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Philip B Meggs

Philip Baxter Meggs was an American graphic designer, professor, historian and author known for his definitive book "History of Graphic Design". He was considered one of the most important design historians since Nikolaus Pevsner for publishing one of the first overviews of graphic design history that extended beyond the 19th and 20th centuries. Meggs had a career as a designer, professor where he doubled enrollment in the graphic design program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author publishing over a dozen books and 100 articles on design and typography. He received several awards including an AIGA medal for his significant contributions to the field.

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623 views2 pages

Philip B Meggs

Philip Baxter Meggs was an American graphic designer, professor, historian and author known for his definitive book "History of Graphic Design". He was considered one of the most important design historians since Nikolaus Pevsner for publishing one of the first overviews of graphic design history that extended beyond the 19th and 20th centuries. Meggs had a career as a designer, professor where he doubled enrollment in the graphic design program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author publishing over a dozen books and 100 articles on design and typography. He received several awards including an AIGA medal for his significant contributions to the field.

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Pauli Rufiner
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Philip B.

Meggs
Philip Baxter Meggs (19422002) was an American graphic designer, professor, historian
and author of books on graphic design. His book History of Graphic Design is a definitive,
standard read for the study of graphic design.
He has been called the most important historian of design since Nikolaus Pevsner (19021983).[citation needed] In contrast to Pevsner, he published a history of graphic design that went
beyond the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the first educators to create an overview
of the history of graphic design that did not depend exclusively on the traditional structure of
the history of the art, Meggs believed that graphic design would need to acquire an adequate
understanding of the past and its relation with art

Life and early career[edit]


Meggs was born on May 30, 1942 in Newberry, South Carolina,[1] to Wallace Nat Meggs and
Elizabeth Pruitt Meggs. He had a twin brother, William Joel Meggs.
At 16 years of age he practiced typesetting metal type in the afternoons after school[1] and
enjoyed drawing and painting.[2]
He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and
an honorary doctorate from Massachusetts College of Art.
In 1964 he married his college girlfriend, Libby Phillips, an art director and illustrator.[2] They
had two children, Andrew Meggs and Elizabeth Meggs.

Career[edit]
Post-college, Meggs worked as a senior designer at Reynolds Metals and then art director
at A.H. Robins Pharmaceuticals.[1]
In 1968, he began teaching in the Communication Arts and Design Department at Virginia
Commonwealth University, chairing the department from 1974 to 1987, during which time
enrollment doubled and the program rose to national prominence.[1] In addition to his teaching
at VCU, he served as visiting faculty at Syracuse University and the National College of Art and
Design, Dublin.
Inspired by a lack of research and instructive materials on design history, theory and creative
methods, Meggs started teaching a history of graphic design course in 1974. His efforts to
record and understand the history of this profession lead him to publish his first book, A History
of Graphic Design, in 1983.[1]
While a professor at VCU he authored more than a dozen books and 150 articles and papers
on design and typography,[2] including a section on graphic design in theEncyclopdia
Britannica. Meggs attended many conferences and was said by Steven Heller to have built a
monument to graphic designs legacy.[1] He was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame

and received its Educator's Award for lifetime achievement and significantly shaping the future
of the fields of graphic design education and writing.
He died after a long battle with leukemia on November 24, 2002 at the age of 60 and was
buried at Dale Memorial Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

Awards[edit]

1983 Association of American Publishers: excellence in publishing

1995 VCU: Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Service

2004 AIGA: Medalist

Selected bibliography[edit]

1983 A History of Graphic Design. (1st edition) Van Nostrand Reinhold

1991 A History of Graphic Design. (2nd edition) Van Nostrand Reinhold

1992 Type and Image: The Language of Graphic Design. Van Nostrand Reinhold

1993 Typographic Design: Form and Communication. for Philip B. Meggs and Rob
Carter ISBN 0-442-00758-2

1998 A History of Graphic Design. (3rd edition) John Wiley & Sons ISBN 978-0-47129198-5

2005 Meggs' History of Graphic Design. (4th edition) Ed. Wiley. Revised by Alston W.
Purvis

2011 Meggs' History of Graphic Design (5th edition) John Wiley & Sons Revised by Alston
W. Purvis, ISBN 9780470168738

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