I N F L U E N C E S

A Starting Point by Marianne Tragakis In the following pages, I would like to share a different viewpoint. I want to share the Introduction to the basics: influences that have formed my ideas in the broad Line picture, the fundamental ideas that continue to Direction influence me and form who I am as a designer. I have been lucky enough to go to The Size Museum of Fine Arts in Boston many times to Shape discover everythng from the the hidden Chapel of Texture Catalonia to Van Gogh and Monet. Visiting the Harvard Botanical Museum’s Glass Flower Exhibit Value was astonishing as an elementary student. And at a Rembrant’s, Storm on the Sea of Galilee Color Stolen from the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum Sunday piano concert at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I found myself mesmerized by the How can I best present the client's product? What do they need to say interior garden courtyard in full bloom in the dead of winter. A few years later I would return to study about it? Who is the audience? All the standard questions. What is my Rembrant's 'Storm on the Sea of Galilee,’ one approach going to be and where do I get the inspiration? of the works which has been stolen from the These are the questions I ask myself when I sit down to design a project Gardner. Now, I spend a good deal of time at for a client. I must reach for inspiration. I examine all kinds of materials in the Peabody Essex Museum and take in a wide spectrum of art, from Asian Art to Contemporay Art. this process, even the work of other graphic designers.

Now, let’s go further The Glass Flowers collection was commissioned by Harvard Botanical Museum Director George Goodale and So I will share with you some of the influences that financed by Boston residents Elizabeth C. and Mary Lee Ware. have had a lasting impression on me. The Ware Collection of Glass Models of Plants, as it is officially known, consists of 4,400 models that replicate the tiniest details of plant anatomy with astounding precision. This exhibition showcases the Glass Flowers and explores the science and artistry behind this one–of–a–kind collection -The Antiques Journal

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Le C o r b u r s i e r by Ethne Clarke

Love of the arts, and enthusiasm for the Jura Mountains, were all formative influences on the young Le Corbusierser; Charles L’Eplattenier.

The Corbusier Chair is a Bauhaus Classic. It is as contemporary today as the day it was designed.

Le Corbusier was In Paris, in 1929, there were some new busier and the production number are counterfeits”. L’Eplattenier, whom Le Corbusier called “My Master,” At the end of the war Le Corbusier moved to Paris. distinct attitude toward the mass-produced “tools” born Charles Ed- concepts on display at the Salon d’Automne. Charles- the family proudly traced its ancestry to the combined into a National Romanticism many strains There Le Corbusier worked on concrete structures of industrial culture, from laboratory flasks to cafe ouard Jeannerct on October 6, 1887, Edouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, Cathars, who fled to the Jura Mountains during the of late-nineteenth-century thought, from Ruskin to under government contracts and ran a chairs, which they called objets-types.The emerg- in LaChaux-de- Pierre Jeanneret, and a young woman called Charlotte Albigensian Wars of the twelfth century, and the Hermann Muthesius. He involved his students in his small brick manufacture, but Le Corbusier ing spirit of industrialized culture in all its aspects Fonds, Switzerland. Perriand were responsible. This furniture has not dat- French Huguenots, who migrated to Switzerland search for a new kind of ornament expressive of the Jura dedicated most of his efforts to the more influential, and became the theme of the journal I’Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusier was ed in the slightest, and even today fits perfectly with following the Edict of Nantes (1598). La Chaux-de- landscape and able to sustain the local craft industry. lucrative, discipline of painting. First in a book entitled founded in 1919 by Le Corbusier, Ozenfant, and the second son of the modern home. This is mainly due to Le Corbusi- Fonds’ tradition of offering refuge includes both Rous- Apprenticed at thirteen to a watch engraver, Le Cor- Apres le cubisme, and subsequently in an art show at Galerie the poet Paul Dermee, and published until 1925. Edouard Jeanneret, er’s conviction that the binomial shape/function value seau andBakunin. His family’s Calvinism, love of the arts, busier abandoned watchmaking in part because of his Thomas, Le Corbusier and Amede Ozenfant began a dial painter in the town’s renowned must be expressed in the three dimensional manifes- and enthusiasm for the Jura Mountains, were all forma delicate eyesight, and continued his studies in art and a movement called Purism, which called for the res- watch industry, and tation of any daily used and useful object. According tive influences on the young Le Corbusi- decoration, with the intention of becoming a painter. toration of the integrity of the object in art. As their Madame Jeannerct- to the designer’s heirs “all pieces of furniture which do er. Charles L’Eplattenier, a teacher at the L’Eplattenier insisted that the young man also study style developed, it drew closer to Synthetic Cub- Perrct, a musician not bear the logotype Cassina, the signature of Le Cor- local art school, dominated his education. architecture and arranged for his first commissions. ism’s structure of overlapping planes, but retained a and piano teacher. 4 5 T h e V i g n e l l i ’ s by David R. Brown, Wylie Davis, Rose DeNeve

The Vignelli Chair

The Vignelli Chairs are offered in threes colors from Wildonhammer Manufacturing.

