DESIGN AND THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT

Print Magazine (1968), devoted a special issue to the subject: “Graphic Design in the Human Environment.” A group of Symposium statements were requested of twenty-four persons (designers, architects, city planners, public officials, critics, psychologists, etc.). They were invited to comment on the prospects and possibilities for achieving meaningful environmental improvement in our time. Lester Beall’s statement in part: “Today’s design environment is one facet of man’s overall culture – hence, it is only partially responsible for the visual mess in which we find ourselves. One microcosm of this threat to our civilization is the detrimental characteristic prevailing in the philosophy of advertising and public relations that has indubitably cemented sales records to the products, regardless of the intrinsic worth of the product. – The result in part is the manufacturer who produces products of expediency; and the craftsman (the labor community) who demands more and more monies without equally important demands for products with structural aesthetic honesty.

“We can say that the painter, the sculptor, and the graphics and industrial designer have also yielded to the competitive aggressiveness manifest by the desire for quick money and the prevalence on the ‘marquee.’ The propellants of this posture are, too often, the museums, galleries, art schools, magazines and others with eulogies of what are the foremost trends. Hence, the so-called ‘fine artists’ as well as graphic designers, must share some concern in perverting and being perverted by these instruments of fashion-setting trends with an attendant drift-away from the integrity of expression; one finds the same problems of group-guilt in the theatre, ballet and cinema – in the fields of architecture, city planning, landmark preservation.

“As for the personal involvement of the designer, or any other environmental maker, by entering the game of politics, it would only end in the degradation of his work, as well as his personality--. In fact, the problems of many types of environmental control are, in my opinion, too enormous for governments, city and state planners, scientists, and technologists using all the most advanced computer systems . . . The near-perfect answer, if there is one, is to be found in personal and group integrity.”

By1935 Lester had taken part in fourteen exhibitions. Of these four were international (the first was in Holland), and ten were group shows in this country. The first of his one-man shows took place in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1937. The same year he exhibited for the first time in Paris, six samples of his work being included in the Paris International Exposition. Since then he has participated in several additional shows in Paris, also a number of times in London, as well as other cities in England. Some of the other exhibitions abroad in which he took part were in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Russia, Sweden, in various cities as well as in Stockholm; Norway, Finland, Denmark; Melbourne in Australia; Japan, both in Tokyo and Kyoto; also in Czechoslovakia and Canada. . . He has taken part in a number of international exhibitions in this country. Of particular pleasure to him were three fine arts exhibitions at the Art Institute in Chicago –as well as other shows there that were not international. He has been included in countless group shows in this country, his first being in 1933, being the first exhibition of the Art Directors Club of Chicago. His work has been shown in many cities throughout the United States, from coast to coast, some of these: The Baltimore Museum of Art: “The Poster Today”, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.: “Modern Art Influences on Printing Design”: Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh: “The Music Sphere Designed by Lester Beall” for the Aluminum Company of America.

Throughout the years he has won a great many awards and trophies, his first received in1934. Other awards included one given to him by the United States Treasury Department for Distinguished Services rendered in behalf of the War Savings Program; another given by the Continental Air Command for outstanding cooperation and professional services rendered in furtherance of the Air Force Reserve Information Services Program.