Class Photos: University of Iowa College of Dentistry

The University of Iowa has a vast and varied digital archive to explore. Included are over 80 years (1883-1967) of graduating-class photo boards from the College of Dentistry.

The early years, of course, have the most interesting boards, and not only for visual variety. I couldn’t help noticing a perplexing change in the number of women graduates over the years. During the first 40 years, 34 women earned degrees, with the classes of 1888 and 1902 graduating five women each. From 1925 through 1967, however, there were a total of seven female graduates--over the entire 42 years! I'm not quite sure which of those stats I find more surprising. Today, 40% of students at the College of Dentistry are women. Drill, baby, drill.

Bauhaus: The Book

“Excuse me,” says the young designer to the clerk in my imaginary, vaguely Monty Pythonesque skit. “I’m looking for a book called Bauhaus.” The clerk replies "walk this way," and proceeds to show her an entire section where every book is titled “Bauhaus.”

The legendary design school is synonymous with creativity and innovativeness, and over the years there have been many lavish and scholarly books published about its history and influence. But where was the creativity when it came to titling these many tomes? True, there is the occasional under-line, over-line, or date range in tiny print. But basically, an enormous number of books fall into perfect lockstep and boldly feature the single–word title of “Bauhaus.”

On the other hand, there is something to be said for clarity in messaging. After all, shouldn’t form follow function?

Really, it's just an excuse to post a bunch of them. The selection here is by no means comprehensive, and many of these are alternate or later printings of earlier editions.

50 Jahre Bauhaus, 1968 catalog (Herbert Bayer cover)
for the exhibition in Stuttgart. The gray cover at the top
of this post, is a 1975 abridged version of the catalog.



Bauhaus, by Fiedler and Feierabend was originally
published in 1999 with the red cover. The cover
of the 2008 edition is white.


Bauhaus by Xavier Girard, Assouline, 2003.



The original edition, top, and the second printing of the
book compiled for MoMA's 1938 Bauhaus exhibition. It was
edited by Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and Ise Gropius.



Two books by Magdalena Droste from Taschen.(top, bottom)



Siebenbrodt & Schobe, Parkstone, 2009.


Gerd Fleischmann’s 1995 book incorporates Herbert Bayer’s
design for a 1928 cover of the Bauhaus Journal.


Hans Wingler’s Bauhaus “bible,” by MIT Press, 1969.
Hard cover edition with slipcase, top, and the
soft cover version.


Even the catalog for the recent MoMA show included
“Workshops for Modernity” in the tiniest type possible.

A really great resource for Bauhaus books is the site Modernism 101. There is a blog associated with the site called Bauhaus Cowboy. It seems to have ended in the summer of 2009, but there are still many interesting posts there to peruse.

Natural High Fashion

German photographer Hans Silvester has documented the Surma and Mursi people of southern Ethiopia and their creative DIY/haute couture tradition of body decoration. "Natural Fashion," a book of the photos was published in 2008 and there is a small show of these works in New York through January 8, at Marlborough Graphics, 40 W. 57th St.

The exuberance with which the tribe members employ animal, vegetable and mineral for mark-making and other adornment is stunning in its inventiveness and sophistication. The images, which celebrate the art and physicality of people who wear nothing but fingerpaint, flowers, and seedpods, are utterly enchanting. You might very well find yourself inspired to frolic in nature and take up crafting.

Or, alternatively (since you are probably dressed entirely in black), you’ll be mentally placing Silvester’s photographs within the universe of ethnographic images made by Irving Penn and Leni Reifenstal, or those we’ve seen in Vogue, National Geographic and modern advertising. Before you know it, you’ll be pondering post-structuralist anthropology, the Western gaze, and the entire artistic/fashionistic industrial complex.

Perhaps we simply are what we wear.














Much thanks to Vito Zarkovic for posting about "Natural Fashion" on his FB page. The images here and many more can be seen here.

Fortune's Glorious Infographic Past

At long last, the article I wrote for Print based on my lecture about the amazing infographics Fortune published during the first half (1930-1970) of its 80-year existence.

A number of years ago, I was invited to give a presentation at Malofiej, the Society of News Design's worldwide infographics conference held each year in Pamplona, Spain. At the time, I was Fortune’s graphics editor and had always wanted an excuse to subject myself to going through every issue of the magazine and document its use of charts, diagrams, maps, etc. Talk about falling down the rabbit hole! Of the few hundred images I collected, some 80 went into the presentation, and 18 of those appear in this article.

I still like to imagine that I will do the book one of these days, but size is a real issue. Unlike the early spectacular Fortune covers that are legible even when reproduced as thumbnails (there weren’t even cover-lines in those days), the infographics are often readable only at the original print size. Each page was 11" by 14" in the early days, and many graphics ran as full spreads and with tiny labels. Sumptuous and gorgeous, but not very iPhone-friendly, or even iPad-friendly for that matter. I just can’t see an 8" by 10" format doing justice to the ‘Financial Irrigation of the United States’ (second spread, below), and I’m not sure I can handle being laughed out of the office of any publisher still in business. The research (most of it) is done ...


The body text should be readable when you click on the pages to enlarge.