The Vignellis, Massimo and Lella, stand at the peak of their profession. During the past 20 years, their The Vignellis were both born and educated in the they were married, eventually grew strong enough “There are three design output has been prodigious in quantity, far-ranging in media and scope and consistent in excellence. industrial, more-European north of Italy, he in Mi- to lure them away from Italy permanently. “There investigations in Equally important is the influence they have had and the difference they have made. Their work has led by lan and she in Udine, 90 miles away. Massimo’s is diversity here, and energy, and possibility,” recalls design,” says Massimo. example. They have contributed to design as individuals. For their accomplishments, Massimo and Lella passion was “2D”—graphic design; Lella’s fam- Massimo, “and the need for design.” He cofounded “The first is the search Vignelli have been chosen to receive the AIGA Gold Medal for 1982—the sixty-second such award in a dis- ily tradition and training were “3D”—architecture. Unimark in 1964, which ballooned and collapsed for structure. Its reward is discipline. tinguished series that began in 1920. They met at an architects’ convention and were as the corporate identification boom of the late The second is the Upon the occasion of the major retrospective of the Vignellis’ work exhibited at Parsons in 1980, married in 1957. Three years later, they opened 1960s hyperventilated, then ran out of breath. In search for specificity. The Times critic Paul Goldberger characterized them as “total designers.” They and their office have their first “office of design and architecture” in 1972, their present office was formed: Vignelli As- This yields appropri- indeed done it all: industrial and product design, graphic design, book design, magazine and newspaper de- Milan and designed for Pirelli, Rank Xer sociates for two-dimensional design, Vignelli De- ateness. Finally, we sign, packaging design, interior and exhibit design, furniture design. Massimo and Lella work together in two ox, Olivetti and other design-conscious European signs for furniture, objects, exhibitions and interiors. search for fun, and ways: he concentrates on what they call the “2D”; she handles the “3D”. He’s the visionary: “I talk of feelings, firms. But their fascination with the United States, we create ambiguity.” possibilities, what a design could be.” She the realist: “I think of feasibility, planning, what a design can be.” which took root during three years spent here after Copyright 1983 by The American Institute of Graphic Arts. 6 7 C h a r l e s a n d R a y E a m e s by Wikipedia

Eames motto: ‘The most of the best to the greatest number of people for the least’

Created by the famous design team of Charles and , this exhibit has been a favorite since it opened at the Museum of Science in 1981. The Eames wanted to provide an opportunity for everyone to enjoy the beauty and wonder of mathematics, and they have also provided us with an opportunity to enjoy the beauty of post-modern design.

