Skip to main content

Georg Olden - Alvin Jeong

By
Georg Olden, born in Birmingham, Alabama on November 13, 1920 lived as an expert in both graphic design and the advertising industry. From young, he showed talent in art and as he dropped out of Virginia State College, he started working at the Office of Strategic Services as a graphic designer. He also was known for his cartoons published in National CIO News, The new Yorker, and Esquire. Later, he worked as a graphic designer at CBS, art director at an advertising agency BBDO (Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn) and many marketing corporations.

2007 AIGA Medalist: Georg Olden
Georg Olden

As aforementioned, Olden worked as a cartoon artist, a graphic designer, and an art director throughout his career, especially in relation to marketing and advertising on news. The positions that Olden worked in often handle information and news that carried nationwide impact and messages. Regardless, his works were good, recognized, and often praised. These are some of his works:

CBS news title: Search For Tomorrow and Brotherhood Week. 

CBS news title: Years Of Crisis and Capitol Hill To New York.

some fun images from the Famous Artists Course design lessons
Television title: I've Got A Secret.

ArtforTV18
Television title: The Conventions.

My praises for Olden goes for the epitaphs that people recall of him. An article from Ebony from 1963 quotes Olden, "In my work I’ve never felt like a Negro. Maybe I’ve been lucky.” This got me thinking. When we look back, maybe around this time it was "normal" for one's work to be discussed along with what color their skin was. Talking about the color less doesn't mean the works and the artists are being valued, the artists themselves may be stressing their identity in their works. However, when one wants their works to be simply that of a creative human being but has to feel that it is that of a colored person, there is something to think about, especially if it's "luck" when they don't feel so. 

Olden also said, “As the first black American to achieve an executive position with a major corporation, my goal was the same as that of Jackie Robinson in baseball: to achieve maximum respect and recognition by my peers, the industry and the public, thereby hopefully expanding acceptance of, and opportunities for, future black Americans in business.” The positions that Olden achieved was just as important as his works because they spoke and still speak to people of color as encouragements and hope for what they can do, and where they can reach.

Written on June 06, 2020 by Alvin Jeong

Resources



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

John Warren Moutoussamy

By
John Warren Moutoussamy John Warren Moutoussamy studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology and graduated in 1948, a mere 26 years after McKissack & McKissack became the first black-owned architecture firm in the United States (Fazzare and Olson). Moutoussamy studied under Mies Van Der Rohe, and Mies’ strong exterior style and structural design is evident in his work throughout the Chicago area. After finishing his education, Moutoussamy became a partner in the Chicago Architecture Firm, Dubin Dubin Black & Moutoussamy, making him the first African-American in U.S. history to become part of a major established architecture firm (Goldsborough). Later in his career, Moutoussamy also played prominent positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Loyola University, and the Chicago Plan Commission                As an architect, Moutoussamy followed the style of Mies Van Der Rohe in many of his wor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beverly Loraine Greene (1915-1957)

By
Beverly Loraine Greene was born October 4 th , 1915 in Chicago Illinois. Although she was born during a time where she was not accepted in the professional world she never stopped moving towards her goal of becoming an architect. In 1936, Greene made history by becoming the first African American female to earn a bachelor of science degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Although she was “ amidst a sea of white male faces” at school, Beverly was known for having a calm presence that allowed her to focus on her difficult education (Illinois.edu). After graduating she began to search for a job in the industry, albeit the many obstacles in her way. Although it was difficult to find work at first due to racial discrimination, Greene’s talent and drive landed her a job with the Chicago Housing authority. This made her the first African American to be a part of the Chicago Housing authority, a corporation that oversees the housing in the cit...
Post a Comment
Read more

Let's fix history

By
OK, you're down to do the work. Cool. First, let's talk about what we mean by "Design" and "Designer". Design as a formal profession has only been around for a relatively short time, during which BIPOC were systematically excluded from both higher education (where designers become formalized) and industry (where designers work). On top of this, systematic oppression of BIPOC has kept their wealth and power in the economy low, which is used as a justification not to design with or for these end users. So, we will need to expand our idea of design beyond that which is done by formally trained designers. Instead, we should think about all traditions of problem solving which try to satisfy human need with technological capability, while pursuing an aesthetically beautiful solution. These may include traditional crafts, toolmaking, architectural design or decoration of traditional buildings, traditional graphical motifs and styles, letterforms or scripts, graphic...
Post a Comment
Read more