Gary Anderson (Recycling)
Encyclopedia
Gary Dean Anderson is an influential graphic designer and architect. He is most well known as the designer of the recycling symbol
, one of the most readily recognisable logos in the world.
Gary Anderson's contribution to modern graphic design
has been compared to those of early pioneering modernist graphic designers such as Herbert Bayer
. His design for a symbol to embody the concept of recycling has been compared to iconic trademarks such as those for Coca-Cola
and Nike
. It has been called one of America’s “most important design icons,” it is one of the most recognizable graphic symbols in the world and has helped to encourage global recycling. In some countries, such as the UK, the symbol carries such implicit meaning that it requires government permission to be used. Although the symbol is the most widely known of his accomplishments, Anderson has also made important contributions in the areas of urban planning
and urban development.
, into a family with roots in rural Germany
, France
and Scandinavia
, and more recently in Nebraska
and the agricultural US Midwest. Midwestern forbears included members of the communal, utopian Icarian Movement
as well as supporters of the populist
progressive
politics of William Jennings Bryan
.
Gary’s father, Glen, left farming and became an electronics technician in the US Navy. As a result of his career in the military, he was re-stationed frequently to various locations throughout the Pacific Rim
, resulting in long absences from the family during Gary’s early childhood and in the family’s relocating several times. Possibly as a result of the stress accompanying these unsettled circumstances, Gary’s mother Florence was hospitalized on several occasions suffering from bipolar disorder
, periodically leaving Gary and his two sisters in the care of various relatives in Nebraska.
In the late 1950s, the family ultimately settled in North Las Vegas, Nevada
, where Glen had been stationed at Lake Mead Naval Base, engaged in work related to atomic research at the Nevada Test Site
. In 1958, shortly after joining the electronics firm of EG&G
, Glen died of complications possibly attributable to exposure to atomic radiation years before at the Bikini Atoll
nuclear test site.
, Anderson changed majors and enrolled in USC School of Architecture
, where he studied from 1966 to 1970. He relied on various scholarships — notably from the Graham Foundation, the Architectural Guild of Southern California and the American Institute of Architects
— to fund his tuition. He earned a bachelor of architecture degree, magna cum laude in 1970 and a master of urban design degree one year later in 1971.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the teaching philosophy of the USC College of Architecture and Fine Arts was influenced by the Illinois Institute of Technology
(IIT) Institute of Design. The Dean of the USC College, Crombie Taylor, was the former acting Director of the IIT Institute of Design. Consequently, the College’s architectural education, like that of IIT, was steeped in Modernism
and in particular the Bauhaus
aesthetic and the Bauhaus approach to integrating art, architecture, technology and culture. This was evident in the work of the College’s faculty, who included the building scientist, Konrad Wachsmann
, and the designer of Southern California Case Study Houses, Pierre Koenig
. Other faculty who influenced Anderson’s design aesthetic were the graphic artist John Gilchrist
, whose recommended reading included D'Arcy Thompson’s book On Growth and Form. Other readings were from Ralph Knowles
, who was an early advocate of environmentally-friendly design that prefigured more recent sustainable design and development, and Richard Berry
, the urban planner and theorist who explored with his students the relationship between design and information theory
.
Through the University’s work-study program, Anderson worked as an assistant to Crombie Taylor, preparing an exhibit of the ornamentation of the early modernist architect, Louis Sullivan
, which melded together aspects of both organic and geometric form. The curriculum at the College included numerous electives, and the administration permitted great latitude in the courses that students took. Anderson took numerous courses outside his major, including courses in sociology, economics, and business, and he returned to the USC engineering program to take a course in mathematical topology
for non-mathematicians. In this last course, Anderson would have encountered the Möbius strip, since it is a fundamental concept in the study of topology.
had raged just south of USC the summer before Anderson arrived, and he was briefly engaged with the South Central Neighborhood Design Center, an organization that had been set up to provide pro bono architectural services in distressed neighborhoods, as a means of furthering the cause of social justice. Three years previously, Rachel Carson
had published Silent Spring
, which implicated big business and industry in profiting from practices that caused irreparable environmental harm. US involvement in the Vietnam War
had steadily increased since 1959, with the deployment of combat troops in 1965.
