By Its Cover

BY ITS COVER
Modern
American
Book
Cover
Design
BY ITS COVER
NED DREW
PAUL STERNBERGER
Princeton Architectural Press New York

Published by
Princeton Architectural Press
37 East Seventh Street
New York, New York 10003
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© 2005 Princeton Architectural Press

All rights reserved
Printed and bound in China
08 07 06 05 4 3 2 1 First edition
ISBN: 1-56898-497-9
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without

written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright.

Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.
Editing: Mark Lamster

Cover Design: John Gall
Book Design: Brenda McManus and Ned Drew
Design Consultant: Paul Sternberger
Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek,

Janet Behning, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Jan Haux,
Clare Jacobson, Mark Lamster, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee,
Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson, Jane Sheinman, Scott Tennent,
Jennifer Thompson, Paul G. Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood
of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 7
i JUDGING THE BOOK 8
1 A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM: THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK JACKET IN AMERICA 18
2 AMERICANIZING UTOPIA: PROGRESSIVE DESIGN IN AMERICAN HANDS 42
3 MODERNISM AND BEYOND: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING THE FUTURE 72
4 THE BLAND BREEDING THE BLAND: AMERICAN BOOK COVER DESIGN DISORIENTED 96
5 THE PILLAGED, PARODIED, AND PROFOUND: POSTMODERNISM AND THE BOOK COVER 114
6 REDEFINE AND REDESIGN: MAKING POSTMODERNISM WORK 134
NOTES 172
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 178
INDEX 182
IMAGE CREDITS 186

6
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are indebted to the many design historians, Among the designers and their families to whom 7
archivists, designers, colleagues, and friends who we owe many thanks are: Elaine Lustig Cohen,
helped realize this book. This project would not have Roy Kuhlman, Paul Bacon, Bob Giusti, John Gall,
been possible without the groundwork laid by a and Carol Devine Carson. Many archivists and book
number of recent design historians. Steven Heller— aficionados have been incredibly generous with
the tireless contributor to the history of American their time and knowledge, including Jane Seigel at
graphic design—has produced an astounding body Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts,
of scholarship, including some of the most rigorous Kari Horowicz and Becky Simmons of the Rochester
studies of individual designers and inspiring Institute of Technology Archives and Special
compilations of texts. Ellen Lupton, along with Collections, Gabriela Mirensky at the American
J. Abbott Miller, has written, edited, and curated many Institute of Graphic Arts, Joe Skokowski of Albatross
of the last decade and a half’s most influential design Books, Tom Dolle of Pratt Institute, and Mark Lamster
books and exhibitions. Roger Remington deserves the and Deb Wood at Princeton Architectural Press.
appreciation of the entire field of design history—he We would like to express our warm appreciation for
is a dedicated archivist who has been preserving and the patient support of our friends and colleagues at
interpreting irreplaceable artifacts and documents Rutgers University in Newark, among them Edward
of modern American graphic design. Rick Poynor is Kirby, Annette Juliano, Ian Watson, Frank D’Asolfo,
perhaps the most lucid and insightful observer of Nick Kline, Sandie Maxa, Mark Sanders, Crystal Grant,
contemporary design, interweaving narrative history and Permelia Toney-Boss. We would also like to thank
of design with cogent analytical observation. Philip Rutgers students Suzy Morais and Paul Pereira for
Meggs was an outstanding educator and mentor in their indispensable assistance in the conception
both the practice and history of design. He will be and organization of this project.
greatly missed.
And our deepest thanks go to Brenda McManus and
Joan Cummins for their unhesitating help every step
of the way.
i INTRODUCTION
JUDGING THE BOOK
Books are a thing of beauty, but so are horse-drawn carriages.

DICK BRASS Vice President of Technology Development, Microsoft 1
Is the printed book destined for eventual extinction?

Is the thoughtfully designed book cover approaching
obsolescence? The availability of ebooks has indeed
increased, and print-on-demand technology will
likely change the way books are marketed and
purchased. But there is something special about the
mass-produced book as an object– it is more than
8 just a presentation of the ideas of an author. When a
text is published and the book is designed and printed,
it becomes a physical manifestation not just of the
ideas of the author, but of the cultural ideals and
aesthetics of a distinct historical moment. Should the
physical book endure the onslaught of virtual forms
of information, it will likely be its very materiality
that facilitates its survival. The book as an object is
comfortingly substantial in its content and its material
presence. At a time when so much information is
dispersed in virtual form, it is especially important
to examine the book as a distinctive object reflecting
a marriage of authors’ words and designers’ vision.
The cover is a book’s first communication to
the reader, a graphic representation not simply of
its content, but of its point in history–in the history
of American design, in the history of American
9
ERNST REICHL ULYSSES 1934 Random House

