Tuesday

Mid-Century in the New Century

It’s 1952 in America. The war was won, more people have jobs than ever before, and you just bought a house with a white picket fence. Things are on the up and up. Now, fast-forward to 2008. We’re neck deep in traffic, debt, e-mails and basically life is just too darn complicated. Against this backdrop there has been a thread of design harking back to a simpler time. A quaint time. It has many names: retro, mid-century modern, post-modern. There are few designers today that capture that simplicity and charm as well as Frank Chimero.

AC: So Frank, what initially attracted you to this type of work?

Frank: I think I’ve always been attracted to work that’s more graphic. I love simple shapes and flat colors. When I was a kid, I used to love the Sesame Street animations that talked about geometry and shapes and had that type of look. I also have a real love for ideas. I love making them, and I kind of love basking in a good idea, whether it’s mine, or someone else’s. So when I was in school, I was introduced to the work of the likes of Saul Bass and Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand and Bradbury Thompson, and everything that I was looking at just sung to me. It’s the perfect synthesis of the two. Formally, they’re simple, but conceptually they’re clever and dense. (Well, maybe not dense.) Anyway, I love the optimism of all of the work from this period, whether "high design" or not. Continue…