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ED

Fella was born in 1938. His parents had come to the United States from Europe

and settled in the Detroit area. Like most immigrants, they adapted to their new

surroundings well enough but never fully assimilated. His mother came from a family

of artists and was always working on various craft projects. His father was employed as an

autoworker, but used his free time to sculpt. Fella inherited their artistic temperament. He re-

members drawing since early childhood. For this, his mother called him the easiest of her five

kids. “All we had to do was give you a pencil, and you’d be gone all day,” she later told him.

D

ETROIT BAUHAUS Striving to give their son the best possible education, his father en-

rolled him in a local college preparatory school. The steady diet of math, Latin, and

theology classes didn’t sit well with Fella, and his grades reflected it. Art and drawing were

more to his liking, so in 1955, his father placed him at Cass Technical High School, a trade

school. “I had to be dragged kicking and screaming, but once I was there I immediately felt at

home.” He still flunked English.

At Cass, Fella received “a Bauhaus model of high school design education”—a thorough trade

education complemented by extended trips into twentieth-century art history. He trained

extensively in the techniques of the day, leaving him with lettering, illustration, and production

skills that would form the basis of both his commercial career and his later personal work.

After thirty years of working for the Detroit advertising machine

as an illustrator and layout man, Ed Fella went back to school

and got his MFA. When he started teaching, he suddenly realized

that he had become the hot new thing on the design scene—

at the tender age of fourty-nine. Teaching at the California Institute

of the Arts allowed him to become, in his own words,

an exit-level designer.

1965 1987

NOW

FELLA

EDWA

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Job no:81378-5 Title : RP_All Access (New PB Verdions) Client : Pro-vision

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175 Size : 203.2(w)254(h)mm Co : M6 (mac J)

Dept : DTP D/O : 22.10.05 (Job no:000000 D/O : 00.00.04 Co: CM0)

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1965

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1967

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1969

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1970

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1972

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1973

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1975

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1979 19801978

1915 Chevrolet, illustration

(above, left) This rendering of an

early Chevrolet turned into a series

of more than fifty cars used to

illustrate the book The Chevy Story.

ChevyVision 70, promotional

display ( above, middle) This display

shows the tongue-in-cheek Art

Deco–inspired typography Fella often

used during this phase of his career.

Charlie Rasch, Ragtime Down

the Line, record sleeve (detail)

(far left) This piece of 1967

lettering clearly foreshadows

Fella’s later interest in irregular

vernacular letterforms.

Celebrating the Moon Landing,

poster ( near left) This announce-

ment of the Apollo 11 moon landing

was a breakthrough for Fella.

It was the first time he realized

that he could self-publish his work

by getting it printed affordably.

Car, illustration (above right) Fella

drew this cartoon car for an article

in Motortrend magazine in 1972.

“IT WAS ALL GOOD, HARDCORE MODERNISM, AND I LOVED IT. BUT AS FOR THE PREVAILING MODERNISM IN DESIGN,

I WANTED SOMETHING DIFFERENT AND BEGAN

LOOKING TO HISTORICISM AND THE VERNACULAR.”

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