulate, but state the facts, which can be unpleasant or uncomfortable. <br />
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However, other ads do work and are intended to manipulate the public. An example are those which use enthymemes, where one of the premises of the argument is left out for the audience to fill it in. This is often the strategy for contentious advertising campaigns since, with the absence of one of the premises, the ad appears to only be supplying the audience with information rather than making a contentious argument and attempting to persuade the audience. Advertisements for products of policies which are not contentious and/or have widespread support often do not use enthymemes, since the advertiser does not need to manipulate the public for support, but merely needs to remind the public of the issue which it already supports. However, as Rose's case studies will show, advertisements for contentious products or policies make greater use of signs or symbols (verbal and non-verbal) which the audience needs to actively decode.<br />
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Chapter One<br />
Rose begins his first chapter by recognizing that all governments make use of communication with the public to either increase both the public's participation in public debate and its understanding of government services, or to manipulate the public to accept the policies and practices of the state. Borrowing from American political commentator, Walter Lippmann, Rose notes that one's understanding of the complex world often relies upon images one either creates of that world or which are given to one to use in forming decisions about the world. One's decisions are often not based upon true knowledge about the world, but upon images which are given to him/her. In the case of governments, the image which the public has of a government is often the image that the government has provided for the public to see.<br />
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In looking at how government's communicate, Rose does admit that some communication is sometimes intentional, sometimes subconscious, that it is sometimes made through words, sometimes through actions, and sometimes through images or symbols, but it always transmits information from one person to another. However, in the case of government communication, he asserts that it is always purposive and is always intended to, "elicit some behavioral or attitudinal change on the part of the public. communication by the government, therefore, is never 'innocent' in the sense of merely providing information or responding to public demand." (p 21) Furthermore, the messages given by the government can vary according to the groups to whom the messages are targeted. These different messages can also be provided via a number of different media. In our current age, advertising may have replaced politicians as the main means of communication between the government and the citizenry.<br />
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Whether advertising - a form of largely one-way communication - is an appropriate means for governments to communicate with the public can be influenced by the way in which one views the role of the government. If one takes the position of Edmond Burke, government is the elected representative of the people and should, once elected, be allowed to guide the public. It should not have to listen to the constantly changing views of the public and form policy to match those changing views. Thus, for a Burkean, government advertising can be used to guide and create public support of government policy. However, if one understands the role of government to be to reflect the opinion of the public (John Locke), than the legitimacy of government advertising is harder to accept. If the role of the government is to represent the current dominant views of society, then it should not be the role of the government to try and change the opinions of the public. According to Rose, the true test as to whether a particular government advertisement is legitimate it whether both those who take the Burkean position and those who feel that government should be the delegate of the people both view the advertisement a s legitimate and acceptable.<br />
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Rose also notes that while political advertisements may use both metaphor (use of an image to represent a less tangible quality or thing), metonymy (where something is not called by its own name but by something closely associated with it), and the other tools of rhetoric to communicate both implicit and explicit messages, the advertisements also say something about how both the speaker's the audience's view of reality at the time. If the audience does not misinterpret the meaning of the advertisement, or does not disagree with it, then the issue is not political. If, however, there is conflict, then at least parts of the audience do not agree with the view of reality offered by the speaker.<br />
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At the end of his section on "How Governments Advertise" Rose points out the benefits of analyzing advertising through both rhetoric and semiotic so as to gain some insight into how the meaning of an advertisement is created, and thus, how government advertising does, r in some cases does not work, to give governments power and legitimacy. He writes that, "Semiotics will help understand how meaning is understood by the receiver given the context of the communications. The rhetoric embedded in the communications plan, advertising strategy, and focus group results all provide us with some evidence of the goals of each advertising campaign and therefore tell us much about the intentions of the communicator. Rhetoric also provides an opportunity to explore the caliber and style of argumentation. It assumes that effective persuasion is dependent upon the organization of arguments." (p 25)<br />
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In his section "The Need For Government Communication" Rose notes that communication with the public is necessary for a government to maintain its legitimacy. This legitimacy is held if the public believes that the government is correct in its decisions and policies. Furthermore, legitimacy is required for a stable state. In the case of a government which is responding to the needs of the public, communication is needed so that the government can keep the public informed of what it is doing and how it is reacting to its concerns. However, communication can also be used to try and convince the public of the legitimacy of its actions, which may not be the desire of, or in the best interests of, the public. As advertising has come to play a larger role in government communication to the public, its tools of communication and persuasion have also been employed to show or convince the public that the government is acting in the public's best interests. <br />
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In his section on "The Role of Myths in State Communication" Rose notes that myths are a commonly used trope of government communication. These are signs which have one meaning and which are imbued with a greater secondary meaning. For example, the slogan "Je me souviens" reduces all Quebec history to the conquest of 1759. This is a form of Synecdoche, where a part is used to refer, or stand, for the whole. A single battle, or the suffering of particular individuals at particular times is used to refer to all of Quebec history. Mythic symbols and concepts are used to distract one's attention, or to give one an easy simplistic concept which stands in for highly complex situations. In one sense, the role of government communication is to create and spread myths about the nation. Some become so pervasive that they cease to be questioned. These myths say something about who we, as a group, are and what we stand for. However, all such myths are ideological, since they are all purposefully crafted. Furthermore, the myths help justify the agendas of governments, in that governments tend to perpetuate myths which are in line with their actions and policies.<br />
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In discussing how and when the government should use advertising to communicate with the public, Rose suggests that one could view the government as simply one voice creating myths, and that it is also one which can be countered and critiqued by the media. However, he also notes that the problem with such a view is that the government is often the loudest voice among many. Furthermore, it is the voice which regulates both other advertisers and the media. What is more, if one believes that the state has an obligation to communicate with its public so as to educate the public about the actions of the government, the role of the state, and how the public can benefit from state programs and participate in the democratic system, one must also acknowledge that governments often rationalize biased communication as being educational in character. The public is informed of the wisdom of the actions and policies of the government even when educating the public of these facts are not necessary but only serve to improve the public's perception of the government.<br />
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In his section on "The Administrative Imperative" Rose examines the argument that there are appropriate times at which the government should communicate with the public through advertising. The advertisement of new or updated policies could be seen as ensuring that all of the public has access to government services. This was one of the findings of the government's 1969 Task Force on Government Information. Information Canada was established so as to give the public access to information from and about the government to the population. Quoting from the 1992 Treasury Board Manual on Communications, Rose notes that the current communications rationale of the government is that advertising is used to rationalize the dissemination of government information. The manual states that good communications is essential for a functioning representative government, and that it is necessary for the achievement of government objectives. While, theoretically, this communication is to be two-way and is supposed to further the public's access to information, the reality is quite different. Not only can actions be taken to delay access to information, but how information is given to the public is not necessarily via a two-way communication and it may be biased in favour of government policies which are questionable in their being for the benefit of the public.<br />
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While the Task Force on Government Information was largely concerned with advertising to help the public gain better access to government services, Rose notes that there are other kinds of government advertising. In particular, he points out that there are generally three kinds of commercial government advertisements. These include ads for competitive government products (such as government savings bonds), ads for crown corporations, and ads for lotteries. By being commercial advertisements the purpose of such ads is to compete with the private sector, not to disseminate political propaganda. While certain tropes will be used in such ads, their primary purpose is to sell a product which the private sector is also trying to sell. However, where there is no competition for the market, then one cannot claim that the advertising has a purely commercial orientation. While such ads do have a function, it cannot be argued that it has anything to do with the administration of democracy.<br />
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In his section on the creation of "Political Culture" being an explanation for government advertising, Rose notes that in the creation and cementing of symbols and myths which resonate with the public, government is consciously trying to unify the population, all be it in a manner which accords with government ideology. However, the success of such myths or symbols depends upon the myth or symbol being closely tied to its referent. Once the primary and secondary meaning of the myth or symbol are separated, thus not seen as being obviously tied together, the symbol or myth may come to be seen as representing something other than what was intended. An example given by Rose is the fleur-de-lis. "For Quebeckers, the symbol of the fleur-de-lis may signify the historic struggle for Quebec culture and the importance of Quebec nationalism; for members of the Reform party, the same symbol may epitomize the domination of Quebec in political matters." (p 38) <br />
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While in the US, the bulk of government advertising expenditure is for administrative purposes (largely the Postal Service, the Army, and Amtrack), in Canada, the government not only spends proportionally much more, its expenditures have (in the 1990s) traditionally been concerned with national unity. Furthermore, Information Canada and Canadian Access to Information legislation were designed to allow for the public to have access to information in a timely manner, and so that the government could hear from the public when members of the public wished to voice their concerns about public administration. Furthermore, the CBC has been another example of encouraging communication between the government and citizens, and between citizens themselves. Thus, in Canada, governments have been involved in creating and enriching political culture more than the US government, and thus, Canadians have a certain tolerance for government communications. Rose will show how this tolerance for government communication can be manipulated for political ends, which, possibly because of the tolerance for government communications, is not criticized as much as could be the case for not just the expense, but the manner in which such seemingly unbiased communication, can be used to persuade and manipulate the public.<br />
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While this second chapter showed the different kinds of possible government advertisements and the kinds of reasons for which they could or should be made, Rose's subsequent chapter show what kinds of advertisements have been made over Canada's history and what kinds have been viewed by the public as acceptable or not, and why (semiotics).<br />
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Chapter Two<br />
Rose begins his second chapter by noting that while some work has been done on the history of commercial advertising, including advertising by political parties, little has been done on government advertising. Governments use advertising to not only inform the public about policies and actions, but to "communicate their successes, reward newspapers for favorable coverage, respond to opposition attacks in the press, or engage in foreign affairs." (page 45) The chapter examines, briefly, the history of government advertising in Canada from confederation up to 1976, when Information Canada was dissolved. These advertising campaigns have evolved from attempts to sell immigration to the west or for support of the war effort in the two World Wars, to sophisticated campaigns to sell federalism, government policies, or the virtues of being Canadian, all tested and designed with focus groups and input from experts human persuasion. <br />
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While Rose does mention several examples of preconfederation advertising by colonial governments of British North America, he begins his examination of Canadian government advertising with Ottawa's program to promote settlement in the Canadian west. Especially under the Department of Interior's direction of Clifford Sifton, Canada launched a calculated campaign to attract specific kinds of immigrants to the Canadian west. Focusing upon white settlers from Britain and the United States, as well as white central and eastern Europeans, the government produced literature in numerous languages, travelling lantern slide shows, and speaking tours which not only provided information in the language of the target audience, but even in a manner which would be understood as acceptable. In the case of the United States, literature was produced using American spelling. In Britain, the literature stressed the high numbers of English-speakers settling the west, so as to dispel British fears that the Canadian west was full of non-English settlers. What is more, the government's advertising campaign, while being overly optimistic and avoiding words like "cold" or "snow", but speaking of the favourable and invigorating weather of the country, was not opposed by the opposition for its substance. The opposition largely only criticized the campaign for its effectiveness relative to its cost.<br />
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Rose next examines Canada's advertising efforts during the First World War, focusing upon both the motivations of the government, in selling War Bonds and fostering support for the war, and the tactics employed to further these ends, including both appeals to negatives views of the enemy, patriotism, and emotional appeals. He then addresses the notion that such advertising can be viewed simply as a form of propaganda, or advertising designed to convince the public of the wisdom and acceptability of particular government positions or actions. He notes that these first large scale efforts at government propaganda were replicated in the Second World War, however, with the benefit of the developing social sciences which focused upon how and why particular groups of people tended to act and react to particular phenomena in certain ways. Advertising was carefully designed to appeal to specific groups of Canadians in particular ways so as to further the government's war effort. What is more during the war and interwar years the federal government not only grew in size, becoming increasingly responsible for providing public services, but it developed new means of communicating with the public. The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission was established in 1932, replaced by the CBC in 1936. In 1939 the National Film Board was also established in order to make informational documentaries, including films designed to both inform the public about the war effort and convince the public of the success and just position of the nation.<br />
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The beginning of the war also saw the creation of the Bureau of Public Information, the first dedicated wartime information department. However, due to problems with its political legitimacy, it was replaced by the Wartime Information Board, which, after the war, became the Canadian Information Service. The purpose of the WIB and the CIS was to ensure that Canadians within the country and abroad were given necessary, clear, and accurate information about the government and the nation. After the war, the CIS, created in 1945, was foremost charged with creating and distributing references and information to Canadian representatives abroad. Criticized, not for the details of its work, but for its cost, the CIS was soon (1947) transferred to the Department of External Affairs to create and coordinate the provision of information about Canada and the Canadian government to officials at Canadian embassies throughout the world. However, the CIS was really just an interim measure as other departments (including Transport, Labour, Health, and Veterans Affairs, developed their own information services. Furthermore, the CBC news service and Radio-Canada's news services and reach had become important new tools of government communications strategy.<br />
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Rose begins his section "The Post-War Ear and Beyond: Decentralization and Diffusion" by noting that there were two reviews of government information services during the 1960s, the Glassco Commission and the Task Force on Government Information. Reporting in 1962, the Glassco Commission (or the Royal Commission on Government Organization) found that federal government information was not centrally planned and uncoordinated. Unlike in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, there was no central direction as to how government information was presented. Rather, different departments had their own, separate communications programs. The commission was not solely interested in the delivery of government information, but the organization of government in general. However, it found that in providing government information the various departments were entering contentious territory in that by not being consistent, the departments opened themselves up to charges of inconsistency and contradiction. It also stressed that controversy could arise in the advertising of departmental services in an inconsistent and uncoordinated manner.<br />
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The Task Force on Government Information reported in 1968, and while, unlike the Glassco Commission, it did had little to say about government advertising, it did report on the government's ability to coordinate information activities, projects to gather information on the concerns of Canadians, and to ensure the use of both official languages so as to strengthen national unity. Where the task force did discuss advertising, it viewed it as an efficient and good way to communicate information to the public. Moreover, however, it recommended the establishment of a centralized agency to coordinate and standardize the production and provision of government information. What Rose finds particularly striking is the task force's belief that government would not abuse its information gathering or provision powers, including in its use of advertising. Rather, it viewed advertising as tool that could simply assist in spreading messages intended to unify the country.<br />
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The main recommendations of the task force were: <br />
1) To increase the public's understanding of government legislation, programs, and services.<br />
2) The better explain the functioning and structure of government administration.<br />
3) To promote the public's use of cultural institutions and the public's attending of cultural events.<br />
4) To encourage both individuals and businesses to act to help serve various social objectives, which, unfortunately, the task force never defined.<br />
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Secondary recommendations included: <br />
1) Recruiting good candidates for the civil service.<br />
2) Increasing tourism advertising.<br />
3) Advertising for semi-commercial ends, including the promotion of available goods such as new stamps, coins, or government publications.<br />
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The task force had been struck just as the government was preparing to pass the Official Languages Act, and during the Quiet Revolution, when unity of Canada was threatened and when the federal government desperately needed to be understood to be a unified and strong presence in the country and not a disorganized or uncoordinated institution. As part of this desire to appear coordinated and unified the government made good use of the centennial celebrations in 1967 to not only mark a symbolic event in the nation's history, but to emphasize the importance of federalism. Through symbols, music, and events, Ottawa attempted to give the appearance of being coordinated, attractive, and even leading the world by example in its hosting of the Expo67.<br />
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Rose notes that two of the influential federal symbols created during this period were the Canada Wordmark and the federal government logo (the bar and leaf logo). The letter of these was attacked at the time for looking very similar to the federal Liberal Party logo of the period. While the wordmark and the federal government symbol are used to stand for the institution, as in the case of corporations, they are also used in order to give legitimacy to allegedly non-political things, like Olympic uniforms or national birthday celebrations. Thus, they have a dual function. Furthermore, their use suggests information from bureaucrats who are only interested in fulfilling their assigned tasks, but they can also be used to give legitimacy to policies of the party in power, which is effectively the government.<br />
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Rose claims that by using the Wordmark as the logo for the federal government of Canada, the wordmark came to represent all of the products, services, and functions of the federal government. It was used to market and legitimize government action. The use of such a registered trademark in such a way indicated the federal government's wholesale embrace of the tactics of successful brand marketing.<br />
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Established the year after Expo 67, the Task Force on government Information recommended the establishment of Information Canada. Created in 1970, this organization was, according to the PM, supposed to: promote cooperation between federal government departments and agencies, to coordinate departmental policies across the government, and to more effectively learn about the concerns and needs of Canadians. However, as quoted in Robert Everett's thesis "Information Canada and the Politics of Participation" (1990), Trudeau believed that the real job of Information Canada was to sell the Government of Canada and its policies to the public, making use of all available technical means. This differed from the statement of the Treasury Board, which echoed the Prime Minister's official statement, by claiming the Information Canada was supposed to, "a) to ensure that federal government programs and policies are examined; b) to provide information feedback from Canadians to the government; c) to co-ordinate federal information campaigns and assist departments."<br />
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While allegedly supposed to not only disseminate government information, but to act as a means by which the public could voice their opinions, Rose explains that Information Canada was never allowed to actually fulfill its purpose of allowing for true participatory democracy. While advertisements for the government offered toll-free telephone numbers and tear-back forms to allow the public to voice their opinions, there never was any real dialogue between citizens and the government. Rather, the government followed its own agenda, regardless of any of the feedback it received.<br />
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During the first half of the decade two government reports found problems with Information Canada and its ability to fulfill its mandate of encouraging participatory democracy. The report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance found that while information Canada could provide information to the public, it was unable to assess public attitudes towards government programs since it could not force people to become interested in government policies or to discuss them. The second report was by the Privy Council Office, and which was concerned with information provision and protection, found the terms of reference for Information Canada were unclear, that it had weak relationships with different departments, that it could not direct and control the flow of government information, and that it did not have well trained staff members. <br />
