Alexander Nesbitt, calligrapher, historian of typography, and teacher, was born 1901 in Patterson, New Jersey. He worked for many years in New York City as a graphic designer and teacher. In 1950, he published “History and Technique of Lettering,” which became a classic in the field. Later, he taught at the Rhode Island School of […]
Biography
My Birthplace
I was born in the village of Plagwitz, close to Löwenberg, in Germany, now Lwówek Śląski in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in Poland. Members of my family were evacuated in February of 1945 to escape the onslaught of Russian troops, ending up and finding refuge with in-laws at the Dutch/German border. The Löwenberg area became […]
Looking for Belonging
Being Abandoned – Being at Home Christmas 1944 is the moment which signals the beginning of my growing sense of abandonment. It is the last holiday, which my parents, sister and I would spend together. Right thereafter, my father, as general practitioner in medicine, was called to the “Volkssturm”, a German national militia established during […]
Life in the 1960’s
Reasons for Visiting the USA Working for Chemie Grünenthal GmbH, the design staff had to respond to the advertising campaigns for medications that were produced on the premises under licenses for American Cyanamid, Lederle, and others. These corporations asked us to use their promotional materials for the European market. A very distinct problem emerged; physicians […]
Reasons for Visiting the USA
Working for Chemie Grünenthal GmbH, the design staff had to respond to the advertising campaigns for medications that were produced on the premises under licenses for American Cyanamid, Lederle, and others. These corporations asked us to use their promotional materials for the European market. A very distinct problem emerged; physicians in Germany, Switzerland, France and […]
Profile: Kunstschule Alsterdamm, Hamburg
Kunstschule Alsterdamm, one of the first new schools in Germany after WW II, established primarily as a concentration for the training professional graphic designers, was founded in 1946 by Gerd F. Setzke, a graphic designer, in Hamburg. Its first location was on Alsterdamm Boulevard, which was later renamed Ballindamm, named after Albert Ballin, a German […]
Alsterdamm Boot Camp
My first weeks at the school were scary. Looking around, I could not find anyone who started as lowly as I did. Many students came from very sophisticated high schools. Some had already semesters of art or design education behind them. I lacked all of their skills. For the first two semesters I was in […]
Alsterdamm Influences
Max Herrmann Mahlmann born April 4, 1912 in Hamburg, Germany was a German painter of Constructivism, graphic designer and design teacher Life and work Max H. Mahlmann studied with Richard Müller and Wilhelm Rudolph at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden from 1934 to 1938. Initially, he also worked as a stage painter and […]
Robert Berkovitz
Robert Berkovitz was always aware of the structural and ordering powers of good design and typography and its ability in providing aid for traversing complex information environments. In an article, “Design, Development and Evaluation of Computer-Assisted Learning for Speech Science Education” he writes: Graphic Design Issues. We made a number of decisions at the outset […]
Jacqueline S. Casey, 1927–1992
Jacqueline S. Casey practiced an intuitive and organic Modernism. From 1955 to 1989, she was a designer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Office of Publications, first under the direction of Muriel Cooper (I believe that this is totally wrong. The only person in charge of all office staff members was John “Mattill” as […]