It was 40 years ago this week that Ernesto Che Guevara was executed by the CIA and the Bolivian Army. As a tribute to the man and a protest against his assassination, Jim Fitzpatrick, a young graphic artist from Ireland, produced the ubiquitous high-contrast drawing (above) from a photograph by Alberto Korda. With the intellectual copy rights being waived by both men the image became, in essence, the first piece of viral imagery with the intention of getting “the broadest possible circulation”. And subsequently became an icon of revolutionaries, freedom fighters and Marxist students worldwide.
Oh, and of course Madonna.
Nathan Usmar Lauder
Posted on Thursday, 11th of October 2007 Permalink
Guaranteed to induce a panic attack, created by poodwaddle, feed your morbid facination with World Clock. 4 people drowned whilst I was watching, wonder who they were?
Dave Brown
Posted on Tuesday, 25th of September 2007 Permalink
Walter Allner died last Friday aged 97. His incredible career reads like a history of Modernist graphic design. He trained at the Bauhaus under Albers, Kandinsky and Klee. He worked alongside Otto Neurath, Piet Zwart and A.M. Cassandre. He founded the International Poster Annual, started his own company and freelanced for Johnson & Johnson, I.B.M. and Life magazine. Allner’s most notable contributions are the 79 covers of Fortune magazine where he was the Art Director from 1962 to 1974. It’s hard to find examples of his work online but you can usually spot his Fortune covers – they are all signed “Allner”.
Also, he may have been the first person to try this:
This spirit was evident with other comparably ambitious Fortune covers, notably one in which he arranged for dozens of windows on 20 floors of the Time & Life building in New York to be illuminated at night to spell out 500. To create this huge temporary electric sign he had to persuade everyone in the offices — many not employed by Time Inc. — to cooperate. After a rainstorm thwarted his initial attempt, the project was eventually photographed from a nearby hotel.
(from The New York Times, with thanks to Steven Heller)
David Rainbird
Posted on Tuesday, 25th of July 2006 Permalink