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Rose assesses the organization as having bureaucratic and administrative problems, as is outlined y both reports, but also as having been seen by the public as little more than a propaganda office of the federal government, the media and public often referring to it as "PropCan." Furthermore, the notion that Information Canada could justify their advertising and publicity budgets through its ability to use advertising and publicity to gain feedback from the public was ill founded. Advertising and publicity rarely functions well as a feedback mechanism, but is typically a form of one-way communication. As is explained in Rose's second chapter, feedback is much more efficiently and effectively gained through public opinion polling and focus groups.<br />
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While the Trudeau government gave in to opposition pressure and criticism to close Information Canada by the end of 1976, Rose notes that the department may have had some positive qualities. He argues that it did offer the government a unified and centralized office which was attempting to coordinate government information, which is essential to a government which is attempting to offer an image of organization and coordination. Furthermore, being created at a time of growing separatist sentiment in Quebec, it may have played a role in reducing the attraction of separatism by offering information about the alternative position. However, concerning this latter point, Rose also notes that it is almost impossible to tell the effectiveness of any adverting campaign compared to other factors which could influence people's choices. Yet, Information Canada did act as a precursor to the Canadian Unity Information Office (CUIO), which the government would open in 1977 to counter the threat of separatism by both communicating information to the public and allegedly listening to its ideas and concerns.<br />
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Drawing conclusions from his overview of Canadian government advertising from confederation to 1976, Rose argues that the advertising campaigns of the wars were not seen as politically controversial since most of the country's federal politicians agreed with the purpose of the ads. The same can be said for the western settlement campaigns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although there was some debate over the efficiency of those campaigns. The same cannot be said for information Canada or the role it played in countering Quebec separatism. The latter being a more controversial campaign, it tended to make less use of hard-sell advertising tactics, recognizing that such a blunt approach would likely result in criticism from separatist forces. Campaigns with more widespread support can make use of ethical or emotional tactics of persuasion, while contentious campaigns use rational means of persuading the public. The rational approach appears more neutral and objective, and thus, less open to accusations of manipulation. Furthermore, non-contentious campaigns tend to make use of more provocative visual images, where as more informational images as well as text tend to be used in more contentious campaigns.<br />
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Chapter Three<br />
In his third chapter, Rose examines the structure of government advertising, and how it is both highly centralized and controlled. Up to the 1960s this was not the case, which resulted in uncoordinated campaigns. In examining the production of government advertising campaigns, Rose looks at both how federal advertising campaigns are organized and coordinated within government, but also the role of advertising agencies. Rose shows through his examination that there has been an increase in both the centralization of the federal government's advertising programs, as well as a greater reliance upon private advertising agencies to both produce the campaigns, but also make use of tactics which have been produced for corporate advertising campaigns to sell products. He suggests that these trends could be detrimental to the real purposes of government.<br />
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Government policy, and thus the policies which are behind advertising campaigns, are coordinated by the Privy Council Office, which implements the communications needs of the cabinet. The decisions about how advertising contracts are to be made and how such policy and advertising decisions are going to be implemented by various government departments are made by the Communication Coordination Services Branch of Public Works and Government Services Canada. however, the details about the content of the advertisements and the tools and approaches used are typically made by the advertising agencies hired to produce the ads. Thus, the advertising agencies can affect the message of the ads and the norms and codes employed. These agencies typically use the same language, codes, and approaches used in government advertising which are employed in commercial advertising. However, Rose argues that the use of the same tactics to sell products as policies or political platforms results in "a debasement of the political process and a denigration of our political vocabulary." (page 80)<br />
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within the government the office with has formal authority over government communications is the Privy Council Office, and particularly its Communications Secretariat, which is to a) advise government organizations of the priorities and themes which are to be reflected in their communications, b) provide government-wide communications leadership, c) as well as collect information on the public so as to advise the Prime Minister. In addition, the Treasury Board approves all government policies on communications and also reviews all advertising expenditures for all departments. It reviews all advertising expenditure request and evaluates whether they accord with the government's declared priorities.<br />
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The centralization of government advertising and policy management began in the 1960s with the recommendations of the 1968 Task force on Government Information, including the recommendation for the creation of Information Canada. Thus, the PCO and the Treasury Board advertising responsibilities are largely concerned with ensuring that the government's advertisements are coherent and consistent. Furthermore, there exists a Cabinet Committee on Communications. this committee was formed under Prime Minister Trudeau and is now used for cabinet ministers to create coordination in the communications, including advertising, between their different departments and agencies. However, this committee is not always used and depends upon the extent to which its chair is interested in ensuring such coordination. This committee allegedly approves the testing and release of all advertising and public service announcements. This is done through communications plans which are attached to all cabinet documents. The plans consist of background information on the policy, any public opinion research on the policy, any other public responses to the policy, as well as an outline of the advertising which will be required for the policy. The committee's most important task, however, is approving general communications plans at the beginning of each year, and one of the main jobs of the chair is to ensure that the activities of each of the ministers reflects the communications plan agreed upon each year. This is particularly important in a world where ministers are often interested in ensuring the support of particular groups who are effected by their departments or agencies. Ministers do not like delivering bad news, and will avoid it if it could harm their future electoral fortunes. However, the Prime Minister needs to ensure that all of his ministers are speaking with one voice and that that voice accords with agreed upon government policy. <br />
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The decisions of the Cabinet Committee on Communications are implemented by the Privy Council Communications Secretariat. By coordinating and keeping abreast of the various communications efforts of the government, the Privy Council Communications Secretariat allows the Prime Minister and the cabinet to be easily kept abreast of those communications efforts. The bookkeeping, advertising shopping, bill payments are all done by the Communication Coordination Services Branch or Public Works and Government Supply Canada. As the largest advertiser in the country, this small unit is the largest clearinghouse of advertising in the country. Created in 1998, this branch oversees both advertising and public opinion research. It had its origins in the Advertising Management Group, created in 1979, so that advertising contracts would be centralized and could benefit from advantages of scale.<br />
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Rose claims that the centralization of the federal government's communications strategy began after the Second World War. Designed to give Ottawa a coordinated and strong corporate image. Much of this image has been produced through advertising which has been produced by advertising agencies. As the government's use of and reliance upon advertising has increased, the government has relied increasingly upon creative decisions which are made by private advertising firms. Thus, the agencies play an important role in legitimizing the government through the creative and persuasive tactics they employ. Rose seen this outsourcing of how policies are sold to the public is harmful to Canadian democracy. The decisions are not made in parliament or in cabinet, but by the hired advertising agencies. <br />
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Rose begins his section "The Shop Floor: Advertising as Agents of Mass Socialization" by noting that in the case of federal government advertising, tat being sold to the public are myths about how policies or actions are in keeping with a mythical national identity. Thus, the government increasingly depends upon advertising agencies to create national symbols. These ads are also the result of input from a number of specialists, each of which bring their knowledge and specialized skills to shaping, and thus, coding the advertisement to trigger particular ideas and feelings in the audience. These can include copywriters, art directors, account executives, graphic designers, and photographers, set designers, actors, camera operators, and other specialists involved in the creation of the advertisement. However, Rose notes that, unlike in commercial ads, government ads are not trying to persuade the public to buy a particular product. Rather, their point is often to create support for government policies or to create ideas of shared identity through the use of images and symbols. Unlike in the case of commercial ads, the public cannot voice its disapproval by not purchasing a product, but it must live with the policy if it is maintained by the government. Yet, while using many of the same advertising techniques, government ads, unlike most commercial ads, are often criticized by the public and the media.<br />
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Rose notes that, while similar in the manner in which they are created, a difference between the creation of government and corporate advertising is that, especially in the past, Canadian government advertising has often been conducted by agencies which were aligned with particular political parties. Beginning with the First World War, Rose explains that the advertising agency which explained the Military Service Act to Canadians in 1917 was then awarded the contracts for publicity campaigns of the Union Government. <br />
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The connections between specific parties and specific advertising agencies are explained by both the survival of the parties and the advertising agencies. The government may retain specific agencies as a form of reward for work which was volunteered by the agency to the now governing party during an election campaign, or it may choose a specific agency for work which was seen as successful in having a leader or the party elected to office. In the case of the agencies, as Reg Whitaker has pointed out in his study of Liberal advertising agencies, they recognize that certain parties express the political and economic ideals which are beneficial to advertising firms. Parties which do not have the money for large campaigns, or which reject political advertising as propaganda and contrary to their political ideals, or reject the kind of advertising that a particular firm specializes in, would not attract the interest of such agencies. Agencies require money and the political will to purchase advertising which the agency is able and willing to produce. thus, particular firms know that particular parties will protect their long-term economic interests.<br />
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Whitaker explains that, in the case of the Liberal Party, the party in power for much of the 20th century, it benefitted from the formal and informal relationship between the party, the advertising agency of Cockfield Brown, and the government. As the agency was retained for various jobs, the government's policies and programs gained acceptance from the public, and as the public was satisfied with the leadership of the country, the Liberal Party benefitted from remaining in power. Examples of the close informal connections included the example of the senior partner of Cockfield Brown, Harry Cockfield, being chairman of the war bon drive in 1940. His firm was also one of the major advertisers for the war bond drive. In the 1949 and 1953 election campaigns the same firm was responsible for engineering the image of Louis St. Laurent being a benevolent and appealing uncle-like figure, rather than a calculating political leader. Indeed, Whitaker claims that in 1943 a formal agreement was signed making Cockfield Brown the Liberal Party's long-term and only national advertising agency. This formal relationship between the agency and the government was so close and so all encompassing that by the 1960s several of the agency's advertising staff were given lucrative government positions, with several being appointed to the senate and two sent to work for the Canadian embassy in Washington.<br />
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While officially secret arrangements, Rose claims that it is known which agencies benefitted from connections to particular parties. Following the Liberal loss in the 1958 federal election the firm of Maclaren was viewed by many Liberals as the firm of choice, while Vickers and Benson benefitted from personal connections with one Montreal Liberal MP. Furthermore, as governing parties change, so do the fortunes of advertising firms. An agency which is tied to a particular party which is removed from office often means that the agency is then typically barred from any work which is required by the new party in power. This was the case for Walsh Advertising, which had been one of the firms regularly used by the Liberal government before their 1957 election defeat. After the election, Walsh did not receive any contracts from the new Progressive Conservative government.<br />
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The amount of money which an agency could hope to gain through government contracts in reward for helping, or volunteering, the winning party during the election campaign more than made up for any donations in time and talent the firm might make to the party in the election. Indeed, both Whitaker and Calton McNaught suggest that these benefits played a large role in the early development of Canadian advertising agencies. However, being closely attached to a political party which lost an election could also be devastating to the future of an advertising agency, as was the case with Cockfield Brown after the 1957 Liberal loss. To further their chances, agencies which are associated with particular parties have also been known to form alliances at election time, donating their services together to a particular party so as to mutually benefit from the contracts which would be awarded should the party take power. This was the case in 1972 with the formation of the consortium, Red Leaf Communications, which did work for the Liberal Party. <br />
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In his section on "Focus Groups and the Test-Marketing of Politics" Rose explains that the advertising tool of focus groups involves showing proposed advertisements to groups of "average" members of the target audience. Based upon their reactions, the wording, tone, or even approach of the ad may be altered so as to have the ad be as effective as possible. However, this approach often results in advertisements being made more simplistic and reinforcing preexisting prejudices. Indeed, referencing the Second World War work of the sociologist Robert K. Merton, Rose suggests that advertisements which are changed as a result of focus group do not tend to educate their audience, but conform preexisting ideas. Rose believes that this tactic of political advertizing, which only encourage unreflexive thought which is not critical of the issues at stake is damaging to society and the political process. these ads appeal to the predispositions of the public, which advertisers know are easier to convince the public of than new ideas which challenge traditional ways of thinking or acting. According to Rose, this is troubling since it does not allow for the education of the public by either the public or political parties. New, better, approaches to policy or governing are either ignored or denigrated as being too different to be acceptable. While Rose admits that such focus group based advertising might be useful in refining particular messages, he claims that it does nothing to further informed public debate over issues.<br />
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In the final section of the chapter, "Making Pictures in Our Heads," Rose claims that Walter Lippmann’s phrase refers to the creation of public opinion, a process which often involves advertising. The appropriate use of rhetorical strategies and images advertisements cause people to understand the world in particular ways. This work is conducted by advertising agencies, who are interested in changing the beliefs, desires, and wants of the public. Furthermore, Rose notes that advertising which makes use of images, be they symbols or locations, are often more influential than those which use language. Thus, governments often make use of images which have associated or useful preformed meanings in order to make affect the manner in which the public views reality. A political speech may make a particular point, but when accompanied by relevant images which reinforce the power and size of the country, influential past accomplishments, etc. the content of the speech becomes more memorable and linked to pre-formed ideas. Yet, where advertising is contentious, appeals to emotions or the use of highly evocative symbols are typically avoided and arguments are presented in a factual manner. In the case of non-contentious ads, however, the lack of any real opposition means that advertisers to take great liberties in their manipulation of the public without having to worry about opposition criticism.<br />
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Following his first three chapters discussed above, Rose offers three case studies of how the government of Canada advertised to Canadians. Through the cases of the 1980 Quebec referendum, the repatriation of the constitution in 1982, and the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1988, Rose examines the tactics used by the government, why they were employed, and the effect(s) they had upon the Canadian public. This is followed by a concluding chapter in which he discusses commonalities and differences between these different examples, and thus, contextualizing many of the issues raised in the book's introduction and first three chapters.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-83814467170736045282011-11-22T08:29:00.000-08:002011-11-23T08:02:34.948-08:00The TDC's Typography annualsThe Society of Typographic Designers of Canada's (TDC's) Typography annuals, or exhibition catalogues, were produced between 1958 and 1964 to highlight commendable Canadian typographic design. Initially Anglophone-dominated and Toronto-centric, the competition gradually became more national and bilingual in character as the years progressed. However, in addition to celebrating and encouraging examples of good design, the competition also served to further define typographic design as a profession. As is explained through the writings of the various catalogues, the competitions, like the TDC, served to foster a national design community and legitimize its members as participants in a field which was specialized and separated from the related professions of publishing and printing.<br />
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Typography 58 beings with an insert to contributors to the TDC's competition, explaining that by participating in the competition they are contributing to an “important field.” This supplementary document reflects an attitude which is found throughout the written contributions to the catalogue, where the writers take the position that the competition, like the TDC itself, is helping to establish typographic design as a distinct field from printing or advertising. While related to, and closely connected to, these fields, they argue that typographic design (which would eventually come to be referred to by the TDC and graphic design in the late 1960s) is not so much concerned with the technical production of prints or the advertisement of products, but the communication of ideas through graphic representation.<br />
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In the introduction to the catalogue, the co-directors of the competition, Frank Davies of the TDC and Leo H. ??? [not clear from signature] of Rolland Paper (sponsor of the competition) argue that the purpose of Typography 58 is to expose the public, publishers, printers, and designers to the best designed printed material of the year in an effort to encourage members of the industry to meet and exceed those standards of excellence. They argue that other related fields had already begun holding similar competitions. In particular they mention the Canadian Industrial Design Council and the Art Directors’ Clubs of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, which had published annual collections of the best advertising and editorial art of the year. While including both publishers and printers in the audience and participants of this competition, the directors also claim that, “… no matter how great the technical advances or editorial skills, the quality of the actual presentation still rests with the individual designer and craftsman.” This statement appears to exclude the technical expertise of printers or the editorial ideas and decisions of publishers, presenting the typographic designer (or graphic designer) as the one who is ultimately responsible for the success of a publication in communicating particular ideas.<br />
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The 1958 catalogue is divided into three sections: book design, business printing design, and magazine design.<br />
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The book design section begins with the instructions that were given to the jury, which was composed of Gerry Moses, Paul Arthur, and Eric Aldwinckle. These instructions assert that the jury members should select works which they believe should be emulated by other designers, publishers, and printers. Importantly, the instructions specify that, while the judges should be primarily interested in book design, they should disqualify entries which are of substandard print production. Works with poor, “typesetting; make-up; engraving; press-work, casemaking, binding or other production operations; art – illustrations (including photographs) which are sufficiently badly executed to noticeably mar the appearance or function of the book” were to be excluded from consideration. In the comments by the judges, Moses, Arthur, and Aldwinckle claim that, based upon many of the entries, there, unfortunately, existed a great deal of poor book production in Canada in the late 1950s. Many of the books they examined for the competition were found to be poorly designed, poorly printed, and/or poorly bound. In the case of design, they argue that, “[f]rom this survey one gathers that books ‘happen’ more often than they are designed”. They claim that as long as more care is not taken with how a book looks from front to back, as well as how it is produced, they cannot expect the industry to produce praiseworthy material. Thus, they call for more direction and coordination from the book industry. In the case of design, the judges argued that much of the industry’s difficulties could be overcome if publishers would allow their book designers to have full access to, and guide, all of the departments involved in the production of all of the elements of the book. If they did not, the end result was likely sub-standard work. This, they claim was evidenced by the large number of works of inferior poor typography, inadequate design, and poor paper.<br />
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In contrast to the book design section, the judges of the business printing design competition felt that the majority of the catalogues, brochures, broadsides, annual reports, letterheads, folders, and other promotional material which was submitted to their competition were effectively designed and well produced. This difference may not simply be explained by the jury being composed of different judges (Stan Engel and Clair Stewart), but by the material being judged. As the judges point out, companies are judged by the look, feel, and readability of their promotional material. Many companies are very cognizant of those elements, and thus, they pay more attention to the quality of their promotional material than, say, a book publisher, who can be preoccupied with considering the written content of the text being published, not the presentation of that content.<br />
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The judges of the magazine design competition (Keith Scott and David Feist) were instructed to award prizes only to works which they believed that the Canadian publishing community should emulate. Rating material according to the competence of the design, its originality, typography (“has attention been paid to spacing and other niceties”), and the production quality of the final product, they found that many of the entries were of poor quality. Many of the publications suffered from poor typesetting. This often harmed what was otherwise acceptable publication design. However, in the case of consumer magazines, the judges claimed their publishers must have believed that typographic design is simply the use of type in a clever of gimmicky way. Like the book jury, the magazine judges suggest that the poor quality of magazine design entries could have been the result of designers having limited ability to oversee the production process, resulting in products which did not conform to what had been originally envisioned.<br />
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The catalogue ends with a section about the TDC, likely written by its president, Leslie Smart. Here it is explained that the TDC was created in 1956 to fulfill the need of Canadian designers of books, magazines, and general print material to pool their experience, to learn from, and collaborate with others in their field. The TDC aimed to encourage design talents and improve design standards through the organization of exhibitions, talks, meetings, and the showing of films.<br />
