cpie pineles, above, in her studio.
cipe for seventeeen, 1948
The graphic design career of Cipe Pineles (pronounced SEE-pee pi-NELL-iss) began when she was installed by Condé Nast Himself in the office of Dr. M.F. Agha, art director for Condé Nast publications Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House and Garden.
Through the 1930s and early 1940s, Pineles learned editorial art direction from one of the masters of the era, and became (at Glamour) the first autonomous woman art director of a mass-market American publication.
She is credited with another "first" as well: being the first art director to hire fine artists to illustrate mass-market publications; the first woman to be asked to join the all-male New York Art Directors Club and later their Hall of Fame.
After experimenting on Glamour, she later art directed and put her distinctive mark on Seventeen and Charm magazines, until her death in 1991. Cipe Pineles continued a design career of almost sixty years through work for Lincoln Center and others, and teaching at the Parsons School of Art and Design (AIGA).
pineles' cover for charm, 1955,
what do we see here?
1- Pineles' style is groovy, authentic; young women saw themselves in it (the polls prove it).
2- she is the first designer to use fine artists to illustrate mass-market publications, which brought modern art to the attention of the young mainstream public.
3- let the epoch guide the design.
4- typeface can be organic.