Eberhard Holscher [Editor]: GEBRAUCHSGRAPHIK. Munich: Gebrauchsgraphik, June 1953. Original edition (Volume 24, Number 6). Text in German with English summaries. Slim quarto. Printed wrappers. 68 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Wrappers lightly worn, but a nearly fine copy.
8.25 x 11.75 vintage magazine with 64 pages of editorial content and trade advertisements. Gebrauchsgraphik utilized the latest printing and press technologies and often included custom colors, bound-in samples and advertising fold-outs, foil stamps, die-cuts and other special finishing effects.
Contents
The Italian designer Erberto Carboni [1899 - 1984] was a recognized master in the field of publicity through the graphic arts. This book is a collection of his individual poster and advertising work since 1934, on such varied subjects as oil, wine, textiles, machinery, appliances, toothpaste and chemical products. Carboni started his studies in architecture in 1921, but became also interested in graphic and industrial design. His career began at the famous Studio Boggeri, but later he worked on his own. He specialized in exhibitions for trade fairs (Olivetti), interior design and graphics. For many years, Carboni worked for RAI (the Italian radio and TV company), but also for clients who mainly manufactured basic consumer products like Motta (ice cream), Pavesi (bread), Barilla (pasta) and Shell Oil. He presented those clients with a complete graphic line, ranging from packaging to posters.
From 1953 to 1960 he worked for Bertolli, for whom he designed a whole series of magazine ads and posters. He mixed photography, graphics and inventive typography and brought a rigorous modernism into his work. In 1954 he designed the ‘Delfino’ (dolphin) chair for Arflex.
Gebrauchsgraphik was the leading voice of the Avant-Garde influence on the European Commercial Art and Advertising industries before World War II. In the thirties, all roads led through Berlin, and Gebrauchsgraphik spotlighted all of the aesthetic trends fermenting in Europe -- Art Deco and Surrealism from Paris, Constructivism from Moscow, Futurist Fascism from Rome, De Stijl and Dutch typography from Amsterdam, and of course the spreading influence of the Dessau Bauhaus. A journal that was truly international in scope, all articles and cutlines are presented in both German and English.
Gebrauchsgraphik was in the perfect place to showcase all the latest and greatest European trends and rising artists for the rest of the world. Gebrauchsgraphik was an incredibly influential journal and agenda setter, most notably to a young man in Brooklyn named Paul Rand. According to his biographical notes, Rand's exposure to Gebrauchsgraphik in the early thirties created his desire to become a Commercial Artist. The rest is history.
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