The Modernist

Today, when we think of good design, we think of a certain quality of timelessness. (It’s 2011 and you’re still lusting after a mid-century Eames rocker, no?) But it hasn’t always been that way. The modernist movement, with its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was the turning point, when the eclectic and the baroque were replaced with a new taste for clean and decidedly functional lines. The legacy of the movement has endured, and Gestalten’s The Modernist serves as a beautiful piece of evidence.

The book is a collection of the work of young graphic designers and illustrators designing under the influence (of modernism, that is), with limited palettes, a geometric eye, and an overall less-is-more approach to combining words and pictures. In fact, they’ve appropriated so much of the visual language of the era that upon first glance, the book deceptively feels like some sort of vintage catalog. The reader’s first hint that this is a 21st-century creation is the contemporary subject matter: posters designed for Black Swan, cover art for She & Him and The Walkmen, an M.R. James book jacket with pull quote from Michael Chabon.

If there’s any sort of feeling of dissonance, it fades quickly. The retro interpretations are a welcomed reversal of the way we typically interpret the past through the lens of the present; it’s quite fun to see a vintage spin on current titles and topics. To reduce a movie to a single shape, as design studio Hexagonall has done for Jaws (a white right triangle set on a blue background), is more than just a punchy one-liner; it’s an example of the subtle genius found in good graphic design.

The Modernist is available for $55 from Gestalten.

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