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Chairman: Rolf Fehlbaum, a new book designed by Tibor Kalman (courtesy Chalkie Davies) |
| Kalman and co-designer Kim Mayley stuffedChairman with 650 pictures of Fehlbaum's favorite people and things. by Craig Kellogg After Rolf Fehlbaum took over Vitra two decades ago, the furniture company became something of a corporate counterculture. As CEO, he befriended avant-garde designers, adding chairs by Philippe Starck, Klaus-Achim Heine, and Coop Himmelblau to Vitra's line. Little wonder they like him: He "believes that 'the designer is always right' " and that "the purpose of industry is to fund culture and social progress," according to gold-foil lettering stamped on the back cover of Chairman: Rolf Fehlbaum (Lars Müller Publishers/Princeton Architectural Press). Designed by Fehlbaum's old friend Tibor Kalman, the founding editor of Colors magazine, the chunky little picture book is a suitably unorthodox biography of the man whose parents started Vitra by manufacturing Eames chairs in their factory near Basel, Switzerland. Kalman and codesigner Kim Maley stuffed Chairman with 650 pictures of Fehlbaum's favorite people and things--often as full-bleed images running right off the page. They included Fehlbaum's horn-rimmed spectacles, his signature bottle of Corona beer, a trio of Beijing acrobats standing on their heads, a pair of neatly pressed periwinkle boxer shorts, and, of course, pictures of the Vitra chair collection installed in the factory's Frank Gehry--designed museum. But Kalman has kept text to a minimum: short sentences of kindergarten words (chosen so that all of Europe could read them without translation) function like title cards in a silent film. Kalman, who heads up his own New York graphic design firm, M & Co., calls his work uncommercial. Nevertheless, the book (published in the U. S. in March) has been flying off store shelves since it was released in Europe last November. That's appropriate, according to the designer, because shelves are the wrong place for an object like this. Instead, he recommends putting it "on your mantel, on your head," or even using it "as a doorstop." |
Keywords:
Rolf Fehlbaum, Vitra, books, Tibor Kalman
