Art Deco exhibition poster, Finch College Museum of Art
Poster for an Art Deco exhibition shown at the Finch College Museum of Art in fall 1970. Finch College was a liberal arts college in Manhattan. It closed in 1976.
The poster measuring 24″×36″ was designed by Milton Glaser of Push Pin Studios. He used a typeface that may have been designed specifically for this occasion. At least that’s what its name suggest: it’s presented in PLINC’s 1971 catalog as Push Pin Art Deko. The showing doesn’t include individual credits, but it mentions Milton Glaser’s name in the sample text, suggesting that it was him who designed the typeface as well.
The wide open caps feature several traits that are characteristic for the Art Deco style: a geometric build with pointed apexes, an S with three horizontals (compare to the lettering in Cassandre’s Nord Express poster from 1927), and an A with a triangle as bar (see Pierre Zenobel’s A New Blue Train to the Cote d’Azur poster from 1928, as well as to period typefaces like Novel Gothic or Vulcain). PLINC’s one-line sample has other glyphs for A and E than the poster, suggesting that Push Pin Art Deko came with alternates.
Milton Glaser Inc. mentions that the poster “employed two split fountains on the press in order to create the effect of a full color announcement [in just two print runs]. Of course, this requires a sympathetic pressman and willingness to spend a lot of time adjusting the results.”
Hat tip to the Herb Lubalin Study Center.
Push Pin Art Deko as shown in Photo-Lettering’s One Line Manual of Styles, 1971
Detail with the filled-in and overlapping letterforms of Push Pin Art Deko
When the exhibition moved to Cranbrook Academy in January 1971, Glaser had the poster reprinted, now on pale yellow paper, which further increases its overall colorfulness, as he explains in his 1973 monograph.
A copy of the Cranbrook College version is currently on sale from renewfinds.
