Lester Beall
Born in 1903, Lester Beall was a renown American graphic designer from Kansas City, Missouri. Known for his use of typography and new emerging technologies like photography and photomontage, Lester Beall was one of the leading designers from the Modernist design movement in the mid 1940’s.[1] After the closure of The Bauhaus School of Design in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin designer from Germany were forced to relocate to other European countries and western societies which allowed Lester Beall to become influenced by the principles and philosophies they believed in, most notably their thoughts on typography and how they used it as a form of communication.
Lester Beall is renowned for his using typography to communicate a clear and concise message to the viewer as well as his use of point, line, plane principles throughout his use of arrows and lines to direct the viewers eye to key points of information, he is also well known for his use of bold primary colours that are often seen throughout Beall’s work most commonly the use of contrasting red and blue colours which are placed on the opposite ends of the colour wheel. This could have been something his was taught by the likes of Josef Albers from the Bauhaus design movement who placed a heavy focus on colour throughout his career and defined the colour wheel as we know it today.
In addition to his focus on colour and typography, Beall would commonly utilise new and emerging technologies at the time like photography and photomontage that can be seen throughout many of his projects over the years. This can be seen in the poster design he did for the Rural Electrification Administration which aimed to provide the rest of rural America with electricity throughout the mid 1900’s. This is something Beall was influenced by from his research and studies into other modernist movements that were around at the time as the Modernist design movement such as Surrealism, Constructivism and Dadaism, Russian Constructivism work commonly featured photography and photomontage which was a huge influence for Lester Beall throughout his career.[2]
I have included some of Lester Beall’s work below to illustrate his use of typography and colour in addition to his influence on the modernist design movement and how he placed an emphasis on the principles and philosophies they believed in.
References & Sources
- Dominic Flask. 2021. Lester Beall : Design Is History. Available at: http://www.designishistory.com/1940/lester-beall/.
- Wikipedia. 2021. Lester Beall – Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Beall.