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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For large patches of his later career Heinz Edelmann focused on quickly producing posters for arts events and series productions: these typically made use of a fairly regularized typographic template for information, and wild, allusive but enigmatic illustrations. For one season in the mid-1980s, he worked with the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus theater, playing off the plays’ angsty plotlines with evocatively deformed bodies.

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Chermayeff & Geismar Collection: Box 19, Folder 4, Gramavision CD packaging, 1989.

Chermayeff & Geismar’s packaging for these Gramavision CDs brings me back to the CD bins in the (long gone) Tower Records on Broadway and E. 4th Street.

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Chermayeff & Geismar Collection: Drawer 7, Folder 2. Mobil Masterpiece Theatre.

Masterpiece Theatre was the principal portal into British television for American audiences in the seventies; Mobil, the sponsor, drafted their longtime designers Chermayeff & Geismar to make posters for various features.

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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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WDR. Die Ausgewogenheit (3): Die Scharfe, Aber Erlaubte Kritik [The Balance: The Pointed, But Allowed, Critique]. n.d.

In the 1970s and 1980s Heinz Edelmann designed many posters for the West German public broadcasting station Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR).

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Steven Heller Collection: Box 29 Folder 11. Symbol for Emigre #10 from Emigre Brochure, 1988.

Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko’s Emigre defined the look of new media that emerged with the proliferation of the personal computer.

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James McMullan Collection: Original art for Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi.

James McMullan’s watercolor book jackets capture the spirit of Borges.

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Heinz Edelmann worked extensively with the Klett-Cotta press over the course of his career: we’ve collected some of his best jackets.

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James McMullan Collection: Borges book covers for E.P. Dutton, 1960s-1970s.

This summer we received a great donation from illustrator, poster designer and long-time SVA faculty member James McMullan.

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Heinz Edelmann Collection: Folder 14 Item 93.

While preparing for a class visit a couple of weeks ago, I rediscovered these gorgeous posters Heinz Edelmann did for Theater der Welt (Theater of the World) in 1981.

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SVA Tribeca Gallery Show No. 4, April 3-14, 1979. Works by Gary Sherman and Julie Cohen.

Earlier, we highlighted a look at the SVA Tribeca Gallery, which was open from 1979-1980 in the American Thread Building on West Broadway and featured SVA student work in a professional gallery setting. The complete history of this seminal gallery is now available on our web site (designed by Archives staff member Zachary Sachs). Some featured artworks follow.

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Pentagram Partners’ Feedback, five volumes, London 1976–1996

Among the ephemera in the Henry Wolf Collection are five early editions of Pentagram’s Feedback — guidebooks for globetrotting designers. Excerpts from David Hockney, Olivier Morgue and Bob Gill follow.

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Chermayeff & Geismar Collection: Box 2A, Folder 26 and Box 25, Folder 5

An envelope showing the logo for slider chain Krystal, ca 1980s, designed by Chermayeff & Geismar. Doggie bag follows.

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Randy Black, installation at the Tribeca Gallery of the School of Visual Arts.

SVA’s Tribeca Gallery, which housed student shows in 1979 and 1980, was one of the first school-run galleries that showed student work in a competitive art scene. Randy Black appeared in a 1980 show alongside Ilan Averbuch, Rebecca Cuming, Jennifer Macdonald, Stephanie Rudolph and Brian Spaeth. The background on the gallery and the story of a forgotten work by Keith Haring follow.

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Steven Heller Collection: Posters and Prints

Here’s a 1981 print from highly influential graphic artist (and longtime SVA instructor) Gary Panter advertising Paul Reubens’ Pee-Wee stage show in Los Angeles. The show was the springboard for Reubens’ feature film, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and later his acclaimed series, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Panter was the head set designer for the TV show and this early poster displays his trademark jagged lines and surreal sensibility. Now scream real loud when you hear the secret word…

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Milton Glaser Collection: Drawer 11, Folder 26.

XTC’s Andy Partridge readily admits to using Milton Glaser’s 1964 poster for radio station WOR as the inspiration for the cover art for XTC’s 1989 album Oranges and Lemons (viewable here). He has also professed his love of the work of Yellow Submarine art director and designer Heinz Edelmann, who is also a new addition to the archives — sneak peek to come!

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Henry Wolf Collection, Series 2: Box 5B, Folder 28.

Wolf shot the photograph for this ca. 1980s Papermate ad, which was originally a full magazine spread. Presumably the art direction credit here includes the choice of this outrageous but strangely compelling combination of magenta boots, purple legwarmers, and high-cut acid-wash jeans. Against their layered, cool-tone palette, the yellow barrel of the pen stands out, its silver clip echoing the silver italic copy. The only snag here, in my opinion, is the affected rhythm of “Think, Re-think, State, Re-state,” which falls too comfortably into the exhausted “Big Idea” voice that was so prevalent in advertising a few decades before, and doesn’t really achieve any meaningful interaction with the image.

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