Who was Otto Storch?

Otto Storch, born in 1913 in Brooklyn, was a magazine art director and advertising photographer.?He died in 1999 in Manhattan.?He studied at New York University, the Art Students League and the New School for Social Research and graduated from Pratt Institute.

Storch was one of the designers that transformed and modernised American magazines. He belonged to a group of editorial and advertising designers called the New York School.?This group created page layouts based on a set of visual guides.?Storch believed that a strong idea, copy, images, and typography were integral to editorial design.

Storch also helped revive Victorian wood typefaces to add graphic impact and contrast to the printed page.

Storch started his career as a photo re-toucher at Dell Publishing and was promoted to art director responsible for designing book covers, magazines and comics. While at Dell he took night classes at the New School with Alexey Brodovitch, a well-known art director of?Harper's Bazaar?who taught him to refine his conceptual thinking and pictorial storytelling.

Mr Brodovitch encouraged Storch into magazines and he secured a position as art director of the woman's magazine?McCall's?from 1955 to 1969.?During his time there he combined new modern typefaces and studio photography into word pictures so that a headline or text type was an integrated component of the illustration rather than separated from it.?And he did this without computer assistance!

One of his notable works was "The Forty-Winks Reducing Plan,'' which featured a sleeping woman lying on top of the text that distorted around her body like a soft mattress.?The text undulates and warps along her outline and which is contrast with a good amount of whitespace between her sleeping body and the title above her.

Storch made many beautiful two-page spreads that featured desirable products.?He would place text around photographed makeup brushes and eyeliners—playfully filling the page with beauty and fascination.

After leaving McCall's in 1969 Storch opened his own studio and worked for well-known brands including American Express, Celanese, Golden Books, Sunbeam and Volkswagen.

Works

The Forty-winks Reducing Plan. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch.

Advertisement for Volkswagen by Otto Storch.

Rings on her fingers?by Otto Storch.

Sources

Otto Storch, 86; Helped Transform Magazine Design in the 50's Oct. 11, 1999 | NY Times | Steven Heller https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/11/arts/otto-storch-86-helped-transform-magazine-design-in-the-50-s.html

Otto Storch (Fine Arts, Alumnus) Pratt Website https://www.pratt.edu/the-work/gallery/mccalls-circa-1955/

Holstead, Carol E. “What’s Old Is New: The Need for Historical Inspiration in Contemporary Magazine Design.” American Periodicals 7 (1997): 73–86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20771103 .