Getting to know Cipe Pineles

Here are a few interesting peaces of work and thoughts by the graphic designer / art director Cipe Pineles.

She was born in Vienna, Austria in 1908 and migrated to New York in 1915.

Cipe is credited to be the first art director to hire fine artists to illustrate the mass-market publications such as Condé Nast, Glamour, Seventeen, Charm, Vanity Fair, Vogue, etc.

Cipe is considered to be “the first woman to be asked to join the all-male New York Art Directors Club and later their Hall of Fame” (1).

During the early 1930s, Condé Nast publications were innovative in their use of
European Modernism
in magazine design.
Typography was simplified
and typefaces such as
Futura
became common. Headlines and text could be anywhere on the page.
Photography took precedence over fashion illustration
and was reproduced large on the page, bleeding off to create “landscapes” or transgressing across the gutter. Space expanded as purely decorative elements disappeared and margins were opened.