Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century by Steve Heller

If the importance and relevance of graphic design books were measured by their weight in pounds and size in inches, few of them would be able to compete with Steve Heller’s latest book: Merz to Emigre and Beyond — coming in slightly under five pounds and a deceptively large eleven-and-a-half by ten inches. Luckily, we have more subjective methods of measuring a book’s significance.

Merz to Emigre and Beyond serves, first and foremost, as an historical archive of some of the most radical publications of the twentieth century by cataloguing art movements, political events and social changes that were integral to the existence of Avant-Garde publishing. Through its 200 plus pages the book takes us from the beginnings of the Avant-Garde press in Paris in the 1830s all the way to the United States in the 1980s where Avant-Gardes entered the digital age along with their creators. Each page is a visual feast all its own — filled with cover after cover and spread after spread of boundary-pushing typography, illustration and layouts that would engross even the least-interested browser. Merz to Emigre and Beyond also manages to cover the work of some of the most important graphic designers and illustrators of the past one-hundred years, ranging from Aleksandr Rodchenko to Neville Brody.

More importantly, Heller’s book achieves something else: To illustrate the indelible relationship between graphic design and life, people, the world. Avant-Garde publications are the efforts — and serve as vehicles of change — of groups of people looking to challenge the status-quo; graphic design in this medium serves as a way to embody spiritually and represent visually the ideas that are bound to shift this status-quo. If this book proves anything is that graphic design can encourage opinion, stimulate reaction and provoke change.

Merz to Emigre and Beyond is an essential book in that it firmly establishes graphic design as an historically-proven medium that can change the way people think, the passion with which artists create, the system wherein politicians govern and the method under which the world works. Merz to Emigre and Beyond is indeed a big book.

Q & A with Steve Heller

Q: The first thought that comes to mind upon seeing the book, is “Man, this is big!” How much work (time, resources, etc.) went into the creation of it?

A: It is big but it could have (and perhaps should have) been bigger, insofar as I had more material and there is a lot that I did not cover. That said I tried to uncover territory that was NOT already well trodden while addressing those periodicals that are larger than footnotes in art history.
Timewise the book took three years to complete, but I had been working on aspects of it for over twenty years. My first foray into writing history was focused on satiric illustrated periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Long before I started writing about graphic design this purely pictorial material fascinated me (indeed I was quite obsessed). I produced exhibitions, articles, and books on the German Simpliccisimus, the French L’Assiette au Beurre, the American The Masses, and more. So I found a way of introducing this book with this pre-twentieth century satiric material.

Resource-wise, I worked with a researcher (he also worked with me on my book The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?) who uncovered a great trove of post-World War II avant garde publications, which I would not have found on my own. I am pretty strong on the pre-War side, especially Futurism and Dada, as well as German left-wing political journals. I own quite a lot of this, but I also tapped into some important private collections. The picture editor at Phaidon filled-in with material I could not obtain on this side of the pond.

Q: “Merz to Emigre.” I am obviously very familiar with the latter and had never heard of Merz. After reading about Merz I noticed a few similarities between the two, most identifiably — and to cite one example — their constant change in format. What was the main reason for choosing these two Avant-Garde publications for the title? Was it their parallels only? Or do these represent the Avant-Garde more than the rest?

A: To be honest, Armin, my original title for the book was UNACCEPTABLE! Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century. But my publisher felt a more didactic title was better. I still like mine (and will probably use it for something someday— maybe my tombstone epitaph). But we agreed on Merz to Emigre because it indeed covers a broad spectrum. Of course, chronologically speaking it does not span the entire breadth of the book. The Futurists came before, as did the Secessionist and Art Nouveau magazines, like Ver Sacrum.

Merz was Kurt Schwiters’ personal art movement, which might even be called his “brand.” It is a nonsense word, like Dada, but was impregnated with meaning. Under the Merz banner he created advertising, sculpture, painting, performance, poetry, and his famous Merzbau (a gigantic 3D collage that filled the interior of his home. He was aligned with Dadaists but did his own thing. I guess the most comparable aspect between Merz and Emigre is that both were chronicles of a NEW typography. In the former’s case, Merz introduced a constructivist vocabulary and propagated asymmetric typography. We all know about the latter’s achievements, and its continuing legacy. But they were very different magazines; each rejected the distinct conventions of their day and now represent the unique avant gardes of their respective times.

