by Christopher Long
264 pages, hardcover, $75
Published by KANT
kant-books.cz

Spanning nearly a century of American culture, Modern Americanness by Christopher Long chronicles a history of graphic design in the United States from 1840 through 1940. This chronologically organized, 264-page book is replete with more than 300 examples of vibrant illustrations, prints and collages.

Using several posters, propaganda pieces, magazine covers and advertisements, Long demonstrates how important events (such as World War I and the advent of commercial air travel) and fine art movements (including art deco and Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts) influenced the development of graphic design in America. He shows that visual cues such as composition, color and text can influence a viewer’s experience, describing how titans in graphic design—such as Will H. Bradley, Ernest Elmo Calkins and James Montgomery Flagg—often relied on these techniques. For example, in Chapter 5, Long references Flagg’s now-iconic Uncle Sam army recruitment poster that portrays “an older man (Flagg in what is a rather peculiar self-portrait), wearing what looks like a clown suit […] glaring directly at us, his finger pointing in a manner that is ‘selective’ and accusatory.”

Though the book provided a compelling compilation of images, Modern Americanness primarily focuses on traditional media, like print and illustration. I would love for Long to release a subsequent volume of Modern Americanness that explores the trajectory of contemporary graphic design in the United States from the 1940s through the present, allowing him to explore modern media, such as photography and video. Still, Modern Americanness is a comprehensive overview of an inflection point in American design. —Isis Davis-Marks ca