FUTURE BOOKS, Industry, Government, Science, Arts. COMPLETE RUN, Marjorie Bruce Milne (editor), Wolfgang Foges & Walter Neurath (producers), John Armstrong, 'Zero' & George Adams [aka Georg Teltscher] (artists), Hilde Kurz & Ruth Rosenberg (researchers)

Title: FUTURE BOOKS, Industry, Government, Science,...

Publisher: Adprint for Leathley Publications Ltd, 162a Strand, W.C.2

Publication Date: 1946

Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition: Good

Edition: 1st 

Complete run of 4 volumes/issues from 1946-7 subtitled "Overture", "The Stage is Set", "Crowded Scene", & "Transformation". Every volume has title page, 33 unnumbered pages of colour adverts (25 in volume 1), 104 printed pages, 26 pages of adverts at end, & advert endpapers. Neat ownership signature of R. Stallrd on bottom margin of front free endpaper. 22 x 30 cm. Original colour printed cloth bindings. Brown lettering along spines. Some handling wear to edges, hinges and corners. The head and tails of the spines are worn and in two cases, have the extremities missing. Contents in overall good condition. The four Future books represent Hitler s gift to Britain (enforced emigration of writers, artists, scholars and scientists from the Third Reich) & were part of Germans in Britain an exhibition about migration at the University of Reading in 2015. This short-lived publication pioneered infographics, picture researchers and print production methods and was produced by the pioneers of the Book-packaging concept. Viennese émigrés Wolfgang Foges & Walter Neurath had set up Adprint in London in 1938. Social scientists Otto (1882-1945) and Marie Neurath founded Isotype in Vienna during the 1920s (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education) and later founded publisher Thames & Hudson. The Isotype system was devised by Gerd Arntz (1900-1988) as a series of pictograms that gave visual expression to the very large numbers routinely expressed in political planning and may be compared, graphically, to the development of Soviet Constructivist information design (examples here in "Factory City Thinks Again ", "British Agriculture " & "The West Indies "). Georg Teltscher (1904-83) AKA George Adams was a brilliant and influential graphic designer who pioneered the Bauhaus school's "functionalist approach". He immigrated to England where he was interned and deported to Australia aboard the vessel Dunera. While interned at Hay, he designed "camp currency" printed locally. He returned to England in 1941 became art director for Future Books -notable for its use of colour photogravure during a time of short supply of raw materials, when this was restricted, and its inclusion of Isotype information graphics. First cover design was by John Rutherford Armstrong ARA (1893 1973), a British artist and muralist who also designed for film and theatre productions, & is most notable for the Surrealist paintings he produced. 'Zero', (new start, postwar German artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene) & Adams designed the others. The art historian Hilde Kurz and the Berlin refugee Ruth Rosenberg, who both worked for Adprint, provided their large picture archives. Future Books were aimed at a general audience, but one probably interested in reconstruction and development after the war; its publication roughly coincides with the post-war Labour government (1945-1951); though undoubtedly innovative, they were not universally popular, however. Orwell linked another periodical called Contact with Future books: 'The kind of streamlined, high-powered, slickly got-up, semi-intellectual magazine which you are familiar with in the USA, now beginning to appear here also. The kind of magazine in which the letterpress exists round the edges of photographs, giving the average reader the feeling of being advanced without actually forcing him to think'. Many copies of these books were discarded, as they are not abundant in the second-hand trade. In libraries they are poorly represented (presumably owing to the ambiguity over whether they are books or periodicals). WorldCat locates a copy of volume one in Paris Bibilotheque Nationale. Provenance: Robert Stallard, architect. Purchased from his surviving daughter at his former home in Gloucester Crescent, London NW1. Bookseller Inventory # 4353