literature, in the history of American culture. Books
and their covers are vital, physical manifestations
of an evolving American intellectual tradition. In
retrospect, the most intelligently designed covers
of American books recall particular moments in our
cultural memory. The designs conjure up associations
of our personal and collective encounters with the
groundbreaking intellectual expressions of our times.
They define what we were, what we hoped to be, and
sometimes, what we have become.
10 The study of great literature and the printed
word allows us to better understand our world, and
examining how designers have interpreted these
words at a particular historical moment sheds light on
the complexities of the American design realm. The
cover design of James Joyce’s ULYSSES , for instance,
was the focus of early American interpretations of
modernism and has ultimately returned to its original
form of seventy years ago. The first American edition
of the book was made possible in 1933 with the lifting
of the U.S. ban of the text for obscenity. In his cover
for the 1934 Random House edition, Ernst Reichl
created a functional and dramatic jacket design that
seemed as modern as the text itself. Reflecting a
modernist heritage that would take firmer root in
America in the decades to come, Reichl used type as
a meaningful compositional device in and of itself.
11
E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER ULYSSES 1949 Random House

The elongated typography echoed the path taken
by the protagonist Leopold “Poldy” Bloom. Subtle,
horizontal crossbars found at the base, midpoint, and
top of the type helped to create a harmonious formal
structure that plays against the extreme verticality
of the book. The attenuated title lettering was further
balanced by a blunt red rectangle anchored by the
author’s name rendered in lowercase Futura Black—
a typeface that had been designed only a few years
earlier by German modernist Paul Renner. Reichl’s
12 simple yet effective typographic manipulation created
a striking cover that foreshadowed the rigorous formal
and conceptual experimentation of American design
in the coming decades.
In his 1949 cover for ULYSSES , E. McKnight
Kauffer pushed the typographic experiment along
with an even purer modernist approach. The typo-
graphic elements of the cover dominate, but do more
than spell out words. They act as abstract compositional
features carefully placed to create an asymmetrical
balance of form and color on a stark field of black.
Perhaps acknowledging Reichl’s design, Kauffer
elongated the U and L, playing with the type as image
and giving graphic form to the phonetic structure of
the title with its accent on the first syllable. Kauffer’s
design for ULYSSES reflects a time when the distilled
forms of modernism were being adapted to the realm
13
UNKNOWN ULYSSES 1940 Random House

14
CARIN GOLDBERG ULYSSES 1986 Random House

of American book cover design with the great hope
for a visual vocabulary that could transform not just
design but society as a whole.
As promising as the spare typography and clean
forms of modernism might have been, their formal
and theoretical rigor could easily be diluted.
Interpretations of modernism could turn into the
suburban blandness of covers like the 1940 Modern
Library ULYSSES , which stayed in print for over two
decades. Here, the formal and conceptual complexity
of Kauffer’s design was lost. By the 1960s many of 15
America’s most innovative designers would look to

alternatives to modernism’s stark, universalizing
forms, but ULYSSES and modernism would have
other encounters.
Carin Goldberg’s 1986 cover for ULYSSES once
again incorporated the language of modernism, but
now as a self-conscious act of historical quotation.
In an era when designers were exploring postmodern
concepts of appropriation, authorship, and originality,
Goldberg created a cover that did not simply use
historical tools like Renner’s typeface Futura. She
went further, audaciously basing the composition
on Renner’s 1928 Applied Arts of Bavaria exhibition
poster. While Goldberg’s design for ULYSSES earned
its share of ridicule, it is emblematic of a moment in
American design when practitioners were seriously
engaging their historical legacy and grappling with
some of the most intriguing theoretical challenges
of the twentieth century.
Random House’s 2002 edition of ULYSSES is a
facsimile of their 1934 edition, including Reichl’s
now uncredited cover design. Similar facsimiles
with original cover designs have been made of modern
classics like Catch 22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest, and reproductions of vintage covers are promi-
nent on the walls and shopping bags of every Barnes
16 & Noble bookstore. The recent reappearance of these
covers is an acknowledgment of the importance of not
only the historical legacy of the texts, but also of their
designs. With historical hindsight, the covers become
the visual manifestations of groundbreaking literature,
a document of a historical moment, an articulation
of our cultural identity.
That identity is still manifested in contemporary
book cover design. In an age where some claim that
an intellectual tradition is being quashed by a soulless
media society, the book cover remains an amalgam
of form and meaning, a reflection of an American
literary legacy that continues to find new avenues
of expression and new ways to explore the nature
of contemporary experience. Indeed, a tradition
of sophisticated, conceptual American book cover
design proves to be the visual language that defines
the literary legacy of an entire culture.
17
ERNST REICHL ULYSSES 2002 (uncredited) Random House

