What's in a Name [Change]?
As a collector and dealer in rare and unusual Design ephemera, I have a special relationship with the publishing sub-genre commonly referred to as "Little Magazines." I love them.
The term "Little Magazine" has become synonymous with the vessels that chronicled the parallel risings and subsequent high-water marks left by both organized Labor and unorganized Literature in the early years of the 20th- century. If you're interested in the little histories of those movements, I politely suggest googling THE LITTLE MAGAZINE: A HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY by Frederick J. Hoffman (et al) -- published by the Princeton University Press. It's the standard reference on the subject.
But if you have a strong interest in the Graphic Arts and are endlessly fascinated (like me) by exactly how the fruitful seeds of European Modernism found purchase in the often-barren rocky landscape of North America, I strongly recommend getting acquainted (maybe even intimate) with my favorite little magazine -- the one with the supersized name: PM [AN INTIMATE JOURNAL FOR ART DIRECTORS, PRODUCTION MANAGERS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATES].
The story of PM (short for Production Managers) gets bibliographically complicated by a name change during their sixth year of publication in 1940 to A-D (short for Art Directors). You certainly couldn't argue with the name change from a marketing standpoint, but the name change truly reflected an editorial and ideological shift that helped make PM/AD the gold standard for Graphic Arts magazines in the United States. Look no further than Martin Pederson's emasculation of the once-virile GRAPHIS for the hintermost end of the measurable spectrum.
Both names -- PM and A-D -- were appropriate for their times. But times change, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of Graphic Arts. When PM started publishing in 1934, the Graphic Arts was the realm of typesetters, job printers and the afore-mentioned production managers. By 1942, when wartime restrictions forced the renamed A-D to cease publication, the Graphic Arts industry had undergone a transformation, thanks in a large part to the pre-war influx of European emigrants. The Production Manager had been replaced by the Art Director. The Industry and our visual culture has never been the same.
PM started publication in 1934 as the House Organ for the Composing Room in New York City, a typesetting firm run by Dr. Robert Leslie and Sol Cantor. Way back in the thirties, production artists and designers hired typesetters to set and produce type -- it was actually a pretty big and competitive industry. Dr. Leslie set his firm apart by offering exceptional service and bringing an artistic sensibility to the table. He also used PM to showcase the high standards of the Composing Room.
If you've never handled an issue of PM, please allow me: each issue measured 5.5 x 7.75 with a variety of bindings, including saddle-stitching, perfect-binding and spiral and wire-o-bindings. Paper stocks varied as widely as the production methods. A true "why-not?" spirit infected the publication from day one, with covers screen-printed on Japanese wood veneers, dry-mat stamping, our old friend Pyroxylin paper, embossed & foil stamped with gold leaf, Unifoil stock -- and that's only a sampling from the first year of publication.
Regardless of how adventuresome the production technologies for the covers were, the editorial content suffered from the dusty fustiness of the age, with articles on the joys of typesetting, half-tone engraving and the rapidly expanding field of color separation. As we have witnessed the ruthless march of technology, we know the inherent hazards of documenting industry milestones. In the early years, PM was more William Morris than Walter Gropius. If PM had contented itself to merely semaphoring combat dispatches from the typesetting trenches, it would mainly be remembered by Bruce Rogers and Frederic Goudy completists. But these are not my people.
New York in the thirties was apparently a pretty exciting place, the Great Depression nonewithstanding. By 1936 it was obvious that the lights were starting to go out all over Europe, and immigrants and refugees were starting to come to the United States. Dr. Leslie opened the doors of the Composing Room to European artists and designers looking for opportunities in the New World. He understood the value of community and his role as an educator and liaison to the NYC-based advertising and publishing communities. By 1936 it was obvious that the times were indeed changing, with tastemakers like Philip Johnson, Alfred Barr and the other mandarins at the nascent Museum of Modern Art calling the shots and loudly naming the tunes. By March, Dr. Leslie decided it was time to dance.
The March 1936 PM presented an original cover design by Lucien Bernhard as well as a 24-page section devoted to the Poster work of the Modern German master. This was the first time an American magazine so prominently featured the work of a European emigre. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated. By rejecting the past, Dr. Leslie put all his chips on the future.
After the Bernhard cover and feature, the race to outrun the spotlight was on: covers and features on George Salter, and Gustav Jensen immediately followed in 1936. 1937 started with A.M Cassandre, E. McKnight Kauffer (not technically an emigrant, but work with me here) and finally the home team was represented by Lester Beall's classic cover and feature in November.
Beall's cover can be seen as a cornerstone of the ongoing dialogue between the Cream of the American Advertising industry and the ever-growing influence of the Europeans. It is also one of the most widely-recognized images in the history of Graphic Design -- a perfect synthesis of the European Avant-Garde neue typographie, interpreted by an extremely sensitive Designer from Missouri.
