If the designers in Switzerland felt that they owed it to their public to speak in an objective and clear language that anyone could understand. Push Pin Studios in New York starting to work in the late 1950s around the same time as New Graphic Design in Zurich was being published felt that they owed it to their public to speak in a language that the public already understood. And that language, that graphic language, was one that was based on really well known vernacular forms like old wood cuts, old book covers. The Push Pin Studio designers were all collectors of all kinds of antique printed matter, toys. They were interested in all forms of pop culture, but the old forms of pop culture in particular. And the history of typography and all of the variations in form that were available to you if you decided you did not want to be modern. Push Pin, which was a group of illustrators mostly, who came together to work after all meeting each other at Cooper Union, would make work that they would then give to potential clients in hopes that they could get hired mostly in the magazine business or in publishing in New York City during that time. So this, for instance, is a cover for a publication that they did to promote their own work called the Push Pin Monthly Graphic. Everything that they produced though, harkens back to old forms of typography. The last thing in the world they were interested in was the 20th century modern style. They liked looking at old wood type lettering from the 19th century, and vernacular American letter forms. This is a mailer that they produced for a type setter in New York City in 1958, where you see this collision of about four different styles of topography. Exactly the opposite of the Swiss style and completely rambunctious and rebellious looking in comparison. They used a lot of humor. The combination of illustration and clever advertising copy can be seen all over their work. And they created this work in order both to get attention but to get attention through an incredibly clever use of various graphic motifs. They were not interested in objectivity. Like most illustrators, they were really interested in subjectivity and the idea of using the gestures of hand drawing and very quirky kinds of symbol-making to indicate a personality. A personality mostly that was in love with literature and popular culture and that was very accessible to an audience that was there waiting for this kind of imaginative work. Even when they tackled serious subjects, their work has a kind of individuality and a power of communication that comes through almost as a very subjective psychological style. This is a cover of the Monthly Graphic with an illustration by Milton Glaser. They had gotten permission to reprint an article about the dangers of nuclear fallout. And instead of using a scary science fiction type image, or a technological image, the simple profile rendered in ink, almost like a sumi-e ink Chinese piece of calligraphy, of a pregnant woman, gets the idea across immediately of somebody of a vulnerable population or a person who's vulnerable to an outside force that you can't see. You can't understand that cover until you understand what's inside the Monthly Graphic, but the connection once you do make it is this incredibly memorable, and rather emotional image. That's contrasted with their standard typography at the masthead of the Monthly Graphic, where they kind of imitate the New York Times, with their use of an old gothic fonts. But then they combine it with different kind of rules, and behind the font is a kind of old curlicue from Dutch calligraphy. So the whole thing is a mish-mosh of typography history, but the power of the image rendered as a symbol still comes through the style of that drawing printed on dark paper that conveys everything about the fear of fallout and the potential horrors of it all. As serious as that copy of the Monthly Graphic is, is as silly as this one is. This is a paperback cover for a somewhat larger issue now called the Push Pin Graphic which was based on a book that they had scavenged out of one of the many used bookstores in and around the Village in New York City, that interpreted dreams. So on the inside of the book, each dream has an illustration by a different member of the Push Pin group, on the inside, but the cover is what's interesting here because it's again a complete combination of different kinds of historical references. Again the sort of Gothic font for Push Pin Graphic, their kind of knotted calligraphy behind it. But over that is a Art Deco doorway which was the kind of doorway that you could see in some of the old apartment buildings in and around their neighborhood in New York. And then their new rendering of the idea of 1920s geometric lettering, which, true is modern, but in their mind, it's Art Deco which is a more decorative, pop version of modern typography. It's this collision of different time periods and humor that made the Push Pin work so different and which got them a great deal of attention.
