Design Observer

Archive
Books + Store
Job Board
Email Archive
Comments
About
Contact
Log In
Register

Observatory

Comments (2) Posted 09.15.10 | PERMALINK | PRINT

Steven Heller

Vignelli’s Herald (or Heralding Vignelli)

I remember like it was yesterday. It was a cold, damp day (or was it warm and sunny?) in 1970 (or 71?), well anyway, a brand new New York newspaper landed on the newsstands. What a surprise! Compared to The Daily News, New York Post, The New York Times and The Village Voice it was a breath of fresh newsprint. All that unused white space, precisionist modular layout and limited use of typefaces and point sizes — The Herald designed by Massimo Vignelli was so beautiful I could cry.

In a field marked by ham-fisted formats cobbled together in metal by crusty veteran “make-up editors” who possessed “news judgment” yet had little interest in the finer points of design, The Herald was a rare gem. A few other jewels shined in the newspaper business prior to The Herald, including its namesake, the defunct New York Herald Tribune redesigned in the mid-sixties by Peter Palazzo. And at the Times, design director Louis Silverstein was feverishly redesigning the “grey lady” starting with the feature sections, although the news would remain locked in a 19th century tight eight-column format for almost a decade longer. The Herald, a weekly, was a clean, crisp and rational alternative.

I worked as a designer in the New York underground press. To call these underground papers “alternative” suggested how naively unstructured they were. They were also sloppy (although exuberantly so). Most “layout” people were not and would never be designers. But I had aspirations to be a pro. The Herald was my model in this quest. But that’s enough about me.

The Herald, April 18, 1971

Vignelli welcomed the opportunity to try his hand at newspaper design. Many designers tried transforming the conventional daily, but so much stuff got in the way. Advertisements for one! Vignelli railed that “selling every bit of newspaper space to advertisers” was a principal failing. Partial page ads were blights around which dog-legs and other onerous wrap-around and layout contortions had to be accommodated. Modular layouts based on standard-size units were not yet accepted. So it was revolutionary (in a conservative kind of way) for Vignelli to institute a modular format. Of course, he was aided and abetted by not having to deal with ads — The Herald wasn’t accepting them in the beginning.

In fact, Vignelli was adamant — advertising must be kept away from the editorial. “He started working on the layouts, testing [the proposition] that you could still do a newspaper without advertising, or [have] all the ads concentrated in some specifically designated pages,” says Beatriz Cifuentes, Vice President of Design at Vignelli Associates.

“It takes people with vision, courage and strong intellectual drive to generate a new newspaper with new style of content and new visual aspect to convey it appropriately,” Vignelli noted in Vignelli From A to Z. “To design a newspaper means to organize the information in such a way that it will facilitate the makeup of the issue…and in the end, to convey the information to the reader in the clearest way possible.”

The Herald, four front pages

This prohibition of advertisements allowed Vignelli to “conceive and design a newspaper in a completely new way,” he further explained, “starting with a grid of six columns of 17 modules in height. Each module contained a certain number of lines, each line a certain number of letter spaces, making it easy to calculate the depth of each story based on a given amount of words.” Vignelli’s precise measuring system prefigured notions endemic to computer-aided design by two decades. Every design component was allotted a strict measure. “Titles were allocated one module high, the rest were for picture and stories, and in the supplement tabloids (The Herald was a “sectioned” paper with two supplements inside), modules were allocated also for white space rarely seen in newspapers…. Every page or two constituted a section of the whole paper, and all pages were structure in clear horizontal bands, which gave a strong, easy-to-read look.”

Readable it was, yet critics complained that The Herald was too pristine. Newspapers, it was argued, are meant to be as dirty as ink on newsprint. Presenting the reader with variegated headline sizes and subheads was a metaphor for the frenetic pace of a news cycle. The Herald was bland: Without hierarchical titles — and set in only one typeface (Times Roman) — a lead story was given the same importance as an off lead. However, Vignelli emphasized that newspapers were equipped for fast production. “And indeed [this] was produced quickly!”

The Herald, May 2, 1971

Vignelli said The Herald was “a very important experience for me, and it was followed with great attention by newspaper designers around the world.” Furthermore it led to designs for other newspapers he designed, including the European Journal, Skyline and IDCNY.

The Herald folded, however, because “in those days, newspapers were controlled by mafia groups,” Vignelli laments. “And either you paid big quantities of money, or your paper would be destined to disappear soon. I guess that is what happened.”

As fate would have it, about a year after The Herald went to sleep with the fishes, the publisher contacted me about art directing a revived version, which he was thinking of renaming (though I don’t recall what). He also planned to retain in tabloid form aspects of the Vignelli format. I worked on one issue, trying to stick to the original look. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help myself; I busted the grid and introduced various headline type sizes and multiple quotes. All I can say in retrospect is, I could cry. Sorry Massimo.