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The most striking difference between Typography 59 and the annual of the year before is that the 1959 publication is presented in not simply English, but also French and German. This appears to have been an attempt to include both the French Canadian graphic design community as well as German-speaking designers within or outside the country who either participated in the competition or could be enticed to read about it.<br />
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The annual begins with a general opening statement about the TDC and the competition. The statement starts by recognizing the enthusiasm with which typographic design had been described that year by the Globe and Mail art critic, Pearl McCarthy, who had called it the “…liveliest art in Canada today.” This statement is interpreted as a positive sign for the profession which is described as traditionally only playing a secondary role to other elements of the publishing and printing industries, and never considered an art in its own right. Typography 59 is thus presented as further evidence to support Pearl McCarthy’s statement, proving that typographic design did indeed constitute a legitimate profession and art form. <br />
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Unlike Typography 58, Typography 59 does not have introductory statements by the judges of its three competition sections: book design, business printing design, and magazine design. Instead, a single essay by Allan Fleming is included at the end of the catalogue. Examining the state and approach of typographic design education in Canada in the late 1950s, Fleming argues that, in addition to exciting students in the possibilities of manipulating typeface and how it is presented, typographic design programs need to familiarize students with each step in the design and printing process. It is not enough to teach students how to make affective layouts. This argument builds upon the comments made in the book and magazine design introductory sections of Typography 58, which criticized many of the poor entries of that year as having been the result of designers not having sufficient oversight of, influence upon, or possibly knowledge of, the entire publication/printing process. While designs may have been well intentioned, their execution did not do them justice and resulted in inferior products. Fleming attributes part of the failure of the existing training programs to take this approach is that, unlike in other countries, typographic design in Canada is often viewed, not a unique profession, but just a form of commercial art. This only encourages they only perform a limited role in the printing and publication process. Furthermore, Fleming notes that the craftsmen who carry out the other tasks in publication and print production (printers, typesetters, etc.) appear to receive less design training than they had in the past. He believes that the solution is that the typographic industry needs to subsidize the schooling of typographers, supplying equipment and expertise, possibly to the point of establishing a Canadian printing school. This would, he believes, produce graduates who would be able to function in the industrial printing and publication field in a manner that would ensure that the ideas of their well made layouts are realized to their satisfaction. It would, he believes, benefit clients, the reputation of one's typographic colleagues, and allow printers to take pride in producing celebrated works.<br />
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Interestingly, at the end of his article, Fleming states that he considers typographic design to be a "craft" or a "trade." He does not believe it to be an art form. He acknowledges the role that contemporary art styles have influenced typographic design, but he stresses that it is an applied field. It does not strive to create new means of communication, but to incorporate useful, preexisting tools of art to enhance communication through the use and arrangement of type. He concludes by stating that, "[c]ertainly no student should be deprived of the opportunity to experiment, quite the contrary, but the problems of an all-type letterhead or a one-colour business card must never be ignored."<br />
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The 1959 catalogue concludes with a statement about the history and purpose of the TDC. It asserts that the organization was established with three goals: "to build up a professional status by accepting professional responsibilities; ... to encourage printers, publishers and others to help them in their efforts towards higher standards in printed communication; and ... to increase public awareness of the benefits which we all derive from good design and craftsmanship." Thus, in addition to furthering public interest in design and the execution of quality design, TDC was created to differentiate, legitimize, and strengthen the Canadian graphic design community. Furthermore, the statement claims that, as of 1959, the majority of Canada's professional typographic designers were members of the TDC.<br />
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Like Typography 59, the annual of 1960 was published in English, French and German. However, like the publication of two years before, Typography 60 includes introductory statements for its book, magazine and newspaper design, and commercial design sections. The first of these is a report by Frank Newfeld which is printed opposite the book design entries.<br />
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Newfeld claims that in Canada there are three types of books: those that are designed by editors, those that are designed by printers, and those which are designed by typographic designers. In the case of printer-designed books, he claims that few Canadian printers have the design skills to create works which make effective use of type and layout so as to enhance the book's contents. Instead, in 1960 Canadian printing houses were largely interested and skilled in producing books and not designing them. Printers did not explore new kinds of typefaces, but only used what they had in stock, often understanding all typefaces as just neutral vehicles which transmit the words. In the case of editor-designed books, he argues that such productions are often imitations of other works. This imitation does not take into account the unique elements of the book being produced, and thus, results in a design which is ill fitted to the book. Finally, and not surprisingly, Newfeld claims that the designer-designed book often produces the best and most suitable product, but he notes that a number of the submissions to Typography 60 show that the field of typographic design was still experiencing growing pains and quality control problems.<br />
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In commenting on the evaluation process, Newfeld explains that the submissions were judged according to text preliminary and concluding material; over-all deign; originality; printing; book casing; and the dust jacket. Of those submitted, he comments that many presented a confused selection of styles. This included the poor mixture of typefaces which did not make good combinations, a problem which he suggest could have been the result of a printer having an insufficient selection of typefaces to choose from. (page 5) What is more, those books which attempted to distinguish themselves by using "startling devices", such as very unique typefaces or typesetting, were typically disqualified from competition since their design took away from the audience's ability to consume and understand their contents. (page 7) Like Typography 58 Newfeld complains of the quality of the printing and casing of many of the submissions. In addition, he complains that many Canadian publishing houses suffer in their type and cover designs in that they appear to use a consistent "house look" which gives books on very different subjects a similar appearance.<br />
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In addition to offering comments on several of the award winning entries (including books designs by Fleming, Arthur, and Smart), Newfeld notes that none of the entries demonstrate any new stylistic trends or revelations in design, although they do give encouraging evidence that some publishers are taking an increased interest in the appearance of their products.<br />
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The report concerning the magazine and newspaper design competition, written by Keith Scott, claims that the consumer magazine entries for the year were disappointing in that many offered standardized formats for their various additions, an approach which fails to tailor the type and layout to the content of specific issues or stories. While submissions often contained illustrations that complimented the content, the type and layout were often uninventive and standardized. Scott attributes these failures to both rushed production and misplaced newspaper production techniques. Indeed, he suggests that those entries which did meet the competition's criteria must have been produced with great difficulty by the designers.<br />
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In the case of company magazines, while Scott notes that there were a number of entries which were not professionally designed and made frequent use of "gimmicks," he also acknowledges the numerous entries which contained good design. Business magazines, however, were largely lacking in quality design, a fact which Scott found curious given the influence and role they play in the business world. He also finds it unfortunate, since good typographical design in such publications could act to increase interest in and respect for good design in the business world in general.<br />
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While praising the number of entries that were submitted for the newspaper category and thus the seeming interest from newspapers in graphic design, Scott notes that few showed any evidence of the application of such design. Many of the entries used a wide array, and poor combinations, of typefaces, and crowded material in a way which gave the impression that little thought was given to presentation. Scott argues that, even though newspapers must be produced in limited time, the same rules of unity, coherence, and emphasis in design still apply. Suggestions he makes to improve this situation include trying to use a limited number of good typefaces more effectively, and giving more consideration to how stories are placed and arranged.<br />
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The commercial printing competition report was written by Jack Birdsall and notes that, while many of the entries of 1960 were of a fairly high level of design quality, there were both few works of brilliance or highly disappointing entries. While middling, he does argue that such a representation shows a certain level of maturity for the Canadian design profession.<br />
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The three competitions sections are followed by brief biographies of Newfeld, Scott, and Birdsall, as well as by an essay by Frank Davies, "Why all this fuss about typographic design?" As the title of the essay suggests, Davies' focus is the perceived increased interest in the selection and arrangement of typefaces in a country which is not a centre of type design, book publishing, or the graphic arts. One of the reasons he gives for this increased interest is the establishment of the TDC in order to increase the professional status of the field at a time when there was a simultaneous increased interest in international trends of the graphic arts and typographic design.<br />
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Davies argues that it is not surprising that Canada would have been affected by international trends in graphic design. He notes that before the Second World War there were sporadic and tempered international influences upon the nation's graphic arts community. Referring to the field as "graphic design" (page 51), Davies explains that such influence typically amounted to the occasional arrival of new immigrant designers who brought the design techniques and traditions of his country of origin. There was some interest from within the Canadian design community in developing the craft of printing and looking to other countries for guidance, but this was limited. In addition, the only real contribution Canada made to the international graphic design community was Carl Dair's book on the basics of typographic design. Yet, since the war, the immigration of designers who had been taught in Germany, Hungary, and other countries greatly increased the exposure of Canadian-born typographic designers to the styles and approaches of other countries. The increased international communication which was facilitated both by such new arrivals, changes in communications technology, as well as the internationalization of trade and culture. Furthermore, since the war several native-born designers had undertaken training and worked in other countries, in addition to being influenced by developments in the United States. Allan Fleming had trained and worked in Britain and the United States, while Paul Arthur worked at Graphis in Switzerland. <br />
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However, the increase in international influences does not explain the growth in interest in typographic design all around the world. Designers in various countries are suddenly interested in typography. Davies suggests that this development could be explained by the "onslaught" of photographers in the design field, with designers retreating to the realm of "copy." Yet, he also notes that in many cases designers are not so much interested in creating clear and legible type than using typefaces as shapes which can be arranged to create patterns, symbols, or illustrations. In the pre-war period design was guided by Tschichold's New Typography. Following 1945 the Dutch designer, Sandberg's, Experimenta Typographie guided the development of the typographic organic phase which had lasted from the war up to the time Davis war writing. He claims that in both cases there was a move away from typographers merely selecting fonts which matched the "flavour" of the subject matter. Sandberg, however, showed typographers how to use text in a manner which would have it mean more than the words themselves. "He did this by choosing type with profound sensitivity and juggling the letterforms and their positions freely to symbolize the theme. The new approach is, at its purist, a form of poetry." (page 55) Davis believes that this approach recreates a link with lost elements of human communication. Text is typically monotone and non-expressive, with the author having to communicate all meaning through the words chosen. While there have been other writers and examples which have made a similar point, Sandberg's text offered the most clear-cut example, with the resulting approach being what Davies terms "Typo-Graphics." However, Davies also notes that the visual punning involved in the double meaning of such "Typo-Graphics" required the attention of the audience, its effect is not always instantaneous, and can often involve particular cultural knowledge. <br />
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Davies does not claim to know what the next phase of typographic design will be, acknowledging that the influence of Sandberg had, by 1960, permeated most areas of typographic design. However, he does suggests that the next phase will not be linked to a particular country. He claims that the Swiss style is "too cold and theoretical," English styles "too dull" and too infused with ethical concerns, the German school too much based upon the ideas of the Bauhaus, and France both too fanciful and ill-conceived. He also dismisses Japan, and Italy, and claims that the influence of Holland my just be expressed through the continued influence of Sandberg. However, he does suggest that the developments made by Saul Bass, Paul Rand, Otto Storch, and others in the United States marks the most stimulating recent developments in the field and could signal the next source of an international trend. However, he also despairs that, "[s]tacked gothics must surely topple; Mondrian black hedges chopping up our landscape pages are likely to linger a little yet; the handsful of punctuation marks which still pepper our ads occasionally will finally be dissed; tangles of random letters piled into rectangles will go too; pictures made of type ornaments for the designer who cannot illustrate will be returned to the kindergarten; blown-up initials are not likely to disappear for a long time; words warped into silhouettes are also not through their run of popularity; and so on. Typographic design is now thoroughly international and these trends show up everywhere." (page 57)<br />
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A problem to the growing internationalization of typographic design, according to Davies, is that access to the solutions from around the world can lead to a lack of originality. The public and typography design students appear, according to Davies, to be confused about what makes good typographic design. It is not the use of popular gimmicks or tricks, but the "logical approach and creative intuition behind communication... Unhappily most of them cannot see beyond the outside styles and in their hands there is danger than communication could disappear entirely behind clever personalisms." (page 57-8) Davies claims that "graphic design" (page 58) is one of the most important mass-communication mediums, but students of the field in Canada are largely denied training at proper graphic arts schools. Rather, most students of graphic design in Canada's publishing field, the fourth largest manufacturing industry in Toronto, must be self-taught in the art of design. Thus, like Fleming in Typography 59, Davies calls for proper training in typographic design. He claims that whether Canada will increasingly produce good design and designers will hopefully be influenced by the large number of international designers working and inspiring others within Canada. These designers bring ideas from around the world and will enrich the work of the country's typographic design community.<br />
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Davies' call for better typographic design education is echoed in introduction to the section concerning the competition between student entries. First introduced in Typography 60, this report praises the experimental elements of the entries from Quebec and British Columbia, as well as the latter's "soundness of approach," and admits that many of the student entries reflect the influence of particular teachers, it also condemns many of the entries from Ontario as showing little evidence of formal training in the field. The judges claim that many of the student entries were rather uninventive in that they used similar solutions to different problems. In addition, they argue that most show a lack of practical training, asserting that provincial graphic arts schools are needed, and suggesting that the printing industry should do something to improve such training, possibly by providing materials or instructors. Interestingly, the report on the student entries competition, like Davies’s essay, are only printed in English.<br />
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Typography 61 begins with the TDC president's (William Toye) message, in which he claims that that year's annual represents the TDC membership's search for a typographic utopia of good design. Covering June 1960 to June 1961, the bilingual exhibition catalogue again highlights the best design from the year, not only to honour those who have achieved high standards in design, but to inspire others to develop similar effective means of delivering specific messages to an audience through type and associated imagery. Significantly, Toye claims that typography is not an art, but a craft, and one which "cannot fail to interest us all because it affects us all." (page 1) This later claim reasserts the claim made by Donnelly that, following the Second World War, design came to occupy an increasingly important place in an increasingly consumer-oriented society. <br />
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Following the president's message, the catalogue departs from the format/content of the previous three editions by including an essay by a non-Canadian designer. "Where are we going?" was written by the American designer Aaron Burns, President and Director of Design of Graphic Arts Typographers (New York) and Director of the International Center for Typographic Arts. He interestingly begins by defining typographic design, suggesting that still, in 1961, all of those doing typographic design were still not completely sure as to the limits of the field. He defines the profession by borrowing from a definition given by the "noted semanticist" Anatol Rapaport, who stated at the first World Seminar on typographic Design in 1958 that "Typography is to printing as elocution and dramatics are to the spoken word." (page 8) From this Burns argues that typography should be understood as being an "attitude or a conduct of thought" and printing or typesetting as "an application of defined working principles." (page 8) From this, Burns stresses that it is important that, as professionals who are attempting to communicate specific ideas through visual design, designers communicate and share ideas on an international level, and that designers strive to more accurately understand how individuals, including people from different cultures, think and why they react in particular ways. He claims that his International Center for Typographic Arts would act as an appropriate clearing house for international typographic communication and the exchange of approaches and ideas. Burns concludes his comments by stating that he was exciting to discover the "high level" of design being produced in Canadian centres such as Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, all of which were apparently design communities with which he was largely unfamiliar before being asked to comment on the exhibition.<br />
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The first section of the exhibition, book design, is introduced by Frank Davies who writes that the entries for Typography 61 were markedly better than those from previous years, noting that, "even the mediocre books are better and the bad books look worse and worse by contrast." (page 13) Davies then continues by giving a brief overview of the quality of the designs from previous years, explaining that in 1958 many book designs suffered from both poor design, as well poor printing and binding. While the binding and printing did improve since then, the book design had benefitted from a growing design "maturity" and the removal of "gimmicks." Unlike the books of earlier competitions, many of those in the 1961 competition had been carefully designed from dust jacket to index. However, as Davies notes, despite the growing general competence in book design, the jury easily selected Frank Newfeld's design of Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of the Earth as the best designed and produced book of the year.<br />
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The "Design for Commerce" introductory statement is written by Leslie Smart. Like Davies, he notes that the quality of the material submitted to the competition had improved, although he does point out that in some cases evidence could be seen of rushed work or the unfortunate influence of someone other than the designer, whom Smart implies was probably the client. Smart and the other judges found the catalogue and press advertising design competitions particularly disappointing, but were encouraged by the submissions for trademarks, which showed a welcome and "noticeable absence of maple leaves, beavers, and Niagara Falls." (page 27) Furthermore, he claims that the designs for publicity and cultural events showed some of the best design of the commerce section, suggesting that, since such work is often for free or at a reduced fee, such opportunities give designers the greatest freedom to experiment. Smart concludes by noting that there was an obvious trend amongst many competition entries towards adopting the Swiss style of typography, which he identifies as being "immaculate and rather sterile." He suggests that, if widely employed in design in place of "more imaginative productions," the field will suffer. However, he argues, somewhat ironically, that if used "for the vast volume of print not supervised by designers, this could be a disciplined and improved solution." (page 27)<br />
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The introduction to the "Magazine and Newspaper Design" section is written by Carl Dair, who laments that many of the submissions were either "dull and correct" or had some elements of exciting design, but also showed considerable inattention to detail. Although he does claim that some good work was being done in Canadian magazine and newspaper design, much of that good work was not submitted to the competition. He concludes by hoping that such good design will be submitted for the 1962 competition.<br />
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The new section on "Experimental Design" is introduced by Harold Kurshenska, who argues that many of the entries which were submitted as "experimental" was actually quite disappointing. The most interesting and groundbreaking work was often the work of students, while many seasoned designers appeared to submit layouts which had been rejected by clients whom the designers appeared to believe were misguided. Kurshenska suggests that many of these professional designers should take the time to experiment on their own, claiming that their design skills could become stayed and mediocre if they only produce "acceptable" work for clients.<br />
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The final section of the catalogue, that of "Student Entries," is also introduced by Carl Dair. He notes that entries from the students at the Vancouver School of Art were surprisingly good and that their work and the guidance of their instructor, Robert Reid, should be viewed as a model for other design programs across the country. Unsurprisingly, Dair, who was often concerned with designers' understanding of both the theoretical and technical elements of both design and printing, particularly lauds the Vancouver students for their knowledge and understanding of the practical considerations of printing.<br />
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Typography 62, covering June 1961 to June 1962, begins with an informal introduction by Frank Davies which defines the role of the typographic designer. As with the beginning of Typography 61, this apparent need to define what typographers do suggests that the profession was still in the process of defining itself. Davies emphasizing the place of type in the designer's work, claims that good typographic design is not noticeable, but does enhance the message of printed material. Through the choice of letterform, the length of lines, the size of type, and the spacing between words and characters the typographic designer controls the rhythm of reading. However, all such choices are only beneficial if the reader is unaware of them. He likens failure in design to a "ham actor" who, in struggling to impress, destroys the illusion of acting.<br />
