“Design & Style 2 Streamline” 1987 HELLER, Steven [editor] The Cary Collection

HELLER, Steven [editor]

[34] pp.

The Pushpin Group Inc.

1987

12″ x 10 1/8″

STREAMLINE by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast

DESIGN AND STYLE 2 from Mohawk Papers Mills

1987 Paper Promotion from The Pushpin Group

Steven Heller [Editor] and Seymour Chwast [Designer]: STREAMLINE. Cohoes: Mohawk Papers Mills with The Pushpin Group Inc., 1987. First edition [Design and Style no. 2]. Slim quarto. Die cut stitched printed wrappers. 34 pp. Multiple paper stocks and elaborate finishings throughout. Production notes, Graphic Design Timeline, and Mohawk card laid in [as issued]. A fine copy.

10.25 x 12 perfect-bound softcover book with 34 pages of elaborate graphic design and production, including 200 line-screen separations, four-color process, multilevel blind-emboss, foil stamping, duotones, flat color, dull and gloss varnish, metallic ink, thermography, and die-cutting.

Includes work by Herbert Bayer, T. M. Cleland, Paolo Garretto, Joseph Binder, Walter Dorwin Teague, Otis Shephard, M. Peter Piening, Alexey Brodovitch, M. F. Agha, Miguel Covarrubias, A.M. Cassandre, Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Otto Kuehler, Russel Wright, Wallace K. Harrison, J. Andre Fouilhoux, Rockwell Kent, Grant Wood, Lester Beall, Joseph Sinel, John Atherton and others.

   Mohawk Papers Mills published the Design and Style series twice yearly as a survey of historic design style and typography and its influence on contemporary graphic design. Various Mohawk papers and printing techniques were employed in this outstanding aesthetically appealing example of graphic design. Design & Style’s mission was to examine the relationship between printing technology and graphic style. Mohawk promised “future issues will explore French Art Deco, Dutch De Stijl, Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism, German Expressionism, DaDa, Surrealism, and Post Modernism.” Unfortunately, the Russian Constructivism, German Expressionism, DaDa and Post Modernism editions never materialized. Volume Seven’s Bauhaus tribute was a pretty good bone to throw those of us who anxiously awaited each volumes’ publication back in the day.

  Here Streamline was portrayed as a style deriving from “Modernism, as extolled by Futurism, Constructivism, De Stijl and Bauhaus, [that] was exported to America via books, annuals and the many proponents of the movement who emigrated to New York and Chicago, Their distinctly European ideas were wed to the developing American design forms, resulting in a pluralistic but distinct period style – a blend of the decorative and the austere, the modern and the moderne, the geometric and the biomorphic.”

   Have you ever scanned the Graphic Design section at your local Barnes and Noble and wondered why nearly every Graphic Design “history” book is crammed full of pretty color reproductions with the history presented as footnotes? It all started in 1986 with the Mohawk Papers Mills of Cohoes, New York.

When Mohawk Papers Mills teamed up with design historian Steven Heller and designer Seymour Chwast to publish a series of paper promotions chronicling the history of Design and Style, nobody could have possibly realized the long-term influence of the venture.

Here’s how Mohawk trumpeted their series introduction JUGENSTIL:  “Welcome to “Design and Style, a journal to be published semi-annually by Mohawk Paper Mills, Inc. in collaboration with its creators, Seymour Chwast of The Pushpin Group and Steven Heller, senior Art Director of The New York Times Book Review.”

“The rich legacy of design history from right before the turn of the century to the present day, as defined by stylistic movements, affords the unique opportunities for the display of startling historic images made even more visually stimulating when printed on a variety of the colors and textures available from the Mohawk Collection of fine Text and Cover Papers.”

This series of paper promotions inadvertently set the tone for modern design history by presenting classic examples of Graphic Design culled from many public and private collections, as selected by Heller and Chwast (aided by respective spouses Louis Fili and Paula Scher, no doubt).

Heller mastered this dumpster-diving method by first turning it into a book with Chwast (Graphic Style: From Victorian To Post-Modern: NYC: Abrams 1988), and then an entire series for Chronicle Books with spouse Louise Fili: Deco Espana, Italian Art Deco, Deco Type, Japanese Modern, French Modern, Streamline, Dutch Moderne, and British Moderne).