Partly in reaction to these and other events, a youth movement was forming that questioned the established patterns of human interaction that gave rise to such problems. Among the early manifestations of this movement was a commitment to nonviolence and pacifism. It engendered, as well, a renewed interest in the stylistic aspects of culture such as were evidenced during a previous youth movement in the late 19th and early 20th Century when the Jugendstil and Art Nouveau
flourished in the applied and graphic arts. Another aspect of the youth subculture of the 1960s and ‘70s was the recreational use of psychoactive substances and psychedelic
drugs.
By the 1970s, the mixing of the youth subculture with concurrent political and social upheavals seemed to give rise to a violent counterculture
that appeared to morph out of the previously peaceful youth movement. In 1968, the Tate
/LaBianca murders were committed by the youthful Charles Manson
Family, and in 1970, the 26 year old civil rights activist Angela Davis
was implicated (although ultimately found not guilty) in the murder of a superior court judge.
(CCA) released a poster that was widely distributed to colleges and universities in the United States. Under the direction of Walter Paepcke
, the CCA had established itself as a leader in corporate graphics and design. The poster advertised a competition to design a graphic symbol which would be used on recycled paper products and which could recognize a commitment to environmental sensitivity on the part of any manufacture who was engaged in recycling. The winning symbol would be given over to the public domain
. The competition was also to honor the first Earth Day
, which was held that same year.
Anderson designed a symbol and submitted three variations of it to the competition. The alternatives actually represented Anderson’s stepwise refinement of a basic idea involving three arrows – from a more elaborate design utilizing different tones and the word “recycle”, to a simple black and white line drawing with no wording. The arrows were planar, suggesting strips of paper, but they curved and bent back upon themselves as though captured in the midst of an industrial manufacturing process, and the three arrows taken together as a continuous band formed the topological figure known as a Möbius strip.
The 500 entries to the competition were judged by designers recognized as world leaders in graphics and industrial art, including Saul Bass
, Herbert Bayer
, James Miho, Herbert Pinzke and Eliot Noyes
. The award was announced at the International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA) under the auspices of the Aspen Institute
. Anderson received a fellowship to attend the Conference.
Anderson has said that his academic experiences and the spirit of the times were primary determinates of his design; but that violence stemming from the drug-infused political radicalization of the youth movement led him to strive for a graphic approach that, while acknowledging the fluid mysticism of underground psychedelic art
associated with Haight-Ashbury, reflected restraint and balance, as well.
He has also identified more specific but diverse influences that include a variation on a popular nursery rhyme, an elementary school field trip to an industrial printing press, the Woolmark symbol, and the graphic art of M. C. Escher
, which at the time of the design competition had only recently become widely accessible in the United States.
, obtaining a diploma in social science from the Institute for English Speaking Students, a branch of the University which no longer exists. Returning from Sweden, Anderson was employed as a planner and architectural designer by Gruen Associates (formerly Victor Gruen Associates) in Los Angeles and David Jay Flood and Associates of Santa Monica, California, before moving east to accept a planning position at RTKL Associates in Baltimore
. During his tenure there, he became a registered architect. Laid off from RTKL during a recession in the mid ‘70s, Anderson found work in the Prince George’s County (Maryland) Department of Community Development, and then in the Office of University Planning at the University of Maryland
.
In 1978 he accepted a position in the School of Architecture and Planning at King Faisal University
(KFU) in Dammam
, Saudi Arabia
. At about the same time, he was accepted into the PhD program in Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University
. He spent the next seven years alternately engaged in teaching and research at KFU, where he ultimately became acting head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. He continued to work on his PhD at Hopkins, which was awarded in 1985 after he defended his thesis on socio-cultural aspects of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia that, in combination with the rise of the oil economy, determined patterns of urbanization there. While still at KFU, he worked with CH2M Hill to undertake a comprehensive socioeconomic survey, which was one of the first in Saudi Arabia.
