Black History Month:
Reynold Ruffins
It is rare to see a brand system without any illustration these days. With trends like 'Corporate Memphis' all around us, illustration popularity is at an all-time high. But where did it all start?
Reynold Ruffins was a Black American illustrator, designer and artist. As a co-founding member of Push Pin Studios (alongside Glaser, Sorel and Chwast), Ruffins was a big part of bringing postmodernism to graphic design.
In the mid-1950’s, Push Pin Studios married elements of pastiche, lettering and illustration in a creative practice that revolutionized visual culture itself. At the time, the studio produced the Push Pin Almanack, a publication made to gain more freelance projects and to show off their experimentation. Each issue focused on a different subject matter and was contributed to by different members of the studio. Ruffins contributed to earlier issues such as Issue 2 and one of my favorites, Issue 21, that spoke to a growing anti-nuclear movement.
After Push Pin Studios, Ruffins continued doing commercial work such as The Urbanite, an early Black celebrity magazine (1961), co-founded a design studio with Simms Taback which lasted 28 years, and illustrated many children’s books, often collaborating with Jane Sarnoff. Some of his corporate clients included Time-Life, Coca-Cola, IBM, Random House, NYTimes, Essence and GQ amongst others at a time when advertising and commercial design work was an almost all white industry. #blackhistorymonth #blackdesigners #postmodernism #illustration
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For more information, check out “The Push Pin Graphic: A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration,” Book by Seymour Chwast and Steven Heller. Designed by the talented (and my former professor) Martin Venezky. It is a beautiful book on the studio’s oeuvre and influence.