Mel Byars

Last updated

Mel Byars (born in Columbia, South Carolina), is an American design historian.

Contents

Byars studied journalism in the 1950s at the University of South Carolina. [1] [2] He subsequently settled in New York City [3] and eventually became active as an art director or creative director for a number of publishers, such as Prentice-Hall and McGraw-Hill, and for advertising agencies, including Leber Katz Partners (subsumed into Foote, Cone & Belding, the world's second oldest advertising agency, founded 1873). In the early 1980s, he studied anthropology under Stanley Diamond (1921–1991) in the master's-degree program of The New School for Social Research. And, previously there, he was enrolled in the School of Media Studies.

A decade later, he turned to the history of applied art/industrial design and served as the archivist of the Thérèse Bonney Photography Collection (images of 1925-35 French decorative arts and other subjects) in New York's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and has been a major donor of 20th-century objects to the museum's permanent collection. [4] He has made other donations to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague (Uměleckoprůmyslová museum v Praze), [2] Israel Museum, [5] Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and Columbia Museum of Art. [2]

Byars has taught at Pratt Institute and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and Holon Institute of Technology in Israel [6] and at others as well as lectured widely [7] while remaining active in the advertising sector. From 2017 to 2019, he wrote a column for Elephant art and culture magazine. [8] [9]

Awards/works

Byars's most significant work is the second edition (2004) of The Design Encyclopedia, which won the Besterman/McColvin Gold Medal for the best reference book of 2004 from the British Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. [10] [11] When active in graphic design earlier in his career, he won a number of awards, including from the Art Directors Club of New York and had works published in various books such as 100 Years of Dance Posters [12] and Dance Posters. [13]

In addition to The Design Encyclopedia, other literary works include more than a dozen books, essays for various design-exhibition catalogs, book introductions and articles for I.D. , Beaux Arts, Clear, Echoes, Graphis, [14] form, and other periodicals. A number of the books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Hebrew. [15]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Deco</span> Early-20th-century architectural and art style

Art Deco, short for the French Arts Décoratifs, and sometimes referred to simply as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s, and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look, Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings, ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects like radios and vacuum cleaners.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ezri Tarazi</span>

Prof. Ezri Tarazi Israeli industrial designer and educator (1986–90). Tarazi studied industrial design at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Subsequently, he was a coordinator of instructors' education for leadership in the Maritime Academy of the Israeli Navy. Early employment included serving as the project manager of industrial-design projects at Bezalel R&D in Jerusalem in 1990–96, and was active as a freelance designer in 1993–96. 1996–2004, he was the head of the Department of Industrial Design at the Bezalel Academy and, 2004–12, founded and chaired the Bezalel master's-degree program in industrial design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">April Greiman</span> American designer

April Greiman is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism.

Roger Fawcett-Tang is a British graphic designer with a special interest in book design and calendars. He has written several books about design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Reisinger</span> Israeli artist and graphic designer (1934–2019)

Dan Reisinger was an Israeli graphic designer and artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick John Kiesler</span> Austrian architect and sculptor

Frederick Jacob Kiesler was an Austrian-American architect, theoretician, theater designer, artist and sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Campana brothers</span> Brazilian furniture designers

The Campana Brothers, consisting of Humberto Campana and Fernando Campana (1961–2022) are Brazilian furniture designers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebeca Méndez</span> Mexican-American artist and graphic designer

Rebeca Méndez is a Mexican-American artist and graphic designer. She is professor at UCLA Design Media Arts in Los Angeles, California, and since July 2020 is chair of the department, as well as founder and director of the Counterforce Lab. Her Vice-chair Peter Lunenfeld wrote about her: "Rebeca has won the three most significant awards in the field of design: The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Communication Design, 2012, the AIGA Medal in 2017, and induction to the One Club Hall of Fame in 2017. This triple crown would be worthy enough on its own, more than worthy, absolutely exceptional, but when you add in that Rebeca is the first and only Latina to win each one of these, much less all three, the achievement is towering." In fact, she is the only woman ever to have received all these three awards, while Bob Greenberg from R/GA is the only man to have received all of them.

