Investigation of Graphic Designers

Ladislav Sutnar

Ladislav Sutnar was a progenitor of the current practice of information graphics. For a wide range of American businesses, he developed graphic systems that clarified vast amounts of complex information, transforming business data into digestible units. He was also the man responsible for putting the parentheses around American telephone area-code numbers when they were first introduced.

Lester Beall

Lester Beall studied the dynamic visual form of the European avant-garde, synthesized parts into his own aesthetic and formed graphic design applications for business and industry that were appropriate, bold, comprehensive, and imaginative. He proved to American business that the graphic designer was a professional that could creatively solve problems and at the same time deal with pragmatic issues such as marketing and budgets. Beall produced solutions to design problems that were fresh and innovative. He studied the dynamic visual form of the European avant-garde, synthesized parts into his own aesthetic and formed graphic design applications for business and industry that were appropriate, bold, and imaginative. In his mature years he led the way with creative and comprehensive packaging and corporate identity programs that met the needs of his clients. The qualities and values that led to Beall's effectiveness are timeless and provide contemporary practitioners with an historical reference base upon which to evaluate present standards.

Leo Lionni

Leo Lionni has wedded fine art to applied art, elevated the level of graphic design criticism, launched the careers of many formidable practitioners, and engaged the minds and hearts of several generations in a variety of roles throughout his career: committed teacher, author, critic, editor, painter, sculptor, printmaker, designer, cartoonist and illustrator. Leo Lionni was born in Holland in 1910, into a world on the cusp of radical change—with cultural and political revolutions in the air and on the streets. His father was an artisan, a diamond cutter from a well-to-do Sephardic Jewish family, and his mother was a singer. Her brother, Piet, an architect, allowed his adoring, five-year-old nephew to play with his drafting supplies. And two other uncles, both collectors of modern art, fed his artistic inclinations by osmosis.

James Miho

James Miho, recipient of a 2004 AIGA Medal, is an art director of seminal campaigns for Champion Papers and the Container Corporation of America, a design educator, and a photographer. James Miho has spent a large part of his 50-year career in focused traveling, collecting the images and impressions that would inform a remarkable body of work for some of the most design-conscious clients of the 20th century. Miho was born into a wealthy Japanese family in northern California. With the onset of WWII, he and his family were interned for four years at Tule Lake on the California-Oregon border. Upon his return from fighting in the Korean War, Miho enrolled at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. The art and architecture he had seen during a two-week sojourn in Japan had inspired him to pursue a career in design.