1 A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM
THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK JACKET IN AMERICA
1 A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM
THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK JACKET IN AMERICA
20 The book jacket evolved from a simple utilitarian demands of their field with a self-image based on
object into a highly visual and conceptualized means individualistic creative expression. Perhaps this
of communication. While the first book jackets date tension between the demands of commerce and the
to the 1820s, until late in the century they had only possibility for conceptual depth made modernism
been used as protective packaging and tended to be attractive to so many American designers: it offered
nonpictorial, labeled wrappers with little focus on an interweaving of rigorous formal aesthetics and
design. Book jackets began to gain importance in the potential for creative expression with an ultimate goal
1890s with the recognition that they could be a way of social and economic utility.
to attract the attention of potential buyers. Thus the
book jacket became a focus of design in and of itself, As a forum for designers to engage modernism and
separate from the front board of the book. By the end define their practice, the book jacket was an intriguing
of the first decade of the twentieth century, the book choice. Book cover design required reconciliation of
jacket began to take root as a promotional tool, and its the individuality of the designer with the needs of the
design received more attention.1 By mid-century in client. The jacket was understood to be an ephemeral
America, what had begun as prosaic illustration and utilitarian protective device and odious marketing
straightforward lettering grew, through the adaptation necessity whose useful purpose was all but depleted
of European modernism, into a sophisticated integra- when the book was purchased by the consumer.
tion of type and image. Furthermore, any book claiming to have literary merit
was understood to be the creative expression of its
The rise of the book jacket as an object of graphic author, thus the designer presented with the task of
design in America coincided with the definition of creating a cover for that book was asked not only to
the field of graphic design as a profession. Just as it speak for the publisher but for the author as well. Yet,
offered ways to add formal complexity to design, despite all its reputation as a crass commercial device,
modernism also gave designers a means to reconceive and the challenge to serve both publisher and author,
the theoretical bases of their practice. By the 1930s, the book cover was a vital forum for experimental
many of America’s leading graphic designers looked graphic expression by some of the most progressive
for ways to reconcile the utilitarian and economic designers in America.
A NEW VOCABULARY ARRIVES
Many of the experimental approaches to book cover
design in America had their stylistic and theoretical
roots in Europe. European movements in the fine arts
inspired new ways of thinking about graphic design.
Cubism presented a means of disintegrating and
distilling form, challenging traditional notions of
representation, embracing the abstracted flatness of
the painted surface and integrating text as a legitimate
formal element of composition. The Futurists and
then the Dadaists took some of the formal innovations
of Cubism and applied them to more specifically
design-related projects. Artists including Filippo
Martinetti experimented with typography as an active
expressive element, no longer subservient to the
content of the text. Artists associated with the De Stijl
and Constructivist movements made tremendous
contributions to the idiom of modernism that would
impact the design world. Not only did they attempt
to contract a highly refined distillation of form into
purified geometries, but they also fostered an ideolog-
ical stance that this new vocabulary of forms could
serve modern society–from the most basic practical
needs to the most ethereal. This notion of formal 21
innovation as both personal and social expression

would greatly inform the practice of America’s first
generation of true modernist book cover designers,
most notably Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand.
The challenge to the commercial designer was to put

these lessons gleaned from the modernist worlds of
fine art and theoretical experimentation to practical
use. The widely published and highly respected British
design and cultural critic Herbert Read pondered
such challenges in the 1930s. Read pointed out the
risk of superficiality when formal manifestation of art
theory was applied to what he saw as the essentially
utilitarian field of design. Read was one of the greatest
proponents of the aesthetic potential of nonobjective
art in design, but he feared that “such an art, which in
the hands of a Mondrian or a Kandinsky is an art of
intuitive apprehension, an infinitely subtle and varied
response to form, line, and color, becomes in the
hands of those who seek without real understanding
to apply its principles to the construction of utilitarian
objects, an art completely devoid of the intuitive
element.”2 Despite the dangers of shallow stylistic
LADISLAV SUTNAR THE GREEN AND THE RED
quotation pointed out by Read, many European 1950 Golden Griffin Books
designers managed to apply the new ways of consider-
ing visual art to their field, and American designers
were paying attention.
A number of European publications offered American
A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM
designers the opportunity to learn the theoretical