Returning to Baltimore, Anderson was employed by STV Inc (previously Lyon Associates), an engineering, architecture, and planning firm, where he held various positions over a period of eighteen years, ultimately rising to the role of vice president in charge of federal planning projects. As a result of his work there, he was awarded the national Urbahn Prize for Architecture by the Society of American Military Engineers
(SAME), a distinction which he shares with other notables such as Harold Adams
, the retired CEO of RTKL. Anderson was also inducted in the Academy of Fellows of SAME.
Concurrent with his work in government-related planning, Anderson held an adjunct faculty position in the Edward St John Department of Real Estate (in the Carey Business School
at Johns Hopkins). In this capacity he taught courses and wrote on the role of design and planning in private sector development, and he became a member of the executive committee of the Urban Land Institute
(ULI), Baltimore District Council. In 2005 he became a Fulbright Senior Specialist, and was invited by the Helsinki University of Technology
to lecture and advise graduate students on their theses in the Faculty for Engineering and Architecture and the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies.
It was not until the 1990s that the connection between Anderson and the symbol began to be better established, with the publication of an article by Philip B. Meggs in the trade journal Print, which credited Anderson with the design and showed that Anderson’s symbol represents a modern expression of Bauhaus principles, a view which was reinforced subsequently by Peder Anker.
Recycling symbol
The universal recycling symbol or in Unicode) is an internationally recognized symbol used to designate recyclable materials. It is composed of three mutually chasing arrows that form a Möbius strip ....
, one of the most readily recognisable logos in the world.
Gary Anderson's contribution to modern graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
has been compared to those of early pioneering modernist graphic designers such as Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer was an Austrian American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental & interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus and was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's...
. His design for a symbol to embody the concept of recycling has been compared to iconic trademarks such as those for Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
and Nike
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
. It has been called one of America’s “most important design icons,” it is one of the most recognizable graphic symbols in the world and has helped to encourage global recycling. In some countries, such as the UK, the symbol carries such implicit meaning that it requires government permission to be used. Although the symbol is the most widely known of his accomplishments, Anderson has also made important contributions in the areas of urban planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
and urban development.
Family background
Gary Anderson was born in 1947 in Honolulu, HawaiiHawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, into a family with roots in rural Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
, and more recently in Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
and the agricultural US Midwest. Midwestern forbears included members of the communal, utopian Icarian Movement
Icarians
The Icarians were a French utopian movement, founded by Étienne Cabet, who led his followers to America where they established a group of egalitarian communes during the period from 1848 through 1898.-European roots:Étienne Cabet was born in France in 1788...
as well as supporters of the populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
politics of William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
.
Gary’s father, Glen, left farming and became an electronics technician in the US Navy. As a result of his career in the military, he was re-stationed frequently to various locations throughout the Pacific Rim
Pacific Rim
The Pacific Rim refers to places around the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The term "Pacific Basin" includes the Pacific Rim and islands in the Pacific Ocean...
, resulting in long absences from the family during Gary’s early childhood and in the family’s relocating several times. Possibly as a result of the stress accompanying these unsettled circumstances, Gary’s mother Florence was hospitalized on several occasions suffering from bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...
, periodically leaving Gary and his two sisters in the care of various relatives in Nebraska.
In the late 1950s, the family ultimately settled in North Las Vegas, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, where Glen had been stationed at Lake Mead Naval Base, engaged in work related to atomic research at the Nevada Test Site
Nevada Test Site
The Nevada National Security Site , previously the Nevada Test Site , is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the city of Las Vegas...
. In 1958, shortly after joining the electronics firm of EG&G
EG&G
EG&G, formally known as Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc., is a United States national defense contractor and provider of management and technical services. The company was involved in contracting services to the United States government during World War II, and conducted weapons research and...
, Glen died of complications possibly attributable to exposure to atomic radiation years before at the Bikini Atoll
Bikini Atoll
Bikini Atoll is an atoll, listed as a World Heritage Site, in the Micronesian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, part of Republic of the Marshall Islands....
nuclear test site.
