Art Deco
The name Art Deco was coined for the design style of the period between the world wars of the 20th century, i.e. 1917 to 1939, almost 50 years later, in the 1960's. How surprised would Cassandre have been in the 1920's, when he was busy designing his wonderful railroad posters, had he known that he would be labeled as an Art Deco Graphic Designer in years to come.

Art Deco is strongly geometric, it's hallmark is the triangle. Just as the Art Nouveau designers that came before them were obsessed with the Orient and particularly Japanese printmaking, the Deco designers were strongly influenced by Egyptian Art. The tomb of Tutankhamon was unearthed during this time and its splendours captured the imagination, not only of the populace at large, but also the designers and craftsmen of the day. Deco style is in fact oppulent, luxurious - not to put too fine a point on it: Decadent. The fact that major unemployment and the great depression set the backdrop to this luxuriousness put at the disposal of the upper classes on both sides of the Atlantic is of course a sad footnote. This time in history is very much determined by the social upheaval following Worl War 1: The breakdown of rigid 19th century taboos and morals both sexual and social, and consequently the social and political emancipation of women; the chaotic manifestations of the breakdown of the class dominated economic system such as the great workers' strikes of the late 1920's and the crash of the stock market in 1929.

The Deco designers were also, and quite inevitably, strongly influenced by the avantgardeist art movements of their day, particularly Cubism and the Bauhaus school. All in all Deco is a bizarre mixture of the luxurious with the starkly modernistic and has exerted considerable influence on all design styles that have succeeded it.

The idyll of the era came to a tragic end with the onset of Nazism and the second world war in Europe, when most of the foremost designers and architects in Europe fled to the USA and took their skills and intellect with them to establish the New York School in the late 40's and 50's.

Graphic Design
Art Deco graphic design distinguishes itself with strong geometric shapes and starkly sans-serif fonts, all of which is a strong reaction to the curvilinearity of Art Nouveau and the Belle Epoque. Futura, designed by Paul Renner in 1926, is the font that best describes the spirit of the times where typography is concerned. Illustration, especially of a stylised/faux-cubist nature is widely used. While typographically Art Deco designers joyfully embraced the advice of the Bauhaus school and widely used sans serif fonts the same cannot be said of page construction: Art Deco graphic design is not strong on negative space, a design element fiercely advocated by the Bauhaus theoreticians but that the commercial designers of the period chose not to heed. Thus where layouts are concerned Art Deco designers followed the traditions of the 19th Century designers to enable page navigation, i.e. boxing and compertmentalisation and created very dense pages.

The foremost designer of this era is A.M. Cassandre, who designed his stunningly beautiful posters in France. Cassandre, like many others fled to the USA at the start of the 2nd world war.



Posters by Cassandre (top and bottom)



However Cassandre was not the only graphic designer of the age. Many others excelled at the craft, including
names like Herbert Bayer, Armin Hoffmann and Joseph Bauer.





Deco was the time of the emancipated woman, the woman who wore short skirts
and smoked in public...



Who after the oppresive Victorian century that had passed openly asserted her sexuality:



Nowhere is the spirit of the age reflected more closely than in Tamara de Lempicka's paintings:



The Graphic Design of the new era reflected itself in a diverse range of products
from bookbinding to cigar labels:





From radios (a new invention in and of itself to candleholders to furniture, the new geometric, cleanlined style, crafted out of expensive woods and metals alongside the "plastic" of the age bacalite, ran rampant...






The usage of jewelery and watches became more widespread and the deco style was implemented both with precious stones and metals as well as bacalite and fashion jewelry. Cartier and Bulova were the men of the hour:



In the United States Deco design was implemented both into the architecture as well as the interior design
and ornamentations of skyscrapers:


Chrysler Building, New York


Rockefeller Center, New York

All in all, the period between the two world wars is the start of the modern age: Ideologies, morals, ethics, design and art were questioned, redefined and challenged to an unprecedented degree. Compared to the collossal rift between Art Deco and what came before it, our own inovations and experimentations seem meager efforts indeed.