MODERN AMERICANNESS The New Graphic Design in the United States 1890-1940

Venturing across five decades of American culture, this landmark book explores how modern graphic design emerged in the United States and how it became an intrinsic feature of the country's identity. We love the wonderfully curated selection of artwork: from Leyendecker to Dard Hunter, Maxfield Parrish to N.C. Wyeth, Fred Ludekens to Walter Darwin Teague, Coles Phillips to Edward Penfield -- plus Art Deco streamlined art right up to its ultimate use for the 1939 World's Fair. We are offered brilliant images of rare posters, prints, luxury advertisements (Fortune Magazine, the pinnacle of luxury ads)...with lots of wonderful material new to us. This offers a sweeping story of the country's visual culture and its distinctiveness across a variety of designed objects: magazine covers, food labels, event posters, chapbooks, advertisements, propaganda and much more. In a series of deeply involving portraits of American artists and innovators who helped shape the very look of the modern age, author and design professor Christopher Long tells this story in a wholly new way, exposing many long-forgotten figures and movements and resurrecting the debates and conceptions that were integral. Innovative designers here include a long, revealing section on Lester Beall and on Will Bradley; Maynard Dixon; Dorothy Waugh; Raymond Loewy; John Held Jr.; Carl Link; James Montgomery Flagg; Charles Buckles Falls; Edward Penfield; Fred Cooper; Harold von Schmidt; Louis Rhead; and onward! Usually there are multiple images by each artist, their finest, most dramatic work that ushered in the new styles and influenced the next generation of artists and designers. Automobile and trains ads; glamorous travel images; Edison-Mazda lamps; ads for Coca-Cola and cigarettes, popular magazines and fine art printers; chocolates and radios; recruiting posters; car tires, nylons, fruit juice, chewing gum...it's an amazing list of very special images using the finest in design from these select years.