George J. Sowden is a designer and product developer.

Jennifer Morla is a graphic designer and professor based in San Francisco. She received the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award in Communication Design in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Atkins</span>

Marc Atkins is an English artist, photographer, filmmaker and poet, born in 1962, best known for his photography of cities and nudes, also commercially for music album and book covers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poster</span> Type of graphic advertisement

A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be used for many purposes. They are a frequent tool of advertisers, propagandists, protestors, and other groups trying to communicate a message. Posters are also used for reproductions of artwork, particularly famous works, and are generally low-cost compared to the original artwork. The modern poster, as we know it, however, dates back to the 1840s and 1850s when the printing industry perfected colour lithography and made mass production possible.

Mel Lindquist was an American engineer and renowned pioneer of the American Studio Wood Turning movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Johnson (graphic designer)</span> British graphic designer

Michael Johnson is a British designer and brand consultant. In 1992 he founded the design studio Johnson Banks in London, UK. Johnson received the Design and Art Direction (D&AD) black pencil award for his fruit and veg stamp designs and the organisation's President's award in 2017. Johnson has published three books and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) have nineteen of his designs in their permanent collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Herdeg</span> Swiss graphic designer (1908–1995)

Walter Herdeg was a Swiss graphic designer, noted for his travel posters and work with Graphis Magazine, who was awarded an AIGA medal in 1986.

Yaacov Kaufman is a Soviet-born Israeli industrial designer and academic. Kaufman's work has focused on lighting, furniture, and product design. He is a longtime professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Setsu & Shinobu Ito</span>

Setsu and Shinobu Ito are Japanese designers. Their work is stored as permanent collections in the Modern Art Museums in Munich, Germany and Milan, Italy.

Michael J. Walsh is an American designer and creative director who has worked or consulted at the School of Visual Arts, Harry N. Abrams, the Walt Disney Company, Time Inc, Turner Broadcasting, Time Warner and The Washington Post Magazine, among others. He has won over 300 awards for design and art direction in American and international awards competitions for digital, video, exhibition design, multimedia projects and print projects.

Yarom Vardimon is an Israeli designer, professor, dean of the Azrieli Faculty of Design at Shenkar and a laureate of the Israel Prize in design.

The American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC) was an American society of designers and decorative artists that was active from 1928 until the early 1930s. The group aimed to bring modern principles of design, such as those promoted in Europe by the Wiener Werkstätte and the Bauhaus, to decorative arts in the United States.

References

  1. List of University of South Carolina people
  2. 1 2 3 "'Psychedelic Design' exhibit at CMA explores rock poster revolution of '60s". 'Psychedelic Design' exhibit at CMA explores rock poster revolution of '60s - The Daily Gamecock at University of South Carolina. Retrieved September 18, 2023.
  3. "Burnishing the Furnishings". Haaretz.
  4. "Mel Byars | People | Collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum".
  5. "Collections | the Israel Museum, Jerusalem".
  6. "创造力在边缘:传统工艺、地方资源与可持续设计之路".
  7. "ARrango Design Foundation, INC.. Miami, FL". bisprofiles.com. Retrieved September 18, 2023.
  8. "Exhausted". June 5, 2017.
  9. "Read, Tear and Wipe". August 13, 2017.
  10. "Archived copy". www.cilip.org.uk. Archived from the original on July 15, 2012. Retrieved January 12, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. Kathryn Beecroft, compiler. CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Yearbook 2004-2005, London, 2005.
  12. Walter Terry and Jack Rennert, 100 Years of Dance Posters, New York: Darien House, 1975
  13. Dance Posters New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1979.
  14. "Graphis Issue 318". graphis.com.
  15. "Pentagon Patches book: secret, scary military guys with sick senses of humor". Core77. Retrieved September 18, 2023.