Academic background
Gary attended public schools and graduated from high school in the Las Vegas Valley. In 1966, after completing one year in the engineering program at the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, Anderson changed majors and enrolled in USC School of Architecture
USC School of Architecture
The USC School of Architecture is the architecture school at the University of Southern California. It is one of USC's 17 professional schools, offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of architecture, civil engineering, landscape architecture and historic preservation...
, where he studied from 1966 to 1970. He relied on various scholarships — notably from the Graham Foundation, the Architectural Guild of Southern California and the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
— to fund his tuition. He earned a bachelor of architecture degree, magna cum laude in 1970 and a master of urban design degree one year later in 1971.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the teaching philosophy of the USC College of Architecture and Fine Arts was influenced by the Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
(IIT) Institute of Design. The Dean of the USC College, Crombie Taylor, was the former acting Director of the IIT Institute of Design. Consequently, the College’s architectural education, like that of IIT, was steeped in Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and in particular the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
aesthetic and the Bauhaus approach to integrating art, architecture, technology and culture. This was evident in the work of the College’s faculty, who included the building scientist, Konrad Wachsmann
Konrad Wachsmann
Konrad Wachsmann was a German modernist architect...
, and the designer of Southern California Case Study Houses, Pierre Koenig
Pierre Koenig
Pierre Koenig was an American architect.Born in San Francisco, he received his B.Arch. in 1952 from the University of Southern California. Koenig apprenticed under Raphael Soriano, among others, and began private practice in 1952. Koenig practiced mainly on the west coast and was most notable for...
. Other faculty who influenced Anderson’s design aesthetic were the graphic artist John Gilchrist
John Gilchrist
John Gilchrist may refer to:*John Gilchrist , American basketball player*John Gilchrist , Canadian politician*John Gilchrist , Scottish footballer...
, whose recommended reading included D'Arcy Thompson’s book On Growth and Form. Other readings were from Ralph Knowles
Ralph Knowles
Ralph Knowles is a class action attorney, best known for winning the Dow Corning breast implant case with damages of $4+ billion....
, who was an early advocate of environmentally-friendly design that prefigured more recent sustainable design and development, and Richard Berry
Richard Berry
Richard Berry was an African American singer, songwriter and musician, who performed with many Los Angeles doo-wop and close harmony groups in the 1950s, including The Flairs and The Robins....
, the urban planner and theorist who explored with his students the relationship between design and information theory
Information theory
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
.
Through the University’s work-study program, Anderson worked as an assistant to Crombie Taylor, preparing an exhibit of the ornamentation of the early modernist architect, Louis Sullivan
Louis Sullivan
Louis Henri Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism" He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an...
, which melded together aspects of both organic and geometric form. The curriculum at the College included numerous electives, and the administration permitted great latitude in the courses that students took. Anderson took numerous courses outside his major, including courses in sociology, economics, and business, and he returned to the USC engineering program to take a course in mathematical topology
Topology
Topology is a major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing...
for non-mathematicians. In this last course, Anderson would have encountered the Möbius strip, since it is a fundamental concept in the study of topology.
Social and cultural influences
During this time the world outside the university was in tumult which was reflected by events on campus. The Watts RiotsWatts Riots
The Watts Riots or the Watts Rebellion was a civil disturbance in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The 5-day riot resulted in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, and 3,438 arrests...
had raged just south of USC the summer before Anderson arrived, and he was briefly engaged with the South Central Neighborhood Design Center, an organization that had been set up to provide pro bono architectural services in distressed neighborhoods, as a means of furthering the cause of social justice. Three years previously, Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement....
had published Silent Spring
Silent Spring
Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement....
, which implicated big business and industry in profiting from practices that caused irreparable environmental harm. US involvement in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
had steadily increased since 1959, with the deployment of combat troops in 1965.
Partly in reaction to these and other events, a youth movement was forming that questioned the established patterns of human interaction that gave rise to such problems. Among the early manifestations of this movement was a commitment to nonviolence and pacifism. It engendered, as well, a renewed interest in the stylistic aspects of culture such as were evidenced during a previous youth movement in the late 19th and early 20th Century when the Jugendstil and Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
flourished in the applied and graphic arts. Another aspect of the youth subculture of the 1960s and ‘70s was the recreational use of psychoactive substances and psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
drugs.
