Issue N°3 — Karl Gerstner’s Capital
One of my favorite designers represented in the Lubalin Center’s collection is Karl Gerstner. Two of his projects stand out for me: a packaging for a laundry detergent (Flat File issue N°8), and his masterful handling of the design of Capital magazine—the focus of this issue.
In 1962 Gerstner was hired by Adolf Theobald—one of the co-founders of twen—who was launching a new magazine aimed at the business sector. He described the editorial concept as “a human view of economics, an economic view of humanity.” Gerstner later wrote, “I saw business and economics as something abstract, something primarily concerned with numbers. So my ignorance equipped me perfectly to Theobald’s concept... I had to understand the abstract first in order to present it in a way that other laymen could understand. It seemed entirely appropriate to pursue that goal with all the stylistic resources at my disposal.” Looking at the magazine it’s hard not to agree with that assessment.
At the heart of the design is the grid. Gerstner said he hoped “to achieve optimum balance between necessity and freedom; or, in other words, a maximum number of constants with the greatest possible variability.” The grid that that he designed for Capital is seemingly complex but is actually quite simple. It was a square sub-divided into 58 rows and columns, each one based on the smallest unit: a 10 point line of type. The entire grid then could be divided into 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 columns and rows, creating overlapping squares of different sizes.
The grid achieved the flexibility Gerstner was seeking. It came from his understanding of the range of content he had to deal with, and from the ability to craft the right framework to allow for exciting but at the same time, varied layouts.