Four Seasons (In One Day)

A few months ago I put up here an ad from the New Yorker published early 1959 showing somebody moving furniture into the newly completed Seagram Building. Time marches on, and now we publish an ad from the New Yorker from August 1959 announcing the opening of the Four Seasons restaurant (which was, and is, in the Seagram Building).




Has graphic design improved at all in the last fifty years? This ad would suggest the answer, Not really. (And the owners of the Four Seasons clearly think the same way: the same logo appears on its website today.) The white space. The clean lines. The symmetry. The graphic might be something that fell from the pen of, say, Richard McGuire ten minutes ago. (Question: did Mies van der Rohe and/or Philip Johnson, who designed the restaurant itself, also design those gorgeous images?)




(Hint: click on the picture for one that can actually be seen by the naked eye.)