Incidentally, years ago when I asserted in an article for EYE titled “Cult of the Ugly” that Emigre would be a “blip in the continuum,” I had no idea that it would become one of centerpieces in my own historical work. I get a big kick out of my shortsightedness at the time, which proves that avant gardisms are indeed unacceptable (at least for the moment).

Q: I have to admit that upon first hearing about this book my first reaction was “Great, another BIG book” (I like to think I’m not pessimistic). I now have to admit that this, for me, is a very important historical archive of the irrevocable relationship that graphic design has with culture, politics and art, why was it important for you to create this book?

A: Simply put, I love the material. As a writer, these magazines offer a trove of stories about the politics and art of their times as well as links to design history. As an aficionado, well, I love holding (and having) this stuff. I’ve written a lot about magazines (not surprisingly I’ve worked for mags and newspapers all my professional life since I was seventeen years old), and these are the wellsprings of all of them. Not all of them are “beautiful” design in the accepted sense of the word, and that is what makes them even more intriguing.

Q: What is more appealing (interesting or inspiring also apply) to you about these Avant-Garde publications, is it their design and existence as artifacts or the social, political and/or intellectual changes they provoked and stood for?

A: Both really. As I said, I am fascinated by the stories that they have to tell. I enjoy reading about the internal battles, the snipes and jabs at each other’s groups and movements. But I also get absorbed by how the magazines developed their graphic languages. This is very cool stuff.

Q: One of your more interesting conclusions was, in regards to Spy, that “mainstream Avant-Garde is an oxymoron.” In your research, was the design of the majority of these publications commonly appropriated by mainstream as a default? I have seen it happen with Emigre and Ray Gun, what does this say about graphic designers?

A: Art is a process of invention, adaptation, absorption, and then reinvention. At different times and places along this continuum designers copy or create. That’s life. Some are derivative others original. Much of the avant garde was co-opted by the mainstream (some of it was not). Emigre begat Beach Culture, which begat Ray Gun which begat and begat. What was interesting about SPY is that it was made from a kind of whole cloth. Designer Stephen Doyle’s basic design was rooted in various historical influences, but the result was unique and the magazine was a hothouse. It was avant garde in this respect but was quickly copied by scores of other magazines. Acceptability breeds cliché.

Q: In your epilogue you mention that “A few of these documents are now as important as the works of art or cultural events that they originally covered.” How telling, and revealing, is this statement towards the importance of graphic design?

A: Well, I don’t really think the artists and writers involved in many of these periodicals separated graphic design from their art per se. It was all communications, and they used popular means and vernacular languages to get their messages across. Graphic design is often poo-pooed as not “Art” with a capital “A” because of its utilitarian purpose, but as Paul Rand said it is art if you make it art. So for many of these periodicals graphic design was a seamless means of expression. For others it was simply a frame for pushing other things into consciousness.

Q: Do you think the web will ever have the power that a tangible publication has? Or is it too volatile and loose an environment to foster such important changes?

A: Yes, it is quite volatile, but all it takes is one genius to transcend convention. Personally, I prefer paper. But your generation is more screen-savvy than me or mine. If someone is passionate enough to make change, it will be made. What is different today than during the golden age of avant garde periodicals is that we are all more self-consciously aware of what is unconventional. So we kind of pre-empt avant gardery because so much is possible. I anxiously await the second coming and ensuing rapture in the web world.

Q: Stepping away a little from the book� I would like to ask your opinion, based on the research and conclusions from this book — and I am not saying nor implying it is or it is not — would you consider Speak Up Avant-Garde?

A: No. At the moment Speak Up is a very handsomely designed blog/forum, but even the gallery of work you show is not avant garde because it fits within the parameters of established and acceptable work. Emigre was avant garde (not from the outset) but once it carved out its niche as an alternative design journal. Speak Up is about right now. This is why it will probably be hard for the web to be avant garde; it happens in real time and space. There is little chance for it to really shock (and I’m not talking about stupid neo-Nazi hate sites). Speak Up is too, forgive me for saying it, well-done to be avant garde (a.k.a. Unacceptable).