Share This Story

Subscribe to Comment Feed

Comments (2) | JUMP TO MOST RECENT >>

It's amazing how close this design is to modern web design.

Dan
09.15.10 at 11:11

Fascinating and insightful article. Thank you for sharing your experience!

Mayank Bhatnagar
02.11.11 at 04:27

LOG IN TO POST A COMMENT
Don't have an account? Create an account. Forgot your password? Click here.

Share This Story

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Heller is the co-chair of the Designer as Author MFA Program and co-founder of the MFA in design criticism program at the School of Visual Arts. He is the editor, author or co-author of over 100 books on design, political art and culture. His website is Hellerbooks.com.
More >>

DESIGN OBSERVER JOBS

MORE ON Vignelli

Looking Back, Thinking Forward: A Narrative of the Vignellis
Vignelli Celebration: Jan Conradi on Lella and Massimo Vignelli and the opening of the new Vignelli Center for Design Studies at RIT.

Massimo Vignelli
Vignelli Celebration: Season premiere of Design Matters with Debbie Millman, a podcast interview with Massimo Vignelli.

Heller on Heller
Vignelli Celebration: Steven Heller talks about the redemptive qualities of having the same name as Vignelli's Hellerware.

Massimo Vignelli: Oppositions, Skyline and the Institute
On Places, a gallery of Massimo Vignelli's graphic design work for the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, written and curated by Kim Förster.

The Kindness of Strangers
Vignelli Celebration: If charity begins at home, how can we proclaim new and progressive agendas of social change without examining ourselves, our students, our profession?

Dot Zero
A look inside little-known design publication Dot Zero, the house organ of pioneering design consultancy Unimark, featuring a slide show and an interview with its designer, Massimo Vignelli.

Massimo Vignelli’s Desk
Vignelli Celebration: Alice Twemlow snoops around Massimo Vignelli's desk.

Massimo Vignelli vs. Ed Benguiat (Sort Of)
Vignelli Celebration: Republication of the 1991 debate between Massimo Vignelli and Ed Benguiat published in Print magazine.

Mr. Vignelli's Map
Vignelli Celebration: Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York City subway map is a beautiful example of information design that was ultimately rejected by its users.

John Madere: Massimo Vignelli
Vignelli Celebration: This film about Massimo Vignelli was directed and filmed by John Madere in 2010.

The Black Rule
Vignelli Celebration: Lorraine Wild examines The Black Rule as a graphic device in the work of Massimo Vignelli.

Lella Vignelli
In my ten years at Vignelli Associates, I came to understand the relationship between the two brilliant designers who ran the office. Massimo would tend to play the role of idea generator. Lella served as the critic, editing the ideas and shaping the best ones to fit the solution.

Interview with Massimo Vignelli
Vignelli Celebration: Debbie Millman interviews Massimo Vignelli.

Lella and Massimo Vignelli: The 1982 AIGA Medal
Vignelli Celebration: In 1982 Massimo and Lella received the AIGA Medal for their many contributions to the design world, here is an article which originally appeared in the 1983 issue of AIGA Graphic Design USA 4.

Lella and Massimo Vignelli: A Celebration
Vignelli Celebration: The opening and dedication of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies, set to open September 16, 2010 at Rochester Institute of Technology.

MORE BY Steven Heller

02.18.13: Child Labor
06.13.11: For the Love of Scripts
05.02.11: Paul Rand, Painter
03.03.11: Souvenirs as Nazi Propaganda
02.17.11: Hitler’s Poster Handbook
02.07.11: The Master Race’s Graphic Masterpiece
01.12.11: My Big Fat Fast Food Feast at Eataly
12.07.10: Designer as Author
11.15.10: Miss Branding: A Cautionary Tale
09.17.10: Heller on Heller
More by Steven Heller >>

BOOKS BY Steven Heller

New Ornamental Type
Thames & Hudson, 2010

Alex Steinweiss: Creator of the Modern Album Cover
Taschen, 2009

Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failure, and Lessons Learned
Allworth Press, 2009

Art Direction Explained, At Last
Laurence King Publishing, 2009

The Design Entrepreneur: Turning Graphic Design Into Goods That Sell
Rockport Publishers, 2008

More books by contributors >>

Dream Weaver
On a retrospective of the work of midcentury sculptor Ruth Asawa at Christie's, her first solo show in New York in 50 years.

The Conceptual Posters of Boris Bucan
Boris Bućan’s little known early posters, produced in Zagreb, were reductive, sharply defined, cerebral and enigmatic.

Anxiety, Culture and Commerce
Is the museum store a distraction or an enticement?

Enjoying TypeToy
This week's Accidental Mysteries highlights the blog TypeToy — an online collection of mid-century design and typography created by Aaron Eiland.

On the Trail of The Eater of Darkness
The Eater of Darkness is a collision of science fiction, murder mystery, Surrealism and experimental typography.

Design Observer

Observatory

Featured Writers

Departments

Topics