Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha (Mykolayiv, 1896 - Pennsylvania, May 1978) was a Russian-born Turkish designer, art director, and pioneer of modern American publishing. He was instrumental in defining the role of the magazine art director and delivering the full force of European avant garde experimentation to the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House & Garden, the Condé Nast publishing company's flagship magazines in the United States. § Early life and education Agha was born in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to a family of Turkish descent. His education ranged broadly from a degree in economics from the Emperor Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute in Kiev to a degree in Oriental languages in Paris. He then pursued training in the arts, and achieved proficiencies in photography, typography, and the sciences. Career In 1928 he became the art director of Vogue Berlin. Agha quickly rose to prominence at the Paris and Berlin offices of Vogue. His inventive layouts came to the attention of Condé Montrose Nast himself who persuaded Agha to take over the art direction of the American edition of Vogue in 1929. When Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha arrived at Vogues New York City offices in 1929, he ignited a design revolution when he revamped the magazine—as well as its sister publications Vanity Fair and House & Garden. Development and theory In fashion publications, Agha adjusted the graphics, simplified layout and imposed a close relationship between text and images. Agha stripped down Vogue's old-fashioned appearance, favoring Art Deco curves and the clean lines of Constructivism. He traded italic lettering for forward-leaning sans serif fonts like Futura, and removed all extraneous design elements from the pages—the borders around photos, column rules, sidebars—while synchronizing the magazine's look with the latest out of avant-garde Europe. During his career, Agha widened Vogue's margins to such an extent that the white space on either side of the page left enough “room for your laundry list," as one wit put it. He designed the first ever double-page spreads, and the first full-bleed images, printing photographs without any borders at all, right over the edge of the page. Agha also involved himself in every aspect of the editorial process. Beyond good design, “you must get modern material first if you intend to publish a really modern magazine," he said in 1930. Vanity Fair's urbane editor, Frank Crowninshield, noted that Agha expanded so rapidly that “an additional floor