By the 1970s, the mixing of the youth subculture with concurrent political and social upheavals seemed to give rise to a violent counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
that appeared to morph out of the previously peaceful youth movement. In 1968, the Tate
Sharon Tate
Sharon Marie Tate was an American actress. During the 1960s she played small television roles before appearing in several films. After receiving positive reviews for her comedic performances, she was hailed as one of Hollywood's promising newcomers and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for...
/LaBianca murders were committed by the youthful Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
Family, and in 1970, the 26 year old civil rights activist Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
was implicated (although ultimately found not guilty) in the murder of a superior court judge.
Recycling design competition
In 1970, the Container Corporation of AmericaContainer Corporation of America
Container Corporation of America was founded in 1926 and manufactures corrugated boxes. In 1968 CCA merged with Montgomery Ward & Company, Inc., in a move that was largely intended to thwart takeover bids against either company. MARCOR maintained separate management for the operations of each...
(CCA) released a poster that was widely distributed to colleges and universities in the United States. Under the direction of Walter Paepcke
Walter Paepcke
Walter Paepcke was a U.S. industrialist and philanthropist prominent in the middle-20th century.-Biography:A longtime executive of the Chicago-based Container Corporation of America, Paepcke is best noted for his founding of the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Skiing Company in the early 1950s, both...
, the CCA had established itself as a leader in corporate graphics and design. The poster advertised a competition to design a graphic symbol which would be used on recycled paper products and which could recognize a commitment to environmental sensitivity on the part of any manufacture who was engaged in recycling. The winning symbol would be given over to the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. The competition was also to honor the first Earth Day
Earth Day
Earth Day is a day that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. The first Proclamation of Earth Day was by San Francisco, the...
, which was held that same year.
Anderson designed a symbol and submitted three variations of it to the competition. The alternatives actually represented Anderson’s stepwise refinement of a basic idea involving three arrows – from a more elaborate design utilizing different tones and the word “recycle”, to a simple black and white line drawing with no wording. The arrows were planar, suggesting strips of paper, but they curved and bent back upon themselves as though captured in the midst of an industrial manufacturing process, and the three arrows taken together as a continuous band formed the topological figure known as a Möbius strip.
The 500 entries to the competition were judged by designers recognized as world leaders in graphics and industrial art, including Saul Bass
Saul Bass
Saul Bass was a Jewish-American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences....
, Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer was an Austrian American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental & interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus and was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's...
, James Miho, Herbert Pinzke and Eliot Noyes
Eliot Noyes
Eliot Fette Noyes was a Harvard-trained American architect and industrial designer, who worked on projects for IBM, most famously the IBM Selectric typewriter and the IBM Aerospace Research Center in Los Angeles, California...
. The award was announced at the International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA) under the auspices of the Aspen Institute
Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1950 as the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. The organization is dedicated to "fostering enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues." The...
. Anderson received a fellowship to attend the Conference.
Anderson has said that his academic experiences and the spirit of the times were primary determinates of his design; but that violence stemming from the drug-infused political radicalization of the youth movement led him to strive for a graphic approach that, while acknowledging the fluid mysticism of underground psychedelic art
Psychedelic art
Psychedelic art is any kind of visual artwork inspired by psychedelic experiences induced by drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. The word "psychedelic" "mind manifesting". By that definition all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic"...
associated with Haight-Ashbury, reflected restraint and balance, as well.
He has also identified more specific but diverse influences that include a variation on a popular nursery rhyme, an elementary school field trip to an industrial printing press, the Woolmark symbol, and the graphic art of M. C. Escher
M. C. Escher
Maurits Cornelis Escher , usually referred to as M. C. Escher , was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints...
, which at the time of the design competition had only recently become widely accessible in the United States.
