Walter Herdeg was a Swiss graphic designer, noted for his travel posters and work with Graphis Magazine, who was awarded an AIGA medal in 1986.
22 Facts About Walter Herdeg
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Walter Herdeg was born of a poor family living in the large city Zurich, Switzerland.
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Herdeg's love for art was evident when he drew as a child, and he desired a profession along similar lines, but formal design schools were not to be established until much later and Herdeg feared that his career path would be limited to work as a lithographic drafter in a printing house.
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Walter Herdeg did not pursue his talent until he met Ernst Keller.
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Walter Herdeg was the teacher who was kind enough to offer him a full scholarship at a new design program that had just been established in the Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich, which was taught by him as the very first instructor.
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The influence of Keller on Walter Herdeg was a heavy one, and proceeding the launch of his career, it would be seen in his own works.
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Works featured in the Graphis Magazine were from all over the world as well, since Walter Herdeg strived to bring designers together to create exchange of information between professionals of different origins.
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The step made by Walter Herdeg in creation of Graphis was a promotion of graphics design culture through the interchange of ideas and techniques, whereby artists with different inclinations could contribute as well as be inspired by others works.
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Walter Herdeg had a distinctive system of work in which he used typography with a combination of photography to create unified photo-montage posters that had simple messages with limited wording.
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Walter Herdeg found this system of work sustainable enough to have used it in several posters for St Moritz travel posters.
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One of such was Anton Stankowski who became known for creating photo-montage with Walter Herdeg working among them.
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Meanwhile, Walter Herdeg was at the forefront of this movement, making history unintentionally.
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Some more popular works by Walter Herdeg are travel posters that he designed before the establishment of Graphis Magazine.
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Walter Herdeg was not a visual artist only but he was known to have approached design from the perspective of a functionalist in more than a few occasions.
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Two hundred and forty six editions of the Graphis magazine were personally overseen by Walter Herdeg and completed in his presence.
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Walter Herdeg was assisted by people from around the globe whom he trusted such as Steven Heller who was a correspondent of Graphis Magazine based in New York.
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The management of the magazine after Herdeg has since been passed on to non-family members, specifically to B Martin Pedersen who after acquiring the Magazine, moved it to New York City in the year 1986.
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Herdeg got interested the pursuit of Magazine publishing when reading the German Design Magazine Gebrauchsgraphik by Professor Walter Frenzel of which he was an avid audience.
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Gebrauchsgraphik was a commercial purpose magazine that Walter Herdeg was proud to have his work featured in, but he was inspired to create better material.
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Walter Herdeg was a designer by profession, focused on advertising design.
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Walter Herdeg started in the design field as the culture of design identity was just emerging.
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Walter Herdeg created his magazine in 1944 to feature a variety of work from typography, paintings, graphic arts and in general visual arts that included inspiration, originality and creativity.