Museum für Gestaltung Zürich – författare

100 Years of Swiss Design offers a new perspective of Switzerland's achievements in furniture and product design. The book presents the essential historical designs in chronological sequence, from the regional roots of the early days around 1900 to the globalized network of today. Thirty essays by known experts shed light on themes typical of their times in word and image. Besides the design process, manufacturing techniques, distribution, and reception, the changing roles of the designer--from mediator between form and function, entrepreneur, social worker, to branding architect--are examined. Featuring one hundred key works from the Designsammlung, the world's largest collection of Swiss design, this reference work is the first to present and discuss a comprehensive show of Swiss designers' achievements, from the anonymous to the famous.

As a pioneer of modern design, Willy Guhl created world-famous furniture such as the Eternit garden chair or Europe’s first plastic shell chair. In the tradition of modernism and against the traditional Heimatstil, after 1945 he developed a holistic design approach oriented to human beings and their needs; functionality and reduction to the essential characterize his everyday objects. In collaboration with Swiss companies such as Dietiker, Eternit and Aebi, Willy Guhl designed seating furniture, planters and mowing machines.Willy Guhl’s designs, his teaching methods and his image archive bear witness to the innovationsof the booming design industry of the post-war period and the changing professional image ofthe industrial designer. As a teacher and later head of the class for interior and product design at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts from 1941 to 1980, Willy Guhl influenced generations of Swiss designers, including Robert Haussmann, Kurt Thut and Andreas Christen. The trained carpenter and interior designer passed on his design knowledge “hands-on,” with illustrative objects, by model making and storytelling.This first comprehensive monograph illuminates Willy Guhl’s legacy in the context of this designand teaching practice as well as current theories of the design discipline. As a thematically structured catalog of works, it offers a complete index of all design projects, and illustrates in sketches, plans and photographs his exploratory working method and his passion for material and technology, which is equally evident in the selection of exemplary student works.

Iranian graphic design looks back on a brief history. The first poster designers completed independent artistic training and created painterly-illustrative works in the 1960s. The simultaneous opening to the West under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi promoted global cultural exchange. With the proclamation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and the First Gulf War (1980–1988), however, this was rapidly interrupted. At the end of the 1980s, a new generation of designers took up the graphic heritage of the pre-war period. At the turn of the millennium, the Iranian poster finally conquered international festivals and caused a great stir in the Western community. The volume Contemporary Iran brings together Iranian cultural posters from 1960 to the present. Despite the many different creative approaches, they always demonstrate the search for a fusion of history and contemporaneity, Iran’s own tradition and Western inspiration, art and everyday culture. An often unorthodox interpretation of Persian cultural heritage is combined with the confident use of computer-generated graphics. Thus, some posters confirm common Western notions of Islamic aesthetics, while others radically undermine them and irritate and surprise us.

Bodies act as powerful signs: Which bodies are represented and how, which gaze determines them, which bodies are not shown or only shown in a particular way and in a particular context? Normative ideas of the body and beauty shape images of the self and the world. They are bodies that manifest inequalities and reflect the prevailing relations of power and violence.Talking Bodies examines mechanisms of representation of the body in medial cultures and illus- trates them exemplarily with posters. Masterpieces of art history that have inscribed themselves in the collective memory are negotiated, as are contemporary self-dramatizations in social media, gender stereotypes, images of black bodies, and the representation of disabled and non-normative bodies. With its focus on the construction and impact of body images, but also on possible strategies of resistance, the publication sees itself as a critical contribution to current debates.With essays by Markus Dederich, Florian Diener, Hans Fässler, Bettina Richter, Maria Schreiber, Marilyn Umurungi, Paula-Irene Villa

In 1980, Josef Müller-Brockmann laid the cornerstone for a uniform visual identity for the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) with his legendary Visual Information System at Train Stations and Stops. In view of Switzerland’s multilingualism, the manual proposed a signage system that largely did without language; with his functional typography, the pioneer of Swiss graphic design conceived an intuitively comprehensible signage system for use throughout the country to also guide passengers unfamiliar with the terrain to their destination with the help of pictograms. The visual concept was developed in dialogue with the SBB and still dominates the railways’ visual identity even today.Müller-Brockmann’s manual, greatly expanded in1992 and given the title Passenger Information System, is a prime example of a complex design project that succeeds through extreme rationality and consistency. It thus serves as a compass for designers worldwide in their daily work. This reprint with a complete English translation makes the manual accessible for the first time to a broader public. Andres Janser examines the project in the context of Müller-Brockmann’s conceptual work and the systematic international design for which railways everywhere were striving during the period.

