(3) Researching Alexy Brodovitch

Alexy Brodovitch

I've recently been researching an artist known as Alexy Brodovitch. I've been searching for artists that specialise in editorial design. I thought that this might be a good way to get some inspiration and ideas for my magazine. Here's some information I've found about Alexy Brodovitch:

"Alexey Brodovitch is remembered today as the art director of Harper's Bazaar for nearly a quarter of a century. But the volatile Russian emigré's influence was much broader and more complex than his long tenure at a fashion magazine might suggest. He played a crucial role in introducing into the United States a radically simplified, “modern” graphic design style forged in Europe in the 1920s from an amalgam of vanguard movements in art and design. Through his teaching, he created a generation of designers sympathetic to his belief in the primacy of visual freshness and immediacy. Fascinated with photography, he made it the backbone of modern magazine design, and he fostered the development of an expressionistic, almost primal style of picture-taking that became the dominant style of photographic practice in the 1950s."

Here's an example of some of Alexy Brodovitch:

 

"Brodovitch created a harmonious and meaningful whole using avant-garde photography, typography and illustration. After being hired he asked several old friends like Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Raoul Dufy, Marc Chagall and A.M. Cassandre to work for the magazine. Cassandre created several of the Bazaar covers between 1937 and 1940. Brodovitch was the first art director to integrate image and text. Most american magazines at that time used text and illustration seperately, dividing them by wide white margins."

So far, Alexy Brodovitch is becoming one of my favourite Art editors. His work was quite ahead for his time. His designs look like something you might find in a modern magazine. The front covers are definitely something that I'd like to incorporate into my designs. They're not too busy and they look almost like art pieces on their own. This is exactly what I'm looking to recreate in my work.