A portrait of Tibor Kalman's middle-aged face almost passes as commonplace: a receding hairline, squinting eyes, and a toothy, sincere smile. Kalman's design career, however, has questioned all boundaries and expectations set by the ordinary. Born in Budapest in 1949, Kalman...
[more]A portrait of Tibor Kalman's middle-aged face almost passes as commonplace: a receding hairline, squinting eyes, and a toothy, sincere smile. Kalman's design career, however, has questioned all boundaries and expectations set by the ordinary.
Born in Budapest in 1949, Kalman was educated in journalism, not design. While working in New York as a clerk for Barnes & Noble, he arranged a window display one afternoon when the designer called in sick. His success and interest in the project eventually made him director of design for the bookseller, and led to the founding of M&Co, his own design agency, in 1979. He served as creative director of "Interview" beginning in 1990, and later as editor-in-chief of "Colors," the magazine sponsored by Benetton. Kalman's work (and, at times, his unruly behavior) has been both criticized and praised for its sexiness, obscenity, and sensationalism.
The philosophy of Kalman's art could be described as "position first, style second." His art demonstrates that the designer can, and possibly must, be responsible for the content of the message as well as the presentation. "Colors" took a provocative stance on social problems. One issue offered an article entitled "How to Change Your Race," with complementary images of Queen Elizabeth as a black woman and Pope John Paul as an Asian man. Another issue published a mock obituary for Ronald Reagan as an AIDS victim, with a full-page image of the President smiling behind a face full of lesions. Kalman put the standard dialogue between advertisements and consumers up for debate, and used design to make political statements. Some people retaliated by burning the magazine. Others rejoiced at the invitation to involve their minds in their everyday lives.
Kalman once said, "My quandary was that designers have been taught to be liars. They have been taught to use their skills -- just like lawyers and accountants -- to distort information. I was not against anyone personally, I just had all these questions about what we were doing." Throughout his work, Kalman has successfully engaged his audience by exposing the formulae according to which sexual, violent, and multicultural images are used in design to sell products and promote social conformity.
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