Biography
Editorial designer, posters, design consultant. Born 2 January 1909 in Dessau. 1927-30: studied at Dessau Bauhaus: teachers included Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee. 1930: assistant to Piet Zwart. 1933: in Paris as assistant to Jean Carlu. 1934-6: has his own advertising agency in Paris, Omnium Graphique; also art director of Formes. 1945-8: co-editor and Paris correspondent of the Swiss art journal Graphis; co-director of Editions Parallèles. 1948: founder, with the publisher Zollikofer, St Gallen, Switzerland, and editor of International Poster Annual. 1949: moved to USA; freelance designer. 1951: co-editor of Fortune magazine. 1955: designed covers for Modern Packaging. 1962: assistant art director of Fortune; 1962-74: art director of Fortune (for which he created 79 covers). From 1974: taught at Parsons School of Design, NYC. Allner had been design consultant to Johnson & Johnson; designer for numerous corporations including Container Corporation of America, IBM, Museum of Modern Art. Wrote on poster art. Died in New York City 21 July 2006, age 97. ‘[He] introduced a European Modernist typographic sensibility to American magazine design…’. (Steven Heller)
- A comprehensive reference is in AKL, 1992.
Writings by
- WWGA, 1962.
Writings about
- Posters, New York: Reinhold, 1952
- , ‘Walter H. Allner, New York’, Gg, Dec. 1954, pp. 2-5
- brief biography, Gg, June 1955, p. 54
- FOS, 1998
- , obituary, New York Times, 24 July 2006.
Exhibitions
- Bauhaus Dessau, 1989.