underpinnings of modernist design and to see the
application of modernist principles in action. Among
the most influential publications to find its way to
America was Jan Tschichold’s Die Neue Typographie,
published in 1928. Motivated Americans also managed
to get their hands on the German graphic design
journal Gebrauchsgraphik, which began publication
in the 1920s and included English translations. By the
1930s American trade publications such as Advertising
Arts (published in New York from 1930–35) attempted
22 at times to ponder the nature of modern design and Most of these Europeans were associated with the
the relationship between design and modernism. Bauhaus, an institution that was perhaps the greatest
conduit for the integration of graphic design and
As useful as published examples were to American other fields, including the traditionally recognized
designers interested in modernism, the immigration fine arts. From its founding in 1919, the Bauhaus was
of their European colleagues to America would prove a hotbed of experimentation in the application of
more influential. In response to the threat of rising modernist principles to mass-produced, socially
fascism in the late 1930s, many of Europe’s most beneficial goods.4 In the 1930s, the Bauhaus was given
gifted designers and theoreticians emigrated to the new life in Chicago by immigrants including László
United States, where they made indelible marks on Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes who would design
design in America. Josef Albers founded design book covers like THE LANGUAGE OF VISION and FALSE COIN .
programs at Black Mountain College and Yale Veterans of the Bauhaus like Bayer and Moholy-Nagy
University. Herbert Bayer acted as consultant for established themselves within the American commer-
one of the great patrons of progressive design in cial and academic realms of design, each writing
America, the Container Corporation of America. extensively on the both ideological and theoretical
Alexey Brodovitch served as art director at Harper’s applications of modernism. The significance of this
Bazaar and taught at the New School for Social influx of Bauhaus designers was not lost on American
Research in New York. Will Burtin acted as art designers at mid century. Designer and critic Marshall
director at Fortune, as did Leo Lionni. Herbert Matter Lee, who was not particularly inclined to attribute
continued his unique uses of photography and type. advances in book design to Europe, noted in 1951
And Ladislav Sutnar, designer of the spectacularly that the American manifestation of the Bauhaus was
bold 1950 cover of THE GREEN AND THE RED , advocated making its mark, in his estimation, taking “firmer
extreme functionalism in modernist design.3 root in the United States than on its own continent.”5
23
GYORGY KEPES LANGUAGE OF VISION

1959 Paul Theobald & Company
GYORGY KEPES FALSE COIN

1959 Little, Brown & Company
GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT COVERS: LOOKING MODERN
As American designers started to focus their efforts

on cover design, they felt compelled to justify putting
so much effort into an object so often discounted as
crassly commercial. One way designers seemed to
come to terms with this problem was to consider the
cover as a part of the larger project of designing an
entire book. An adventuresome cover design might be
created by an illustrator who had the task of creating
images for the interior of the book, as was the case
with Rockwell Kent and his Art Deco woodcut designs
for editions of PAUL BUNYAN and MOBY DICK . This dedica-
24 tion to the design of the book as a whole, integrating
the cover with the interior, was shared by many of the
first generation of American designers to embrace
book cover design as a serious endeavor, among them,
William A. Dwiggins, George Salter, Ernst Reichl,
Arthur Hawkins, and E. McKnight Kauffer. Rather
than embracing the subtle formal and theoretical
intricacies of modernism, these designers, with the
exception of Kauffer, most often attempted to create
a new modern look for American book cover design
based more or less on stylish, decorative elements.
ROCKWELL KENT PAUL BUNYAN

1924 Harcourt, Brace & Company
25
ROCKWELL KENT MOBY DICK (front board)

1930 Random House
ROCKWELL KENT MOBY DICK (interior)

1930 Random House
W. A. Dwiggins was among the American designers
most adamantly dedicated to total book design.
He chose to embrace a style more firmly rooted in
traditional design and typography, but incorporating
a few elements of modernism like abstracted illustra-
tional and calligraphic elements. He brought to book
cover design a sense of sobriety and depth in his
carefully calculated orchestrations of type in layouts
that tied together every line of his books. From the
subtle variations within the system he created for the
jackets of the CRITICAL STUDIES ON WRITING AS AN ART series,
to the sophisticated understatement of the front board
of THE TIME MACHINE , with its slip cover rather than a

dust jacket, Dwiggins set the stage for generations
of designers to approach book cover design with
steadfast professionalism and treat the book as a
precious object.
26
W. A . DWIGGINS ON WRITING
1949 Alfred A. Knopf
27
W. A . DWIGGINS THE TIME MACHINE

1931 Random House
28 George Salter was another designer who firmly

believed that book cover design could transcend the
crassly commercial sphere and be an honored profes-
sional pursuit. Like Dwiggins, Salter rooted his style in
tradition. Salter emigrated to the United States in 1934
after many years of working as a typographer and book
designer in his native Germany. His cover design style
was based in illustration, but he often would give his
images a modern twist. A hint of Surrealism in his
cover for THE SCARF , the blending of collage, geometric
abstraction and figural drawing in THE TOWER OF BABEL ,
or the fragmentation of photomontage in BREAD AND
CIRCUSES granted Salter’s designs an air of artistic
respectability. By mid century, Salter was not only a

revered cover designer, but he also had proved himself
to be one of the most outspoken advocates for serious,
professional book cover design in America.
GEORGE SALTER THE SCARF

