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book (design) story #661

kurt wirth:
zeichnung wenn wie / drawing when how

neue chemiegraphie ag, zürich / arthur niggli ltd, teufen, 1965
printer: r. weber ag, heiden
size: ?? x ?? cm
designer: kurt wirth

bern-based graphic designer kurt wirth (1917-1996) was a founding member and later president of the vsg (association of swiss graphic designers, see also book 326).

in this 1965 book wirth lays down his opinions about "when and how" to use drawing as a means in graphic design.

in the 1950-60s, the leading "ideologists" of swiss graphic design – such as the editors of "neue grafik" (lohse, müller-brockmann, neuburg and vivarelli) – propagated a "constructive", design style using "objective" photographic images, while they considered figurative hand-drawing as "subjective" and outdated.

wirth's text defends figurative drawing against that ideology: "this book challenges the doctrine that the only acceptable pictorial language in advertising is documentary. it does not impugn photography as such – which would be unforgivable and stupid – but rather the attitude of the graphic designer who, in each and every case, obstinately confines himself to the products of the camera lens."

wirth asks rhetorically: "are the 'figurative' artists moving in the wrong direction, counter to the trend of development? are their primciples outmoded? (...) is the exclusion of the object really the only point of issue today? won't abstraction still retain its contemporary significance as a way of mastering pictorial form?"

and wirth states: "today it seems to be the fashion among graphic designers and picture-makers to tighten up their boundaries as if they were petty farmers and to lay in a stock of appropriate dogmas. it is nothing short of heresy to question the sensibility of creative aesthetics. today's discussion deals in nuances, and contradictions centre on the smallest of differences. it is all the more unusual, indeed almost compromising, to air an opinion which accepts the figurative and yet affirms the value of pure form. yet, to my mind, both forms of expression are not merely thoroughly compatible with each other, but the one often has to add to the other mot only in free work but also in applied graphic design. (...) the corollary to be deduced from our own work, however, is that we are free, and this freedom keeps us from clamping too rigid restrictions on our work and becoming enmeshed in a dosgmatic aesthetic or in a mannerism of formulas."

perhaps no coincidence that this book was published in 1965, the year that marked the end of "neue grafik" – and maybe whith it the end of the "hardline" era of swiss graphic design?

however the design of the book is in the classic "swiss style": multi-language, multi-column, grid-based layout with asymmetrical typography with sansserif set unjustified.

below a list of the designers with reproduced works.