Eye Magazine

Born in Czechoslovakia, Ladislav Sutnar was a pioneer of information design. Working in America in the years after the war he synthesised European avant-gardisms into a functional commercial lexicon, made Constructivism playful and used its geometry to forge the dynamics of catalogue organisation. ‘The designer must think first, work later,’ Sutnar declared. His writings — in which the bracket was a favourite motif — are as timely today as his designs.