1947 The Dial Press
GEORGE SALTER THE TOWER OF BABEL

29
GEORGE SALTER BREAD AND CIRCUSES

1937 Oxford University Press
30
ERNST REICHL THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE

1934 Random House
ERNST REICHL ULYSSES (title page)

1934 (later printing) Random House
German-born immigrant Ernst Reichl also helped
gain respectability for book cover design in America.
After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of
Leipzig at the age of 20, he started as a graphic design-
er in Germany and came to the United States in 1926.
In an American career that lasted over five decades,
Reichl designed thousands of books, working for
Knopf, Doubleday, and H. Wolff Book Manufacturing
Company. He started his own firm in 1945. Perhaps
Reichl’s most significant design was for the first
American edition of Joyce’s ULYSSES published by
Random House in 1934. A proponent of whole book
design, Reichl included a number of innovative 31
features in the design of the interior of ULYSSES as well:

for instance, he experimented with the use of type as
image by enlarging the “U” on the title page spread.
An even more remarkable playful manipulation of
typography is his DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE
where a mélange of styles prefigures the eclectic mixes
Push Pin designers would use in the 1960s.
The decorative, semi abstract style of Reichl’s ULYSSES

cover might be categorized as what design historian
Lorraine Wild has called “moderne,” a style in which
typefaces “were designed with exaggerated geometry
solely for stylistic purposes; type was used in ways
that neither enhanced nor interfered with content.”6
In contrast to the language of modernism adapted by
American designers like Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand,
who were more dedicated to creating meaning through
an interplay of type and image, Reichl’s design seems
to pursue the look of the modern, but not much more.
The same could be said for covers by Arthur Hawkins
for LAST AND FIRST MEN and Bernard Shaw’s THREE PLAYS . ARTHUR HAWKINS LAST AND FIRST MEN
1931 Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith
ARTHUR HAWKINS THREE PLAYS

1934 Dodd, Mead & Company
32
ARTHUR HAWKINS RED SMOKE ARTHUR HAWKINS BASES OVERSEAS

1932 National Traveler Club 1944 Harcourt, Brace & Company
With elements like bold geometric forms, deco
skyscrapers, and angular lettering, Hawkins’s covers
are stylish and attractive, but also had a sense of
superficiality in that they seem to make little attempt
at deep conceptual connections between the book’s
content and the combinations of image and type.
Hawkins’s covers for RED SMOKE and BASES OVERSEAS
incorporate popular modern devices that appeared
in magazines like Fortune.
Even if some of the designs by Reichl and Hawkins

were not the most thorough adaptations of modernist
dogma, they understood that in the commercial
realm, as one observer put it, their designs should
be “remembered not only as a literary experience but
as a physical fact.”7 By the 1930s and 1940s, publishers
recognized that a stylish book cover could attract
consumers and that if they produced a good-looking
product, it was more likely to sell. Indeed, Reichl
understood his role as book designer was mediated
by the publisher’s need to sell the book, which was
after all an object, a commodity. And the fashionable
look publishers were after did not necessarily
encourage conceptual rigor. As early as 1936, Reichl 33
explained that he had to attack his task as a product

designer might design packaging for breakfast
cereal or champagne. The viewer, be it the average
consumer or a literary reviewer “will select those
books which have first enchanted him through a
pleasing optical experience.”8
Still, Reichl attempted to set high standards that

reached far beyond attracting the eye of a potential
ERNST REICHL PORTRAITS AND PRAYERS (front board)
consumer. He experimented with new techniques 1934 Random House
and materials in the design process and in the books
themselves, using type as a design element and
incorporating nontraditional elements, like strips
of metal and plastic, into the covers. One of his most
technically innovative was his design for Gertrude
Stein’s 1934 PORTRAITS AND PRAYERS in which he had a
halftone portrait of the author printed directly onto
the cloth of the cover by means of offset lithography.
Reichl’s treatment of the front board as the main arena
for design is one of many instances in which cover
designers augmented or eschewed the design on the
ephemeral dust jacket in favor of the cover of the book
itself. Reichl would remain a vocal member of the
book cover design community well into the 1970s,
and while he was wary of full-blown modernism, he
continually updated his style to reflect progressive
contemporary approaches to design.
34
E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER THE SLEEPWALKERS