Like in the earlier In the 1950s, the Eameses continued The Eameses also conceived and designed a num- 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, California, designed for Charles’s friend, film director Billy magnitude by visually zooming away from the earth moulded plywood work, their work in architecture and modern furniture ber of landmark exhibitions. The first of these, included in its staff, at one time or another, a num- Wilder, the playful Do-Nothing Machine (1957), an to the edge of the universe, and then microscopically the Eameses pioneered design. Like in the earlier moulded plywood work, Mathematica: a world of numbers...and beyond ber of remarkable designers, like Henry Beer and early solar energy experiment, and a number of toys. zooming into the nucleus of a carbon atom. Charles innovative technologies, the Eameses pioneered innovative technologies, (1961), was sponsored by IBM, and is the only Richard Foy, now Co-chairmen of CommArts, Inc., Short films produced by the couple often document was a prolific photographer as well with thousands such as the fiberglass, such as the fiberglass, plastic resin chairs and the one of their exhibitions still extant. [4] The Math- , Deborah Sussman, , and their interests in collecting toys and cultural artifacts of images of their furniture, exhibits and collec- plastic resin chairs and wire mesh chairs designed for Herman Miller. ematica Exhibition is still considered a model for Gregory Ain, who was Chief Engineer for the Eames’ on their travels. The films also record the process of tions, and now a part of the Library of Congress. the wire mesh chairs Charles and Ray would soon channel Charles’ in- scientific popularization exhibitions. It was fol- during World War II[5]. Among the many important hanging their exhibits or producing classic furniture died of a heart attack on August 21, designed for Herman terest in photography into the production of short lowed by “A Computer Perspective: Background designs originating there are the molded-plywood designs, to the purposefully mundane topic of film- 1978 while on a consulting trip in his native Saint Miller. films. From their first film, the unfinished Travel- to the Computer Age” (1971) and “The World of DCW (Dining Chair Wood) and DCM (Dining ing soap suds moving over the pavement of a park- Louis, and now has a star on the St. Louis Walk ing Boy (1950), to the extraordinary Powers of Franklin and Jefferson” (1975–1977), among others. Chair Metal with a plywood seat) (1945), Eames ing lot. Perhaps their most popular movie, “Powers of Fame. Ray died 10 years later to the exact day. Ten (1977), their cinematic work was an outlet for The office of , which func- Lounge Chair (1956), the Aluminum Group furni- of Ten” (narrated by the late physicist Philip Mor- ideas, a vehicle for experimentation and education. tioned for more than four decades (1943–88) at ture (1958) and as well as the Eames Chaise (1968), rison), gives a dramatic demonstration of orders of 8 9 Itten The first color wheel was invented by “Color is life, However, Itten departed from Goethe's work, which Newton, according to Color-Wheel-Pro.com. His for a world without color seems dead. looked at how color affected people in a general early color wheels included bars of red, orange, yel- As a flame produces light, sense. Itten theorized that people reacted to color low, green, cyan and blue. Newton joined them to- quite indiviually. To teach his Bauhaus students what gether so that the continuum of color could be seen. light produces color. this meant, according to Van Arsdale, Itten first taught A century later, Goethe expanded on Newton's theory As intonation lends his pupils about color in general and then asked them by studying the psychological effects of colors. In addi- color to the spoken word, to develop their own palette of subjective colors. tion to determining that colors could be warm or cool, The Bauhaus operated from 1919 to 1933. he also associated certain colors with certain feelings. color lends However, Itten’s career at the school ended in Itten, who taught at the famed Bauhaus in spiritually realized 1923, about 10 years before it closed. Itten op- Weimar, Germany, developed the concept sound to form.” posed the Bauhaus’ production of commercial of color chords, according to Color-Wheel- work and after a longstanding conflict with Bau- Pro.com. He also modified the color wheel haus founder, Walter Gropius, he resigned from Itten developed "methodgies for coordi- -Johannes Itten the school, according to Germany Today. nating colors utilizing the hue's contrasting prop- Itten’s work has proven to be so pivotal erties," according to Janet Lynn Ford on Worqx. that designers and artists still use his concepts in com. Sarah Van Arsdale with the Sheffield School their work to this day. According to Van Arsdale, of Interior Design further clarifies Ittan's work in human beings during every era have attempted to an article on at Dezignare.com by explaining that order the world according to their view of it. It- Itten's color wheel also looked at color's subjec- ten’s theory of color was one man’s attempt to or- tive feeling. Itten outlined his theories in his book, der and define the world and how people saw it. "The Art of Color", which became a text- book for a course that he taught at the Bauhaus.

10 11 Babar the Elephant is a very popular French children’s Jean de Brunhoff created the story of Babar in 1931 and it was carried fictional character who first appeared on by his son Laurent. in “Histoire de Babar” by Jean de Brunhoff in 1931 and enjoyed immediate success.

by Wikipedia

An English language version, entitled The Story before his premature death in 1937 at the age of realm following the death of the King of the Elephants, of Babar, appeared in 1933 in Britain and also in the 37. His son Laurent de Brunhoff, also a writer who had eaten a poisonous mushroom. A council of United States. The book is based on a tale that Brun- and illustrator, carried on the series from 1946 elephants approach Babar, saying that as he has been hoff’s wife, Cecile, had invented for their children. onwards with Babar et Le Coquin d’Arthur and educated in France, he would be suitable to become It tells of a young elephant called Babar who leaves many more. After Babar witnesses the slaughter of his the new King. Babar is crowned King of the Elephants, the jungle, visits a big city, and returns to bring the beloved mother by a hunter, he flees from the jungle marries his cousin Celeste, and founds the city of Ce- benefits of civilization to his fellow elephants. Then and findshis way to Paris where he is befriended by lesteville. Babar introduces Western civilization to he comes back and becomes king of the kingdom. He an old lady, who buys him clothes and enrolls him in the elephants, and they soon dress in Western attire. then has children and teaches them valuable lessons. school. Babar’s cousins Celeste and Arthur find him in Jean de Brunhoff published six more stories the big city and then help him return to the Elephant 12 13

