New York School Movement

New York School Movement:

During and after World War 2, a lot of talented artists from Europe migrated to America from Europe and from its countries. The artists at that time were escaping the political instability which was occurring throughout all of Europe and when they migrated to America they took their design styles with them and influenced the American Design which was “pragmatic, intuitive and less formal in its approach to organized space”. Another factor that helped to boost this movement was the fact that at that time New York was bustling and booming with life which led for that city to let this movement flow freely. The movement in general consisted in not only artists but also poets, musicians and painters. When it comes to graphic design, the New York School it is split into two different categories: The elder generations which where the teachers and were the ones who fled the political chaos and the other category were the students that were being taught about design by these same people. The students were being taught at a lot of institutions which specialized in graphic design such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The aim of the New York School Movement was to emphasize the way how the designers expressed their ideas with a very open and perfect direction of information. Many artists were influenced by the New York School Movement; a particular artist which was greatly influenced by it was Paul Rand.  He started his career of a graphic designer by working as a promotional and editorial designer for diverse companies such as Apparel Arts, Coronet and Esquire. In his career he also worked hand-in-hand with the copy-writer Bill Bernbach by becoming the example of an art/copy team to work with each other. Rand also created a lot of famous logos that are very familiar with use and are still being used to this day. His style usually contained a lot of puns and manipulation with the typography; it also contained a lot of contrasting colours such as blue vs orange, yellow vs purple etc.  His work also featured a lot of geometrical shapes and cut edges against sharp forms and textured backgrounds with white text to oppose them to create interesting effects. 

Ahistoryofgraphicdesign.blogspot.com, (2011). The History of Graphic Design: The New York School. [online] Available at: http://ahistoryofgraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-york-school.html [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].

Citrinitas.com, (2014). The History of Visual Communication - The Modernists. [online] Available at: http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/modernists.html [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].