Decade: 1950s

The 1950s were the foundational decade of postwar modernism in graphic design. In Switzerland, the design schools of Basel and Zurich were developing the principles that would become the International Typographic Style. Emil Ruder at the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel and Armin Hofmann at the Basel School of Design trained a generation of designers who would carry these principles across Europe and America, among them Wolfgang Weingart, Helmut Schmid, and Siegfried Odermatt.

In America, the influence of European emigre designers who had arrived in the previous decade was fully embedded. Paul Rand was producing his most celebrated corporate identity work, including his programmes for IBM and ABC. Saul Bass was reinventing film title design. Record sleeve design was emerging as a significant graphic art form, with Alex Steinweiss and S. Neil Fujita and in Britain, poster design for London Transport and public information continued to thrive, with Abram Games, Tom Eckersley, and FHK Henrion among the most significant practitioners of the decade.