19/09/11 – Selections from Imre Reiner’s Grafika: modern design for advertising and printing published in New York in 1947. English edition limited to 1000 copies.

Sources and related information
Images from Imre Reiner’s Grafika on Flickr

30/03/11 – Stamp series dedicated to the  Czechoslovak military heroes of World War 2. Series dates from 1945 and consists of 16 unique denominations.

Eight individual engravings feature: Staff Captain Ridky (British Army), Dr. Miroslav Novak (French Army), Capt. Otakar Jaroš (Russian Army), Staff Capt. Stanislav Zimprich (Foreign Legion), 2nd Lt. Jiří Král (French Air Force), Jozef Gabčík (Czechoslovak paratrooper), Staff Captain Alois Vašátko (Royal Air Force), and Private František Adámek (British Colonial Service).

Stamp designs and engraving are unattributed.

Dimensions (image): 20 × 23mm.

Sources and more information
Czechoslovak stamp collection on Flickr

24/02/11 – Sixteen-part postage stamp series commemorating three key figures of the Czechoslovak independence movement: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik. Of the sixteen, twelve are engravings and four photogravures. The designs date from 1945-7 and were executed by Jindra Schmidt. Note the visual difference between the two printing processes and the range of colours indicating denomination.

Sources and more information
Czechoslovak stamp collection on Flickr//

21/02/11 – Ladislav Sutnar began designing toys while a student at the School of Applied Arts in Prague in the early 1920s. His use of simple geometric shapes and bright colours resonated with children as well as adults. His designs, though rooted in the rich heritage of Czechoslovak folk art, helped bring toy design into the 20th century.

His toys depicted modern everyday objects (cars, trains, factories) and were carefully designed to allow for mass automated or conveyor-belt production. As early as 1921, Sutnar’s toys began gaining wide acclaim, winning numerous awards and touring in international shows.

During the early 1920s he began work on a building block set called Modular City (Skládací město) for the Artěl Association. The design would win him a prize at the Toys exhibition held by the Prague Museum of Applied Arts in 1924. Between 1926 and 1929, he further developed his ideas and created more prototypes, including a building block set entitled Factory Town (Tovární město) this time winning significant recognition both in Czechoslovakia and abroad.

Through the 1930s, Sutnar looked beyond toy design and held positions in several notable applied arts and cultural organizations. He also worked on a great number of collaborative and solo projects ranging from book design and typography, to industrial and exhibition design. It was not until the early 1940s that he would once again return to his building block designs.

After traveling to the United States to help setup the Czechoslovak pavilion for the 1939 New York World’s Fair and subsequently being stranded due to the outbreak of war, he developed what would be the final iteration of his building block designs. He called it Build the Town. In an effort to see the set produced, he created designs for packaging, instructions and promotional artwork and, after unsuccessfully securing a manufacturer, himself commissioned the production of fifty sets.

Prototypes of Build the Town, as well as promotional material and working sketches, now reside in the collections of several major museums including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, MOMA and the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague.

Modular City building block set (1922)

Building block set, 1927

Factory Town building block set 1927

Kit sketches, Build the Town building block set, 1942-3

Kit sketches, Build the Town building block set, 1942-3

Documentation: roofs, Build the Town building block set, ca. 1943

Documentation: blocks, Build the Town building block set, ca. 1943

Promotion kits, Build the Town building block set, ca. 1943

Promotion kits, Build the Town building block set, ca. 1943

Design of box, Build the Town building block set, ca. 1943

Design of box, Build the Town building block set, ca. 1943

Design of box, Build the Town building block set, ca. 1943

Prototype, Build the Town building block set, 1943

Prototype for Build the Town Building Blocks, 1940-43

Sources and more information

• Andel, J. et al. Ladislav Sutnar: Prague – New York – design in action, Prague: Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague & Argo Publishers, 2003.
• Images of Build the Town from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art//
• Build the town images courtesy of Daddytypes on Flickr//
• Build the Town Flickr set//

15/12/10 – Two early examples of titles from the Penguin Poets series: (left) John Overton’s [?] original design of 1946 and (right) Jan Tschichold’s reformed design of 1951.

The Penguin Poets series first appeared in 1941 with only three titles published before Jan Tschichold’s arrival in 1947. I believe the original design was by John Overton.

Tschichold’s redesign picked up on features common to his other designs. Like the Shakespeare series, he added a decorative border and, as in his Penguin Scores design, he employed Garamond Italic for the titles.

The design was revised 1954 by his successor, Hans Schmoller.

Schmoller pushed the design still closer to that of the Penguin Scores by introducing patterned backgrounds, even re-purposing some of the very same designs.

Sources and related information
For more on the design and history of Penguin Books, see Penguin by design: A cover story 1935-2005 and Seven hundred penguins in the bibliography.

Penguin covers on Flickr//