Peace appeals, reminders of human rights, calls to protect nature – posters have proven an effective medium in accompanying social and political struggles worldwide since the 1920s. Through the poster, these universal and timeless topics are able to reach a broad public and encourage critical debate. While some posters are meant to shed light and are aimed at reflection, others appeal more strongly to the emotions of their audience. Some dismantle past and present autocrats cynically, ironically or humorously – while others construct idols that exemplify a different world. Dystopian images function as a provocation and warning, while utopian messages keep the belief in change alive. Symbols such as the raised fist or the dove of peace demonstrate their global and lasting power in ever new interpretations. Proven visual formulas and argumentation strategies are taken up in posters of the latest civil protest movements and are supplemented by new rhetoric. The designers, acting individually or collectively, are united by commitment and an emancipatory attitude as well as the conviction that resistance requires its own aesthetic in order to function. The publication brings together works from around one hundred years that demonstrate the tradition of the poster as a medium of protest and assert its validity and necessity in the present day.

Avantgarde highlights the advent of the poster and the beginnings of graphic design as an indepen-dent design discipline: between the wars, photography, typography and visual abstraction were at the heart of the poster; based on the reform movements at the turn of the century and the various “isms” in art after 1900, it became both a reflection of innovative design ideas and an expression of the zeitgeist and its radical socio-political utopias.Posters served as a medium for propaganda and education, promoted new products and technical achievements, encouraged new discussions about “Neues Bauen und Wohnen” (new building and living) and attracted people to photography, film and advertising exhibitions. Both the traditional concept of art and the conventional role of artists were questioned. A rational, sober approach that rejected all individualism became a commitment to universal modernism and confidently demanded a new way of seeing.Posters of Russian constructivism by El Lissitzky or Valentina Kulagina held their own alongside art deco posters by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre or Jean Carlu. Jan Tschichold, Herbert Matter and Maja Allenbach experimented with photography in very different poster genres. It came to a temporary end with the totalitarian movements around 1935 – but its inspirations continue to have an impact today.

What kind of fashion exists without mass production, without Hollywood and international fashion weeks? In Switzerland, far from the international spotlight and the dictates of the major fashion hubs, small labels, collectives, and young graduates as well as established brands test their potential for greatness. Creative designers take initiative and position themselves in Berlin, join the fashion circus in Paris, or establish clever business models at home in Switzerland.Wild Thing - The Swiss Fashion Scene, published in conjunction with an exhibition at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, puts a spotlight on this development and the products resulting from it. The book picks up on current topics - such as minimalism and the questioning of assigned gender identities - that shape designs, design concepts, and processes. Lavishly illustrated, it features looks and creations by important labels, selected outfits, textile inventions, and collection presentations. Together with brief interviews, portraits of individual designers, and text contributions, Wild Thing - The Swiss Fashion Scene is a highly attractive snapshot of Switzerland’s creative and vibrant fashion scene.In addition, the book contains links to short print-in-motion videos, which can be watched by pointing a smartphone camera at the corresponding image. The videos offer portraits of designers, interviews with fashion experts, and contributions from fashion schools.Text in English and German.

Under the label Atelier Zanolli, a fantastic world of silk fabrics that were painted and imprinted with patterns, opulently embroidered cushions, colourful pearl creations, as well as finely crafted leather and wood articles, was created between 1905 and 1939 in Zurich. The Zanollis had immigrated from Italy in 1905. Their family business was entirely women-run by mother Antonietta and her daughters Pia, Lea, and Zoe Zanolli. The cultural and stylistic influences manifested in the Zanollis’ visually appealing product world range from the avant-garde to a typically Swiss aesthetic forged by a national spirit of defence against the increasingly felt threat that Nazi Germany posed to the country in the 1930s. Driven by a striving for artistic self-realisation, the atelier defied the many economic challenges of the period and carried out many commissions for Zurich’s leading textile businesses and department stores.This book traces the history of Atelier Zanolli, places its work in the context of the development of Zurich and the Swiss textile industry in the first half of the 20th century, and for the first time also positions the “Zanolli style” internationally. More than 600 images show the wealth of colours and shapes of the cosmos of textiles and crafted objects, as well as templates, sketches, private photographs, business cards, and letters. The essays illuminate the techniques and work processes used, discuss entire motif families and unique designs, and grant a rare comprehensive insight into the tastes of the time.

King Stag is a play originally written in 1762 by Italian playwright and champion of Commedia dell’arte Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806). It is about love and conspiracy at the court of King Deramo. In search of a bride, Deramo falls victim to the intrigues of his adversary Tartaglia and is temporarily transformed into a stag.In 1918, on the occasion of a major art exhibition staged in Zurich by the modernist association Swiss Werkbund, Swiss dramatist René Morax (1873–1963) and director Werner Wolff (1886–1972) produced a modern adaption of Gozzi’s fairy-tale play that turned it into an amusing parody of Sigmund Freud’s and Carl Gustav Jung’s psychoanalysis, which had caused much controversy in Zurich at the time. The production was conceived as a puppetry, for which avant-garde artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) designed the stage sets and created an ensemble of 17 radically abstracted marionettes that broke with every tradition of the genre.This book offers the first English translation of Morax and Wolff’s adaption of King Stag. The text is supplemented with photographs of a restaging of the puppetry, produced especially for this volume, featuring Taeuber-Arp’s striking marionettes. Essays by distinguished scholars explore the genesis of the original 1918 production and place it in historical context, shed new light on the play and its model, the Commedia dell'arte, and highlight its significance for Switzerland’s avant-garde.