Frank Lloyd WrightHe is considered by many the most influential

architect in modern history, but despite his enormous cultural recognition, the full extent

of his contribution to design — posters, brochures, typography, murals, book and

magazine covers — remains relatively obscure. His covers for Liberty Magazine, mural designs

for Midway Gardens, Photographic experiments, hand drawn typographic studies,

jacket designs for his own publications, including The House Beautiful, and An

Autobiography are design masterpieces.

Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, 1955. ©FLW Foundation

• From his childhood encounter with Friedrich Froebel’s educational building blocks at the 1876 Centennial Exposition to his experiments with geometric designs long before the Mondrian age to his obsession with the woodblock art of Old Japan, Wright’s inspirations, influences, and singular style evolves as his work dances across aesthetic movements like Bauhaus, Japanisme, Arts and Crafts, and De Stijl.

Magazine cover, Town and Country, July 1937.One of the designs that Wright originally proposed for Liberty, it is the only one ever published as

a magazine cover. ©FLW Foundation

Frank Lloyd Wright, 'Descriptive Geometry' class drawing, 1885.Shade and Shadow of a Surface of Revolution. Pencil and ink on paper.

LEFT: This colorful 1973 adaptation of Wright’s design is a backlit art glass mural made for the Arizona Biltmore by Taliesin Architects. ©FLW

RIGHT: Frank Lloyd Wright, Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers. Cover design for Liberty, c. 1927–1928. Presentation drawing (detail). Pencil and color pencil on tracing paper.

As Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation director Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer writes in the introduction, what Wright wrote in 1908 of architecture could well apply to his graphic design work as well:

“As for the future — the work shall grow more truly simple, more expressive with fewer lines, fewer forms; more articulate with less labor; more plastic; more fluent, although more coherent; more organic. It shall grow not only to fit more perfectly the methods and processes that are called upon to produce it, but shall further find whatever is lovely or of good repute in method or process, and idealize it with the cleanest, most virile stroke I can imagine”

Frank Lloyd Wright, presentation drawing, City by the Sea mural (south wall), Midway Gardens.Pencil, color pencil, gold ink, watercolor, and crayon on tracing paper. ©FLW Foundation

Frank Lloyd Wright, 'Kinder Symphony,' for the Avery Coonley playhouse, Riverside, Illinois, 1912.

Midway Gardens. Tavern Room, looking north to entranceway.

'The Eve of St. Agnes'Title page designed by Wright for the Auvergne Press.

“Reading, sketching, and music each played a role in shaping Wright’s character. So did hard work. Beginning when he was eleven, he worked through the late spring and summer on his uncle’s farm. Wright described the long hours and hard work as ‘adding tired to tired.’ Nevertheless, this farm labor as an ‘amateur hired hand’ fostered an everlasting appreciation of nature.”

TOP: Frank Lloyd Wright, conceptual sketch for promotional brochure, Midway Gardens. Pencil and color pencil on paper.

BOTTOM: Cover, Midway Gardens.This rare promotional pamphlet describes the facilities and their attractions and features photographs

of patrons enjoying the cosmopolitan atmosphere.

Frank Lloyd Wright, perspective of model J902. 'American System-Built Houses for the Richards Company,' 1915–1917.

Frank Lloyd Wright, 'Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers.' Rug design, 1955.Adapted from a cover for Liberty magazine, 1927–1928. Presentation drawing. Pencil and color pencil on

tracing paper

Frank Lloyd Wright, Scherzo. Rug design, 1955.Adapted from Liberty cover design. Presentation drawing: pencil and color pencil on tracing paper.

Frank Lloyd Wright, cover and dust jacket, The Disappearing City (William Farquar Payson, 1932).Wright’s abstraction of the “futile pattern” foretold the American dilemma of centralization

without planning.