Abstract
In 1947, Czech designer Ladislav Sutnar and Danish architect Knud Lönberg-Holm published three articles in Interiors magazine introducing their theories of modern visual communication to the professional design community in the United States. These articles, subsequently released together as Designing Information, were informed by the authors’ work at Sweet's Catalog Service, a dominant publisher of industrial catalogs at the time. At Sweet's, Lönberg-Holm and Sutnar developed standards for product information centered on the concept of “visual flow.” This article examines vision and flow in Designing Information, analyzing how the authors applied ideas from diverse realms of midcentury discourse—including visual education, Gestalt, and Behaviorist psychologies—to the context of American business and industry.