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In 1948, the art director and editor Frank Zachary (later Editor-in-Chief of Town and Country magazine) conceived of creating a magazine focused solely on art and design. With his friend George Rosenthal, head of Cincinnati-based printing company Zebra Press, Zachary approached the already legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch (American, born Russia. 1898–1971) with the proposal. Brodovitch had served as Art Director of Harper’s Bazaar since 1934 and was recognized as a major creative force in magazine publishing. Known for his cinematic use of photography, dynamic typography, and generous use of white space—as well as his collaboration with transplanted members of the European avant-garde such as Erwin Blumenfeld—Brodovitch’s radical visual aesthetics had met with broad success among designers and the American public alike. Zachary’s and Rosenthal’s magazine was to be self-funded, and thus free of advertising and commercial imperatives. It was to spare no expense on paper quality and printing techniques, and Brodovitch was to have complete editorial and creative control over his choice of contents, artists, and photographers. With its broad variety of content, innovative design, and collapsing of distinctions between the distinguished work of recognized artists and the ordinary design of the American vernacular, Portfolio stood out among contemporary American magazines, then as it does now. Articles included, for example, a feature on department store wrapping paper (complete with an insert of sample sheets); a six-page foldout photo essay on Philadelphia’s annual Mummers Parade, shot by several of Brodovitch’s photography students from his Design Laboratory workshop at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts); and a twenty-two page story on calligraphy. Despite discontinuing after only three issues due to its oversized budget and high production costs, Portfolio is widely considered by design historians to be a milestone of magazine design.
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