{{Short description|American design historian|bot=PearBOT 5}} {{Use mdy dates|date=August 2022}} {{BLP sources|date=June 2017}} '''Mel Byars''' (born in Columbia, South Carolina) is an American design historian.
==Biography== The earliest award he received a small trophy at age thirteen for a school-newspaper piece. Two years later he was granted further recognition in a poetry contest.{{cn|date=September 2025}}
Previously to The New School’s graduate curriculum of School of Media Studies, he studied journalism in the late 1950s at the University of South Carolina.<ref>List of University of South Carolina people</ref><ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=https://www.dailygamecock.com/article/2017/01/psychedelic-design|title='Psychedelic Design' exhibit at CMA explores rock poster revolution of '60s|website='Psychedelic Design' exhibit at CMA explores rock-poster revolution of 1960s - The Daily Gamecock newspaper at University of South Carolina|access-date=18 September 2023}}</ref> and subsequently settled in New York City.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.haaretz.com/burnishing-the-furnishings-1.129259|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180111052719/https://www.haaretz.com/burnishing-the-furnishings-1.129259|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 11, 2018|title = Burnishing the Furnishings|newspaper = Haaretz}}</ref>
His first professional employment was as a book designer of a large number of titles for McGraw-Hill in New York City, including the format General McArthur’s autobiography and 888-page Warren Commission report of the John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Byars eventually became active as an art director or creative director for a number of publishers, including a group of professional magazines at Bill Publications in the late 1960s, after Prentice-Hall and for advertising agencies] such as Leber Katz Partners (subsumed into Foote, Cone & Belding, the world's second oldest advertising agency, founded 1873). In the early 1980s, he studied anthropology under Stanley Diamond (1921–1991) in the master's-degree program of The New School for Social Research. And, previously there, he was enrolled in the School of Media Studies.
A decade later, Byars turned to the history of applied art/industrial design and served as the archivist and organizer of the Thérèse Bonney Photography Collection (images of 1925-35 French decorative arts and other subjects) in New York's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and has been a major donor of 20th-century objects to the museum's permanent collection.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/people/18040939/|title = Mel Byars | People | Collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum}}</ref> He has made other donations to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague (Uměleckoprůmyslová museum v Praze),<ref name="auto"/> Israel Museum,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://museum.imj.org.il/imagine/galleries/viewItemE.asp?case=20&itemNum=397501|title = Collections | the Israel Museum, Jerusalem}}</ref> Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and Columbia Museum of Art.<ref name="auto"/>
Byars has taught at Pratt Institute and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and Holon Institute of Technology in Israel<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.360doc.com/content/16/0131/12/14979747_531847797.shtml|title = 创造力在边缘：传统工艺、地方资源与可持续设计之路}}</ref> and at others as well as lectured widely<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://bisprofiles.com/fl/arango-design-foundation-758712|title=Arango Design Foundation, Inc., Miami, FL|website=bisprofiles.com|accessdate=18 September 2023}}</ref> while remaining active in the advertising sector. From 2017 to 2019, he wrote essays on a wide range of subjects for ''Elephant'' art and culture magazine.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://elephant.art/can-we-start-over-again/|title=Exhausted|date=5 June 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://elephant.art/can-we-start-over-again-2/|title = Read, Tear and Wipe|date = 13 August 2017}}</ref>
He retired in 2015 when in his 80s.{{cn|date=April 2025}}
==Awards/works==
