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From children's toys to information design Ladislav Sutnar (1897 Pilsen – 1976 New York) Designer in two worlds In exile On April 14, 1939 the Czech Ladislav Sutnar disembarked from an ocean-going liner in New York City; his home country had been occupied by German troops. The designer's official brief was actually to disband the Czech pavilion at the World's Fair, but he ignored the orders he had been given. Instead, together with other high-profile fellow exiles he set about perfecting the interior of the pavilion, with which he had been commissioned in 1938. On May 31, in the presence of members of the government in exile, the Czechoslovakian exhibition at the World's Fair in New York was officially opened. Sutnar was to become the leading graphic designer for various organizations and institutions associated with Czech exiles in the USA. Moreover, he was also in close contact with exiles from Germany, in particular with protagonists of Bauhaus he had known since the 1920s, including Walter Gropius, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lázsló Moholy-Nagy, and Joesph Albers, as well as with American designers such as Paul Rand and Frederick Kiesler. Despite the intellectual environment, however, his new existence in a foreign country, where a foreign language was spoken, was not easy. Very early on he produced a children's game, building blocks, like in the early days of his career in Prague, when he addressed toys in depth. Clearly defined shapes and effective colors In 1927 the press acknowledged Sutnar's toy using these and other similar phrases … in reviews of the "Spielzeug und Bilderbuch" (toys and picture books) exhibition, which the Neue Sammlung staged in Munich. Painted red, yellow and blue, also the preferred colors of such pioneers of Modernism as Piet Mondrian, the Constructivists and Bauhaus, the steamroller and railway carriage continue on their way. The shapes were reduced to simple, geometric bodies: cylinders, blocks and pyramids. The wooden animals on wheels, the puppets and the building blocks, which were designed in the USA, all work on a similar principle. In the 1920s, based on modern theories about education and play, as well as utopian ideas about reforming society, toy design was all the rage. Gold medal winner In the years that followed, propagating Czechoslovakian avant-garde applied art and architecture abroad was one of Sutnar's major design focuses. Nowadays this would be referred to as exhibition or trade fair design. The "Europäisches Kunstgewerbe" (European arts and crafts) exhibition in Leipzig and the international book fair there marked the beginnings, while the highpoints were a presence at the World Fair in 1929 in Barcelona and the pavilions at the 1937 "Exposition International – L'art et la technique dans la vie moderne" in Paris. Here Sutnar received no less than 14 gold medals, not to mention the Grand Prix. His next commission was for the pavilion at the World's Fair… Lifestyle However, designing exhibitions was not Sutnar's only line of work. In 1920s and 1930s Prague he had been one of the leading personalities of the Czech avant-garde, a design shooting star. As such, along with Jan Tschichold, El Lissitzky, Lázsló Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and others, he was one of the most important representatives of New Typography. This is evident in particular in his numerous book designs, be they for socially critical novels such as "Wall Street" and "Petroleum" by Upton Sinclair, or the works of Nobel Prize-winning playwright George Bernard Shaw. In his guise as designer of porcelain crockery just as much as inspirational Art Director, he was a major influence on "Krasna jizba" (beautiful home): this sales and exhibition forum in Prague was the first studio, so to speak, for product design in Czechoslovakia. Sutnar flanked these activities with trailblazing marketing measures in collaboration with leading contemporary avant-garde photographers such as Josef Sudek, be they for the staging exhibitions, shop window dressing or advertisements. All these facets went into producing an image of a joie de vivre and domestic harmony that was eagerly lapped up by the Czech middle-class. Visual communication The decision to stay put in New York meant a new beginning and re-orientation for the immigrant Sutnar. In Old Europe, inspired by De Stijl, the Constructivists and Bauhaus, he had developed a thoroughly pragmatic, user-friendly style of functionalism. For all its stylistic rigidity, pragmatism, even in what were to begin with, foreign environs, enabled him to recognize where there was a need for design. Sutnar became the first info rmation design and corporate identity specialist. Behind the demure words lay the recognition that in order to get the message across to observers, readers, users and consumers, any flow of info rmation in the modern world must be structured, categorized and made visual. That applied just as much to advertising brochures as to info rmation in copy at exhibitions and trade fairs, diagrams and letter paper, specialist books and packaging design or the graphic design of company catalogues and publications against air pollution (Sutnar was an early campaigner for environmental protection). Geometric forms, bright colors, in particular his so typical orange, diagonal composition, filmic-dynamic elements and a distinct hierarchy of info rmation – all these stylistic means meant that as a graphic designer Sutnar was much in demand. His work and his visions in this field provided what are even today the foundations of visual communication. And so it is hardly surprising that in both Europe and the USA a new generation of designers is currently re-discovering Ladislav Sutnar. Architects from Olgoi Chorchoi, the internationally renowned Prague studio – stars in the Czech design scene – are designing the first extensive Sutnar retrospective, which, following the accession to the EU of the Czech Republic will be showcased by the Neue Sammlung in the Neues Museum in Nuremberg from July 9 through September 19, 2004. Corinna Rösner