In February/March 1938 Walter Gropius contributed an article on the Bauhaus and Architectural education (designed by Herbert Matter) and in June/July L. Sandusky wrote THE BAUHAUS TRADITION AND THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY -- the first published account in English of the Bauhaus Typographic philosophy. Sandusky wrote the text and Lester Beall provided the design work for the 34-page, 2-color insert that has become one of the standard bibliographic references for the cross-pollination of European and American avant-garde typography. This article features work by Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Archipenko, Walter Gropius, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Karel Teige, Piet Mondrian, Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Herbert Bayer, M. Peter Piening and many others. While it seems common today to attach these names together under the common avant-garde umbrella, it was quite an intellectual stretch to merge the plastic arts of architecture, painting, typography, printing and sculpture into a coherent argument in 1938.
And the hits kept on coming: the first feature on the rising star Paul Rand in October/ November 1938; Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha featured in August / September 1939; Herbert Bayer owned December 1939; Gyorgy Kepes was introduced by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in February / March 1940 ; and followed by Joseph Binder, Jean Carlu, George Giusti, Alex Steinweiss, Will Burtin and many others before war shortages forced the now-named A-D to cease publication in 1942.
Dr. Robert Leslie was a true American Modernist in every respect -- a facilitator, an educator, an advocate and a patron. His talents as a cultural barometer and an astute businessman allowed him to unfurl his sails right when the wind started to pick up.
In April 1937, the editors of PM announced their intent to devote an issue entirely to the Bauhaus: "This issue will be the most ambitious expression of the editors' belief that those engaged in a given art of design should be aware of their common interest with those in other branches if design, whether it be poster art, typography, scenic design, furniture design, or architecture."
When PM changed its name and editorial focus from the nameless and faceless Industry Production Managers to A-D for the Art Directors who were rapidly becoming the cultural agenda setters of pre-war America, the magazine made the leap from being an insular House Organ to a Little Magazine which cast a long shadow over the cultural landscape of the 20-century.
If you don't believe me, pick up and issue and see for yourself. Go ahead, get intimate.
Now is the perfect time, since it is my good fortune to have just acquired an exceptional run of PM and A-D consisting of 47 of the 66 total issues, including all of the above-mentioned highlights.
For an exceptional overview of PM Magazine and its founder, Dr. Robert Leslie, I strongly recommend a lengthy visit here -- a website that serves as a virtual tribute to Erin K. Malone's MFA Thesis project from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The term "Little Magazine" has become synonymous with the vessels that chronicled the parallel risings and subsequent high-water marks left by both organized Labor and unorganized Literature in the early years of the 20th- century. If you're interested in the little histories of those movements, I politely suggest googling THE LITTLE MAGAZINE: A HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY by Frederick J. Hoffman (et al) -- published by the Princeton University Press. It's the standard reference on the subject.
But if you have a strong interest in the Graphic Arts and are endlessly fascinated (like me) by exactly how the fruitful seeds of European Modernism found purchase in the often-barren rocky landscape of North America, I strongly recommend getting acquainted (maybe even intimate) with my favorite little magazine -- the one with the supersized name: PM [AN INTIMATE JOURNAL FOR ART DIRECTORS, PRODUCTION MANAGERS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATES].
The story of PM (short for Production Managers) gets bibliographically complicated by a name change during their sixth year of publication in 1940 to A-D (short for Art Directors). You certainly couldn't argue with the name change from a marketing standpoint, but the name change truly reflected an editorial and ideological shift that helped make PM/AD the gold standard for Graphic Arts magazines in the United States. Look no further than Martin Pederson's emasculation of the once-virile GRAPHIS for the hintermost end of the measurable spectrum.
Both names -- PM and A-D -- were appropriate for their times. But times change, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of Graphic Arts. When PM started publishing in 1934, the Graphic Arts was the realm of typesetters, job printers and the afore-mentioned production managers. By 1942, when wartime restrictions forced the renamed A-D to cease publication, the Graphic Arts industry had undergone a transformation, thanks in a large part to the pre-war influx of European emigrants. The Production Manager had been replaced by the Art Director. The Industry and our visual culture has never been the same.
PM started publication in 1934 as the House Organ for the Composing Room in New York City, a typesetting firm run by Dr. Robert Leslie and Sol Cantor. Way back in the thirties, production artists and designers hired typesetters to set and produce type -- it was actually a pretty big and competitive industry. Dr. Leslie set his firm apart by offering exceptional service and bringing an artistic sensibility to the table. He also used PM to showcase the high standards of the Composing Room.
