CBS HEADQUARTERS CONSTRUCTION BARRICADE AND SIGN PROGRAM New York, New York, USA
Lou Dorfsman (1918–2008), Designer New York, New York, USA
1965
In the 1960s, most major metropolitan cities throughout the world were in danger of becom- ing an urban oasis of innocuous aluminum and glass architectural structures. All of that changed in 1965 when a new headquarters building for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), designed by the modernist architect Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) with interiors by Florence Knoll (b. 1917), was completed in New York City.
The 38-story (149.4 m) building, dubbed “Black Rock” due to its imposing appearance created by its massive Canadian black granite– clad facade, columns, and spandrels, conveyed an imposing, rocklike solidity that was ex- tremely different from the majority of the glass- curtain walled buildings being built at that time. The building is the only skyscraper designed
by the Finnish-born Saarinen, designer of other well-known modernist structures including the TWA Terminal at Kennedy International Airport (1956), the St. Louis Gateway Arch (1960), the main terminal of Dulles International Airport (19), and the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lin- coln Center (1965).
Frank Stanton (1908–2006), then presi- dent of CBS, was determined that the visual character of the interior and exterior graphics for the new headquarters be equally elegant and distinctive as its architecture. Stanton gave Lou Dorfsman (1918–2008) the task of meeting this need as well as adding a critical and much- needed graphic design nuance to their new building that had not been achieved in any other headquarters building prior to this.
Following the completion of his under- graduate education at Cooper Union in 1939, Dorfsman worked as an exhibit designer for the U.S. Army until 1946, when he joined CBS under the guidance of William Golden (1911–1959), art director of the organization for more than two decades and graphic designer of one of the most universally recognizable trademarks of the era—the iconic CBS eye symbol. In 1951, Dorfsman was appointed art director for CBS Radio and eight years later succeeded Golden as vice president and creative director for the entire CBS Broadcast group.
Throughout his forty-five-year career at CBS, Dorfsman was the driving force and mediator for all visual forms at CBS, from print advertising, on-air graphics, and corporate identity to the sign program and graphics for the new headquarters building.
Initially, when the building was just an excavated corner along midtown’s Avenue of the Americas, Dorfsman enclosed the construc- tion site with a clear Plexiglas wall, rather than the traditional plywood fencing with peepholes, allowing passers-by to look in at any time to see
the progress of the new building. Loudspeakers located intermittently along the perimeter of this transparent wall informed the public about the future home of CBS and provided periodic CBS news reports.
As the building construction rose above sidewalk level, the Plexiglas wall was replaced with a protective walkway for pedestrians.
While this requirement was a New York City building code regulation, Dorfsman saw it as another creative opportunity that immedi- ately became an informative, entertaining, and extremely memorable exhibitlike experience for the public. Instead of constructing the typical structure of scaffolding and painted plywood planking, he created a passageway consisting of thirty rear-illuminated panels, each equipped with a recess for a telephone, and that provided space for a series of special CBS promotions— the first was devoted to historic news broad- casts, the second promoted the summer’s presi- dential nominating conventions, and the third previewed the new CBS fall program schedule.
For the building’s sign program, Dorfs- man brought a new level of visual quality and integrity to a corporate headquarters environ- ment by reconsidering the importance and relationship of typography to all architectural forms and surfaces. He designed all aspects of typographic information found on the building’s exterior, as well as within the building’s interior, with a resolute consistency, rigor, and restraint.
Dorfsman collaborated with Freeman Craw (b. 1917), a major twentieth-century figure in the creation of comprehensive visual identity programs for some of the world’s lead- ing companies, on two proprietary typefaces for the new building. They redrew the typeface Didot, a seventeenth-century modern serif, and renamed it CBS Didot; as a supporting typeface, they designed a sans-serif gothic and
named it CBS Sans. CBS Didot was used for the bronze CBS logotype over the building’s entrance doors, as well as for all interior sign requirements such as the identification of floor numbers, room numbers, directories, depart- mental and executive personnel names, mail chutes, fire alarm boxes, clock faces, and even exit signs. Every typographic element in and on the building relied solely upon one of these two new typefaces unifying the overall identity of this new corporate architectural symbol of the modernist era.