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As with Typography 61, the main introduction to the 1962 annual is written by an American (actually a Dutch-American) designer, Pieter Brattinga, Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Advertising Design and Visual Communication at the Pratt Institute in New York, and Director of Design at the Dutch printing firm, Steendrukkerij de Jong & Co. Brattinga begins "An Appreciation" by warning that, while useful for celebrating good work in design and showing colleagues what creative solutions have been advanced for various communication problems, annuals, such as Typography 62, should only be used to inspire designers. They should not be sources from which designers copy the latest design trends. This, he believes, would quickly drain the field of creativity and would lead to homogenization, and he likens such practice to the work of "commercial artists" and those wishing to make a "fast buck.". Thus, he praises the TDC for including a student design section in its annuals, so as to both encourage good design amongst new designers, and discourage the blind use of popular styles or gimmicks. Significantly, in briefly commenting on particular designs in the exhibition, Brattinga, in contrast to commentators in other editions of Typography, praised the use of "pure Swiss typographic design." He even criticized a design firm which had produced good Swiss inspired design for not employing such well-regulated design styles in all of their corporate designs, claiming that corporate identity should not have a "relaxed outlook." In commenting on the various sections of the competition, Brattinga, like commentators in previous years, was disappointed by the apparent lack of good design for Canadian newspapers and magazines. In the case of books, he lamented that many are not well designed from cover to cover, but only have well designed covers and introductory sections, giving the impression that the designer, the printer, and the reader should not care about the appearance of the portion of the book with which the reader is going to spend the most of his or her time.<br />
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Brattinga concludes his introduction by noting that, while his review of all of the entries in the 1962 competition showed him the high quality of design appearing in Canada, he was unable to distinguish a truly Canadian style of design. Rather, he recognized that Canadian designers were being increasingly influenced by many international influences. However, he does not appear to believe that this diversity of influences is necessarily beneficial, suggesting that it could lead to the copying of those foreign approaches and not allow for the development of original Canadian design styles. Thus, he emphasizes that Canadian design programs have to encourage the development of regional Canadian styles which would highlight unique regional solutions or approaches to various design problems.<br />
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In their judges' report for the "Book Design" section, William Toye, John Gibson, and Harold Kurschenska explained that while there was only a small number of books which were so ugly they had to be rejected out of hand, the majority were wanting in at least some aspect of their design. As was mentioned by Brattinga, many of the submitted books had well designed elements, but few were well designed from cover to cover. And while the judges do praise a few of the book designs for 1962, including Frank Newfeld's design of The Canadian Dictionary, they note that there were none which were extraordinarily good.<br />
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For the "Printing for Commerce" judges' report, Frank Davies, Pierre Garneau, and Leslie Trevor argue that they did not believe that any of the submissions for 1962 deserved an award for extraordinary design. They found the submitted commercial annual reports to be "glamorous and deadly dull," that few of the press advertisements were acceptable, but they did find a number of the letterhead designs to be somewhat exciting. However, they despaired that in many cases the "mathematical-formula school of typography" (by which they mean the international style) was being widely used, and that, while organized and rational, was a dead-end path which would lead to blandness and sterility. Furthermore, this approach led many designers to concentrate more upon creating regular patterns than legible designs. In particular, the attack the overuse of sans-serif type, which they claim has low legibility. They conclude by stating that 1962 was, "a year of good but not exciting work with gimmicks, bandwagons, and the cult of Me-too-ism well to the fore."<br />
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The judges' report for the "Newspapers and Magazines" section is written by Keith Scott and, as in previous years, despairs at the lack of quality design in most of the country's serial publications. The one area of exciting new design appears to have been in the Montreal newspapers, with Le Nouveau Journal and La Presse offering thoughtful and well balanced layout which contrasted with the rushed and mismatched appearance of the papers from the rest of the country.<br />
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In the introduction to the "Experimental Design" section Gerry Moses reiterates Brattinga claim that experimentation is necessary to ensure the production of new an innovative approaches to design. Like Brattinga, he warns that without experimentation there is a danger that designers may tend to rely upon imitation of successful solutions to design problems. He argues that the award wining experimental designs included in Typography 62 can be seen as evidence of how Canadian designers are attempting to avoid charges of imitation. Similarly, in the introduction to the "Student Category" section, Harold Kurschenska argues that the 1962 student submission showed a definite increase in both the standards of the work being produced by Canada's design students, as well in the level of design innovative being produced by Canada's design programs. However, he also calls for the development of more programs across Canada, and especially for programs which teach, the history of typographic design and its sound practices without encouraging pure imitation of those traditional approaches. In addition, he concludes by suggesting the creation of international student design exhibitions, so as to further stimulate international professional interaction the exchange of ideas.<br />
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The 1962 catalogue ends with a statement from the TDC, stating that when it was established the organization had three major aims: “to build up a professional status by accepting professional responsibilities”; “to encourage printers, publishers, and others to help [designers] in their efforts towards higher standards in printed communication”; and “to increase public awareness which we all derive from good design and craftsmanship.” In claiming that great advances had been made in achieving each of these three goals, the unidentified author emphasizes not only that most of the leading Canadians who identify themselves as typographic designers were members of the TDC by 1962, but also that both the public and the printing and publishing industries had increasingly come to recognize typographic design as a distinct profession.<br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Unlike its predecessors, </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography 64 </span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">showcases Canadian design work for more than a single year, including works created and submitted between June 1962 and June 1964. Like several of the earlier catalogues, in addition to showing the winners of the TDC's design competition, the catalogue also contains a number of written contributions by various Canadian designers. It begins with a forward by an unidentified author who highlights the book </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Love and Joy about Letters</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> by Ben Shahn, praising both its design and the author/designer's views about the importance of good typographic design to the creation of quality publications. Significantly, the author agrees with Shahn that typographic design is, "an expressionistic art notwithstanding the rules, the precision, the perfection that accompany it." Thus, unlike statements made in earlier editions of </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> by such well known Canadian designers as Allan Fleming, </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography 64</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> begins with the assertion that typographic design is indeed an art and not simply a trade or a craft.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The forward is followed by "An Appreciation" by Allan Fleming. While the cover of the catalogue features the deconstruction of the exhibition's title in Helvetica, and many of the award winning designs of the competition are of the International style of design, Fleming dedicates much of his "Appreciation" to bemoaning the strong and growing influence of Swiss design on the field of Canadian typographic design. He begins by claiming that the bothersome influence of the International style was very apparent to him even before he began his review of all of the contributions to the exhibition, and that, having examined each of the submitted works, he can claim that, "there is no doubt that this </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">is</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> what the designers call a 'Swiss Show.' And as such it is an extremely fine example - full of well oiled, highly professional and quite safely anonymous designs." Fleming does argue that the professionalization and number of quality contributions to </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography 64</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> shows that the field of Canadian graphic design had grown and matured since the establishment of the </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> exhibitions in 1958. He also notes that the Swiss inspired designs of contributors such as Ernst Roch, Rolf Harder, and Gerhard Doerriés had made valuable contributions to the field, but he worries that the influence of the International style was becoming too great and that it would lead to a large amount of homogenous, formulaic, and "safe" work which only offers one approach to design. Referencing Anatol Rapoport, the director of the School of Mental Health at the University of Michigan, Fleming argues that the creation of a single world culture, or a truly international style of design, implies the loss of the diversity and creativity offered by multiple regional or local cultures. Furthermore, while creating a homogenous and safe society, a single world culture would be slow to adapt to challenges, and would not be likely to experiment with new approaches to dealing with problems. While Fleming admits that Canadian typographic design had undergone great developments since the 1950s, he hopes that those developments would not stall with the popularity Swiss typography, stating that the design community should "hope that soon we'll be a long way from the grid system and sans-only approaches." Fleming concludes his written contribution with a number of disconnected comments about various contributions to the exhibition, none of which refer to his earlier attack against the popularity of the International style.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The introduction to the exhibition's "Printing for Commerce" section is written by the judges Rolf Harder, Martin Krampen, Tancrède Marsil, and Brian Patterson. The four designers argue that, while of good quality, many of the contributions to the commerce competition were uninspiring. Significantly, like Fleming, they argue that too many of the designs relied upon the sans-serif and grid-oriented approaches of the International style, resulting in professional-looking, but somewhat formulaic, designs. However, they also note that this overreliance upon the International style is often preferable to design which does not follow a formula, but has a bad layout and a poor selection of fonts. In particular, the judges praise Canadian designers for not returning to the modern "Baroque" approach which had been popular in the 1950s, and which they claim was being readopted by many American designers. They believed that the best designs of the competition were, indeed, in the style of the New Typography, but they argued that in the future, Canadian designers should strive to bridge the gap between the formalism and professional approach of the International style and empirical findings as to the most readable and legible approaches to design. This, they argue, would result in designs which communicate particular messages as successfully as possible.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The "Book Design" section, judged by John Gibson, Robert Reid, and Arnold Rockman, begins with an introduction in which the judges complain about the lack on innovation in Canadian book design. Significantly, they note that the greatest innovations for 1963 and 1964 were in book case design, with the best work being produced, not in Toronto, the home of Canada's publishing industry, but Montreal. However, they also despaired that many of Canada's foremost book designers were not offering any new solutions to book design problems, but were simply reproducing new versions of older approaches. In addition, like the comments concerning the book design section of previous competitions, the judges also complained that many book designs in the competition suffered from poor binding, poor printing, and poor quality paper. They stress that all of those non-design elements are essential to the production of quality books, and that several of the books that were considered for </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography 64</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> were judged harshly if those non-design elements were wanting.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">For the "Magazines and Newspapers" design section, the judges George Beaupré, Paul Fiala, and Chris Yaneff argue that, as with previous TDC competitions, the examples of Canadian newspaper and magazine design submitted to </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography 64</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> were largely of poor quality. Not only were they wanting in "inventiveness, overall design, typographic detailing, and general handling," but also the number of submissions was also relatively small. They argue that the low number of entries was particularly disappointing given that they had seen good examples of Canadian newspaper and magazine design during 1963 and 1964 which were not entered into the competition. However, those few designs for which the judges reserved praise included Ken Rodmell's cover design of the </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Imperial Oil Review</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">, work for the </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Star Weekly</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> by Gene Aliman, a nuclear disarmament newspaper called </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Sanity</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> by the Montreal designer Peter Matthews, and Gilles Robert's overall design for </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">La Presse</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The "Experimental Typography" section was judged by Arnold Rockman and Chris Yaneff, who, like the section judges of </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography 62</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">, begin their introduction to the section by stressing that, contrary to the view of many of the designers who submitted material to the competition, work which was rejected by clients should not be automatically categorized as being "experimental." They were discouraged by the number of submissions that were obviously layout that the submitters had submitted to clients, and which had been rejected by those members of the commercial world. Feeling slighted, and believing that their work should have been embraced by their clients, the judges charge that the designers in question appeared to have decided that their work had been too radical for their clients, and thus, constituted experimental design. However, the judges point out that many such designs were likely rejected by clients because they were indeed bad designs. Furthermore, in addition to rejecting a number of submissions for simply being examples of typographic pattern-making and not experimentation, the judges do claim that the competition had attracted a lot of good experimental design. In particular they praise the Anglo-Swiss inspired slide presentation designs of Tony Mann, as well as the International Style designs by Gerhard Doerrié, which won the top experimental design prize. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The final section, "Student Work, was judged by Arnold Rockman and Chris Yaneff. Offering brief comments, the judges claimed that while of a high caliber, the student submissions for 1963 and 1964 very closely resembled the styles and approaches of the students' instructors. The judges suggest that design instructors would be wise to allow their students more freedom in their experimentation. In addition, the judges particularly praised the quality of the submissions from the Ontario College of Art. However, they also despaired that the majority of the entries only came from Toronto and Montreal, and that Vancouver, often a source for impressive student designs in previous years, was not represented.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Typography 64</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> concludes, like all of its predecessors, with a comment from the President of the TDC. In this edition, unlike earlier versions of the President's message, Gerry Moses does not discuss the importance of highlighting quality typographic design for the development of the profession. Rather, he simply explains that the selection of the "best" design work is a subjective process, but one which is necessary in order to differentiate between obviously poor design and that which is collectively viewed as laudable by experts in the field. Interestingly, unlike in the forward to the catalogue, which may have been written by another person, Moses does not refer to typographic design as an art, but as a craft.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"></span></div> Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-79899930367924788772011-11-20T13:57:00.000-08:002011-11-20T13:59:14.370-08:00Graphic Design in Canada Since 1945<span style="font-size: large;">Donnelly, <i>Graphic Design in Canada Since 1945</i></span><br />
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This article/essay was written to accompany an exhibition of post 1945 Canadian graphic design at the Carlton University Art Gallery in 1996. The work begins with a note from the gallery director, Michael Bell, who notes that there had (as of 1996) not existed any significant work done on the history of graphic design in Canada. This is followed by acknowledgements by Brian Donnelly, who organized the exhibit, and who did so with the help of several prominent Canadian designers including Rolf Harder, Ernst Roch, Frank Davies, and Clair Stewart. <br />
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In his introduction, Donnelly notes that since 1945 graphic design in Canada, while populated by artists who are largely unknown outside of their own field, has not only grown but has been immensely effective in how it has been able to graphically motivate people to follow directions, buy products, or receive important information. Indeed, its success and its growth as a profession has allowed it to distinguish itself from the fields of advertising and commercial art, as well as from printing, engraving, and publishing. While it has its roots in these separate fields, graphic design is now (1996) viewed as not being limited to simply being a function of one of those fields, but as something which can be applied through all of them.<br />
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Just as Cramsie argues in his The Story of Graphic Design, Donnelly claims that the starting point for many post-war graphic designers was print. Indeed, many began as typographers, either designing or setting and arranging type, agonizing over the best arrangement of the words and letters, or the choice of the best typeface, in order to obtain the desired affect upon their audience. While beginning with type, graphic design also includes the selection, placement, and creation of images, the placement of text, and the arrangement of all such elements in a manner which will communicate a particular message or have a particular meaning. Thus, the exhibition tells the story of technicians who, realizing the power which elements of the printed page could have if manipulated in particular ways, used their positions to create a distinct profession.<br />
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Many of the works in the exhibition, and thus which Donnelly uses to explain the development of the profession, were chosen by graphic designers themselves, and thus, represent what they understood to be the significant pieces of the field in Canada. He also made use of the Art Director's Club of Toronto annuals, which began publishing an annual show booklet in 1949, as well as that of the Typographic Designers of Canada, which began less than a decade later. The annuals of these Toronto-based organizations reflect, according to Donnelly, what the designers valued in both their own work and that of others. However, Donnelly also notes that the works selected for the exhibit were also chosen because they stood for, or reflected, significant changes about how designers and the public thought about the visual realm. While intended to explain the works selected for the exhibition, the paper is also intended to outline the historical context in which these representative images were made, how they fit into art history and were affected by modernism, modernity, image/printing production methods, and the politics of their day. Donnelly concludes his introduction by noting that it was his hope that an exhibition on the history of Canadian graphic design would foster an interest in additional research on the field.<br />
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The Eveleigh-Dair Studio<br />
Beginning with the work of the graphic designer Carl Dair, Donnelly explains that Dair was a largely self-taught designer, who worked largely on advertising layouts before the war. However, during the war he worked for the National Film Board in Montreal. The NFB had expanded during the war from simply making propaganda films and movie posters, to being the government's own design department, designing a wide array of printed and graphic materials for the war effort. Dair met Henry Eveleigh after the war through mutual professional and communist friends. Eveleigh, who was three years older, had been trained in art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and had recently won the United Nations international poster competition (1947). From 1947 until 1951 they combined Eveleigh's skills at illustration and creating good concepts, and Dair's knowledge of typography and modern European design to build a modern design studio. Such a studio, being independent from advertising agencies, although they did do extensive work for such agencies, would be the archetype for Canadian graphic design studios. The studio became known for producing work which made use of simplified illustrations by Eveleigh and off-centred, asymmetrical modern type which was arranged by Dair. Examples include the redesign of Canadian Business magazine, as well a significant series of advertisements for the E.B. Eddy Pulp and Paper Company of Hull, Quebec. <br />
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In the case of the Eddy ads, the company interested in targeting both the printing and commercial art market and recognized that this could be done through attempting to both educate customers about and promote their products with modern, attractive advertisements. Rather than overwhelm the customer with large numbers of images of their products, or copy ubiquitous "realistic" and/or dramatized scenes showing the use of their products, Dair and Eveleigh used limited illustrations which depicted symbolic objects, solid colours, and offset blocks of type to give customers clear ideas about what the product was, and that those products and the company which made them was stable and reliable, while also being current and modern.<br />
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Dair and Eveleigh split with hostility in 1951, with Dair relocating in Toronto. The break had occurred just as the two were negotiating with a third potential partner so as to start an advertising agency. Rejecting the possible loss of his freedom, Dair worked by himself for the rest of his life, with a brief exception when he was made a partner in a Toronto-based firm (Goodis, Goldberg, Dair), as well as when he was teaching. Also, in Toronto, Dair moved away from the influence of interwar European experimentalism, returning to more traditional typographic and graphic design principles. Gone was the emphasis upon contrast or the geometric asymmetry of his work. In 1956 Dair toured Europe, meeting with the then Art Director of Hoffman-LaRoche, Jan Tschichold, for more than four-and-a-half hours. Interestingly, Tschichold, who had attempted to codify the principles of modernist typographic design in his 1927 Die neue Typographie, had also abandoned modernism, allowing for the use of more classical typography, and seeing his former views as having been too authoritarian.<br />
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In 1960 Dair and his fellow Toronto Designer Leslie (Sam) Smart won the silver and bronze design medals from the Leipzig Internationale Buchkunst-Ausstellung for the four-page folios they produced, A Cry from an Indian Wife and The Shooting of Dan McGraw. These works had elements which were being advocated by professional design associations of the day, including precise type spacing, use of open white space, and good use of traditional lay-out principles. Those principles were a reaction to the predominant communication medium of the 1950s: illustration. Such illustrations, which were used to sell and illustrate all kinds of products, were pictorial and often had an emotional narrative. Text was often hand drawn and was made part of the illustration. <br />
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Other Toronto-based designers who were working for larger firms (such as Clair Stewart at Rolph Clark Stone printers, and Les Trevor at Rous and Mann Press), also attempted designs which were counter to the illustrative, busy, and emotional trends of the period. An example were the brochures for the Garamond and Janson typesetting company (included in the exhibit), which Dair praised in Canadian Art as being good examples of design that attempted to advance ideas or concepts without literally showing the audience images of those ideas or concepts.<br />
