Merz to Emigr and Beyond: Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century

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This is a fully documented study of the history of the avant-garde magazine and examines the publications that have been at the forefront of design this century: the journals, magazines and printed manifestos that have challenged design convention, providing a platform for the dissemination of the ideas of the most radical design movements of the 20th century. These avant-garde approaches permeated all the arts - art and literature as well as the graphic arts. This book concentrates on the journals, magazines and pamphlets whose very ephemerality allowed spontaneity, experimentation and risk, exploring ways in which words and images could be presented on a page, illustrating design ideas and cultural ideals. The book features an extensive selection of international publications from Europe and the USA, including "Merz" (1920s), "View" (1940s), "East Village Other" (1960s), "Punk" (1970s), "Raw" (1980s) and "Emigre" (1990s). The design of these magazines, often raucous and undisciplined, was as ground-breaking as the ideas they disseminated. Many were linked with controversial art, literary and political movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Modernism, the New Left and Deconstruction. They contain the work of many leading experimental artists and designers of their time - from Kurt Schwitters and El Lissitzky in the 1920s and 30s, to Art Spiegelman and Rudy Vanderland in the 1980s and 90s. This book explores the typography and layout of these journals, and also places the avant-garde notions these magazines represented in their broader artistic, cultural and political contexts.

Reviews

"A social history lesson in alternative culture."Arena

"Will become the bible for all magazine lovers."Dazed & Confused

"Magazine design connoisseurs will go wild for Steven Heller's Merz to Emigr and Beyond... Laden with beautifully ground breaking print designs... Beautifully realized, Heller's not-so-secret history is one to be read on many differing levels."i-D

"It will provide everyone from design students, art historians, academics and coffee-table/armchair connoisseurs with a visually breathtaking reference book, as well as a thorough and engaging read."Fernando Guitirrez, partner at the Pentagram design agency, London, Creative Review

"A well-illustrated, impeccably researched and chronological study, this book looks set to be the definitive volume on its subject."Grafik

"An overview of the past century of print design and graphic experimentation. It is so well written and illustrated, it makes print seem exciting again... The book focuses on the avant garde in its widest sense... Visually, the results are mind-blowing... With short entries alongside illustrations and linear text, the book manages to be both a great reference tool that you can dip into, and a thorough, clear read. What Merz to Emigr does, lifting it above the usual crop of magazine design anthologies, is to examine the sweep of cultural change by looking at the details... Paper has never looked so radical... The magazines in this book could still kick up a sandstorm."Francesca Gavin, Blueprint

"This is a book that was waiting to be written. If you have any interest whatever in the succession of Modernist avant-garde movements that so enlivened culture through the last century, from Futurism, Dada, and Constructivism to underground, punk and internet subversion, you will know that the magazine was until the last decade the crucial medium of the dissemination of revolutionary ideas... Among much else, this book is a brilliant compendium of graphic shock tactics... Encyclopedic in scope, Merz to Emigr is also an exhaustive pictorial record of the one of great artistic phenomena of the modern era... It is too soon to write off the power of the alternative press... So richly documented in this fine and necessary book."Mel Gooding, World of Interiors

"A focused piece of scholarly research by a leading design historian... [Merz to Emigr] will last at least a century... Avant-garde publications usually had short, intense lives and were printed in small runs, so the reproduction of these images is a valuable resource, and Merz to migr includes a wealth of material rarely found in the standard design histories. For once the coffee-table format is justified in allowing these artifacts to be reproduced at a scale which gives a fair idea of their presence as physical objects, and it also allows a couple of the more significant issues to be shown in their entirety... In Merz to migr, Heller always traces the reasons why the magazines end up looking how they do. A good example is his comparison of Futurist, Dadaist and Surrealist publications from the 1910s onwards with the American underground press of the 1960s."First published in Fluid, reproduced on www.typotheque.com US

Author Bio

Steven Heller is Senior Art Director at the New York Times and editor of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design. A respected authority in the design world, he has written and co-authored numerous publications, including Phaidon's Paul Rand (1999).