studying under hoffman

 

Having no means to earn a living with her current skills, Barbara decided to become a graphic designer. She moved to Switzerland and enrolled in the Basel Art Institute to study under Armin Hoffman, one of the leading figures in the Swiss Style movement. The first task Hoffman gave her was to paint a complete Latin alphabet in Helvetica by eye. The assignment took six months. Hoffman’s training shaped her strong ties to Helvetica, which lasted throughout her career.

returning to USA

When Barbara learned John F. Kennedy was going to run for president, she decided to return to the United States to try to improve the world with design. However, after coming back she realized the style that she’d learned from Hoffman was very different from the hippie wavelength of current art in San Francisco. Her designs were even sometimes called “Nazi Graphics,” in sharp contrast to typical San Francisco design of the 1960’s, which she characterized as “wiggles and squiggles.”

solomon’s scanlan’s design was unique for counter-culture publications at the time. although swiss modernism was a common corporate design language, it was foreign in this context. —steven heller, journalist and graphic design historian

Scanlan's Monthly Magazine cover with four cover stories
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