E d w a r d T u f t e, Information Design érôme’s art epitomized the officially sanctioned, by Adam Aston “My father once told me that I would never be successful because I have too G much contempt for authority,” says Edward Tufte. “I think that’s been an enor- academic style against which the Impressionists mously successful strategy.” rebelled. His paintings, with their imperceptible brushwork, meticulous detail, and brilliant effects of color and light, commanded huge prices in both France and America. One of the great visual minds of our time, described At 67, Tufte (pronounced TUFF-tee) defies easy clearly, from business executives to students. In dis- by The New York Times as “the Leonardo da Vinci of data” categorization. He has been a university statisti- mantling some of the worst habits of two dimensional and by Business Week as “the Galileo of graphics” cian and a public policy wonk. And these days, he’s design, he has framed new analytical terms that flicker more excited about turning bulldozers into sculp- through many design conservations. For Tufte, “chart ture than the abstractions of information analysis. junk” is the kudzu of modern information work. It in- But Tufte’s fame all flows from a rethinking of cludes the ubiquitous, unneeded words and addenda information design. He has consulted with IBM (IBM) that tend to crowd the margins of corporate com- on how to cultivate innovative thinking, helped The munication, from PowerPoint to project manage- New York Times redo its information graphics and ment charts and financial reports. Most of this junk advised NASA on mission-critical software inter- can be removed without diminishing understanding. face design. “[Tufte] has made it clear that in a clut- “Clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of in- tered Information Age we need methods of cutting formation,” Tufte writes in Envisioning Information. through the brush,” says Steven Heller, a design edu- tufte’s approach is not strictly critical. cator and critic who has been art director of both The He also endorses densifying information, albeit New York Times Book Review and Screw magazine. intelligently. His “sparklines” are tiny graphical tufte’s influence is at once invis- devices that can communicate enormous volumes ible and ubiquitous. And in the less-is-more era of data in just a few characters. “They can be em- of Google’s (GOOG) home page and Apple’s bedded in-line in a sentence, summarizing mil- (AAPL) category redefining devices, his think- lions of points of data in the space of a word,” says ing resonates. (See and hear Tufte’s musings on Tufte. Naturally enough, financial and sports pages the design thinking of the iPhone’s interface here.) have been quick to pick up the approach, includ- tufte’s approach is deceptively simple. In his ing the example shown from BusinessWeek, above. self-published books and in his popular auditorium . gigs, he teaches by visual example. Next to a bad ex- ample of a graph, he positions a sublimely clear treat- Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, this map by Charles Joseph Minard ment, often using the same data. Simple as it sounds, portrays the losses suffered by Napoleon’s army in the Russian campaign of 1812. the effect has proved to be riveting for a generation Beginning at the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size of the army at each position. The path of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter of nonprofessional designers. Tufte’s work is relevant is depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales. to anyone who needs to write or present information

14 15 J a p a n e s e A r t and Design by Ellen Marion

Japanese printmaking originated in the Edo region of Japan during a time when Jap- Two dimension and three dimensional objects come alive in anese political and military power was Japanese art prints, or Ukiyo-e (which literally means “pictures in the hands of the shoguns. Japan, of the floating world”) during that period, was isolated from the rest of the world under the policy of Sakoku, which translates into “secluded or closed country.” In 1853, an American com- mander named Perry came to Japan to negotiate with the Japanese govern- ment on behalf of the USA. At the time back to their homeland, thus exposing Ja- of Perry’s arrival, Ukiyo-e was a popu- pan’s exotic art to the rest of the world. lar contemporary art form, and many To create a Ukiyo-e art print, an image was prints were on sale on the streets of Edo. carved in reverse onto woodblocks, cov- Ukiyo-e subject matter includ- ered in ink, and then pressed onto paper. ed portraits of kabuki actors, theatre At first, all prints were produced in black scenes, lovers, famed courtesans, and and white. Artists Okomura Masanobu and landscape scenes from Japan’s history Suzuki Harunobu were among the first to pro- and lore. It’s no surprise that Western duce color woodblock prints by using one visitors eagerly carried Ukiyo-e prints block for each color, a very complex process.≠≠ F r a n k G e h r y by Wikipedia

University of Southern California, told Gehry that, “...After George Lucas, you are our most prominent graduate.”

Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, February 28, 1929) is a Canadian Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles.

His buildings, including his private resi- ings at his grandfather’s hardware store. He would dence, have become tourist attractions. Many spend time drawing with his father, and his mother museums, companies, and cities seek Gehry’s services as introduced him to the world of art. “So the cre- a badge of distinction, beyond the product he delivers. ative genes were there,” Gehry says. “But my father His best-known works include the titanium-covered thought I was a dreamer, I wasn’t gonna amount Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Basque Country, to anything. It was my mother who thought I was Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Ange- just reticent to do things. She would push me.” les, Experience Music Project in Seattle, Weisman Art In 1947 Gehry moved to California, got a job Museum in , Dancing House in Prague, driving a delivery truck, and studied at Los Angeles City Czech Republic and the MARTa Museum in Her- College, eventually to graduate from the Uni- ford, Germany. However, it was his private residence versity of Southern California’s School of Ar- in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his chitecture. After graduation from USC in career, lifting it from the status of “paper architec- 1954, he spent time away from the field of ture,” a phenomenon that many famous architects architecture in numerous other jobs, including ser- have experienced in their formative decades through vice in the United States Army. He studied city plan- experimentation almost exclusively on paper before ning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for receiving their first major commission in later years. a year, leaving before completing the program. In frank Owen Gehry was born in Toronto, On- 1952, still known as Frank Goldberg, he married Ani- tario Canada. A creative child, he was encouraged by ta Snyder, who he claims was the one who told him his grandmother, Caplan, with whom he would build to change his name, which he did, to Frank Gehry. little cities out of scraps of wood.[1] His use of cor- “But my father thought I was a dreamer, I wasn’t rugated steel, chain link fencing, and other materi gonna amount to anything. als was partly inspired by spending Saturday morn-

Disney, Los Angeles, CA 19 MIT Cambridge, MA M a r t h a S t e w a r t by Mary Elinoro

Design in her thinking put together an empire. Food and Home brought together at a design level that surpasses other products.

Lifestyle guru and businesswoman Martha Stew- farmhouse they had bought, Martha decided to In 1991, Martha Stewart, Inc., became Martha art was born Martha Kostyra, on August 3, 1941, focus her energy on gourmet cooking, having trained Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., with the release of her in New Jersey. The second of six children, Stew- herself from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French magazine, Martha Stewart Living. Stewart’s lifestyle em- art grew up in Nutley, New Jersey, a working-class Cooking. She started a catering business in the late pire soon grew to include two magazines, a checkout- community near New York City. She worked as 1970s, and soon became known for her gourmet size recipe publication, a popular cable television Attention to a model from the age of 13, appearing in fash- menus and unique, creative presentation. Within show, a syndicated newspaper column, a detail, strong ion shows as well as television and print advertise- a decade, Martha Stewart, Inc., had grown into a series of how-to books, a radio show, an In- photographic ments. She attended Barnard College in Manhat- $1 million business serving a number of corporate net site, and $763 million in annual retail sales. images, clean tan, where she earned a degree in European and and celebrity clients. Stewart expanded into the On October 19, 1999, America’s most famous typography and architectural history in 1962. While at Barnard, world of publishing with her first book, Entertaining, homemaker returned to Wall Street to see her com- interesting she met Andy Stewart, a Yale law student, and the which became a bestseller and was followed in quick pany through its initial public offering on the New content have been the hall- two married in 1961. Six years later, after the birth succession by such publications as Martha Stewart’s York Stock Exchange. At the end of the day, the mark of of their daughter, Alexis, Stewart went to work as Quick Cook Menus, Martha Stewart’s Hors d’Oeuvres, price of each of 72 million shares in Martha Stew- Living Magazine. a stockbroker for the boutique firm of Monness, Martha Stewart’s Christmas, and Martha Stewart’s art Living Omnimedia, Inc. had jumped more than Williams, and Sidel. She worked on Wall Street until Wedding Planner. Her newfound fame took its toll on 95 percent and raised almost $130 million. Stew- 1972, when the family moved to Westport, Connecticut. her personal life, as her marriage to Andy Stewart ended art herself controls 96 percent of the voting shares After the Stewarts restored the 19th century in divorce in 1990, after a bitter three-year separation. in her company and is worth $1.2 billion.

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