Byars's most significant work is the second edition (2004) of ''The Design Encyclopedia'', which won the Besterman/McColvin Gold Medal for the best reference book of 2004 from the British Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/information-services/awards/pages/archive.aspx |title=Archived copy |website=www.cilip.org.uk |access-date=12 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120715091600/http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/information-services/awards/pages/archive.aspx |archive-date=15 July 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>Kathryn Beecroft, compiler. ''CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Yearbook 2004-2005'', London, 2005.</ref> When active in graphic design earlier in his career, he won a number of awards, including from the Art Directors Club of New York and had works published in various books such as ''100 Years of Dance Posters''<ref>Walter Terry and Jack Rennert, ''100 Years of Dance Posters'', New York: Darien House, 1975</ref> and ''Dance Posters''.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/danceposters0000luge Dance Posters] New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1979.</ref>
In addition to ''The Design Encyclopedia'', other literary works include more than a dozen books, essays for various design-exhibition catalogs, book introductions and articles for ''I.D.'', ''Beaux Arts'', ''Clear'', ''Echoes'', ''Graphis'',<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.graphis.com/archives/publication/issue-318/|title=Graphis Issue 318|website=graphis.com}}</ref> ''form'', and other periodicals. A number of the books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Hebrew.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.core77.com/posts/9388/Pentagon-Patches-book-secret-scary-military-guys-with-sick-senses-of-humor|title=Pentagon Patches book: secret, scary military guys with sick senses of humor|website=Core77|access-date=18 September 2023}}</ref>
==Bibliography==
* "What Makes American Design American?", introduction in reprint, R.L. Leonard and C.A. Glassgold, eds., ''Mocern American Design by the American Union of Decorative Artists & Craftsmen'', New York: Ives Washburn, 1930 (reprint New York: Acanthus, 1992) | {{ISBN|0-926494-01-5}} * Introduction in ''Bořek Šípek: blízkost dálky, architektura a design = the nearness of far, architecture and design'', exhibition cat., Amsterdam: Steltman, 1993, in English, Czech, and Japanese | {{ASIN|B000J3L54S}} * ''The Design Encyclopedia'', New York: John Wiley, 1994 | {{ISBN|0-471-02455-4}} * ''50 Chairs: Innovations in Design Materials'' (Introduction by Alexander von Vegesack), Hove, UK: RotoVision, 1996 | {{ISBN|0-8230-6505-7}} * ''50 Lights: Innovations in Design and Materials'' (Introduction by Paola Antonelli), Hove, UK: RotoVision, 1997 | {{ISBN|2-88046-265-7}} * ''Tropical Modern: The Designs of Fernando and Humberto Campana'', Mel Byars, ed., et al., New York: Acanthus Press, 1998 | {{ISBN|9780926494183}} * ''50 Tables: Innovations in Design and Materials'' (Introduction by Sylvain Dubuisson), Hove, UK: RotoVision, 1998 | {{ISBN|2-88046-311-4}} * ''50 Products: Innovation in Design and Materials'' (Introduction by David Revere McFadden), New York: Watson-Guptill, 1998 | {{ISBN|0-8230-6794-7}} * ''100 Designs/100 Years: A Celebration of the 20th Century'' (with Arlette Barré-Despond), Hove, UK: RotoVision, 1999 | {{ISBN|2-88046-442-0}} * ''50 Sport Wares. Innovations in Design and Materials'' (Introduction by Aaron Betsky), Hove, UK: RotoVision, 1999 | {{ISBN|2-88046-418-8}} * ''On/Off: New Electronic Products'', New York: Universe Books, and Kempen: teNeues, 2001 | {{ISBN|0-7893-0648-4}} * ''50 Beds: Innovations in Design and Materials'' (Introduction by Brice d'Antras), Hove, UK: RotoVision, 2001 | {{ISBN|2-88046-449-8}} * ''Design in Steel'', London: Laurence King, 2003 | {{ISBN|1-85669-313-9}} * ''The Design Encyclopedia'' (Foreword by Terence Riley), New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004 | {{ISBN|0-87070-012-X}} * ''New Chairs: Innovations in Design, Technology, and Materials'', San Francisco: Chronicle Books, and London: Laurence King, 2006 | {{ISBN|0-8118-5364-0}} * ''Improvisation: New Israeli Design'' (אימפרוביזציה - עיצוב חדש בישראל), Tel Aviv: The Haim Rubin Tel Aviv University Press, 2007 (in Hebrew) | {{ISBN|978-965-7241-28-8}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[https://web.archive.org/web/20120715091600/http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/information-services/awards/pages/archive.aspx CILIP 2005 Besterman McColvin award list] *Wilson Laminate [http://www.thestatementblog.com/2006/10/design-historian-mel-byars/ The Statement] * Yuval Saar [https://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/969660.html Masters of improvisation] ''Haaretz'' {{dead link|date=September 2023}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Byars, Mel}} Category:21st-century American historians Category:21st-century American male writers Category:Writers from Columbia, South Carolina Category:1938 births Category:Living people Category:Fashion Institute of Technology faculty Category:Pratt Institute faculty Category:American male non-fiction writers