‘As a Practitioner and an Historian of His Art’ by Alvin Eisenman in Ray Nash and the Graphic Workshop at Dartmouth College.

1987

Dartmouth Book Arts Workshop

Hanover, New Hampshire, The Friends of the Dartmouth Library

Ray Nash was mentor to Alvin Eisenman (1921-2013), an American graphic designer and educator well-known for founding the Yale School of Art’s graduate programme in graphic design. Eisenman was a Dartmouth College undergraduate who was influenced by Nash and his professed functionalism towards design. Eisenman wrote that Nash was ‘a very wily teacher who knew how to put to good use the passing enthusiasm of a lazy student!’ While at Yale Eisenman recruited design masters like Alvin Lustig and Herbert Matter, and had among his students Garry Trudeau, the author of the comic strip Doonesbury, and Min Wang, who designed graphics for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Here are Eisenman’s reflections on Nash and Dartmouth.