Category: Design Legends

GestalterIn Gallery

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Josef Brockmann Opernhaus Zurich

Just when you’ve thought you’ve seen it all, you stumble across something like this Swiss site containing a MASSIVE amount of work from legendary designers like Brockmann, Ruder, Bill, Hofmann, Stankowski, Rüegg, Lohse, Huber, Tschichold and more. This is the motherload folks.

It just goes to show how prolific these designers were, especially Brockmann. I thought I’ve seen most of his work, but this site contains many designs that I’ve never seen, like the one pictured here. It’s like rediscovering him all over again. Not sure how he was able to get all the work completed. I can’t imagine ever producing this amount of work in my lifetime. Amazing.

Emil Ruder Posters

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Time and time again, Emil Ruder’s work simply amazing me. I find myself always going back to it for inspiration for my own designs. What’s truly inspiring about his work is that the designs are so simple in terms of aesthetic, but also complex and refined. A novice designer, or even a non-creative person, would look at his work and think that it’s easy to duplicate. Oh how wrong they would be.

Here are some of his excellent poster designs for you to lust after.

Rudolph de Harak

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Rudolph de Harak (1924-2002) was a legendary American graphic designer who is well-known for his book cover designs for McGraw-Hill during the 50s and 60s. A modernist at heart, de Harak also designed record covers for Columbia and Westminster, as well as these lovely clocks.

After some quick searching, I found this Flickr group dedicated to him.

Fritz Gottschalk

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fritz-gottschalk-stamps.jpgIn 1973, Fritz Gottschalk designed these postage stamps for the Canada Post to celebrated the meeting of the main organizations involved in earth exploration. Beautiful.

Gottschalk is a renowned Swiss designer that founded the agency, Gottschalk+Ash International, and is widely known for designing the Swiss passport. I can’t seem to find an image online of his passport design, if anyone has one I’d love to see it. Gottschalk+Ash International is also responsible for two of lovely theater posters: one and two.

Ikko Tanaka

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Ikko Tanaka Nihon Buyo Poster

Ikko Tanaka (1930–2002) was an influential Japanese graphic designer who combined Japanese tradition with the International Typographic Style to form a style of his own. He’s most known for this 1981 poster for a Nihon Buyo dance performance, in which he created an abstract geisha using basic geometric forms placed on a simple grid.

Benno Wissing

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Not many have heard of Benno Wissing (1923-2008), but in my book he goes down as one of the greatest designers of the last 100 years. Along with Ben Bos and Wim Crouwel, he founded the influential studio, Total Design. Wissing also worked as a painter, illustrator, set designer and architect, but is best known for his signage design for Schiphol Airport in 1967. In the 80’s he was invited to be a professor of design at the Rhode Island School of Design.

The excellent site NAGO has a massive gallery of Wissing’s work. I still haven’t had the time to get through it all — I’m only on page 8. Also, check out the monograph Benno Wissing: Grafische & ruimtelijk ontwerpen.