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Dair's articles called "Type Talks" influenced a young Allan Fleming in the 1940s, who also undertook a study tour of the English publishing and typography industry and by the mid-1950s was working for the Toronto advertising firm of Cooper & Beatty. Often simple in structure, Flemming's work built upon the modernist principles of the period, as well as his understanding that humans are affected by all of the elements of a designed page, and that they all carry meaning. As Donnelly notes, Flemming had a "natural understanding of the semiotic qualities of type, shape, colour, space, and form, and of our natural tendency to 'read' even the most abstract elements." (page 17) However, Fleming was not as formal or rule driven as his European contemporaries, and borrowed more from the playfulness of the American designer Paul Rand than any one European designer. Furthermore, Fleming did not have a single style, but was more interested in using the best means possible to communicate particular concepts to the public. As his posters in the collection show, Fleming’s main concern was not only getting across specific messages, but doing so with particular accompanying feelings. <br />
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Indeed, it was Fleming’s ability to recognize how text, shapes, colours, and space can all be used to communicate both messages and ideas which led him to designing one of the first and most influential corporate images which would communicate the organization's name and function with modernist simplicity: the Canadian National Railways logo. The simplicity and strength of the logo, Donnelly claims, illustrated the post-war economic strength of the country, as well as the dynamism and importance of the crown corporation. In addition, unlike mush minimalist design of the period, it was very easy for people to both read the logo as consisting of a "C" and "N" and to understand that it represented a train track snaking its way across Canada.<br />
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Fleming had been hired to work on the CN account by James Valkus, a New York designer who had won the contract and presumably wanted to have some Canadian input. Initially Fleming considered calligraphic letters for the design, while Valkus imitated the design Herbert Matter had made for the New York, New Haven Railroad (1954), which made use of slab-serif letters. The first version which attached the "C" and the "N" actually came from Carl Ramirez, a staff artist working for Valkus. Yet, the final design, which borrowed the connecting of the letters was the work of Fleming. However, as Donnelly notes, Fleming also provided the persona of a Canadian, "modern, bright, corporate designer, to identify with the symbol." (p 20) What is more, Donnelly emphasizes that the success of the CN design also owes a great deal to both the railway's full commitment to its rebranding campaign, as well as the thoroughness of the rebranding process which Valkus insisted upon. <br />
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While Fleming would go on to work for MacLearn Advertising in the early 1960s, he, like Dair, was more content to work on "small clever pieces which showed his intelligence, control of space, type, and pacing." (page 21)<br />
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Self-Promotion and Self-Awareness: Societies and Other Experiments<br />
Donnelly begins the second section of the paper, "Self-Promotion and Self-Awareness: Societies and Other Experiments," by discussing the establishment of the Typographic Designers of Canada association in 1956. The four founding members included two British graphic designers who had been members of similar organizations before immigrating to Canada: Sam Smart and Frank Davies. The other two founders were the Canadian graphic designers John Gibson and Frank Newfeld. (Both Newfeld and Smart worked mostly in book design. Newfeld worked for many years with McClelland and Stewart, creating cover designs for the publisher’s children's books.) Funded by the Rolland Paper Company of Quebec, the association launched its annual Typography exhibits in 1957, which were accompanied by catalogues of the exhibits. Claiming to be a national organization, the Typographic Designers of Canada was originally a Toronto-based and membered club, holding its first meeting at the city's Arts and Letters Club. However, over the following decades the organization would become truly national in character. The Typographic Designers of Canada eventually changed its name to the Graphic Designers of Canada. The organization provided a forum for designers to not only make important social and professional contacts, but also to share and develop design ideas and techniques. <br />
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Another association formed in the late 1950s was the Guild of Hand Printers (1959). The Guild was an association for designers who still used the obsolete technology of metal type, hand typesetting, and hand-operated letter presses. This organization sporadically printed collections of its work between 1960 and 1976. Nine editions of Wrongfount were eventually published.<br />
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An influential Canadian journal of the late 1950s and early 1960s was a magazine produced for the employees and shareholders of Imperial Oil. Under the art directorship of Gerry Moses, Imperial Oil Review began to include images in the mid-late 1950s which were both modern and experimental. These included a 1956 feature illustration by Arnaud Maggs and a 1958 cover collage by Michael Snow. In 1960 the graphic designer/typographer John Richmond joined the journal's staff, allowing Moses to incorporate experimental typography into his layouts. By the following year, the journal's covers included both modern and semi-abstract designs.<br />
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Also, by 1960, international attention was being paid to innovations in Canadian graphic design, leading to a special edition of the Tokyo-based graphic design journal, Idea, on Canadian graphic design. The cover design was by Theo Dimson. It made use of a relevant period image (Victorian eyes) which were contrasted against the large amount of white space and the use of tightly controlled bold lettering. Donnelly stresses that Dimson's cover was a good representation of Canadian modern design of the period. He claims that, "it is important to note that Canadian awareness and acceptance of modern experimentation was always balanced by an engagement with traditional values, as well, even if in a humorous or ironic way." (page 28) However, Donnelly claims that the traditional elements of Canadian graphic design, those elements which made its creations recognizable and readable, were fully challenged after 1960 with the arrival of two German immigrants to Montreal, Rolf Harder and Ernst Roch.<br />
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The Modernist Vision: A Sans-Serif Steamroller<br />
Donnelly begins the section "The Modernist Vision: A Sans-Serif Steamroller" by noting that in the 1950s and 1960s Canadian designers were well aware of, using, and adapting various European modernist design styles which were being developed and heavily used by their European contemporaries. The influence of such European styles was partially furthered with the end of the war and the large number of European emigrés coming to Canada in the early-mid 1950s. Already influenced by English design, by the 1960s Canada was being heavily influenced by other European traditions, especially by the styles of German-speaking countries, which, Donnelly claims, were the most dynamic and openly modern of all European graphic design. The post-war economic boom helped fuel design experimentation in Canada, as the public, publishers, and producers of all kinds were increasingly willing to abandon traditional domestic themes of advertising and illustration. However, in abandoning traditional typographic ideas and values, modernist inspired designers were abandoning the very roots of their growing Canadian professionalization. <br />
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When Rolf Harder arrived in Canada in 1955 his work displayed some of the same North American styles as many of his Canadian contemporaries, including using antique engravings and playful collage. However, by the early-mid 1960s he had begun to adopt a more geometric approach and started incorporating photography. These changes were part of a desire to gain a rational control of the designed space, a trend which follows from the international style of architecture, which attempted to incorporate productivity into every space within its structures. This was a transition from eclectic and personal experimentation, which had become the Canadian norm, to one which was much more constrained or refined. This is also exemplified by the work of another European emigré, Ernst Roch, who made use of photography that was highly cropped so as to be purely utilitarian in nature, typography which was controlled, and white space that was used as contrast to other parts of his images. These new immigrant European designers were making use of a very specific aesthetic, one which carefully defined the audience's visual range and which eliminated all excessive decoration so as to clearly communicate the intended message and ideas of the designer.<br />
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Donnelly claims that while European modernism, which began at the time of Jan Tschichold and was adopted in the Soviet Union and Weimar Germany, had undergone significant refinement over the decades to evolve into the International Style which was being used and manipulated by Canadian designers and others around the world, it contained two central ironies to its development. The first was that, although modern style had been meant to free designers from the formal and traditional conventions of design, it was also authoritarian in that its exponents believed that its geometric simplicity and use of sans-serif fonts should be the totality of what one should need to overcome most design problems and communicate most messages. The second irony is how the authoritarian, ordered intelligence of the international style, and its formulaic elimination of much of the personal expression of the creator, does not match the anti-authoritarian, counter-cultural mood of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. More structuralist than care-free and diverse, the international style was popular at exactly the time that much of society was challenging established conventions. This may have been that, while being conventional, it was also seen as a reaction to convention.<br />
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The success of the international style, which began to dominate Canadian graphic design shows in 1964 (page 34), also attracted governments and corporations, who liked its clear and authoritative communication of ideas. Interestingly, Donnelly notes that it was with such authority of style that the graphic design community in Canada began to exhibit a growing sense of professionalism as it moved away from the domestic and emotional styles of the 1950s. This professionalism was demonstrated in its shows and publications, as well as its interaction with the larger international design community. As Donnelly notes, it was in the early 1960s that Ken Rodmell called for submissions to the Typomundus 20 exhibition in Toronto which attracted Eastern European talent which was barred entry in participating in some American exhibitions. Federally, the National Design Council and Design Canada hired Frank Davies, Burton Kramer, and Gerhard Doerrié to illustrate Canadian product design, while the Federal Identity Program used modernist design to give the federal government a rational, balanced, and standardized image with which all Canadians could identify. As Donnelly notes, in the case of the Federal Identity Program, the largest problem was to both accommodate and represent the wide array of identities and names which existed within the country's largest institution. Furthermore, the shape and composition of the federal government changes with new political programs and policies. (page 34-5)<br />
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The New Synthesis: A Decorative Revival<br />
Donnelly begins the section "The New Synthesis: A Decorative Revival," by explaining that, following the popularity of reductionist and precise modernism in the 1960s to mid-1970s, much like in the 1950s, period styles and decorative elaboration began to be incorporated in graphic design. Donnelly uses the example of the heraldic Roots clothing logo as an example of an adoption of illustration and detail, arguing that as of the later 1970s organizations recognized that consistency, rather than restraint, was important to having a strong corporate identity. Donnelly also argues that part of the impetus for this change to a more decorative style of design was the life-styles of the baby-boom dominated society whose countercultural movements, with their elements of environmentalism and spiritualism, were having an effect upon even the staunchest modernists. Yet, he also suggests that the turn towards the evocative and the fantastic may have been influenced by the change in the post-war fortunes of the mid-1970s. While the economic prosperity, confidence, and sense of rebellion of the 1960s may have allowed for many in the society to gravitate towards a form of visual communication which was bold and objective looking, the recessions, inflation, growing ecological anxiety, and oil shortages of the mid-late 1970s attracted designers and the public to more complex, confusing, and even escapist imagery. Furthermore, larger design budgets and new printing technology allowed for the easier reproduction of such designs.<br />
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Having examined the work of many of the major modern Canadian graphic designers of the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s, Donnelly questions whether one can claim modernism to really have a single overarching form. He points out that modernism borrows from various languages and traditions, and while it may use them in a highly restrained and ordered way, it is still informed by them. Yet, "[w]ithout a stylistic teleology, or a single formal consensus, what then, if anything can be said to have been gained by the concept of modernism? Has design become an empty, postmodern end-in-itself, or does it simply respond, in however decorative or unusual form, to the demands of the client and the message?" (page 39)<br />
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An Argument for Modernism<br />
In the final section of his paper, "An Argument for Modernism," Donnelly argues that modernism can be understood as a fusing of technology and art, a process which he claims is the essence of socialism. Without this fusion, without an avant-garde to challenge and manipulate accepted ideas of tradition, large forces of production (cultural or material) will dominate cultural production. Those producing the products will not have a connection to the creation, which only has an economic value. While commodification does encourage change and evolution, it only does so in order to obtain more consumer variety. It does not challenge the values or preconceptions of the market. As a once avant-garde movement, Modernism did challenge traditional ideas of design. However, by the late 1950s and especially in the 1960s and 1970s its characteristics were viewed as not only acceptable, but as desirable in that when applied to a product, be it a government or a cereal box, they would foster the acceptability and even the desire for that product. Donnelly claims that the same had occurred with postmodernism by the mid-1990s. Where once it was radical and shocking, it had become the latest means of commodification. However, since the role of artists is to find and explore new means of expressing ideas, Donnelly calls for an avant-garde reappropriation of modernism's attempt to use simple, functional, reductionist graphics in order to express the inexpressible. Combined with evolving technologies, this could only result in benefits to society. Yet, I would point out that since postmodernism rejects all structure or meta-narrative, one is left in a situation where any avant-garde can be easily attacked as simply attempting to impose such a meta-narrative or structure upon society.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-47566621783534291352011-10-24T20:18:00.000-07:002011-10-24T20:18:25.190-07:00Allan Fleming: The Man Who Branded A Nation<style>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14pt;">Martha Fleming, “Allan Fleming: The Man Who Branded A Nation,” <i>Eye</i> 79 (2011).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">This article, by Allan Fleming’s daughter, Martha Fleming, contains much of the same information found in her two earlier articles published in the journal <i>The Devil’s Artisan</i> (“Allan Fleming’s Many Worlds: Making Design History in Canada,” <i>Devil’s Artisan</i> #62, Spring/Summer 2008; “Allan Fleming at Home: a Partial Reconstruction”, <i>Devil’s Artisan</i> #63, Fall/Winter 2008). The article outlines her father's career in graphic design, as well as the influence of his designs, his industry connections, and the effect of his work upon Canada’s national identity. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Fleming’s design education, which began with his attending Western Technical Collegiate in his home city of Toronto (1943-1945) followed by work as an illustrator for Eaton’s mail order advertising department from 1945 until 1947. From 1947 to 1951 Fleming worked in Toronto for Art Associates Studio and the advertising firm Aikin McCracken, and then until 1953 for the firm Art and Design Service. In 1953 Fleming and his wife moved to England where he studied type and book design, returning to Toronto in 1955 to pursue freelance work and teach part-time at the Ontario College of Art. In 1957 he joined the typesetting/advertising agency of Cooper & Beatty for whom, as a consultant typographic designer and then creative director, he designed materials for various art galleries, a cover for Mayfair magazine, as well as a series of agency advertisements which ran in <i>Canadian Art</i> magazine. Fleming worked with the magazine's art director, Paul Arthur, to increase the representation of graphic design to the country's artistic community through <i>Canadian Art</i>. As a result of their efforts, that traditionally fine art publication became the first national publication to regularly cover and critique the growing field of Canadian graphic design.<br />
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At Cooper & Beatty Fleming also helped to further connections between the Canadian and international design communities through talks and exhibitions at the company's Toronto headquarters which attracted leaders in the larger graphic design community including Paul Rand, Saul Bass, and Beatrice Ward. In addition, his expertise in designing and manipulating type to achieve specific effects attracted the attention of Marshal McLuhan who worked with Fleming and his agency on an article exploring typographic self-reflexivity. Fleming also provided designs for the magazine Explorations, which McLuhan edited, and designed several covers for Maclean's magazine. Fleming eventually left Cooper & Beatty in 1962 to assume the position of art director at Maclean's. That year he also joined MacLaren Advertising as director of creative services. <br />
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At MacLaren he designed a number of corporate identities, work for which he was well qualified after having designed a new, and highly influential, logo for Canadian National Railway in 1959 as a freelance job for James Valkus of New York, who had been looking for some Canadian design input on his account with the railway. Fleming's new corporate identity projects included such Ontario-centred government projects as designing new logo for Ontario Hydro in 1964, a logo for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1965, and a logo and materials for the Ontario Science Centre in 1968. He also designed the Liberal Party of Canada's logo for the 1965 election, and then worked on a number of federal government design projects under Liberal Prime Ministers during the mid-late 1960s and 1970s. These included designing a centennial photobook for the National Film Board in 1967; acting as a jurist for the centennial coins design competition (won by Alex Colville), and later advising on the typeface to be used for the coins; and leading a design review of the entire Canada Post Corporation, influencing the institution's identity, including the design format of its stamps for several decades. Martha Flaming even suggests that her father's design influence within Liberal Party ranks may have been significant enough to influence the design of the new flag which was introduced by the newly re-elected minority Liberal government in 1965. While Fleming had submitted a design to an earlier unofficial flag design competition run by <i>Art Canada</i> in 1963, she suggests that drawings from his archives imply that her father was at least hired to influence the design put forward in the public 1965 official competition by Colonel George Stanley, who is officially recognized as having designed the flag.<br />
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Leaving MacLaren in 1968, Fleming went to work for University of Toronto Press as chief of book design. Staying with the press until his death in 1977, Fleming made use of his keen understanding of how type and page design can affect the message of a text, as well as his cover design talents, to radically change, and modernize, the look of the books produced by UTP. Many of his book designs won national and international awards, including several World's Most Beautiful Book awards from the Leipzig Book Fair. Focusing upon publishing during his last years, Fleming also opened his own small volume press, and even designed the Hymn Book for the United and Anglican Churches of Canada in 1971. <br />
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In addition to his numerous awards, his influential designs, and the inspiration he gave to a generation of Canadian designers, Martha Fleming believes that her father was at least partially driven by the conviction that he was helping to create, and inspire the creation of, a national identity from the 1950s to the 1970s. Trained in the advertising and typography styles and traditions of Europe, the United States, and Britain, she believes that Allan Fleming contributed to the design of a uniquely Canadian national identity through graphic design. What she fails to mention directly, however, is how, in having such a strong influence upon the designs used and chosen by Canadian governments through his connections with the federal Liberal Party in the 1960s and 1970s, Fleming's modernist style may very well have had a direct influence upon the national visual identity policies and programs of the federal government and its various departments and crown corporations during those decades.</span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-48237364760526546132011-10-10T21:04:00.000-07:002011-10-10T21:04:54.302-07:00Jean Morin - Hydro Québec, Bell Canada, Petro-Canada, du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal<a href="http://www.sdgq.ca/membre_honoraire.php?id=15">http://www.sdgq.ca/membre_honoraire.php?id=15</a>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-31807004033297892552011-10-10T19:43:00.000-07:002011-10-10T19:43:53.871-07:00Jim Donoahue - Canada Wordmark (1974)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWsjeXow2rg8egMTE35TH-4sNJPg4pNLQvM5KFvRmVrFOitJ2VOgGVteUmt1kRxcZehNNyLGO6yRTBIGeb_61p_4nRbBtgGOjPZKBUl8juC1k2pMGl5B0BlL8BUi_c28GCMTTNPuBmWDQ/s1600/canada-wordmark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWsjeXow2rg8egMTE35TH-4sNJPg4pNLQvM5KFvRmVrFOitJ2VOgGVteUmt1kRxcZehNNyLGO6yRTBIGeb_61p_4nRbBtgGOjPZKBUl8juC1k2pMGl5B0BlL8BUi_c28GCMTTNPuBmWDQ/s320/canada-wordmark.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Canada Wordmark<br />
Designed by Jim Donoahue, McLaren Adverising for the Canadian Government Travel Bureau. Adopted in 1981 by the Treasury Board to be widely used across the federal government "to provide a clear and attractive expression of the federal presence."<br />
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http://www.torontoimagescanning.ca/donoahue-design/index.htm<br />
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Reference: Michael Large, <i>Graphic Design and Corporate Identity</i> (Thesis), (Concordia University, 1989) 286, 289.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-38060777840707968172011-10-10T19:16:00.000-07:002011-10-10T19:16:43.052-07:00Allan Fleming - CN, etc.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq3S1g8LCcjSNb4M4OVaPAOukn0ffiIbHF9Rui-O8Z0qtTmQAOHjh8o3kUIGbhn23ttUqIWHj672iYTkKOrNhRW9eu8saa-lsQU0D9KKIxHtLCqrcy7jxXnuDfDvhISqvVK63AX5K85fY/s1600/250px-Allan_Fleming_and_CN_Boxcar_1960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq3S1g8LCcjSNb4M4OVaPAOukn0ffiIbHF9Rui-O8Z0qtTmQAOHjh8o3kUIGbhn23ttUqIWHj672iYTkKOrNhRW9eu8saa-lsQU0D9KKIxHtLCqrcy7jxXnuDfDvhISqvVK63AX5K85fY/s1600/250px-Allan_Fleming_and_CN_Boxcar_1960.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Montreal Trust Company logo; letterhead for Hawker Siddeley Canada; logo for Toronto’s Malton Airport; all signage, monumental lettering, and the foundation stone for Massey College at the University of Toronto; art director at <i>Maclean’s</i> magazine (1962); Ontario Hydro logo; Trent University crest; unsuccessful design for a new Canadian flag; logo for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; 1965 Liberal Party of Canada campaign materials; etc.Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-3402427768616818912011-10-10T19:07:00.000-07:002011-10-11T07:11:53.362-07:00Julien Hébert - Expo 67 logo and logotype<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijmz54W2fhfEG3VJW5aMmPYKWEcMinPM_X4N2NHcTGseDDq5NTrXEonXSzIfiLJ3M2nzpFdKTPb-DE5f2eXA64lNRZeHJ-ahKUET9k8rLagLApMQscxHkndNu_1VxMWxujoSGI03C-DbY/s1600/expo67_logo_canadian_design.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijmz54W2fhfEG3VJW5aMmPYKWEcMinPM_X4N2NHcTGseDDq5NTrXEonXSzIfiLJ3M2nzpFdKTPb-DE5f2eXA64lNRZeHJ-ahKUET9k8rLagLApMQscxHkndNu_1VxMWxujoSGI03C-DbY/s320/expo67_logo_canadian_design.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julien_H%C3%A9bert">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julien_H%C3%A9bert</a>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-57384568965340622352011-09-27T19:39:00.000-07:002011-10-06T20:49:01.122-07:00Michael Large, "A Flag For Canada"Michael Large, "A Flag For Canada" In Made in Canada: Craft and Design in the Sixties. (Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005) 40-50. <br />
