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One Response to “AGI: Graphic Design Since 1950”

1. Robert Fripp
   November 19th, 2009 at 10:24 pm

   This massive undertaking dedicates one page each to about 500 designers who made their mark in world design after 1950. Editors Ben and Elly Bos selected a total of 1,943 colour illustrations to mark their subjects’ work. I looked at pages about designers whose work I knew, concluding that the editors had made good choices, accurately representing important aspects of their subjects’ careers.

   One can imagine almost any designer, tired, stressed and working to a deadline, opening ‘AGI: Graphic Design Since 1950′ and finding inspiration and visual solutions among its copious contents. The book has intrinsic value from that viewpoint alone. Then, interspersed among designers’ personal entries, more than thirty essays describe and analyse design trends through the passing decades while posing challenges for the years ahead. For example, on the cusp of the 1990s we get ‘Cold War Exits’ while ‘The End of Print?’ mulls the rise of what would become the Internet. This book is indeed a valuable compendium about design, designers and trends through a period of almost 60 years.

   The front flap tells us that ‘AGI: Graphic Design Since 1950′ “presents biographies of almost every AGI member to date. ” Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) accurately lays claim to being an “élite club,” one of “common interest and achievement” for many leaders in design. But it is hardly fair to describe this book, which includes only AGI members, as a “Who’s Who in the world of graphic design. ” A single professional association cannot claim universality. For example, the book lists Will Burtin and his second wife, Cipe Pineles, but not Pineles’ first husband, William Golden, who designed the CBS Eye.

   Never mind. AGI, the editors, and many others invested heavily in time, labor and dedication to write and assemble a magnificent book on design.

   Robert Fripp
   Co-author, ‘Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin’
   Rating: 5 / 5