1947 Pantheon Books
Another key player in early American flirtations with
modernism was American-born Edward McKnight
Kauffer, a designer who proved to be one of the most
adept of his generation at applying a sophisticated
modernist vocabulary to book cover design. Kauffer
spent much of his career in London, but moved to
New York during World War II and designed many
American book covers before his death in 1954. Like
his progressive contemporaries, Kauffer’s training in
fine art and exposure to the European avant garde
shaped his conception of modern design and inspired
some of the more conceptually rigorous designs of his
generation. While as a young man he had pursued 35
studies in academic fine art in San Francisco and

Chicago, Kauffer encountered more radical art at the
Chicago showing of the Armory Show in 1913 as he
readied himself to travel to Europe. By 1915 in
London, he had stumbled into the field of design and
had begun to hone his modernist style, especially in
poster design. Inspired by cubism, Kauffer employed
simplified repeating forms.9 In the 1920s and 30s,
Kauffer’s style took on a jazz age flavor, a mixture of
updated Art Deco or “moderne” lettering and boldly
composed compositions. These striking, yet accessible E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER THE ILL-TEMPERED CLAVICHORD
images would tout familiar services and goods like 1952 Simon & Schuster
the London Underground and Shell Oil products.10

36 By the time he returned to America, Kauffer had

adapted a number of styles and techniques associated
with modern art, including updated distillations
of traditional illustration and compositions that
revealed the influence of Cubism and modernist
photomontage from eastern Europe. Kauffer’s
American book covers revealed his range as a designer
and his appreciation of the ways modernist elements
could be applied to cover designs. His THE SLEEPWALKERS
incorporates playfully rendered text and a few
meandering lines that cleverly reiterate the imagery
evoked by the title. Kauffer’s whimsical interpretation
E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER THE FILM SENSE
of Cubism in his cover for THE ILL TEMPERED CLAVICHORD
1942 Harcourt, Brace & Company
echo similar explorations being made by Paul Rand
in the early 1950s. Striking contrasts of color and the
incorporation of a disembodied photographic face
in THE FILM SENSE reveal his understanding of the
potential of photomontage. Compared to work by
designers like Hawkins, Kauffer’s front board for the
catalogue of the 1941 BRITAIN AT WAR exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art offers evidence of a deeper
sense of how figurative elements can be melded
with geometric abstraction to create a sophisticated
composition. And Kauffer’s version of ULYSSES is one
of his boldest and purest designs, with its calculated
asymmetry, and use of type as an abstracted element
in a stark composition.
Even if they were not always as progressive as Kauffer
in their style, designers such as George Salter sensed
that serious book cover design had to rise above and
at the same time compete with popular, often kitschy
illustrative design. “If book jacket design intends to
claim its position in the field of graphic arts,” Salter
chided in 1948, “it must disclaim connection with
the all too conspicuous top heavy ladies draped in
undress.”11 As he pondered the future of respectable
book cover design, he considered its place in a larger
socioeconomic context. In 1950 he observed that the
United States, with its vast size, divergent populations,
and unapologetic consumer society, provided a fertile 37
environment for the advance of book cover design.

While in retrospect, he seems naive not to have seen
the threat of television to the significance of “the book
reading public,” Salter saw America at mid-century
as a growing market for books, a market with great
potential. In order to succeed, proposed Salter, the
book industry had to compete with the gigantic
magazine industry, and innovative cover design would
be necessary to entice consumers’ attention away from
E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER BRITAIN AT WAR (front board)
1941 The Museum of Modern Art
the glossy ephemeral pleasures of the magazine.12
At the same time, Marshall Lee was making similar

observations about American society: “The very
function of the book in society is being challenged by
other media of information and entertainment, some
of them much more accessible. . . . The publisher today
is engaged in a battle for the public’s attention not
against his fellow publishers but against radio, motion
pictures, television, magazines, and many other
distractions, ranging from war to psychoanalysis.”
He saw the paperback as a means of promoting
wider distribution of books and thus worthy of an
improvement of standards in their design.13
THE PAPERBACK: ACCOMMODATING THE MASS MARKET
The paperback was a tremendously influential
phenomenon in American publishing and book cover
design. While books with paper covers had been
published in the nineteenth century, the first grand
attempt at serious paperback publishing in America
was made by Charles Boni, who introduced Paper
Books in 1929. Respected titles with covers like
PRIZE POEMS and THE MASTER OF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT
designed by Rockwell Kent, created an impressive

line of books, but a required subscription of twelve
titles made marketing difficult and the project was
short lived.14 The real impetus to make the modern

