Looking Back: The 1970s

By j.Charles Walker

j.Charles Walker is professor emeritus and former director of the School of Visual Communication Design at Kent State University. An emeritus member of UCDA, he served as president in 1978.

Depending upon one’s conception of what constitutes visual communication, a valid argument can and has been made that it began when earliest humans drew images on cave walls or other surfaces and/or invented writing. Images can tell stories­—the primary intention of illustration—and all writing is a form of typography. Most early visual design, however, was primarily decorative, illustrative embellishment of calligraphy and handset typography. My personal point of view is that the beginning of a definable profession of visual communication began in the early 20th century, with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, with the development of mechanical means of setting type, new printing techniques, and photography, which created both the means and the reason to apply photographic images and typography to more complex forms of communication.

Early graphic design was an outgrowth of the arts and crafts movement because practicing artists, who were commissioned to create visual pieces for use for propaganda, especially during the World War II, primarily held the skills needed to structure and apply imagery. In the late 1940s following the war, and in the 1950s and 1960s design began to be seen as a viable and enhanced communication form for advertising the products and services available in the expanding economy. As a designer schooled in the late 50s early 60s, in one of the few colleges and universities with a major in what was then called commercial art or advertising design, I was aware of the emerging profession of graphic design through the few periodicals available at the time: Graphis, Art Direction, Print, and a few others, and the featured pioneers of the relatively newly recognized professional field, like Herb Lubalin, Paul Rand, Milton Glazer, Fritz Gottshalk, and Ruedi Ruegg, to name just a few.

The 70s were a turbulent time; politically, socially, and artistically. After graduating from graduate school in 1964, I began teaching “graphic design” in one of the new programs emerging in universities and colleges across the country, to fill the need of the growing profession and the demand for those seeking to enter the profession. Viewing an article published in Communication Arts in 1975, on an organization titled the University & College Designers Association (UCDA), as a design educator and university designer I joined to see what it might be about. The following year, having had several pieces accepted into the annual UCDA Design Competition, I attended the 7th annual conference in Snowbird, Utah. I was impressed, not only by the people attending the conference and the speakers, but more importantly by the quality of the work being exhibited. I was so impressed that when the incumbent president and vice president asked me to run for a leadership position, I jumped at the chance. I was reluctant at first, as I thought it was a bit early, being my first year as a member and the organization was only seven years old. When they told me that one of the duties was to design and produce UCDA’s first exhibition catalog, my reluctance vanished.

Left: Conference attendees view the UCDA Design Show in Rochester, New York, 1977. Right: The UCDA Design Show in Wichita, Kansas, 1975.

In reviewing the work in the UCDA Design Collection archives covering the 70s, I was struck by the overriding importance of conceptual problem solving, simplicity of layout and imagery, and the creative use of typography to get across a complete message. It was a time before “form and structure” with little or no concept was to become the overriding direction of graphic design, predicated on the Swiss influence in the late 80s and early 90s. It was a time before the random placing of unreadable typography and unrelated visual noise of the late 90s and early 2000s. While I may have a personal preference of style, I do not mean to denigrate those forms, only to point out the differences between the styles and perhaps reasons for those differences. In the 1970s there was always lots of white space, simple geometric organization of poignant pictures and distinctive typography, all coming together to communicate to the viewer and idea in the simplest form. Other obvious elements of the pieces during the 70s were the creative manipulation of typography, the use of illustration and objects as symbols, almost always used conceptually rather than strictly for decorative purposes. Photography, when used (its dominance was to come later), was simple and straightforward, telling a story or supporting and enhancing a concept, not as an artistic expression of its creator, even if it took on a life of its own as such afterward. Even color was used with restraint, with very little four color process and mostly the use of one, two or three colors used flatly, with little modulation or gradation, again used for structural or conceptual purposes rather than as decoration.

It could be argued that this simplicity was because of the technology of the time before computers, in which designers used what we now refer to as primitive hand tools: T-Squares, compasses, rubber cement, hand-drawn or later adhesive press-down typography, cut paper or press down Pantone adhesive sheets of color, and later still Magic Markers, and photos manipulated in the darkroom or on stat cameras. Even printing was primitive by today’s standards, and preparation of art for color separation for printing was by hand. Simplicity of form may in some ways be explained by the more primitive technology of the time, but in many ways those experiments reflected a different mind-set in the new world of visual communication. Much of it was based upon the understanding of the organization of newspapers and magazines and how people read and understood ideas. “Hit them Hard, Make it Simple and Get the Idea Across Quickly” was the motto of the day. Start with a strong headline or visual image, follow with a simple but complete over-all typographic explanation, and then follow with the minutia of facts and figures as necessary to complete the concept for those interested.

Graphic design is largely an anonymous profession, and generally speaking the message is the most important element, with personal style following. A designer’s unique style, however, might be identifiable by viewing numerous pieces over time. Designers in the newly formed printing and publication offices in institutions of higher education, schooled during this early period, followed this emerging simple conceptual style in advertising and communication design. The over-riding form of 70s graphic design for colleges and universities is demonstrated in the 1970s UCDA Design Collection, the epitome of form following function.