Christopher Long on the Genius Graphics of Lucian Bernhard

“Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972) was one of the great founders of modern graphic design. In a career spanning nearly five decades in Berlin and New York, Bernhard laid the foundation for a new language of form and communication. His brilliant posters, advertisements, book designs and typefaces created the very look of the twentieth century and beyond. In this lavishly illustrated book, noted design historian Christopher Long traces Bernhard's life and career, uncovering new truths and demolishing old myths.”

Long studied at the universities of Graz, Munich and Vienna, and received his doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Trained as a cultural historian, his dissertation was a study of the Viennese architect and designer Joseph Frank. He has since written extensively on various aspects of Central European Modernism and has published monographs on a number of notable central European emigre architects and designers in the United States.

We talk about his latest, Lucian Bernhard. I learned about it from Steven Heller’s essential Daily Heller, and was thrilled to see that it was published by Kant Books, based in Prague. All I had to do was to walk about ten minutes from my apartment doorstep to my favourite bookstore, Kavka Books, to pick up a copy.