Post-modernism blog post

Dan Friedman(1945-1995) is an educator, graphic designer, and furniture designer who was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1945. At the young age of 12, he became interested in design after moving into a new home with his parents and seeing his parents build their dream home with decorations. Friedman studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania where he would receive his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. During his time there, he was praised by his professor Ken Hiebart who was a designer from Switzerland. He encouraged Friedman to study abroad and thus Friedman went to Germany to study graphic design at Hochschule fur Gestaltung in Ulm. However, the city of Ulm was collapsing due to political strife and so Friedman moved to Basel. There, he would meet and study under designer Armin Hoffman and typographer Wolfgang Weingart, the two would have a big influence on Friedman’s design thinking. Friedman moved back to the US in 1969 where he would begin his full time career as a graphic designer for large corporations as well as being a teacher at Yale University. While at Yale, Friedman would use his influence from the cool rational design of Ulm and the humane and intuitive design from Basel and apply them to his students. He teached his students the two extremes of design so that he can push the boundaries of typography and design. He was also the Assistant Professor and Chairman of the Board of Study in Design at the State University of New York at Purchase from 1972 to 1975 and worked with the firm Anspach Grossman Portugal as a senior designer from 1975 to 1977. Friedman later worked at the cultural city of New York in the design firm called Pentagram from 1979 to 1984 where he would design posters, packaging, and logos. The 70s and 80s would help define Friedman’s work as a major contributor of the New Wave or Post-modernist style of design and typography(even though Friedman personally chose to identify himself as ‘radical modernist’). Some of his major works include a typography journal called Visible Language where he and Weingart would show student works and European design to the American market and redesigning the Citibank logo.

I find Friedman’s work interesting. He has somewhat of a surrealist style with his designs because of he makes the type float in the air or having random objects in different spots. Aside from that, his work is appealing and has that European Swiss style combined with the colourful and energetic style of the 80s New Wave.