Fun fact: People remember 80% of what they see versus only 20% of what they read. it is so conventional to see a sentence begin with a capital letter that it is only noticed when one isn’t. Capitalization is so much a part of current English orthography that most writing applications (Word, Google Docs, and iMessages, among others), autocorrect for it by default. Yet, the use of capitals has waxed and waned across the history of the English language. In the 17th century, it w

Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), a maestro of the graphic arts, was most closely identified with the Bauhaus program in Weimar, Germany. Together with Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky, Bayer helped shape a pedagogy of various disciplines ranging from architecture to typography and graphic design. Bayer went on to produce an impressive body of work, including freelance graphics commissions, Modernist exhibition design, corporate identity programs, and more.

The 1920s were, by far, the most rip-roaring decade for graphic design. Art Deco was jazzing up the whole world. The folk in Russia turned Constructive, geometrically speaking. Western Europe dallied with the Surreal thing. And of course, Germany rocked the Bauhaus, but that’s not all it did: this country also had book jackets extremely well covered, as amply evidenced within the contents of The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic, just published. Sacco und Vanzetti. Berlin: Mo

Brander, typographer, web designer. Today’s market requires unrivaled multimedia design skills. Be prepared for anything with the Multidisciplinary Design Kit from MyDesignShop. Even if you might not know Oskar Schlemmer, if you’ve seen Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance or New Order’s True Faith—with their eccentric costumes and mechanical movements—then you’ve had a taste of this Bauhaus Master’s multimedia design aesthetic, as both music videos are contemporary takes on his famous Tr

When Alexey Brodovitch was art directing Harper’s Bazaar, he ran a striking cover by Herbert Bayer for its 1940 “College Fashions” issue. A three-quarter view photo of a woman’s face is duplicated in two rows of four: a clear newsstand eye-catcher. In his formative years as a commercial artist, Warhol would regularly produce drawings by tracing photos. Although the article doesn’t mention Bazaar, it does remark that the sketch “reflects his obsession with repetition.” And now

Atlases have been around for centuries, but up until the 1950s, most were maps, pure and simple. Former Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer’s unique contribution (not simply as a designer, but as an author) was to show that maps did more than illustrate space and place. Maps were, he proffered, a record of time and perhaps even a tool of prognostication. The 1953 World Geo-Graphic Atlas, published by Walter Paepcke’s Container Corporation of America (CCA), is a monument to Bayer’s s

Harvey Pekar had been collaborating with the comic book artist JT Waldman on a book project, one that charts the journey from his Zionist upbringing to his questioning of Israel’s role in the world. But Pekar died in July 2010. Still, Waldman continued to work on it, and now it’s about to be published. Peter Kuper describes Not the Israel my Parents Promised Me as “an insightful look at one of the burning topics of our time. With Pekar’s scholarship and humor and JT Waldman’s