Looking at the modernism of the 1950's in context

I have recently been reading the book American Modernism – Graphic Design 1920s to 1960s; in which to get an idea of context of the decade of the 1950's. I have been reading through and it has been throwing countless names and advertisements at me—some of which I knew and some that came as a surprise to me.

The book covers artists that were prevalent in the era, as well as economic movements and political stances. It does little to explain these different contextual things, but I have a small knowledge of them already so it's a lot easier to expand on them. It brings to light the Detroit motorcar industry boom, the post-war economy and the movement in politics with civil rights acts.

As it stands, American in the 1950's was crawling with modernism and it's quite often known as the point of great modernism before post-modernism began. In the same decade you have Rosa Park's bus strike, as you have the beat poets and be-bop jazz, all the while inspiring the freedom in Jackson Pollock's abstract art; reflected by the installations and sculptures of Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg.

In the book, they refer to the the 50's as the 'calm before the storm' because everything was moving but it hadn't quite exploded yet. Politics became a battle between liberalism and xenophobic democrats; making everything quite uneasy, especially with the surge in economy from the breakdown of the war. It was also a turning point for Graphic Design—where we no longer just setting type in layouts, they were using typography to support and image like an illustration rather than just a reading context. Graphic Design's became hired to work in-house with huge companies and their points became valid in huge board meetings and advertisement sectors.

The 50's was the era of the 'corporate identity' with the likes of Paul Rand designing not only just a logo for IBM but a whole instruction manual on how they should, run, structure and implement their brand; there was also the CBS logo, which set the whole branding system alight across america, with it's innovation and (of course) modernism.

Along with the designers, artists I've already mentioned I have found a few more that I really did like and found to be contextually relevant.

• Gene Federico
• Herbert Bayer
• Cipe Pineles
• Lester Beall
• William Golden
• Otto Storch