Further work
Anderson used his $2,500 in prize money to study for a year at the University of Stockholm, SwedenSweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, obtaining a diploma in social science from the Institute for English Speaking Students, a branch of the University which no longer exists. Returning from Sweden, Anderson was employed as a planner and architectural designer by Gruen Associates (formerly Victor Gruen Associates) in Los Angeles and David Jay Flood and Associates of Santa Monica, California, before moving east to accept a planning position at RTKL Associates in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
. During his tenure there, he became a registered architect. Laid off from RTKL during a recession in the mid ‘70s, Anderson found work in the Prince George’s County (Maryland) Department of Community Development, and then in the Office of University Planning at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
.
In 1978 he accepted a position in the School of Architecture and Planning at King Faisal University
King Faisal University
King Faisal University is a public university with the main campuse in the city of Hofuf in Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia founded in 1975. KFU was initially established with four colleges: two in Dammam and the other two in Al-Hasa.-History:...
(KFU) in Dammam
Dammam
Dammam is the capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, the most oil-rich region in the world. The judicial and administrative bodies of the province and several government departments are located in the city. Dammam is the largest city in the Eastern Province and third largest in Saudi...
, Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
. At about the same time, he was accepted into the PhD program in Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
. He spent the next seven years alternately engaged in teaching and research at KFU, where he ultimately became acting head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. He continued to work on his PhD at Hopkins, which was awarded in 1985 after he defended his thesis on socio-cultural aspects of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia that, in combination with the rise of the oil economy, determined patterns of urbanization there. While still at KFU, he worked with CH2M Hill to undertake a comprehensive socioeconomic survey, which was one of the first in Saudi Arabia.
Returning to Baltimore, Anderson was employed by STV Inc (previously Lyon Associates), an engineering, architecture, and planning firm, where he held various positions over a period of eighteen years, ultimately rising to the role of vice president in charge of federal planning projects. As a result of his work there, he was awarded the national Urbahn Prize for Architecture by the Society of American Military Engineers
Society of American Military Engineers
The Society of American Military Engineers is an organization for military engineering professionals. According to its , SAME was formed “in the interest of National Defense… bringing together all phases of U.S...
(SAME), a distinction which he shares with other notables such as Harold Adams
Harold Adams
Harold Adams is a prominent tenor saxophonist from the Baltimore jazz scene. He is the leader of the Harold Adams Quartet, and a member of the group Moon August.-References:...
, the retired CEO of RTKL. Anderson was also inducted in the Academy of Fellows of SAME.
Concurrent with his work in government-related planning, Anderson held an adjunct faculty position in the Edward St John Department of Real Estate (in the Carey Business School
Carey Business School
The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, also referred to as Carey Business School or JHCBS, is one of the academic schools of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland...
at Johns Hopkins). In this capacity he taught courses and wrote on the role of design and planning in private sector development, and he became a member of the executive committee of the Urban Land Institute
Urban Land Institute
The Urban Land Institute, or ULI, is a non-profit research and education organization with offices in Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, and London...
(ULI), Baltimore District Council. In 2005 he became a Fulbright Senior Specialist, and was invited by the Helsinki University of Technology
Helsinki University of Technology
Aalto University School of Science and Technology , was the temporary name for Helsinki University of Technology during the process of forming the Aalto University...
to lecture and advise graduate students on their theses in the Faculty for Engineering and Architecture and the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies.
Recognition
Because he had turned his attention to pursuits not directly related to graphic design following creation of the recycling symbol, and because he lived abroad for extended periods of time, Anderson was not always recognized as the designer of the recycling symbol. Following the original press releases and initial coverage in trade publications, the design was sometimes erroneously attributed to the head of the Container Corporation’s graphics department. There may have been an attempt to have the symbol copyrighted, despite the entry rules for the original competition which would have prohibited this.It was not until the 1990s that the connection between Anderson and the symbol began to be better established, with the publication of an article by Philip B. Meggs in the trade journal Print, which credited Anderson with the design and showed that Anderson’s symbol represents a modern expression of Bauhaus principles, a view which was reinforced subsequently by Peder Anker.