When I Think Back

 

06/13/2023

    For today's post, my research was on When I Think Back, created by Lester Beall. He traveled all around the U.S. and many people did not know him as a graphic designer until around 1935. His inspiration for his designs came from people like "Paul Klee, Herbert Bayer, Kurt Schwitters, Jan Tschichold, and others" (found from the source at the end of this post). 

     The example above is called When I Think Back, which was created in 1939. This design is an example of Early Modern design because of Beall's use of photography rather than illustration. While there is a little bit of illustration (the arrows specifically), photography was widely used in Early Modernism as a focal point, resulting in becoming a big characteristic of the movement. Beall's illustrations include geometric shapes, just like in my previous example of Jan Tschichold's Die Neue Typographie. Something I noticed that was also different between Tschichold and Beall is that Beall uses arrows to direct the audience's attention rather than using bold and colored text like Tschichold did. The arrows first lead to When I Think Back, and again to the man seated in this design. This design choice was very interesting to me as I discovered it when viewing the work itself. 

    This design is important to this movement because again of the minimalistic approach that Beall is trying to express. While using very little, the message is still delivered. The design seems to be an advertisement for the Rural Electrification Administration, and this makes sense because of the radio that is included in the photograph. While Beall does use two different typefaces, the sans-serif font is more visible at the top, than the serif font at the bottom of the page. This was also a characteristic involved in Early Modernism.

    

Image Citation:

Beall, Lester. When I Think Back. 1939. Lithograph. Found the image on June 13th, 2023. Found image information on https://www.moma.org/collection/works/8280. Source: https://www.oneclub.org/adc-hall-of-fame/-bio/lester-beall.