Blog post 1: Advertising Art Director

Gene Federico

Gene Federico portrait
Image 1: Gene Federico
Image 2: Lambretta, 1952
Image 3: Love of Apples, 1960
Image 4: IBM, 1962
Image 5: Napier ads

Research

Gene Federico, an American graphic designer and advertising executive, was born in 1918 in New York. Studying at the Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island, he became an Art Squad member and was influenced by leading European advertising artists’ work. At Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, he also gained influence from the work of Cassandre, Lester Beall and Paul Rand. It wasn’t until the late 1940s that Federico discovered his passion for graphic design and advertising as a career. He helped start Doyle Dane Bernbach agency, where he was known for his Woman’s Day ads. Federico became a premiere advertising art director and designer in America. According to AIGA, “[h]is selection as the 1987 AIGA Medalist… honors someone who … responsibly stretched the boundaries of advertising design with typographic elegance… and… contribute[s] to an American graphic design vocabulary.”

Opinion

Image 6: Woman’s day, 1951-1954

This is one of Federico’s most memorable Woman’s Day ads. What works for this piece is how it is not static, the blur of the foot adds movement for visual interest. The ‘o’s fit perfectly as the bike’s wheels — a great example of integration of type, especially right now as I am working on my Typographic Expressionism project.

Image credit:

Image 1-6: https://www.aiga.org/medalist-genefederico

Image 7: https://modernism101.com/products-page/art-photo/cinema-16-an-invitation-brochure-title-new-york-cinema-16-1949-amos-and-marcia-vogel-gene-federico-designer/#.YBM2W5NKi84

Sources:

Biography by Steven Heller  September 30. “Gene Federico.” AIGA, www.aiga.org/medalist-genefederico.

“Gene Federico.” GD 203, go.distance.ncsu.edu/gd203/?p=52172.

“Gene Federico.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Federico.

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