The Push Pin Almanack

The Push Pin almanac (New York: Push Pin Studios, 1953-1955). Graphic Arts collection GAX 2009-2161N

"Seymour [Chwast] and I designed a four-page parody of an old-time almanac, with our own predictions and invented statistics," writes Edward Sorel in the catalogue for his current retrospective. "Seymour illustrated the first issue with woodcuts, and I the second with that dumb two dimensional style I was still a prisoner of. ...We named it The Push Pin Almanack, mailed it to a few hundred art directors, and Seymour picked up a few jobs. ...we decided to start our own studio. With an elegant business card no one would know just how seedy the Push Pin studio really was."

The almanack lasted for fifteen issues, with the cover note: "The choicest morsels of essential information gathered for those persons in the graphic arts." According to Steven Heller, "the type-setting and the printing of three thousand copies were basically done at cost in exchange for the free design of ... advertisements that ran in each edition." Although Sorel left after a short time, the influential Push Pin Studios lasted through the 1970s.