ladislav sutnar

: 1897 – 1976

a pioneer ahead of his time,

Sutnar, a Czech designer born in 1897, was one of the first designers to actively practice the field of information design. His work was rooted in rationality and the process of displaying massive amounts of information in a clear and organized manner for easy consumption by the general viewer. He placed a heavy emphasis on typography and primarily used a limited color palette.

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beguilingly simple yet unmistakably unique,

Borrowing from the principles of De Stijl, Sutnar’s work had a reduction to primary colors, straight lines, and an overall harmony of irregular text alignment. His strong use of diagonal elements, typography and imagery more strongly conveys his design style to be classified as Constructivism. Using Bauhaus fundamentals, Sutnar’s work is simple but suggests motion with vivid colors and directional patterns.

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the balance of rationale and abstraction,

While other 20th-century graphic designers might be better known, few have contributed as profoundly to the literature of graphic design. With the publication of Visual Design in Action in 1961, Ladislav Sutnar developed his essential principles of design. Visual Design in Action is known as being a testament to the historical relevance of modernism and the philosophical resonance of Sutnar’s focus on the functional beauty of total clarity.

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