INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 2: April 1955

Sitterle Ceramics; Citroens; 3-Wheelers and Minis from Europe; Danish Silver; Student Toy Projects; Raymond Loewy Cartoons

Jane Fisk Mitarachi [Editor]: INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 2. New York: Whitney Publications, Inc., April 1955 [Volume 2, Number 2]. Original Edition. A very good original magazine whose waviness refuses to allow it to lay flat, with the fore edge curling upward from improper storage. otherwise a nice early copy of this influential design journal.

9 x 12 magazine with 124 pages and illustrated throughout and printed on different stocks and an amazing variety of editorial content. here is what the publishers wanted this magazine to accomplish: "A bi-monthly review of form and technique in designing for industry. Published for active industrial designers and the design executives throughout industry who are concerned with product design, development and marketing."

This magazine celebrates all the best of modern American industrial design. Includes many examples of furniture, ceramics, housewares, appliances, automobiles, buildings, radios, projectors, televisions, and many other objects designed for the burgeoning postwar middle class.

Contents include:

The El Comes Down
Frames for Fiberglass Displays
The Story of Rubbermaid Products
Men and Machines: Computers
REdesign: dome-shaped barn
REdesign: lotion dispenser, portable lock, micro switch and Citroen suspensions
Motor Sports Show: 3-Wheelers and Minis from Europe!
what are the best materials for cooking utensils?
Exhibitions: Danish Silver in the USA and American Designs in Paris: work by Georg Jensen, Henning koppel, Magnus Stephensen,
Student Toy Projects
Sitterle Ceramics
Lunge by Loewy: cartoons by Raymond Loewy
Design Review: Applaince controls, furniture, ceramics, housewares, appliances, automobiles, radios, projectors, televisions, and many other objects
Housewares
Appliances
Perspective; a new system for designers by Jay Doblin
Technics
Manufacturers Literature and Calendar

Here is former ID editor Ralph Caplan's recounting the magazines birth: "Fifty years ago, the publisher Charlie Whitney ran into Henry Dreyfuss. 'Henry,' he said, 'I'm about to publish a magazine for industrial designers.' 'Wonderful,' Henry replied. 'There are 14 of us.' Caplan remembered, "I.D. was not begun as a magazine for industrial designers, but as a magazine for anyone who had a stake in design and cared about it. This allowed a great deal of editorial latitude."

In DESIGN LITERACY (Second Edition, Allworth Press), Steven Heller wrote an essay describing the historical significance of Industrial Design magazine: “Industrial Design was the brainchild of publisher Charles Whitney, who also published the successful Interiors. In 1953 he was convinced by his friend and advisor George Nelson that the time was right to introduce a specialized periodical devoted to practitioners of this burgeoning field. Interiors was already featuring its own industrial design column that had evolved into a discrete section, which Whitney realized had commercial potential as a spinoff. Interiors was also so beautifully designed that Industrial Design could have no less the visual panache of a coffee table book/magazine, replete with foldouts and slipsheets, not unlike the legendary design magazine Portfolio, published between 1949 and 1951. To accomplish this an eminent art director was sought. This was the age of great magazine art directors -- including Alexey Brodovitch, Alexander Liberman, Otto Storch, Cipe Pineles, and Alan Hurlburt -- and Whitney fervently believed that a magazine's design would be the deciding factor in its success. Hence Lustig was entrusted with considerable authority to design the magazine as he saw fit.”

“On the editorial side, however, Whitney decided to take a calculated risk by promoting two young Interiors associate editors to co-editors of Industrial Design. Jane Fisk (now Jane Thompson of the architectural firm Thompson & Wood in Cambridge) and Deborah Allen may have been inexperienced in the field of industrial design but nevertheless had a clear plan to introduce a distinctly journalistic sensibility into professional publishing that emphasized criticism and analysis rather than the puff pieces common to the genre. As it turned out, this became a point of philosophical contention between the designer and editors.”

“If they had a choice the editors would have preferred an art director who, as Thompson explained, "would have been in the trenches with us," a team player with journalistic instincts rather than a distant presence with a formalist sensibility. Because Lustig designed the initial dummy and subsequent two issues in his own studio and returned with the completed layouts to the editorial offices he had made certain assumptions about the presentation of content that were often inconsistent with the editors' vision. "We did not want the words to be gray space, we wanted them to have meaning," recalled Thompson about wanting more spontaneous design responses to the material. But instead of being journalistically intuitive, Lustig imposed his formal preconceptions, and designed the magazine as he would a book.”

“Blocks of text type were indeed used as gray matter to frame an abundance of precisely silhouetted photographs. But if there was a problem it was more in the editors' minds than Lustig's design. While it was not as journalistically paced as say, a Life magazine, it was respectfully, indeed elegantly neutral allowing, for a wide range of material to be presented without interference. Moreover, it was what Whitney wanted, so the editors reconciled themselves to building the magazine's editorial reputation through informative features written by authors not previously associated with trade publishing.”

“Thompson nevertheless hated the first cover with its tight grid and silhouetted photographs. Instead she wanted to disrupt the design purity with a few well composed coverlines. She further favored a conceptual method of intersecting photography, resulting in an editorial idea, not a pure design. Lustig thought coverlines would sully the design and intersecting ideas would be too contrived. Years later, Thompson grudgingly admitted that maybe Lustig's judgment was wiser: "He wanted to make a strong simple statement, which he believed (perhaps erroneously since Industrial Design did not have to compete on the newsstand) had to stand up against the covers of the elegant fashion magazines." Lustig's design set the standard for future covers, and his successor, Martin Rosensweig, continued to produce covers for a few years afterward that more rigidly adhered to the same formal practices.”

“Despite these creative tensions, the early issues of Industrial Design reveal a shift in the nature of professional publishing from a trade to cultural orientation that was in no small way underscored by Lustig's classically modern design.”

Harold F Sitterle