Mid-Century Modern vs Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design

Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design is the cross-discipline counterpart of Mid-Century Modern — the graphic counterpart to mid-century modern architecture and product design.

Stahl House (Case Study House #22), Los Angeles — Mid-Century Modern

Mid-Century Modern

Warm, livable modernism — clean lines and flat planes opened up with glass walls that dissolve the boundary between indoors and out.

  • Clean horizontal lines, flat or low-pitched roofs
  • Floor-to-ceiling glass and walls of windows
  • Open floor plans and indoor-outdoor flow
  • Honest use of wood, stone, and brick
  • Integration with the natural site and landscape
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Original specimen in the mid-century modern / corporate-modern style

Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design

Postwar American graphic design that married European modernist rigor with Madison Avenue optimism, building the visual language of the corporate logo, the trademark, and the witty conceptual poster.

  • Reductive conceptual logos built around a single idea
  • Hand-cut paper collage and torn-edge shapes
  • Flat unmodeled color blocks with generous white space
  • Bold sans-serif type set with dramatic scale contrast
  • Geometric simplification of imagery into clean silhouettes
Full Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design guide →

At a glance

Mid-Century ModernMid-Century Modern Graphic Design
Era1945–1969c. 1945–1970
DisciplineArchitectureGraphic Design
RegionUnited States, ScandinaviaUnited States
FamilyModernismCorporate Modern, Modernist
Formal traitsclean-lined, organic, minimal, indoor-outdoorflat-color, geometric, sans-serif, negative-space

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