Dan Friedman Research

Dan Friedman was born in Ohio in 1945. After graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he attended both the Ulm School of Design and Schule für Gestaltung Basel, where he studied under Wolfgang Weingart and Armin Hofmann. Here, he clearly picked up the country’s hallmark emphasis on the grid and meticulous typography. In 1969 he moved back to the United States and had a very successful and interesting career before his untimely death from AIDS in 1995. He was one of the first employees at the huge design studio Pentagram and also has a large presence in the New York East Village scene in the 1980s. Friedman’s own work became more experimental, often veering into the world of sculpture and furniture design.

In the ’70s he was the epitome of success in his field, with teaching posts at Yale and positions at Anspach Grossman Portugal and Pentagram. But in 1982, deeply disenchanted, he restarted his private practice. “What I realized in the 1970s, when I was doing major corporate identity projects, is that design had become a preoccupation with what things look like rather than with what they mean.” His work always strived, taught and was, ultimately, deeply communicative. His work in the 1990s was a continuation of what he had always done, but building in momentum and speed.

Friedman was chosen as an AIGA medalist for his eccentric and revolutionary philosophy of “Radical Modernism”—a blend of Modernism archetypes and postmodern energy. Active in the realms of education, design, art, writing, and social activism, Friedman’s body of work prompted a distinct displacement of modernist design, incorporating more emotion and energy into Modernist ideals.

“I have, for many years, used my home to push modernist principles of structure and coherency to their wildest extreme, I create elegant mutations radiating with intense color and complexity in a world that is deconstructed into a goofy, ritualistic playground for daily life.”

In 1994, near the end of his life, Friedman offered this 12 point ‘radical modernist’ agenda for life and work: 

• Try to express personal, spiritual, and domestic values even if our culture continues to be dominated by corporate, marketing, and institutionalised values.
• Choose to remain progressive; don’t be regressive. Find comfort in the past only if it expands insight into the future and not just the sake of nostalgia. 
• Embrace the richness of all cultures; be inclusive instead of exclusive.
• Think of your work as a significant element in the context of a more important, transcendental purpose. 
• Use your work to become advocates of projects for the public good. 
• Attempt to become a cultural provocateur; be a leader rather than a follower
• Engage in self restraint; except the challenge of working with reduced expectations and diminished resources. 
• Avoid getting stuck in corners, such as being a servant to increasing overhead, careerism, or narrow points of view. 
• Bridge the boundaries that separate us from other creative professions and unexpected possibilities.
• Use the new technologies, but don’t be seduced into thinking that they provide answers to fundamental questions. 
• Be radical.