School of Visual Arts Collection. Detail of poster illustrated by Phil Hays and designed by Ivan Chermayeff, 1960s.

SVA’s early subway posters helped raise the school to a new plane of artistic and intellectual pursuits.

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More Tony Palladino: a clever concept hiding in plain sight.

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Milton Glaser Collection Box 112 Folder 24. Push Pin Graphic No. 11, December 1957.

Milton Glaser tips his hat to French poet, playwright, and critic Guillaume Apollinaire.

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School of Visual Arts Collection: Poster for Robert Weaver: Retrospective 1956-1977.

Pioneering illustrator Robert Weaver was a major figure at SVA beginning in 1950s.

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School of Visual Arts Collection: SVA Exhibitions: Josef Presser: Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, late 1950s.

Bob Gill lets Josef Presser’s words speak for themselves in this visually simple but verbally playful announcement for Presser’s exhibition at SVA.

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Chermayeff & Geismar Collection: Pepsi-Cola World, February 1960.

The design firm of Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar established their reputation for brilliant corporate identity work with one of their earliest clients, Pepsi-Cola.

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Another recent addition from Ivan Chermayeff: the beautiful slipcased hardcover for The new graphic art, a trilingual history of the basis for the Swiss design style, compiled by Karl Gerstner and Markus Kutter in 1959.

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In 1958 Henry Wolf, newly appointed art director for Harper’s Bazaar, was tapped by the Advertising Typographers Association to write an essay on magazine typography for their bulletin.

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School of Visual Arts Collection: Annual Art Scholarships by Sal Jon Bue, 1959.

I recently came across this lovely poster Sal Jon Bue designed for SVA in 1959. My research on the unfamiliar (to me) Bue didn’t turn up much, but I did learn he taught courses on typographic and advertising design at SVA in the late 1950s and early 1960s, at which time he encouraged his student Paul Davis to submit his work to Push Pin Studios. You can see similarities in style to the work of his fellow SVA faculty member, Bob Gill. Bue passed away in 2001.

Bue also designed this piece for the 1964 World’s Fair and his work was featured in Early/Later, an exhibition at the Whitney in Stamford in 1991.

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Milton Glaser Collection: Milton Glaser for Container Corporation of America.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. – Samuel Johnson

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School of Visual Arts Collection, Bob Gill self-promotional pamphlet, c. 1959.

Designer and illustrator Bob Gill was one of the earliest faculty members at SVA, joining right around the time George Tscherny taught the school’s first design course.

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Steven Heller Collection: Identity Programs by Noel Martin, identity for Xomox Corporation, manufacturers of valves, actuators and surgical implants.

Noel Martin was a renown self-taught typographer and designer who studied drawing, painting, and printmaking at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He later became an instructor there and was the long-time designer for the Cincinnati Art Museum, as well as a prolific free-lance designer. Martin was celebrated for modernizing museum graphics and industrial trade catalogs. In 1953, he was featured in MoMA’s landmark design exhibition, Four American Designers, along with Herbert Bayer, Leo Lionni, and Ben Shahn. His spiral-bound self-promotional piece, Identity Programs, presents some of his iconic minimalist logos.

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This detail for a 1956 poster for the Cartoonist & Illustrators School by George Tscherny. Rebranded as the School of Visual Arts later that year, the designer had a long and fruitful relationship with the institution.

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Steven Heller Collection: Interiors November 1953: Cover by Aldo Giurgola.

From the Steven Heller Collection come these lovely covers for Interiors, the influential magazine for interior designers, architects, and industrial designers. The magazine was art directed by notable architect Romaldo Giurgola and Roberto Mango; George Nelson was an editorial contributor.

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Tony Palladino Collection: Box 9, Folder 21.

Here’s a 1957 poster by Tony Palladino. Substitute ’09 for ’57 and it still works. Click here for the full image.

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A birth announcement illustrated by Jack Roberts (for his daughter), archived in Henry Wolf’s correspondence.

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