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</style> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Michael Large's paper “A Flag For Canada” examines the development of some of Canada's most recognizable federal images in the 1960s and the inspiration for the adoption of such designs. Beginning with the design competition to replace the Red Ensign and the adoption of the new flag in 1965, Large discusses how the decision to replace the flag, as well as the choice of the final design, were made in reaction to the cultural and political circumstances of the early to mid 1960s. With increasing calls from Quebec nationalists for more of a voice in not just the affairs of Quebec, but also of Ottawa, as well as a recognition of the growing number of Canadians who were not of French or English descent, the Pearson government wanted to replace the main symbol of the country with something which was not so obviously British in origin and which could be embraced by all Canadians. As Large explains, the implementation of the flag design was only the most noticeable, and likely the most enduring, part of a systematic use of new, often modernist, symbols to represent the Canadian nation. Indeed “more change of a symbolic nature occurred in a few years [in the 1960s and 1970s] then in the whole of Canadian history.” (page 40) The flag represented one step in a review and refashioning of the country’s entire communications structure so as to allow the government to meet the demands of the era.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In addition to the period being one of tensions between French and English Canada, the 1960s and early 1970s was also a period of growing recognition of Canada’s other ethnic groups, a time of social and cultural revolution and experimentation, as well as a period, especially for the baby boom generation, of a rejection of traditional views and ideals. These were also the young new consumers who recognized the importance of individual style which could set themselves, and the products they consumed, apart. In addition, it was also a period when there existed widespread optimism about the economy and the promised innovations of technology. Thus, it is not surprising that many Canadians were receptive to proposed modern changes to the ways in which their country and their government were represented to Canadians and to the world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">That the flag and many of the other government designs of the 1960s were modernist in style is not accidental since, as Large notes, “[t]he start of the [1960s] marked the high tide of the international style, the postwar vision of modernism that believed in rational design solutions and the perfection of form and systems.” (page 41) The international style, which was becoming highly influential in the corporate world, would also come to greatly affect Canadian government iconographic design with the immigration to Canada of European modernist designers </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://www.gdc.net/about/fellows/articles141.php">Rolf Harder</a> and <a href="http://www.gdc.net/about/fellows/articles141.php">Ernst Roch</a>, as well as some Canadians who had worked in the field abroad, such as <a href="http://www.gdc.net/about/fellows/articles75.php">Paul Arthur</a>, who had worked at <i>Graphis</i> magazine in Switzerland. Arthur became the managing editor of the Canadian journal <i>Canadian Art</i> and was responsible for new modernist signage employed at Canada’s federally run airports, as well as for the graphics used for Expo 67. Furthermore, graphics had been central to ideas and movements in Canadian visual culture earlier in the century, beginning with the Group of Seven, who had been originally trained as advertising artists. The country also had several design firms which already had experience creating new, modern corporate designs for some of Canada’s largest companies. Designers such as those at Toronto’s <a href="http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/index.php?s=stewart+morrison&searchbutton=Go%21">Stewart and Morrison </a>or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Fleming">Allan Fleming</a>, who had designed the new logo for Canadian National Railways, had shown that they could create recognizable, influential, and memorable logos and signage systems.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Recognizing the popularity, attractiveness, and the alleged psychological power of the modernist a design philosophy, the federal government wanted to capitalize on the implied rationalism and order of modernism by incorporating it into federal iconography. Such implied characteristics or rationalism, order, and efficiency appealed to many Canadians who were concerned or confused about what Canada was and whether their government understood them, their interests, and what they wanted their country to be. The imagery chosen by the federal government thus not only imposed ideas of the nation and the government, but it also gave the impression to the Canadian public that the federal government was reacting to the participatory, popular culture of the era.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In the case of the flag, the process of its design and selection reflected both the modernist principles of rationality and precision, as well as the 1960s public demand for input and participation in how its government was run. The participatory aspect was seen in the fact that the flag design was chosen from a public design competition, about which there was much public debate. Rational principles were reflected in the systemized and centralized nature of selection and process and then the meticulous and systematic deployment of chosen symbol throughout the government, resulting in a complete and controlled revision of the country’s identity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The official competition was preceded by a competition run by the magazines </span><a href="http://www.canadianart.ca/issues/"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Canadian Art</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> and <a href="http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=12809&back_url=%28%29"><i>Perspectives/Weekend Magazine</i> </a>in 1963. The call for a new flag, which had been made numerous times by others since the Second World War, generated 789 entries, </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">many of which were submitted by some of Canada’s most prominent graphic designers, with the majority of such entries being modernist in style. These submissions included submissions by </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Allan Fleming, Ernst Roch, Rolf Harder, and the typographic designer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Dair">Carl Dair</a>. The entries were judged by Dr Geoffrey C. Andrew, executive director, Canadian Universities Foundation, Ottawa; Ted Bethune, creative director, Cockfield, Brown Ltd, Vancouver; and Guy Viau, critic and vice-president of the Arts Council of Quebec, Montreal. The finalists were reproduced in the September/October edition of <i>Canadian Art</i> in an article titled "In Search of Meaningful Canadian Symbols." In the text of the article, the judges explained that they had looked for designs which reflected the changing nature of a modern, evolving, bilingual Canada of many cultures and French and English origins.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The official selection of the new flag design was conducted by an all-party committee of the federal parliament, following tempered and passionate debates in the House of Commons over various designs, containing different ethno-cultural, regional, and historic symbols and colours. The designs had been submitted by thousands of armature and professional designers from across the country.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Large claims that the submissions can be divided into three general groups. 1) Traditional: which includes symbols and colours which made reference to Canada’s English and French heritage. These often consisted of designs that included versions of the Union Jack and fleurs-de-lys. 2) Representational: Which consisted of designs that included distinctly Canadian, often natural, images, such as beavers and maple leaves. 3) Abstract: Which included designs consisting of shapes and lines, such as circles, stripes, and stars. The committee, judging the designs, reduced the thousands of submissions down to fifteen finalists, five from each of the categories of three-leaf designs, single-leaf designs, and designs which included references to Britain and France. After another six weeks of debate, the committees chose one finalist from each of the three categories. The first was the heraldic three red maple three leaf from the Canadian shield bordered by two blue stripes (the Prime Minister’s favourite). The second was the single stylized thirteen-point maple leaf bordered by two red stripes, while the last was the same as the second, but it also included a Union Jack. The winning flag, designed by George Stanley, dean of arts at the Royal Military College, was redrawn by the federal designer Jacques Saint-Cyr to have eleven points and was formally approved by the Prime Minister on 9 November 1964. It was then proclaimed by parliament on 28 January 1965 after protracted protest by John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative opposition.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Large claims that the flag represented the core elements of any corporate identity program. Its reference to a traditional, natural Canadian symbol showed continuity with the past. The removal of the Union Jack from the national flag spoke to the country’s distinctiveness. The flag was a highly recognizable symbol, and its dissemination across the country and its reproduction were carefully controlled. The red used for the flag had to be a of a specific shade, the government ensured that its flags were produced on the most advanced and appropriate material, and the Canadian Specifications Board issued detailed guidelines on how the flag, and the highly stylized maple leaf, should be drawn or printed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The adoption of the new flag, and its protection in law, was followed in the late 1960s by the introduction of other significant federal design changes. These included the adoption of the modernist typeface, Helvetica, as the font to be used for most federal government communications, including written documents and signage. The government also hired the </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">McLaren Advertising agency of Toronto in 1969 to</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> create a new "Canada" wordmark for the </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Canadian Government Travel Bureau. The wordmark was soon adopted as the official textual representation of the federal government. Furthermore, with the adoption of the Official Languages act in 1969, the </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">government also launched a task force that was charged with examining how information was provided to citizens by the federal government. The result of the task force’s work included the creation of Information Canada in 1970 as the federal body which as responsible for overseeing, and ensuring the quality, control, and standardization of all of the government’s communications with Canadians. As such, Information Canada was also responsible for the implantation and enforcement of a new Federal Identity Program, one of the world’s largest government identity programs which set guidelines and regulated all naming of government entities, the design and use of signage, and the government’s use of specific symbols, including the flag. <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As Large explains, Information Canada had been created out of recommendations set out in a report of the federal taskforce of 1969 entitled </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">"To Know and Be Known." The agency and its Identity Program were to have the federal government follow the trend of large businesses and have Ottawa be symbolically visible to Canadians. Large explains that the Federal Identity Program was to, “to promote recognition of, and access to, government services, to project both official languages equally, to improve efficiency and savings in government communications, and to exploit design as a management tool.” (page 49) Design was thus used to </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">portray an image of Ottawa as, and have Canadians believe Ottawa to be, a modern, efficient, powerful, centralized government which treated all of its citizens equally. This use of design has also been consistently employed for over forty years. Although Information Canada was disbanded, control of the Federal Identity Program passed to the Canadian Secretariat and has made use of many of the same designs, only undergoing minor modifications during the 1980s. Large suggests that proof of the effectiveness of the identity program can be seen in the enthusiasm with which Canadians have adopted the 1965 flag, as well as the various provincial government which, having the same goals of recognition and image control, have followed Ottawa’s lead by adopting their own identity programs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-19728243100980483502011-09-27T18:40:00.000-07:002011-09-27T18:49:26.977-07:00Parks Canada logo and signage references<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99MLu7prcGbyFiH6Nu9wsOEQiy0kgxLwvKnYu8r-Hpa_JHm5vKxt-czP7PLz5412Nngr-7YkaiIUTsYr5syV_yiEEtsq1WyqXXwSMcTEAP2_BDp_FZJm3X1ZiLoupEYzv7A_m4foKBXY/s1600/parks-canada-beaver-negative-image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99MLu7prcGbyFiH6Nu9wsOEQiy0kgxLwvKnYu8r-Hpa_JHm5vKxt-czP7PLz5412Nngr-7YkaiIUTsYr5syV_yiEEtsq1WyqXXwSMcTEAP2_BDp_FZJm3X1ZiLoupEYzv7A_m4foKBXY/s320/parks-canada-beaver-negative-image.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Design: Roderick Huggins – derived from Federal Identity Program<br />
Client: Parks Canada – Government of Canada<br />
Date: 1970′s<br />
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<a href="http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/logo/original-parks-canada-logo/">http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/logo/original-parks-canada-logo/</a><br />
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Designer(s): Stewart and Morrison Ltd. and Jaques Guillon Designers Inc.<br />
Client: Parks Canada, under the direction of Environmental Services Division, Engineering and Architecture Branch, Dept of Northern and Indian Affairs (originally)<br />
Date: 1975<br />
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<a href="http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/graphics/parks-canada-signage-manual-1975/">http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/graphics/parks-canada-signage-manual-1975/</a>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-69439190884898429472011-09-27T18:28:00.000-07:002011-09-27T18:28:06.214-07:00Beatrice Warde, "The Crystal Goblet," 1955.<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In “The Crystal Goblet,” a 1955 speech to the British Typographers Guild, the typographic scholar Beatrice Warde begins by comparing the use of different kinds of wine glasses to the use of different typefaces. The contents of wine glasses is, of course, wine, whereas the content of type is linguistic messages. In her metaphor, Warde states that the connoisseur of wine we choose a clear glass which does not misconstrue the color or visual quality of the wine, unlike an expensive golden chalice which, while very impressive looking, almost demands as much or more attention of the consumer than its contents. Her point is to argue that the crystal wine glass plays a similar role to well-chosen type. For Warde, the real purpose of typography is to allow the reader to take in the written message without being distracted by the medium through which it is transmitted.<span> </span>She argues that fancy typefaces, while in some cases possibly adding to the written message, are often distracting. Although carefully designed, a poorly chosen typeface can cause the reader to spend time trying to decipher the text, taking away from its desired effect. Furthermore, poorly chosen typefaces can also cause the reader to misread, or worry about misreading, the text. Instead, Warde argues that typeface designers should make a concerted effort to design type which is completely innocuous and inoffensive, allowing the reader to focus upon the message provided by the text rather than upon the medium through which the message is to be transmitted.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Warde claims that her approach to typography, which she argues is the basis of all good typography, is modernist in the sense that it first asks what the type should do rather than how it should look. The purpose of printing for Warde is to transmit ideas from one person to another via text. For her, if one does not begin with this assumed purpose, one may focus too much upon things other than clarity of communication. And while the result may be visually pleasing, it may not get the message across efficiently. Furthermore, Warde warns about the difference between legibility and readability. While it may be shown that some fonts are more legible than others, some are much more pleasing to read, and thus, will not distract the reader with their design. Using the example of Bold Sans, Warde claims that it has been found to be much more legible than, say, Baskerville. However many find the later typeface more pleasing and less distracting to read than Bold Sans.</span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-6916112477466086072011-09-27T17:53:00.000-07:002011-09-27T18:37:11.298-07:00Clive Dilnot, "The State of Design History: Parts I and II"Clive Dilnot, "The State of Design History, Part I: Mapping the Field," ""The State of Design History, Part II: Problems and Possibilities" In <i>Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism</i>. Ed. Victor Margolin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.<br />
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</style> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Clive Dilnot begins his essay "The State of Design History, Part I" by arguing that any discussion of the present and future roles of design cannot be conducted without reference to and knowledge of the history of design. All designs are influenced by what came before. They may be attempting to incorporate elements of earlier styles of design or reacting against certain forms, while also being influenced by other social, economic, political, or physical phenomena around them. The role of the design historian is thus to explain how different kinds of design both developed and were used. His/her job is not to try and explain away the past by collapsing different designers and their styles into large sweeping movements, but to explain the complicated developments in design. Through maintaining these differences, the design historian will also maintain a differentiation between design the practice and the designs, or the concrete results, which are produced by the practice. When the details of design (the practice) is separated from the designed product, as occurs when one creates large categories, which include many different examples of designed phenomena, the activity and particularity of the act of design are lost. Indeed, Dilnot claims that the field of design as a whole can only be understood is one explains, and makes credible, the particularities of the different varieties of design. Otherwise designers could simply be misconstrued as simply being individuals who "imbue products with added desirability." (page 214) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Dilnot also suggests that the field of design history, while an emerging area of study which has and is gaining recognition in a number of countries, does overlap with other preexisting historical fields. These include art history, the history of technology, and the histories of business and the economy. He suggests that the best means of assessing and identifying any significant differences and similarities is to survey the work which has been done in the field of design history. Similarly, an overview of the work done in the field can help to explain why the field has taken so long to develop in comparison to other historical areas of study. Dilnot partially explains this lack of concentration upon the study of design as being a result of the particularly North American popular belief that cultural and physical objects and images are separate. Thus, discouraged from being self-reflexive design, like technology, has been slow to pursue any philosophical analysis of itself. In addition, lacking professional organizations and the belief that it was indeed a field which was separate from manufacturing, design had until recent decades been seen as having little value when compared to other aspects of the production of goods.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Writing from a British perspective, Dilnot claims that before the Second World War there were, apart from architecture, only a few topics of study being pursued by historians which could be included as part of the history of design. One was the history of the decorative arts, consisting largely of the study of the monumental decoration and architecture of great houses. Another was the emphasis placed upon design by Nikolaus Pevsner in his 1936 <span>Pioneers of Modern Design</span>, in which Pevsner argued that the forms furthered by design, the creation of which are rooted in history, have an effect upon society. History also showed, for Pevsner, how society relates and related to the field and products of design. In addition, developments in the printing movement and typeface design during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an international typographic movement develop by the 1920s, as well as great interest within the movement for the history of typography. However, Dilnot also notes that, as in the other cases of early design history, the history of typography was largely pursued by those involved in the field of design, and was typically conducted in order to answer particular problems posed by designers or to justify or explain unique developments within the field. Prior to the 1960s it was not studied as a field for its own sake. Rather, once problems of the field had been answered through the help of historical research, interest in that research tended to fade. This, according to Dilnot, prompts the question of: "What is implied by the current simultaneous rise of a need for history on all design fronts?" (page 218), a question which he believes can be answered by examining the apparent absence of any significant interest in the history of design between the mid-late 1930s and the 1960s. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In the case of graphic design, Dilnot argues that history seems to have been irrelevant to many in a field which was attempting to escape the historical limitations of the arts and crafts movement and roots in commercial art. These historical influences were seen as a threat which would hamper the development of new styles, particularly modernist design which had already overtaken other areas of design, such as architecture, and thus, did not require historical justifications in order to be adopted. Furthermore, the field of design was not only highly anti-intellectual in attitude during this period, but it was seen as a sub-division of the fine arts, the history of which was already studied by the field of art history. However, interest in the history of design can be understood, according to Dilnot, as being a result of the popular impact of design during the 1950s and 1960s. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">With the development of an affluent post-war economy in which image affected sales, the widespread use of design by institutions to express brand standards, the growth in the number of schools teaching courses in design, and the growth of the Western youth popular culture, design was suddenly central to the products and institutions of everyday life to an extent which they never were in the 1930s and 1940s. Advertising and design was now being used not simply to sell people products, but to sell them products which they associated with particular ideas and lifestyles to an extent which had not been seen prior to mid-century. With this recognition of design and its importance, new interest was also created in the history of design in earlier periods, particularly Victorian and Edwardian popular and technical design. Indeed, 1960 saw the republication of Pevsner's <span>Pioneers of Modern Design</span> and the release of Reyner Banham's <span>Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, </span>which focused upon the history of the modernist design movement and its origins. However, these books were still heavily focused upon architecture, fine art, and what constituted good design, while describing the profession in terms of the "great men" of design. Yet, recognition, particularly from the design education field, that the history of design was not simply the story of the development of modernism, and that the history of design should go far beyond the history of architecture and fine art, led to the emergence of a new design history by the late 1960s ad early 1970s.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Given the lack of a tradition of design history, Dilnot claims that it is difficult, if not impossible, to offer a comprehensive survey of the field. Practitioners do not focus upon core subjects and do not base their knowledge upon an agreed upon cannon of texts. Rather, he claims that the best that can be said is that the field shares four principles and three absences. The principles are that:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt 28.3pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">- Design history is the study o f the history of professional design activity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt 28.3pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">- It is not the activity itself that forms the first layer of attention of historians, but the results of that activity: designed objects and images. (This emphasis is justified on a number of esthetic and archeological grounds, as well as on the premise that design is a practical activity that results in a new thing or image.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt 28.3pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">- An equally natural orientation was added to design in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt 28.3pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">- Design history emphasizes individual designers. Explicitly or implicitly, they are the focus of the majority of design history written and taught today." (page 221)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Dilnot’s three absences are that:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">- There is little explicit consideration of aims, methods, or roles of design history in relation to its actual or potential audiences.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">- There is little consideration of design history's origins, except in an educational and institutional sense.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">- There is a general lack of historical, methodological, or critical self-reflection. Whereas self-reflection might at the very least engender clear statements of position or clarification of aims, the ad hoc nature of most design history means that it is very difficult to define social, theoretical, or methodological presuppositions. This is not to say they do not exist. (page 221)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Dilnot also claims that, as of the late 1980s, when he wrote his paper, one could point to at least four different areas of concentration in the field of design history. These include:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">1) The study of the decorative and minor arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">2) A focus upon modernism, its practitioners, its origins, and movements away from it by the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, Dilnot focuses upon the work of Tim Benton and the Open University's Art History Department for developing comprehensive courses since the early 1970s which focus upon relationships between the history of modernist architecture, seen from a very broad perspective, modernism, and other areas of design. Furthermore, Dilnot claims that the focus upon modern design has also led to new definitions of Modernism. He writes that, according to Pevsner, to be modern was to be aware of design's social role and to attempt to progress design towards a rational universalism. Thus, one was modern if one was aware that one was striving towards an ideal of design. However, for those studying American modernist design, such as Penny Sparke and Jeffrey Meikle, modernism had more to do with design that reflected the progressive aspects of American capitalism. This modernism manifested itself in the esthetic, theoretical, economic, and technological aspects of design. In contrast, European modernism was more disconnected from the market, which could limit design possibilities. