Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Is the Future of Graphic Design in its Past?


If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie reign as the premier power couple of Hollywood, then Seymour Chwast and Paula Scher deserve credit as the “Brangelina” of  the world of graphic design and illustration for the last half century. In Double Portrait: Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers, which runs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through April 14, 2013, the work of “Schwast” (“Chwer”?) appears together for the first time in an unruly retrospective that, like all retrospectives, points back, but also points forward to where the world of illustration and graphic design might go in the technology-laden future. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is the Future of Graphic Design in its Past?" 
[Image: (Left) End Bad Breath, 1967. Seymour Chwast, American, b. 1931. Poster, offset lithograph, 37 x 24 inches; (Right) 1995-96 Season campaign poster for The Public Theater, 1995, by Paula Scher/ Pentagram.] 
[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the image above, an invitation to the press preview for, and other materials related to Double Portrait: Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers, which runs through April 14, 2013. Many thanks also to Bloomsbury USA for providing me with review copies of Seymour Chwast’s The Odyssey and The Canterbury Tales. Very special thanks to Mr. Chwast for indulging a long-time fan by autographing my copy of The Canterbury Tales.]

1 comment:

Josh Mayne said...

Perhaps they really do deserve to be called the "Brangelina" of the graphic design world. Among graphic designers, their names are always mentioned.