Graphic design is invaluable when it comes to the communication of ideas. Here’s a list of 10 Architects turned graphic designers’ architects must follow.
The journey of completing an architectural degree can be a long and arduous process, but also wonderfully rewarding. Despite this, many freshly graduated architects often find themselves unsure about where to begin or deciding that they don’t want to pursue architecture anymore. The digital revolution, which intensified the sharing of knowledge and experience, has helped architects realize that pursuing interests, inclinations, and passions that diverge from mainstream architecture can be a viable career path. Young practitioners and graduates now have a wide array of career options that allow freedoms rarely enjoyed by previous generations.
One such career alternative is Graphic design. Graphic designers are an integral part of the advertising process in architecture. They create graphics such as images, logos, and diagrams that help potential clients to identify and remember projects and products. Graphic design is invaluable when it comes to the communication of ideas.
Here’s a list of 10 Architects turned graphic designers’ architects must follow.
1. Massimo Vignelli
Massimo Vignelli was a renowned Italian designer who worked in several areas ranging from package design through graphic design and furniture design to interior design and environmental design. His ethos was, “If you can design one thing, you can design everything,” and this was reflected in the broad range of his work. Vignelli studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano but his area of specialization was graphic design since the beginning of his professional career. His firm Vignelli Associates managed to attract high-profile companies in the whole country such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale’s, and American Airlines.
2. Gary Dean Anderson
Gary Dean Anderson is a prominent graphic designer and architect. He is most well known as the designer of the recycling symbol, one of the most readily recognizable logos in the world. It is considered one of America’s most important design icons, and one of the most recognizable graphic symbols in the world which has encouraged global recycling.
3. Max Bill
Max Bill was an influential Swiss architect and graphic designer, one among the pioneers in the field of designers with a wide field of work. Bill is widely considered as a significant influence on Swiss graphic design beginning in the 1950s with his theoretical writing and progressive work and known as a founder of Concretism ‘concrete art’.
4. Lazar Markovich Lissitzky
Also known as El Lissitzky was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist, and architect. He was considered as a distinguished figure of the Russian avant-garde. He experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices and influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements that ultimately dominated the 20th-century Graphic design.
5. Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer was an Austrian designer and graphic designer who utilized various media to create dynamic typefaces, paintings, and architecture. He trained as an architect and began graphic design projects at age 36. His work is characterized by its Minimalist and crisp aesthetic, developed from his time studying at Walter Gropius’ influential Bauhaus school.
6. Barbara Stauffacher Solomon
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon is an American landscape architect and graphic designer. She is best known for her graphic design at the Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast. She has been credited with the invention of “Supergraphics” as a result of her work there, and she got almost as much press coverage as the architects for her simple, bold moves.
7. Angiolo Giuseppe Fronzoni
Angiolo Giuseppe Fronzoni was an Italian graphic designer, publisher, industrial designer, architect, and educator. He designed architectural magazines including Punta and Casabella. He designed the minimalist, Quadra Lamp, and a briefcase in collaboration with the Italian luxury brand Valextra. For him, projects came to life from reality: everything was subject to design analysis, and the practice of provocation is always pushing for the comparison, reflection, and formation of a critical sense.
8. Peter Behrens
Peter Behrens was born 14 April 1868 and was a founder of modern objective industrial architecture and modern industrial design. Peter Behrens was a leading German architect and industrial designer, best known for his early pioneering AEG Turbine Hall in Berlin in 1909. He had a long career, designing objects, and important buildings in a range of styles from the 1900s. He was an Art Nouveau designer of decorative and graphic art before he became an architect.
9. Piet Zwart
The multidisciplinary designer Piet Zwart worked as a photographer, graphic and industrial designer, and architect in the 1920s and 30s. Zwart is best known for his contribution to graphic design work. Recognizing typography as a powerful cultural force, he identified himself as a ‘Typotect’ a part architect in that he built a composition with text. His work is characterized by the use of primary shapes and colors, varying typefaces, strong diagonals, and a careful asymmetry, at the same time integrating visual puns, alliteration, and repetition.
10. Bob Noorda
Bob Noorda was a Dutch designer and architect who came to the fore as one of the main artificers of the renewal of twentieth-century Italian graphic art. He set up the graphic agency Unimark International along with the designer Massimo Vignelli, which was famous for implementing a modern approach to design for international clients such as IBM, Pirelli, and the New York subway system, for which they redesigned the entire communication system.
