A Brief Intro to 1920s Design

The art and design movements that shaped the roaring 20s

BY ZOË MEYER

Content warning: this is some niche nerd shit.

The 1920s was a time of growing wealth and prosperity—especially in the world of design. Everything from typography to architecture was embellished with fancy linear designs and coated with gold and silver decorations.

The Chrysler Building in New York is my favorite example of Art Deco design. The radial metal triangles that make up the pointed layers of the top of the building resemble a sun, shining out over the city with prosperity and life. The inside of the building is equally as stunning, hosting marbled walls and geometric elevators with gold embossing. (Have I been? No. Have I taken multiple 3D online tours? Yes.)

The Art Deco era is also a wonderful time for typography nerds such as myself. The elegant fonts that were popular at the time have held up for over a century and can still be seen today in logo branding, packaging, and poster design. The special thing about Art Deco fonts is the geometric shapes that are used throughout the design, and the way many fonts play with thick and thin lines, and the x-height levels of fonts. If you are not a weirdo like myself who spends their free time critiquing logo fonts and sign postings for their bad typography and are blessed to not know what the x-height of a font is, I will do my best to explain it quickly with no visuals: remember drawing letters as a kid? There would be a top and bottom line for where the letters started and stopped, and a dashed middle line where the humps and middle lines of letters rested. This is the x-height. For example the middle bar on a capital letter E can be raised or lowered depending on the designer’s choice; the higher it is, the more Art Deco it appears.

I designed this magazine here to look Art Deco. The typography, borders, colors, and overall style are here to reflect the heights of the 1920s. To the designers of the Art Deco era, be proud; 100 years later and there are still nerds such as myself geeking over your typography and architecture.