Art Directors Club of Chicago

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Title

Art Directors Club of Chicago

Description

Perplexingly, apart from a briefarticlethat appeared in the March 1953 issueofPrint magazinesixty-three years ago, littledocumentationexistson the history and activities of the Art DirectorsClub of Chicago(ADCC). The article“European Influences on Chicago Designers,”written by graphic designer and ADCC member George McVicker (1904–1990)for a special Society of Typographical Arts (STA)issue, offersno genealogy of the group. Based on the numbering of the ADCC Annuals, the foundingof the organizationmay be placed at 1932 or 1933, althoughthe “first”annualmay not havecoincided withtheir first year of existence. (For reference, the New York Art DirectorsClubwas founded in 1920.) According to McVicker, inthe fall of 1934, the group sponsoreda course taught by much-admired Viennese designer Joseph Binder, known to ADCC membership through European publications. The well-attendedcourse made an enormous impact on participants, who were unfamiliar with Binder’s approach to stylizing and “abstract symbol” making. However, Binder’s influence was nothingcompared to that of László Moholy-Nagy(1895–1946)—called by McVicker “the real bomb [that] hit town.”1Four years after Binder’s course, Moholy-Nagy was brought to Chicago by the local Association of Art and Industry, which includedthe Container Corporationof America, Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field,and R.R. Donnelley representatives. Moholy-Nagy and his “first lieutenant”Gyorgy Kepes(1906–2001) not only introducednewmethods and design principles butalso acquainted Chicagoans with a vocabulary thatredefined design thinking and designproblems, using phrases such as “articulation of space” and “interpenetration of planes.”

McVicker mentions the following namesin his Print article; they arepresumably ADCC members. Their names arepresented here in alphabetical order:
  • Franz Altschuler
  • Frank Barr
  • Bruce Beck
  • Francis Chase
  • Burton Cherry
  • DeKovic-Smith Design Organization
  • Gene Douglas
  • Cliffe D. Eitel
  • Stan Ekman
  • William Fleming
  • Fran and Ros Foley
  • Morton Goldsholl
  • M. Martin Johnson
  • Elsa Kula
  • Anne Edwards Lang
  • Dale Maxey
  • Everett McNear
  • Phoebe Moore
  • Dale Nichols
  • Herbert Pinzke
  • Bert Ray
  • Harry B. Smith, Jr.
  • Irving Tittel
  • Harold Walter

Source

McVicker, George. “European Influence on Chicago Designers,”Print:Magazineof the Graphic Arts7,no. 5 (March 1953): 26–33.

Collection

Firms

Citation

“Art Directors Club of Chicago,” Chicago Design Manual, accessed July 6, 2024, https://mail.cdmtest.digital.uic.edu/items/show/15.

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