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">3) Linked to the American interpretation of modernism, Dilnot claims that many design historians focus upon issues of design organization, that is, how design fits into the production process, the two activities having become separated since the Industrial Revolution divided the production process into a series of separate steps and jobs. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">4) The final area of focus is related to the study of design's place in the production process. The study of the social relations of various kinds of design examines how and why designs are executed within and in reaction to political, social, and economic relationships. Focusing upon the cultural aspects of design, Dilnot considers the work which has been done on design and representation by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and the journal <span>Block</span>, as well as the influence of the works of Rolland Barthes upon both, particularly his 1957 book <span>Mythologies</span>. This is of interest to a study of iconography in that the work of Barthes examines how images are never free of meaning, but they, or their elements, always make reference to other ideas or images with which one, or one's culture, is already familiar. This can be seen as akin to an iconographic example of </span><em><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal;">Wittgenstinian</span></em><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> language games. Where as Wittgenstein recognized that words gain their meaning based upon context and experience, Barthes argued that the meaning of images, or their elements, are specific to individuals and groups who have specific experience, and thus, are able to participate in a kind of language game of images. As Dilnot notes, the study of the use of sensory signs and sign combinations to express specific ideas (or the study of semiotics) has been influential to various areas of media studies. In the case of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and <span>Block, </span>scholars have moved beyond the analysis of only graphic images to the use of and associations made with the products of material and popular culture. Furthermore, Dilnot argues that analyses of the meaning of elements of design can be seen to include feminist design history, in that "[i]t is precisely the feminist analysis that relates the design of things intimately and concretely to the ways in which objects and images affect us." (page 232)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In the second part of his article, "The State of Design History, Part II: Problems and Possibilities," Dilnot claims that there are four main problems which need to be addressed in the process of creating a field of design history. The first of these is for design historians to agree upon what it is they are studying. In addition to being defined differently by those who examine design from its role in industrial, economic, and cultural events over the past two centuries, the word “design” has various meanings. Design can refer to the act of designing, it can refer to the results of such acts, and it can imply a certain added value. In design history, this range of meanings has led to the production of very different kinds of design histories. This is the same point which John A. Walker makes at the beginning of his book <span>Design History and the History of Design. </span>Dilnot argues that glossing over the differences in the use of the term design may have the effect of confusing people as to what designed objects really are and what designers actually do. The second negative effect will be that history will be removed from design in that, not knowing exactly what design is, people will stop questioning what the activity of design is, why it is done, and what it produces. Rather, the field of design history will be reduced to a cannon of "important" works and designers. "Histories" of design could merely consist of retrospectives of the field and not real explorations of the activity and its products. Such retrospectives would not explore the details of different developments in the field, but would offer an overview of design so as to explain the current state of the field and/or product. Indeed, Dilnot claims that Pevsner's <span>Pioneers of Modern Design </span>was such a retrospective overview. Such overviews of the history of design reduce the subject,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 28pt 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">to an unproblematic, self-evident entity (Design) in a form that also reduces its historical specificity and variety to as near zero as possible. This reduction also restructures the history of design to a repetition of designers' careers and to the past as simply anticipating and legitimating the present. In the process, the vast range of designing represented in history, professional and vernacular, industrial and preindustrial, is eclipsed to a single developmental model, and the process and activity of designing is largely sundered from its social roots. (page 237)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The second major problem facing design history is, according to Dilnot, the challenge of defining both the roles of the field and its audiences. While not offering any concrete solutions, Dilnot does raise several questions which must be asked. These include whether design historians would be writing for themselves, for professional designers, or for a general audience. He also questions whether the field should constitute an independent area of study, whether it should just be thought of as a subset of history, or possibly cultural studies, or whether it should be understood as an interdisciplinary field which makes important links between fields such as cultural studies, sociology, history, and anthropology.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">This leads to Dilnot's third challenge, that of constructing the discipline by defining its subjects and aims. This includes defining the historical approach by which design historians will interpret the past. As of 1989 there had been little discussion of such historiological issues amongst practitioners in the field.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The final challenge to design history, and that which follows from the other three, is to explain the significance of the field. Why do the issues and events of design history matter to the world? What can the field reveal about design and does it matter? Dilnot claims that the value of the field will be determined by the "adequacy, range, and vigor of the questions practitioners ask of their material" (page 241), as well as an authentic recognition of the perspective from which those questions are asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Dilnot concludes the article by asserting that the above mentioned challenges will be easier to overcome if people stop thinking about design as being sets of values or esthetics which are embodied in certain individuals or the objects they create. Rather, quoting Victor Papanek's <span>Design for the Real World</span>, he argues that design should be understood as, " 'the conscious attempt to impose meaningful order . . . the planning and patterning of any act towards a foreseeable end', and that sees professional design as a particular historical form of this more fundamental activity." (page 245). Particularly in the case of Dilnot's first problem for the field of design history, this would allow, if not challenge, design historians to avoid the tendency of offering histories of the "great" designers and designs of the past, but would force them to examine all of the past and contemporary phenomena which affected their subjects and led to their producing particular kinds of products which were used in particular ways by particular sets of people within unique environments.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"></span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-36397792589345399962011-05-19T10:20:00.001-07:002011-05-19T10:20:37.065-07:00Walter Gordon and the Rise of Canadian Nationalism (1999)<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;">Stephen Azzi, <i>Walter Gordon & the Rise of Canadian Nationalism</i>, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Written as both a biography and a description of the development of Canadian Nationalism between the late 1950s and the 1980s, </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Walter Gordon & the Rise of Canadian Nationalism</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">, begins by describing Gordon's early life, his education, and his start as an accountant in his father's Toronto accounting firm. However, Stephen Azzi also uses the first chapter of the text to point to the roots of Gordon's life-long anti-American views and his understanding that Canada should maintain close political, social, and economic ties (the three often being interconnected) with Britain while developing a strong, Canadian-directed economy. An economic conservative, Azzi also shows the origins of Gordon's strong support for government social welfare programs and his socially liberal views. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As the author explains, Gordon grew up in affluence during the Great Depression and was keenly aware that the unemployed and homeless whom he saw daily were largely victims of the failures of the economic system and the government's lack of social assistance measures. Having been interested by the promises of communism as a youth, by the mid-1930s Gordon had become interested in the more democratic ideas of the left and was even a co-owner of the </span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Canadian Forum</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">, the articles of which were often dedicated to discussing left-leaning policies and the problems associated with uncontrolled American influence over Canadian society, its politics, and economy. Furthermore, he and his wife were close friends with several members of the League for Social Reconstruction, including Graham Spry. Azzi also shows how Gordon's work for Eaton's before the Commons Committee on Price Spreads and the Tariff Board during the 1930s convinced Gordon of the dangers posed by free trade with the United States for the Canadian economy. Furthermore, his work for the federal government during the war on the Foreign Exchange Control Board, as chair of the Royal Commission on Administrative Classifications in the Public Service, and as special assistant to Clifford Clark, the deputy minister of finance, convinced Gordon of the importance of Ottawa's new departures from classical government financial management. Especially under Clark he was able to see the role that government could play in both helping the less fortunate and intervening in the economy so as to advance national interests. However, his war time work for the federal government also showed that Gordon lacked a full understanding of macro-economics, preferred action over worrying about the details of complex economic issues, and often allowed his personal ideas and theories concerning the national economy to override the opinions and interests of the government.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Gordon's work for the Ontario and federal governments continued after the war, using the expertise of his business consulting firm (a partial off-shoot of the accounting firm he had inherited from his father) to advise on the efficient organization/reorganization of various government departments, agencies, and overall civil services. He also helped start Canadian Corporate Management Co., a business management firm which Gordon claimed was at least partially established to try and encourage Canadian companies not to sell out to American competitors, but rather, sell to a Canadian holding company which would restructure the company and keep it in Canadian hands.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It was also during the post war years that Gordon developed what he believed was a close friendship with Lester B. Pearson. The two had met while working for the federal government in the 1930s, and it was Gordon who ensured that Pearson would be financially secure enough to enter political life in 1948 when he became Minister of State for External Affairs. Gordon was also responsible for reorganizing the Liberal Party following the defeat of 1958 when Pearson became leader.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Claiming that Gordon's ideas about the threats posed to Canada by American economic hegemony were set before he entered public life, Azzi dedicates his second to sixth chapters to discussing Gordon's public life between 1955 and 1968. The second chapter examines Gordon's involvement in the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, which he chaired from 1956-1957 at the request of Louis St. Laurent. The commission was charged with investigating the nature of the Canadian economy and to make recommendations on how it could be altered to best benefit Canadians. Gordon, still concerned about American influence over the Canadian economy, and thus Canadian sovereignty, recommended that Canadian resources and other business interests should not be unquestioningly sold to foreign interests. The third chapter deals with Gordon's restructuring of the Liberal Party following the party's 1958 defeat to the Tories. His policies on protecting Canadian economic sovereignty would influence Liberal economic policy during the 1960s and 1970s, although his ideas concerning the curbing of foreign investment would not form the basis of Liberal economic policy until the 1970s. The fourth chapter discusses Gordon's election to parliament in 1962, his gaining the position of Minister of Finance following the 1963 election, and finally his unsuccessful first budget, which contained the proposal to tax the take over of Canadian businesses by foreign companies. As is explained in chapters five and six, although Gordon's ideas about protecting Canada's economic sovereignty were generally popular among members of the Liberal Party and the electorate, his ideas about restricting foreign investment were less popular among Liberals. He was replaced by Mitchell Sharp as Minister of Finance in 1965 but was returned to cabinet in 1967 as president of the Privy Council. In this position he oversaw the creation of the </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Task Force on Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Canadian Investment, headed by Mel Watkins, which recommended close control of foreign investment in Canada, particularly in cases involving the purchase of Canadian resources and businesses by foreign interests.<span> </span>Although Gordon left the parliament in 1968 due to a lack of confidence in the experience and tact of Pierre Trudeau, he did support Trudeau, who eventually implemented the many of the recommendations of the Watkins Report through the creation of the Canada Development Corporation and the Foreign Investment Review Agency.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">An early critic of American influence upon Canada, Gordon’s views concerning American investment, as well as related concerns over American political, military, and cultural influence, gained support during the 1960s. Those interested in military sovereignty pointed to the North American Treaty Organization and argued that it was simply a tool by which the United States influenced smaller powers to further its military, political, and economic interests. Cultural nationalists argued that Canada's universities were too heavily staffed by American graduates and that Canadian media was either indistinguishable from American media or could not compete with large budget American publishing, television, and movie productions without government assistance or regulation. However, Azzi claims that the most prominent warnings of, what came to be called "the new nationalism" by the late 1960s, were economic nationalists including Walter Gordon, Mel Watkins, and Abraham Rotstein. However, unlike Gordon, other economic new nationalists, such as Kari Levitt and Eric Kierans, argued that while Canadian enterprise needed to be protected from American direct investment, tariffs should be reduced, if not eliminated, so as to encourage expansion of Canadian business and sales to the United States. However, while concerned about the threat of American economic influence, Azzi notes that Gordon did not see Canada as being threatened by American culture, other than by the way that the importation of American cultural products drained money from Canada. He never had any great interest in culture or the role it played in Canadian society. Rather, nationality for Gordon was only defined in political and economic terms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While many economists did not strongly support Gordon's ideas concerning control over foreign investment, others, including Watkins and James Laxer, members of the NDP Waffle, went much further than Gordon had suggested, arguing that nationalisation, not the regulation of foreign investment, was the only way to protect key industries and remove any risk that they could be sold to foreign interests. In response to the call for the nationalisation of Canadian businesses, Gordon, along with other economic nationalists including Rotstein and Peter C. Newman, formed the Committee for an Independent Canada, an organization designed to lobby the government to increase government intervention in the Canadian economy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As a book which is dedicated to outlining the life and achievements of a Canadian businessman who was not particularly interested in culture and his connections to the new nationalism of the 1960s and 1970s, it is not surprising that Azzi focuses upon the economic strain of the new nationalism. However, it is fairly inaccurate for Azzi to claim, as he does at the beginning of his seventh chapter, that cultural nationalism was never of as much concern to Canadians as economic nationalism. He argues that cultural nationalists both failed to attract the same interest as economic nationalism and that there were no cultural nationalists of equal stature or appeal as Gordon and others who acted as spokesmen for the cultural nationalist cause. This position is contrary to that offered by Ryan Edwardson in <i>Canadian Content</i>, that some of the same new nationalists discussed by Azzi, such as </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Jack McClelland, Mel Hurtig, and Peter C. Newman also spoke out against American domination of the Canadian cultural market, and not solely in economic terms. Furthermore, highly prominent new nationalist artists, such as Margaret Atwood, were clearly more concerned about the cultural implications of American domination than the economic repercussions.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"></span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-55066893603724558352011-05-14T19:59:00.001-07:002011-05-14T19:59:18.900-07:00Born at the Right Time, 1996<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;">Doug Owram<span class="high">, Born</span> <span class="high">at</span> <span class="high">the</span> <span class="high">Right</span> <span class="high">Time</span> : A History of <span class="high">the</span> Baby Boom Generation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As Douglas Owram admits in the Preface to his 1996 book, <i>Born at the Right Time</i>, his research focuses specifically upon the history of the baby-boom generation in English-Canada. Thus, it complements François Ricard's 1994 book, <i>The Lyric Generation</i>, which examined the first wave of the baby-boom generation, paying special attention to what he termed the "Lyric Generation" in Quebec. However, unlike Ricard, who did not cite any of the information included in his work, Owram offers extensive documentation. While many of the themes raised by Ricard reappear in <i>Born at the Right Time</i>, Owram's use of national and local statistics allows the reader to see how his conclusions are actually based upon evidence, and that they are not simply the reminiscences of beliefs of someone who happened to be a member of the baby-boom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In addition to offering detailed references, Owram's text differs from Ricard's in that he examines all of the baby-boom generation. Covering the first quarter century of that generation, be defines the generation as beginning in 1946 and ending in 1962, although he does acknowledge that such beginning and end dates fail to include those born before 1946 who considered themselves to be part of the baby-boom generation, as well as those born during or before 1962 who identify more with Generation X.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Like Ricard, Owram begins his book by examining the generation which spawned the baby-boom. Coming to the same general conclusions as Ricard, but with the documentation to make his case, Owram asserts that the generation which had reached their twenties and thirties in the 1930s and 1940s had, by the end of the war, experienced a decade and a half of financial and domestic instability. With the Great Depression and then the Second World War, the goals of many to obtain steady employment, get married, have a home, and start a family, had been disrupted. Many were either unable to afford to, or had the opportunity to marry and/or start families prior to the end of the war. Thus, with the end of hostilities and the economic growth of the post-war years, these children of the First World War readily embraced the dream of a stable home-life and family. The result was a dramatic rise in the birthrate which contrasted sharply with the steady drop in the birth rate during the 1930s and relatively slow rise of the early 1940s. Peaking in 1959, the birthrate only began to fall significantly in 1963.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The result of this rise in post-war pregnancies is the focus of Owram's second chapter. In particular, he is concerned with the structure of the post-war family and how it was, in theory, more permissive than the Victorian or early twentieth century family. Mothers and fathers were instructed by experts in the new fields of sociology, psychiatry, and psychology that they were to create and maintain a nurturing environment for their children in which the child dictated his/her needs and was free to safely make mistakes and learn about the world. In an era which completely rejected inheritance as a significant factor in development, parents and their society were responsible for exposing children to positive influences and shield them from negative ones. Problems of development were thus traceable to exposure to negative environments and could only be corrected by ensuring that such negative external factors were removed and replaced with those deemed to be beneficial to the child.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Owram's third chapter concentrates upon the development of the North American, and by extension the Canadian, suburb in which children were promised a positive and protective environment. Here he examines the allure of suburban living to the parents of the baby-boom generation, the design of suburban homes and neighbourhoods, the technology which helped the suburbs develop and that which suburban life spawned, and even typical decoration of suburban homes. Great attention is paid to the rationale behind why such a life style became popular, why the technology of the automobile and household appliances were attractive to the parents of the baby-boom, why they furnished their homes in the way they did, and what those choices meant for their children.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Play, the products sold to the baby-boom as toys and childhood necessities, how such marketing was done, and the accepted ideology behind the necessity for play and healthy socialization environments are the focus of Owram's fourth chapter. This is followed by an examination of the content and structure of schooling in the 1950s and early 1960s, and especially how new post-war emphases upon democracy and tolerance, as well as the steeply rising numbers of Canadian grade-school students radically transformed the country’s education systems.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While the first half of Owram’s study offers valuable information about the development of the generation which would be most involved in the counterculture and protest movements of the 1960s, it is the book’s last five chapters which focus specifically upon the development of youth culture, the counterculture movement, its interconnection with the protest movements of the decade, and the sexual revolution. Unlike the other books read for this class, Owram uses the information from the first half of his book to explain how a youth culture which was distinct from the rest of Canadian society, was able to develop in the post-war years, and how that social position of youth was then used by the large and influential baby-boom generation to demand and make significant social, political, and economic changes to Canada. He begins by explaining the development of youth culture during the 1940s and 1950s. Eventually understood as a legitimate segment of society and period of human development, what he terms "the cult of the teenager" was eventually influenced by the lifestyle and writings of the Beat generation, developments in music and fashion, as well as a tarnishing of the moral and ideological position of Western society, particularly that of the United States. The result was a generation of youth in the 1960s who questioned the cultural, ideological, economic, sexual, and political norms of their society. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Although only a small segment of the generation fully embraced a questioning of all aspects of Canadian/North American culture, most members of the baby-boom generation did participate in the countercultural movement in some manner, be it through the music they listened to, their clothes, or their political and social views. Furthermore, this countercultural movement dovetailed with the existing peace movement which in Canada had evolved out of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as the Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA). However, as was evident from Brian Palmer's <i>Canada's 1960s</i>, many of the baby-boomers who were interested in and/or participated in the countercultural movement were not particularly interested in sustained political protest. Those that were, lacked one or more objects of protest which were specifically Canadian. While local or international social and political issues were of concern, there was no major Canadian issue which united the protest/peace movement across the country. In addition, as is also noted by Myrna Kostash in <i>Long Way From Home</i>, the youth-organized SUPA was eventually overtaken/taken over by the federally funded Company of Young Canadians. Like Kostash, Owram suggests that this development was in some way a failure of Canadian youth action and a government directed means of quieting voices of protest. