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Steve Heller
Posts:366
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| 10/16/2007 5:40 AM |
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A new book, "Meggs: Making Graphic Design History" is a veritable history of the man who codified the field.
Graphic designer, professor, historian, and author Philip Baxter Meggs
(1942-2002) began teaching in the Communication
Arts and Design Department at Virginia Commonwealth University,
chairing the department from 1974 to 1987. In 1983, he published his
History of Graphic Design--the book that not only put graphic design in
its historical context; it put graphic design on the cultural map.
Before Phil Meggs wrote his seminal book, graphic design was left
largely unchronicled. A History of Graphic Design offered designers and
students of design a foundation on which to build, a starting point
from which to move forward, and a context for graphic design's place in
history.
This single work afforded an immediate legitimacy to a field that had,
until that moment, been considered more of a trade than a profession.
As I wrote in PRINT, Meggs "laid more than a
groundwork; he built a monument to graphic design's legacy. Now he is
an integral part of that legacy."
Meggs: Making Graphic Design History is at once a retrospective of Phil
Megg's achievements as a historian, educator, and artist in his own
right, a deserved tribute to his lasting influence on the graphic arts,
and a loving memoriam written by family, friends, and colleagues. . .
I am one of them.
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