If you've never handled an issue of PM, please allow me: each issue measured 5.5 x 7.75 with a variety of bindings, including saddle-stitching, perfect-binding and spiral and wire-o-bindings. Paper stocks varied as widely as the production methods. A true "why-not?" spirit infected the publication from day one, with covers screen-printed on Japanese wood veneers, dry-mat stamping, our old friend Pyroxylin paper, embossed & foil stamped with gold leaf, Unifoil stock -- and that's only a sampling from the first year of publication.
Regardless of how adventuresome the production technologies for the covers were, the editorial content suffered from the dusty fustiness of the age, with articles on the joys of typesetting, half-tone engraving and the rapidly expanding field of color separation. As we have witnessed the ruthless march of technology, we know the inherent hazards of documenting industry milestones. In the early years, PM was more William Morris than Walter Gropius. If PM had contented itself to merely semaphoring combat dispatches from the typesetting trenches, it would mainly be remembered by Bruce Rogers and Frederic Goudy completists. But these are not my people.
New York in the thirties was apparently a pretty exciting place, the Great Depression nonewithstanding. By 1936 it was obvious that the lights were starting to go out all over Europe, and immigrants and refugees were starting to come to the United States. Dr. Leslie opened the doors of the Composing Room to European artists and designers looking for opportunities in the New World. He understood the value of community and his role as an educator and liaison to the NYC-based advertising and publishing communities. By 1936 it was obvious that the times were indeed changing, with tastemakers like Philip Johnson, Alfred Barr and the other mandarins at the nascent Museum of Modern Art calling the shots and loudly naming the tunes. By March, Dr. Leslie decided it was time to dance.
The March 1936 PM presented an original cover design by Lucien Bernhard as well as a 24-page section devoted to the Poster work of the Modern German master. This was the first time an American magazine so prominently featured the work of a European emigre. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated. By rejecting the past, Dr. Leslie put all his chips on the future.
After the Bernhard cover and feature, the race to outrun the spotlight was on: covers and features on George Salter, and Gustav Jensen immediately followed in 1936. 1937 started with A.M Cassandre, E. McKnight Kauffer (not technically an emigrant, but work with me here) and finally the home team was represented by Lester Beall's classic cover and feature in November.
Beall's cover can be seen as a cornerstone of the ongoing dialogue between the Cream of the American Advertising industry and the ever-growing influence of the Europeans. It is also one of the most widely-recognized images in the history of Graphic Design -- a perfect synthesis of the European Avant-Garde neue typographie, interpreted by an extremely sensitive Designer from Missouri.
In February/March 1938 Walter Gropius contributed an article on the Bauhaus and Architectural education (designed by Herbert Matter) and in June/July L. Sandusky wrote THE BAUHAUS TRADITION AND THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY -- the first published account in English of the Bauhaus Typographic philosophy. Sandusky wrote the text and Lester Beall provided the design work for the 34-page, 2-color insert that has become one of the standard bibliographic references for the cross-pollination of European and American avant-garde typography. This article features work by Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Archipenko, Walter Gropius, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Karel Teige, Piet Mondrian, Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Herbert Bayer, M. Peter Piening and many others. While it seems common today to attach these names together under the common avant-garde umbrella, it was quite an intellectual stretch to merge the plastic arts of architecture, painting, typography, printing and sculpture into a coherent argument in 1938.
And the hits kept on coming: the first feature on the rising star Paul Rand in October/ November 1938; Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha featured in August / September 1939; Herbert Bayer owned December 1939; Gyorgy Kepes was introduced by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in February / March 1940 ; and followed by Joseph Binder, Jean Carlu, George Giusti, Alex Steinweiss, Will Burtin and many others before war shortages forced the now-named A-D to cease publication in 1942.
Dr. Robert Leslie was a true American Modernist in every respect -- a facilitator, an educator, an advocate and a patron. His talents as a cultural barometer and an astute businessman allowed him to unfurl his sails right when the wind started to pick up.
In April 1937, the editors of PM announced their intent to devote an issue entirely to the Bauhaus: "This issue will be the most ambitious expression of the editors' belief that those engaged in a given art of design should be aware of their common interest with those in other branches if design, whether it be poster art, typography, scenic design, furniture design, or architecture."
When PM changed its name and editorial focus from the nameless and faceless Industry Production Managers to A-D for the Art Directors who were rapidly becoming the cultural agenda setters of pre-war America, the magazine made the leap from being an insular House Organ to a Little Magazine which cast a long shadow over the cultural landscape of the 20-century.
If you don't believe me, pick up and issue and see for yourself. Go ahead, get intimate.
Now is the perfect time, since it is my good fortune to have just acquired an exceptional run of PM and A-D consisting of 47 of the 66 total issues, including all of the above-mentioned highlights.
For an exceptional overview of PM Magazine and its founder, Dr. Robert Leslie, I strongly recommend a lengthy visit here -- a website that serves as a virtual tribute to Erin K. Malone's MFA Thesis project from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
posted by Randall Ross at
6:33 AM
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