Alexey Brodovitch
Alexey Brodovitch was a key designer from the Modernist movement throughout the early-mid 1900’s, born in 1898 Brodovitch was a Russian graphic designer and photographer who focused his work towards magazine design and page layout. Initially Alexey Brodovitch wanted to work as a painter in his earlier years before he transitioned to graphic design and visual arts, he is often recognised by his work with the Harper’s Bazaar magazine from 1934 to 1958 where he worked on directing the visual identity for the magazine alongside photography and page composition. Brodovitch’s work has been a huge influence for the design industry over the years especially in magazine design where some of his ideas and principles are still used to this day, like his use of overlaying and masking typography over images to create a three-dimensional effect which was revolutionary at the time as we did not have the tools and technologies that we have access to today.[1]
Brodovitch spent his entire life in and out of the Russian army throughout the 1900’s where he fought in the Second World War but his passion always stood with visual arts. Alexey Brodovitch has designed many project over the years and one that is most notable is his work for a local theatre competition where he was asked to design a poster for a theatre, his work was placed first and was up against Picasso who is a renowned artist that we all know of today.[2]
I have included some of Alexey Brodovitch’s work below to illustrate his influence in magazine design and demonstrate his use of photography and typography.
References & Sources
- Dominic Flask. 2021. Alexey Brodovitch : Design Is History. Available at: http://www.designishistory.com/1940/alexey-brodovitch/.
- Wikipedia. 2021. Alexey Brodovitch – Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Brodovitch.