American paperback a mass marketing device arose
in the late 1930s. Close on the heels of Alan Lane’s
Penguin Books in England, publisher Robert de Graff,
backed by Simon and Schuster, introduced a line of
American paperbacks called Pocket Books in 1938
and had ten titles in print by the following year. At a
cover price of twenty-five cents each, the books cost
a fraction of hard covers of the day and could compete
with the rental fees of commercial lending libraries.15
Heavily marketed as cheap but respectable publica-
38 tions, Pocket Books set the stage for the development
of the paperback as a mass medium that in the
decades to come would attract the increasing attention
of publishing houses. In a market that expanded
dramatically with a wartime demand for soldiers’
reading material and then with a burst of postwar
consumerism, the paperback became a staple product
in book shops and newsstands, and also in every
American drugstore, be it in the largest city or in
the smallest town.
ROCKWELL KENT PRIZE POEMS 1913 –1929

1930 Charles Boni Paper Books
39
ROCKWELL KENT THE MASTER OF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

1930 Charles Boni Paper Books
The jury of the 1959-60 American Institute of
Graphic Arts exhibition, Paperbacks: USA, agreed.
They complained of the high percentage of “poorly,
if-at-all designed” books on the market and noted
that small-run, high-priced paperbacks were as likely
to be subjected to graphic clichés as mass-market
inexpensive editions.17 Despite its shortcomings
at the time, the paperback cover prompted many
mid-century observers to ponder its great promise
for the field of design. Ray Nash, a professor of
design at Dartmouth College and editor of Printing
Not only was the paperback culturally significant as and Graphic Arts, extolled the “alluring opportunities”
a new means of making books accessible to a broader for paperback design in the late 1950s: “The smooth
spectrum of buyers, but it also impacted the design white surface of thousands upon thousands of covers
world. Unlike the dust jacket, the paperback book stretches out . . . to infinity. . . a fresh publishing
cover was an integral part of the book itself. While the phenomenon calls for experimentation and much
paperback was never intended to have the longevity rethinking by the designer.”18
of the hard cover, its integral cover did eventually help
encourage designers to think of the cover design as The paperback, cheap and accessible, had a huge
something more than a crass protective and marketing potential audience that obviously appealed to
device. Although 300 million soft cover books were commercial publishing. But the appeal extended to
sold in 1958 in the United States, paperback cover those who saw the audience not just as consumers,
design was seen as in need of the same sort of refine- but as consumers of literature. Musing upon the
40 ment Salter had proposed a decade earlier. From the potential social impact in America of the paperback
beginning, Pocket Books covers were straightforward as a medium for works of literary merit, Flower wrote
and blandly illustrational, but their legacy was the in 1959, “Although a number of high-brow soft-cover
bawdy and sensational pulp fiction covers of the 1940s titles may be bought under a misapprehension and
and 1950s. A contemporary observer of paperbacks swiftly cast away, a certain percentage of the knowl-
in England and America, Desmond Flower, noted that edge absorbed from the balance must stick and raise
attempts were being made in early 1950s America to the general intellectual level of the country. It may
introduce “serious general titles into the hitherto be no more perceptible than the universal rise of
exclusive welter of sex and crime. In order that these sea-level due to the melting of the Polar ice-cap,
titles could stand side by side with the acres of cheese- but it is happening.”19 While his observations have an
cake they were presented in the same way. A donkey air of haughty elitism, his basic argument that social
with a lightly clad blonde together in a most peculiar change could be effected through the well-designed
position would sell Marcus Aurelius in the Bronx; a paperback was shared by a number of dedicated
luscious red-head tangling with a swan could make publishers and their designers– New Directions would
Bullfinch’s Mythology a seller in Hicksville, Tennessee.”16 put out paperback editions of many of its offerings of
monumental modern literary works and Grove Press
sent many of its publications directly to paperback.
TAKING MODERNISM A STEP FURTHER
While some design historians have claimed that the
American take on modernism was pragmatic and
visual as opposed to the utopian, theoretical, and
functional nature of modernism in Europe, a few
American designers, most within the first generation
to absorb the modernist idiom, did indeed see design
as a means of both personal expression and a larger
social impact.20 In America, modernism offered book
cover design a new graphic language, a language of
purified compositions in which spare flattened shapes
could interact with type as equal elements without
recourse to traditional illustrational strategies. While 41
European modernism, both in fine art and in design,

made a tremendous impact on receptive American
designers, they did not merely adopt the formal tropes
of modernism. The American book cover designers
who wished to engage modernism thoughtfully took
the visual vocabulary introduced by European
designers and fine artists and turned it into a
language specifically adapted to meet the needs of
both commercial publishing in America and the
individualized creative aspirations of the designer.
DESIGNER UNCERTAIN THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HELEN OF TROY

