Vouge, Beauty Number

06/26/2023 (Post 1)

    For my first post of the day, I researched the work of Mehemed Fehmy Agha. "Mehemed was born in Russia, a Turkish designer, art director, and pioneer to modern American publishing." He worked for magazine publishing companies like "Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House & Garden" (all of this information can be found at the source at the end of this article). 

    Vogue, Beauty Number is a magazine cover for Vouge that was created in 1932. This was the first magazine cover that Agha created using a full-color photograph (which can also be found in the source). Between the late 1920s and early 1930s was when Agha began to have characteristics of creating designs for Early Modernism. Before this, he would initially create designs using illustration, he used no photographs (which was pretty common at the time). 

    This magazine cover is important for the Early Modern Design period because as I had mentioned before, this cover was the first of Agha's designs to include a photograph, but the big idea to take away from the photograph is that it includes color. In Early Modern design, it was more common to include pictures that were in black and white. Also, the photograph is the "star of the show", meaning that the photo is the center of attention. He doesn't make the type emphasized like some of the other designs that I mentioned before in other posts. These ideas are experiments of graphic design, and how advertising can become different (in a good way, of course). 

Image Citation:

Agha Fehmy, Mehemed. Vogue, Beauty Number. 1932. Magazine Cover. Found the image on June 20th, 2023. Found image information on https://medium.muz.li/the-european-pioneer-of-early-american-art-direction-1960ba641664. Source: https://www.moma.org/artists/80#exhibition.