The CBS Building was the first project of the modernist era to achieve a “total design” through graphic design and architecture, all in the name of corporate image making. It quickly became a defining symbol for the company and for its continued commitment to excellence.
THE POS
TW
AR W
ORLD 1950–2000
III
LOU DORFSMAN, HERB LUBALIN, AND
GASTROTYPOGRAPHICALASSEMBLAGE
CBS HEADQUARTERS CAFETERIA MURALOR GASTROTYPOGRAPHICALASSEMBLAGE New York, New York, USA
Lou Dorfsman (1918–2008), Herb Lubalin (1918–1981), Designers
New York, New York, USA
1965
In September 1965, an employee cafeteria– lounge opened on the twentieth floor of CBS’s new headquarters building in New York City. On the entire eastern wall of this public space was a seminal example of graphic design in the built environment—a 40-foot- (12.2 m) long by 8 ½-foot- (2.6 m) high typographic tour de force conceived and designed on an epic scale over a six-month period by CBS vice president and creative director Lou Dorfsman (1918–2008). The Gastotypographicalassemblage, as
Dorfsman called it, was devoted to the subject of food and based on an enlarged printer’s job case—a wooden drawer composed of dozens of various-size compartments allowing the printer to sort fonts by letterform, with samples of metal and wood type. In this case, it would be multiple lockups of words and objects related to food.
This three-dimensional collage was orga- nized in nine separate panels; words were jig- sawed out of thick pine wood, and blank spaces were filled with sculpted food items and culi-
nary props. Most of its panels were composed in various typefaces totaling approximately 1,450 letterforms and spelling out culinary possibili- ties such as dill, banana, fudge, pumpernickel, hasenpfeffer, pizza, pâté de foie gras, and so on. The entire monochromatic assemblage was spray-painted in opaque white enamel. The only variations of color and texture that occurred along the expansive composition was a series of small figurative, sculptural, food-related items and utensils—a row of plastic bagels, a hero sandwich made out of wax, a composition of tin cans, a pair of wooden feet crushing a cluster of grapes, and a frying pan with a plastic egg.
Dorfsman collaborated with his longtime friend and colleague Herb Lubalin (1918–1981) and Tom Carnase (b. 1939), who were both responsible for refining the detail design of each typographic-based panel. Lubalin was a legend- ary art director and typographic master who brought humor, sensuality, and an expressive modernist flair to every letterform in his work. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he attended Cooper
Union, where he began his love affair with calligraphy, letterform, and formal typography. Immediately following his graduation in 1939, he joined the advertising agency of Sudler & Hennessey (later Sudler, Hennessey & Lubalin) as an art director. In 1964, he left the agency to start his own graphic design firm, where he ultimately worked in a broad range of areas including advertisements, editorial design, trademarks, typeface design, posters, packag- ing, and publications. In 1969, he and Carnase formed Lubalin & Carnase.
Throughout his career, Lubalin always treated space and surface as his most valuable visual communication tools. One designer noted that his work reminded him of a Claude Debussy quote—“music is the space between the notes.” Lubalin embraced typographic characters as both visual and communicative forms—forms that became figurative and picto- rial and that invoked, informed, and ultimately
engaged the viewer. Rarely have complex typographic arrangements been so dynamic and so unified. The traditional rules and practices of typography were always abandoned for a more nontraditional and humanistic approach that made him a typographic genius.
Gastotypographicalassemblage’s overall
composition, bas-relief appearance, its popular content, and restrained treatment, as well as its unique presence within a modernist corpo- rate headquarters environment, reinforced the wall mural’s direct relationship in style, content, and theme to contemporary developments in sculptural assemblages by contemporary American artists such as Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) and Joseph Cornell (1903–1972), as well as the pop art movement that followed it in the coming years.
Lou Dorfsman, Herb Lubalin, and Gastrotypographicalassemblage, continued
THE POS
TW
AR W
ORLD 1950–2000
III