The American Period: a European in the United States
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NEW LIFE, NEW STYLE ITALIAN ROOTS, AMERICAN SPIRIT
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internationally. It is no coincidence that Pop Art, born in the United States in the 1960s, expressed itself by stressing the close ties between art and advertising: its greatest exponent, Andy Warhol, was a graphic designer by training and his first job was as art director for a chain of department stores. In this general context, Heinz Waibl found the optimal situation to do his work; unsurprisingly he designed logotypes for major corporations or institutions in the new continent, such as American Airlines (the American flag carrier), the important JCPenney chain stores (with a nationwide network), and multinational companies that had
grown up in the United States, such as Levi’s, Transunion Corporation and Maison Blanche. Waibl’s career in America, interpreted in these terms, reveals a gradual revision of the abstract-theoretical type of approach that had characterized his early work. The spatial and compositional organization formed by graphic elements and lettering, based on printers’ fonts, were gradually replaced by a different principle: to make the letter, the initial or the word the dominant feature, as the graphic module of the message, focusing the viewer’s attention wholly on this artefact.
We no longer have just the monogram Bandiera statunitense. © Samuel Branch
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but the strong identity of a letter or symbol, around which the lettering is set, often being represented in full.
The American experience gained by Waibl in Chicago and New York, and then completed in Johannesburg, was updated on the most modern tendency to develop the corporate image or brand image, which when it comprises the total image of a whole product goes under the name of the product image.
The innovative vision of American culture came to embody the visual identity in all forms of communication, leading to the complex phenomenon that is known as corporate identity.
In America in the 1960s Heinz Waibl learned the new method of communication which, while focusing attention on a strong graphic image, sought to vary it in all its aspects and across a wide range of media.
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Unimark International Heinz Waibl Logotipo per i grandi magazzini Levy’s Co., Tucson, USA, 1969
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ITALIAN ROOTS, AMERICAN SPIRIT
Unimark International Heinz Waibl Logotipo per i grandi magazzini JCPenney, Chicago, USA, 1969
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DesignCulture
American Airlines
TITLE
American Airlines
DESIGNERS
Heinz Waibl, Massimo Vignelli
FIRM
Unimark International
YEAR 1967
CLIENT
American Airlines
MEDIUM Logotype
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AN AIRLINE THAT HAS FLOWN... ITALIAN
Unimark International Massimo Vignelli e Heinz Waibl immagine coordinata per American Airlines, 1968
AN AIRLINE
THAT HAS FLOWN
...ITALIAN
NEW LIFE, NEW STYLE AN AIRLINE THAT HAS FLOWN... ITALIAN 57 Applicazione logo American Airlines su Boeing 757
Unimark was appointed to design American Airline’s corporate identity by Henry Dreyfuss, a famous industrial designer who was hired to develop the interior of the planes.Massimo Vignelli and Heinz Waibl set the logotype in plain and legible Haas Helvetica and made it half-red and half- blue to use the colours of USA’s national identity.
“We wanted to make one word of American Airlines. There were no other logos then that were two colours of the same word. So we took the space away and split it by colour. We proceeded by logic, not emotion. Not trends and fashions” (M. Vignelli). A double ‘A’
monogram version featuring a stylised eagle was also used on the tail of the planes. The graphic design of the eagle was attributed to Vignelli for many
years, until he revealed that he actually refused to draw it: “I wanted the eagle to be real. It has to have every feather.
If you do an eagle, do it with the dignity of an eagle. Don’t stylise the eagle and make a cartoon out of it” (M. Vignelli).
However, American Airlines pilots threatened to go on strike because they wanted the eagle since it always symbolised the company, so the office of Henry Dreyfuss drew it. The prefe- rence for a plain logotype without the eagle reveals Vignelli’s design attitude at best. In fact, Vignelli was above all a great typographer. He was able to make a typeface expressing all its strength and character. He always focused on the very function that the graphics had to perform — so preferring plain typography, where nothing more Something special in the air
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NEW LIFE, NEW STYLE AN AIRLINE THAT HAS FLOWN... ITALIAN
was needed — because aware that simplicity is always stronger than complexity. And by focusing on clarity and simplicity and then choosing a plain typeface instead of a stylised symbol, this design also represents an expression of that timelessness, so long praised by Vignelli. “Fifty years ago (early ’60s), there were very few logos in general. Somebody started to do logos and people started thinking that logos were important. Now there is a plethora and so many don’t make sense. You see the pages of the sponsors of a concert of an exhibition and, at the bottom, there are 50 different logos. It’s ridiculous. A word is so much better” (M. Vignelli).
The logotype and identity system designed by Unimark lasted until 2013,
when a new identity developed by Futurebrand was adopted raising a lot of critiques. It was judged by many as
“one of the worst branding decisions ever made” (Alissa Walker). Vignelli in particular was very upset about it:
“There was no need to change. It’s been around for 45 years, the whole world knows it. This is the typical mistake that company presidents make:
‘I’ll change the logo and the company will look new.’ But it’s the same company. They’re not going to solve their problems. I will not be here to make a bet, but this new logo won’t last another 25 years” (M. Vignelli).
This was one of the projects through which Massimo Vignelli mostly contributed to the fortune and fame of Helvetica in the USA.
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Logotipo American Airlines, 1969