Ladislav Sutnar
| Ladislav Sutnar | |
|---|---|
Sutnar in 1934
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| Born |
9 November 1897 Plzeň, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 13 November 1976 (aged 79) New York, New York, United States |
| Nationality | Czech |
| Occupation | Designer, artist, art director, educator |
| Known for | Information graphics, modern design, adding parentheses around American area codes |
| Awards | AIGA medalist, 1979 Art Directors Club Hall of Fame |
Ladislav Sutnar (9 November 1897 – 13 November 1976) was a graphic designer from Plzeň, Czechoslovakia (in western Bohemia) who was a pioneer of information design and information architecture. Although he is uncredited, his contributions to business organization benefited society, which included creating a user-friendly telephone directory by implementing parenthetical area codes. He received design commissions from a variety of employers, including McGraw-Hill, IBM, and the United Nations. He also worked as art director for Sweet's Catalog Service for almost twenty years. Sutnar held many one-man exhibitions, and his work is on permanent display in MoMA. He is best known for his books, including Controlled Visual Flow: Shape, Line and Color, Package Design: The Force of Visual Selling, and Visual Design in Action: Principles, Purposes. Sutnar was a master of exhibition design, typography, advertising, posters, magazine and book design.
Sutnar studied painting at the School of Applied Arts in Prague, architecture at Charles University, and mathematics at the Czech Technical University. Post graduation, Sutnar worked on wooden toys, puppets, costumes, and stage design. Also, he contributed to exhibition design as well as teaching and the design of magazines, books, porcelain products and textiles. He taught at the State School of Graphic Arts, Prague, from 1923-36. In Europe, he gained recognition for typography and exhibition design.
While still in Prague, Sutnar was an Artel Cooperative member. Other designers for Artel included Vlastislav Hofman and Rudolf Stockar. The Artel Cooperative consisted of designers from Czechoslovakia who crafted furniture and held workshops under the Wiener Werkstätte's principles of art accessibility. Medium included ceramics, textiles, carpets, furniture, and metal aiming to visually improve the experiences of daily life. The organization came to an end in 1924.
In 1927, Sutnar became the head of publication design for a large publisher in Prague. Then in 1928 he went to the Pressa international exhibition, taking responsibility for the Czech pavilion there. He was accompanied by Augustin Tschinkel. He was made director of the State School of Graphic Arts beginning in 1932. Sutnar continued his work in exhibition design and received a Gold Medal at the 1929 Barcelona Exhibition. Sutnar was also an art director of a book publisher and editor of an architectural magazine.
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