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"></span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-69379799892602858662011-05-14T19:07:00.001-07:002011-05-14T19:07:22.188-07:00Creating Postwar Canada, 2008<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;">Creating Postwar Canada: Community, Diversity, and Dissent, 1945-1975.</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;"> Eds. Magda Fahrni and Robert Rutherdale. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">This collection of papers, unlike many of the books examined for this course, is not confined to the decade of the 1960s and is also not confined in its approach to examining all of the country or the country’s entire political, military, economic, or social situation between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1970s. Rather, each of the book’s thirteen contributors offer microstudies and case studies which are representative of the country in their particularity. While not offering a grand, all-encompassing narrative about Canada and the Canadian experience between 1945 and 1975 (a project which has already been attempted and which invariably overlooks many facts about and conceptions of the country), the papers illustrate how the country consisted of a diversity of events and perspectives, and that only by learning about a wide range of such experiences can someone approach an authentic understanding of the country during the years between 1945-1975. Although some of the papers are national in focus, their subject matter is specific. Others are decisively more local in focus. However, they all illustrate how Canadians of the time were responding to topics which affected many Canadians across the country, including Americanization, continentalism, and even the process of Canadianization and the strengthening of the federal state. The essays of the book’s first section all illustrate communities which, while part of North America, were in some way quite different from the continental social and/or political norm. Each of the papers emphasize how Canada of the postwar era consisted of numerous different kinds of communities, some national in scope, some regional, some defined by race and ethnicity, others defined by class or sexuality. All of these communities, however, did not neatly match common conceptions of North American life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While not using a specific decade to define the book's periodization, the editors do use the same rationale as other authors examined for this course to legitimize the periodization used. They argue that by 2008 enough researchers had enough distance from the 1945-1975 period so as to be able to attempt to study it objectively. Indeed, many of the authors in the volume were no more than children by the time the period in question ended, and were thus not consciously involved with the issues of the time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Not defined by a decade, the editors nonetheless offer a series of justifications for focusing on the thirty-year period in question. Often referred to in Western Europe as the "thirty glorious years" of economic prosperity and the development of a strong welfare state, Magda Fahrni and Robert Rutherdale the claim that the same label might be applied to Canada between 1945 and 1975. Indeed, they see the country's economic prosperity as being one of the defining factors of the era. This prosperity was not only the result of a strong demand for products from growing Canadian families and the large baby boom generation, but also of the demand by the United States for Canadian resources which fed that country's own economic boom, the rebuilding of Western Europe, and eventually its own economic prosperity. Although all sections of Canadian society did not benefit equally from the post-war economic boom, the social welfare and collective agreements obtained by many unions following the war did afford much of the Canadian working class a lifestyle which was greatly superior to those available to their class predecessors. Yet, the editors point out that, as is shown by papers in the collection, not only were these benefits felt differently in different regions of the country, but they were also tempered by the minor recession of 1957 to 1961, as well as the stagflation experienced in both Canada and the United States which began in the early 1970s.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The second of the six reasons offered by the editors to explain the exceptional nature of the period in question was the significant population growth the country experienced. The addition of more than ten million to population by 1975 was the result of the large post-war baby boom, but also the significant post-war immigration which was required to fulfill the labour requirements of the post-war Canadian economy. The millions of new arrivals, many of whom were not of the traditionally Western-European stock which had formed much of Canada's previous immigration, dramatically changed the ethnic composition of the country. Furthermore, as the baby boom generation challenged the established norms of Canadian society in the 1960s and 1970s, the country's growing population of Canadians who were of neither of British or French descent began to join the baby-boom activists' calls for a more equitable society where the contributions of the "other ethnic groups" would be fully recognized. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The third distinguishing factor of the period noted by the editors was the migration of the country's growing population to Canada's urban centres, as well as to the suburbs which were growing around those centres. While there had existed a movement of urbanization in Canada since the beginning of the century, the rate of urbanization was much more rapid following the Second World War. Furthermore, that movement resulted in a construction boom which both employed large numbers of Canadians and radically transformed the organization of Canadian cities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The fourth defining element of the post-war period up to the mid-1970s is the development of Canada's social welfare state. Making use of its new powers obtained during the war, Ottawa was able to implement measures including unemployment insurance (1940), family allowances (1945), veterans' benefits (1947), and enhanced old-age pensions (1951). These were followed hospital insurance in 1957 and full medical insurance in 1966. As the editors note, the adoption of all of these social welfare measures illustrated that the federal government was increasingly acknowledging that all Canadians had the right to a certain standard of living, and that it was the job of government to ensure that everyone is at least afforded that minimum standard. Furthermore, this marked an important break from the more classic liberal position which governments had previously taken, where poverty was often the result of the poor's lack of a will to work and where government charity was designed on the premise that a low level of assistance would encourage the poor to better their own situation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The fifth defining element of the 1945-1975 period is the increasing influence of the United States. That influence was felt not only in Canada's increasingly close military and political ties to the United States following the Second World War and the start of the Cold War, but also in trade and the significant amount of American culture to which Canadians were exposed through all media. While many Canadians did privately and publically resist and resent the growth of American influence, the economic benefits to Canadians, as well as the need for Canada to conform to American political and military demands so as to maintain sovereignty, often meant that American influence upon the lives of Canadians was inevitable. However, part of the reaction to American hegemony and imperialism was an aspect of the final defining element of the era cover by the text. The protest movements of the late 1950s to the 1970s were disparate in focus, including movements for civil rights in the United States, opposition to the American backed war in Vietnam, nationalism in Quebec, expansion of women's rights, the use of drugs, and the redefinition of acceptable sexual norms. Yet, all of these acts of protest shared the common goals of the removal of some form of oppression and the expansion of equality.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The first article of the collection, by Joan Sangster, examines the image of the North which was offered to Canadians in the postwar period. Resulting from Ottawa's actions to increase the country's presence in the North, which was partly the result of Cold War military necessities, Sangster examines the conceptions of the North which were offered to a Southern readership that was largely ignorant about the Arctic. By examining the travel narratives written by nurses, teachers, the wives of doctors, missionaries, Hudson's Bay Company traders, as well as description of the North offered to readers of <i>The Beaver</i>, Sangster shows how the description offered about the North was presented as being that of educated and rational Southerners who were living amongst the irrational, premodern, and culturally deficient Inuit others. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The second article, by Eric Bédard, examines how in addition to new reforms to the administration of Quebec's government and social services during the 1960s, the Quiet revolution also saw the rise of more extreme demands for recognition of Quebec's distinctiveness. Inspired by other nationalist movements throughout the world, as well as by the countercultural movement and its rejection of all oppression, Bédard claims that nationalism and independence took the place once occupied by the Catholic church in Quebec, inspiring followers with a spiritual sense of their distinctiveness as Quebecers and the notion that that distinctiveness would not be truly realized until separation was achieved. As Joel Belliveau explains in his contribution to the collection, New Brunswick's Acadian community also underwent its own awakening of its distinctiveness and the need to defend it within from being eclipsed by the larger English society of the Maritime region. Initially dedicated to integration into and participation in the provincial and federal political and economic institutions after the war, by the 1960s a neo-nationalist movement had developed in the Acadian community which advocated for separate Acadian institutions rather than simply Acadian integration into the cultural, educational, and political institutions of the larger Maritime and Canadian communities. Such distinct institutions would allow Acadians to both maintain their distinctive communities while also benefiting from and participating in the larger regional and national communities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Defence of difference was also important to English-Canadians in the post-war years, as is shown through Steven High's paper on Canadian English. Examining the defence of and focus upon differences in pronunciation and spelling during the 1950s and 1960s, High demonstrates how Canadian English was used as a sign of national independence from both Britain and the United States. Defence of national sovereignty is also the focus of Robert Wright's essay on the political thought of Peter C. Newman who had begun his career as a political commentator as a neo-liberal who was in favour of a free-market, conservative economic policy. However, by the 1970s Newman had become a strong defender of Canadian nationalism and protectionist measures. Wright's thesis is that Newman, who never fully gave up his fundamental preference for fiscal conservatism, reflected the country's economic ideological conflicts, where Canadians strove to find a balance between the free-market and a state directed economy. An example of this conflict between economic nationalism, free trade, and the national and international political implications of pursuing one or the other policy is seen in Dimitry Anastakis' paper on the 1965 Auto Pact. He argues that this agreement, which allowed for free-trade in the case of automobile manufacturing, and thus removed the American-Canadian border as a factor for car producers, should be understood as a significant step in the integration of the two markets, as well as other aspects of Canadian society which are affected by interaction with the American economy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In addition to cars, another product of the postwar decades which is largely seen as an American import that has affected both the Canadian economy and Canadian culture is fast food. Beginning in the 1960s American fast food restaurants began to appear in Canada, fundamentally changing not just what Canadians ate, but the organization of cities and towns, with many such restaurants being situated in shopping malls and new car dominated shopping areas located next to the controlled access highways which had been developed to handle as well as encouraged, the large increase in automobile use following the war. However, as Steve Penfold argues in his paper, this continental, and even international, fast food market, where people all over North America and eventually the world were eating the same foods, did have regional variations. He shows that in its effort to integrate Canadian communities into the monolithic fast food community, some American/international fast food chains were forced in some cases to bow to the tastes of local Canadian communities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The second section of the collection focuses upon the themes of diversity and dissent. This begins with an examination of debates over shopping regulations in the Vancouver and Victoria areas and how they were affected by Cold War concepts and rhetoric concerning free enterprise, dictatorship, and democracy. In his paper Michael Dawson shows how those ideas were used to further very different ideas concerning when and where the public could shop and that, contrary to received opinion about the Cold War, the evocation of the ideas and rhetoric of the time did not always succeed in stifling debate, but in some cases even fed it. This theme of dissent and diversity is also expressed in Becki Ross' essay on the diversity and interaction of communities of performers and patrons in Vancouver's striptease scene between 1950 and 1975. While focusing primarily upon men, Robert Rutherdale's contribution also deals with diversity in his examination of the role of the male household breadwinner in the postwar ear, and how that role differed according to class, region, and ethnicity. According to Rutherdale, the father of the post-war era was often the link between the family and the outside world, and how a father was able to interact with that world affected family stability, security, and their social status. Family status and stability is also discussed by Karen Dubinsky in her study of the adoption of black babies by white families in Montreal in the 1960s. Are she explains, such adoptions, while fulfilling a couple's desire to raise and care for a child, led to conflicts both within the family as well as within the larger community. Similarly, the challenging of established conceptions of particular groups during the postwar era is discussed by </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Christabelle Sethna’s paper on how the sexual revolution was expressed through and reacted to in the pages of the University of British Columbia's student newspaper. She shows that regardless of the liberating aspects of the revolution, women were still often portrayed in a sexist manner through the 1960s. It was only when issues and voices of second wave feminism affected the content of the paper that the publication began to regularly describe and discuss women in a non-discriminatory manner.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> Although also addressing changes in postwar morality, the last paper of the collection by Marcel Martel's, which examines illegal drug use in the 1960s, this paper is extremely similar to another paper by Martel which has already been examined for this course in the collection <i>The Sixties: Passion, Politics, and Style</i>.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"></span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3208769971791488342.post-17512772554109534332011-05-14T19:05:00.001-07:002011-05-14T19:05:42.286-07:00Contesting Clio's Craft, 2009<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="high"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;">Contesting</span></i></span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;"> Clio’s <span class="high">Craft</span>: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;">, Eds. Christopher Dummitt and Michael Dawson, London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2009.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The 2009 collection of papers, <i>Contesting Cleo's Craft</i>,<span> </span>was the result of a conference of the Institute for the study of the Americas held at the University of London, and focuses upon offering new debate and discussion about the state of Canadian historical writing and teaching. The editors, Christopher Dummitt and Michael Dawson, argue that discussion of these subjects during the first decade of the 21st century has concentrated upon debates of the last two decades of the 20th century. In particular, they assert that the three questions of why Canadians are so ignorant about their past, whether historians should focus upon grand national histories, and whether it is possible to obtain and agree upon historical truths, while possibly important for their time, have been sufficiently discussed and should no longer be the main preoccupations of Canadian historical debate. Furthermore, these three topics have often led to polemics by politicians and nationalists, which only served to shut down real discussion or debate. For example, the first debate, concerning Canadians ignorance of their history, is regularly discussed by the media and politicians as a result of the Dominion Institute's annual Canada Day Quiz, which tests Canadians knowledge about their past and routinely shows that they are unable to identify individuals were events which the Institute has decided our key elements to a basic knowledge of Canadian history. Examples of the second debate were the 1991 and 1998 claims made respectably by Michael Bliss and J.L. Granatstein that the field of Canadian history was being harmed by a preoccupation with the study of social history (that of particular groups within society) and a failure of Canadian historians and educators to present students with strong national histories that would bind Canadians together with the knowledge that they were all players within a larger national narrative. While most historians reacted to Bless and Granatstein by arguing that grand national narratives result in the public only being given one monolithic interpretation of the past and silence the voices of other individuals, groups, and perspectives, many Canadian politicians and media accepted the two historians’ claims as convenient reasons for problems of national unity and national pride. The third debate, about the possibility of ever obtaining truths about the past, was much less public.<span> </span>With the spread of postmodern theory throughout the humanities during the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian historians, like other academics, debated one's ability to ever obtain pure and absolute knowledge about any phenomenon. Although such debates were healthy, in that they caused historians to rethink what it was to study and write about the past, and caused most to accept that history is an ongoing attempt to gain a more accurate understanding about the past, discussions about whether one can read, research, or write about the past in a manner which would allow one to approach true knowledge about the past tended to be fruitless given the postmodern conception of truth upon which such debates were based.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The first paper in the collection, by Magda Fahrni, questions why many English-Canadian historians are reluctant to study Quebec, or to examine how Quebec has affected topics which are largely external to the province. Examining the field of Canadian history as a whole, she questions whether there is something which allows for English-Canada to be studied in isolation, as a separate field, apart from the fact that it is not Quebec. After reviewing the differences and connections between English-Canadian and Quebec historiography, she argues that historians writing about phenomena which affected much of the country, must discuss how Quebecers, and especially French Quebecers, were part of the overall Canadian history on such subjects. To ignore the reaction and influence of a large section of Canadian society, and in particular a section which often has perspectives and takes positions which are different from those of English-Canada, is to offer blatantly incomplete interpretations of Canada's past.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In the second of the collection's eight papers Steven High questions whether and why historians claim authority concerning their subjects of study, and whether those whom are studied can or should be accepted by historians as having authority. An expert in oral history, High recognizes that while a critical approach to the past must be maintained, memory and the public's role in the historical process should not always be viewed with suspicion, While changeable over time, and thus, potentially inaccurate, the memory of witnesses can also offer unique perspectives and interpretations of the past which could never be uncovered in, or easily seen through, "objective" documentation. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">A similar theme of interpretation is discussed by Michael Dawson and Catherine Gidney in the third paper in which they question the usefulness and potential handicaps of periodization. Through understanding a particular phenomenon as being of a particular decade, era, or century, while neatly packaging the subject within a specific time period and offering the author and the reader a beginning and end to their narrative arc, periodization can also affect how one interprets that subject. Other elements of that period which may have had little to do with the subject in question may affect how one understands it. Similarly, phenomena beyond the defined period, or which are long-term trends that include that period, may be overlooked. This subject is of particular relevance in writing about the 1960s. As can be seen through an overview of the existing literature on the history of Canada during that decade, many of the significant events and movements of the 1960s had their roots in earlier decades and continued to affect Canadians for years after 1969. To allow the 1960s to be anything other than a guide as to general subjects of significance and how they interacted within a loosely defined period, and not a strict ten-year window, would be to ignore how such subjects occurred within a continuum of phenomena which, in reality, has no beginning or end. The same could be said of Canadian history in general, which cannot be simply defined as events which occur in isolation from the world beyond Canada's borders. This is the point made by Adele Perry in her contribution to the collection in which she calls upon Canadian historians not to allow the fiction of the nation to define their research of subjects, and to draw upon and help contribute to international historiography in their studies of "Canadian" subjects. A similar call for more transnational Canadian history is made by Katie Pickles, who points out in her paper that one of the significant barriers to such an approach is an inferiority complex on the part of Canadian historians which causes them to play-down the international significance of imperial, colonial, and international links between Canada and other countries. Michel Duchanne also addresses the problem of the insular nature of Canadian history in his paper on "Rethinking Canadian Intellectual History in an Atlantic Perspective." Duchanne advocates couching Canadian history, and in particular Canadian intellectual history, within the international world in which one finds many of its roots. This approach would avoid the problem of concentrating upon English influences and would offer a more authentic understanding of how Canada was shaped.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The collection's fourth essay questions the commonly expressed idea that Canada's historical connections to the British Empire, and the country's past British orientation, had decisively negative consequences for the country. Largely resulting from post-Second World War accusations of British bias and a demand for recognition of the contributions of non-British Canadians to, and their influence upon, Canadian society, the argument that Canada's cultural and political leaders had traditionally believed the country to be British in character was accompanied by the claim that non-British Canadians had suffered from this situation, and that as a country of immigrants, Canada itself had not benefitted from its British orientation.<span> </span>Andrew Smith questions this position, pointing out that Canada is typically viewed internationally as a successful nation and that it is a country which has flourished in the past and today at least partially because of its imperial connection, not in spite of it. Similarly, Christopher Dumutt's paper questions whether the inclusive character of current Canadian history writing, while attempting to always be sensitive to the history of particular groups and perspectives which were either ignored or never considered by Canadian historians before the late twentieth century, has resulted in there being significant gaps in the available stories of Canada's past. In focusing upon the particular or the stories of smaller groups of Canadians, has too little attention been paid to people or events which affected the country as a whole, or which are commonly understood to have been well represented in the past, but which were never actually the subject of detailed historical study?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Although all of the contributions included in <i>Contesting Clio's Craft </i>are valuable commentaries on failings or deficiencies of Canadian historiography and how they might be overcome, the problem with the collection is that, like any collection of critiques of the subject, it is incomplete. In fact, one might view the collection as simply a continuation of debates about the nature of historical truth from the 1980s and 1990s which the editors claimed to be moving beyond. Each of the contributions, while valuable commentaries about Canadian history writing, only offer comments about how common approaches within the discipline are imperfect and how one might change the in order to gain attain a more holistic study of Canada's past. However, no study of the past will ever be perfect. And while it might be useful to focus upon improving particular shortcomings, such criticisms should be consumed as part of an ongoing attempt to attain an unattainable objective understanding of the past. Thus, rather than claim postmodern critiques of Canadian history to be passé, they should have described their collection as simply being one of new ideas about how to tweak the study of Canada's past.</span></div>Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16105520448804889763noreply@blogger.com0