1948 Popular Library
MILTON HERDER FIERY FINGERS

1956 Pocket Books
2 AMERICANIZING UTOPIA
PROGRESSIVE DESIGN IN AMERICAN HANDS
2 AMERICANIZING UTOPIA
44 The movement toward progressive design in American The American publishing world began to recognize the
book covers was a product of greater self-awareness possibility of bold and effective visual communication
on the part of both designers and publishers. In as a means to orchestrate its identity and inform its
February of 1947 a group of American designers audience. Thus the designer became an essential link
formed the Book Jacket Designers Guild “for the between the corporate entity and its market, creating
purpose of promoting and stimulating interest in the visual vocabulary of American consumer culture.
the art of book jacket design.” With the intention of Good design meant good business. Modernism
elevating the artistic level of jacket design, the group served that commercial language well, providing the
aimed to foster a collegial atmosphere and organized means for articulate design that was functional yet
annual exhibitions. Their exhibitions included a neither simplistic nor obvious. Progressive publishing
broad range of styles and theoretical approaches to companies appreciated modernist graphic design’s
design. Their first show in 1949 traveled extensively marriage of type and image and were among the most
throughout the United States and included relatively important sponsors of groundbreaking American
conservative illustrative covers by designers such as graphic work. They employed designers who could
Dwiggins and Kauffer as well as more progressive exploit the clarity and logic of modernism to develop
work by Paul Rand and Alvin Lustig. The mélange of visual systems that shaped the identities of the presses
styles was fully intended by the committee of guild and created thematic threads from one publication
members, who chose works for the exhibition that to the next.
transcended the highly popular style of bawdy pulp
fiction of the day.
INTEGRATING ART AND DESIGN
The role of graphic designer was being defined by
the American postwar publishing world, which was
finding a place for graphic design in its realm. The
growing significance of the modernist approach to the
making of book covers was evidence of the increasing
responsibility and creative sovereignty of the graphic
designer within corporate America. Alvin Lustig was
among the most rigorous of the American graphic
designers who strove to adapt both the forms and
philosophy of European modernism to the realm of
design, creating complex metaphors with formal and
conceptual comparisons in striking compositions. 45
Lustig’s work was characterized by his use of uniquely

cropped and arranged photographs, biomorphic
shapes, and sophisticated, often poetic, typography.
Educated in Los Angeles, Lustig worked for three

months in 1934 with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin
East in Spring Green, Wisconsin. While the experence
proved less than pleasant, Lustig recalled that it
helped him to refine his design philosophy. Upon
returning to Los Angeles and starting his own firm,
Lustig used combinations of traditional printer’s
type ornaments to design abstract geometrical
patterns reminiscent of Wright’s work. He experi-
mented with these designs in his own promotional
work and in commissions for Los Angeles book
printer Ward Richie.
ALVIN LUSTIG THE WISDOM OF THE HEART

1941 New Directions
Publisher James Laughlin, who had heard about the
designer’s unique experiments with type and pattern,
sought out Lustig and commissioned him to design
the cover for Henry Miller’s WISDOM OF THE HEART .
This professional association of designer and publish-
er helped to inspire one of the most formidable
series of book covers in twentieth-century American
design, the New Directions New Classics. In the
1940s and 1950s Lustig designed dozens of covers
for New Directions and other prominent progressive
publishers. He explained his goals in these designs:
AMERICANIZING UTOPIA
The primary intention in designing the book jackets

of the New Directions Series, was to establish for
each book a quickly grasped, abstract symbol of its
contents, that would by sheer force of form and
color, attract and inform the eye. Such a symbol
is a matter of distillation, a reduction of the book
to its simplest terms of mood or idea. This spirit
of the book cannot be expressed by naturalistic
representation of episodes or by any preconceived
formal approach, but can only develop naturally
from its own nature.1
46
Lustig’s “distillation” of forms and images developed

into a complex, abstracted, efficient, and resolutely
modern visual language, simplified yet never simplistic.
Lustig’s first New Directions covers began as

experimentation with the Wright-inspired geometric
patterns of THE WISDOM OF THE HEART , but soon shifted
to adaptations of forms familiar from modern
paintings. Within a few years, Lustig was often
incorporating biomorphic shapes that recalled the
work of Joan Miró, as in his jacket for D. H. Lawrence’s
ALVIN LUSTIG THE MAN WHO DIED
THE MAN WHO DIED , with its simplified repeated human
1950 New Directions
forms and agitated linear elements that conjure
up associations of death and ascension. Lustig’s most
striking jackets present complex contrasts between
fields of color, line and form, image and text. His
jacket for Djuna Barnes’s NIGHTWOOD is composed of
an asymmetrical balance of jagged shapes like those
in Clyfford Still’s paintings, juxtaposed with thin
calligraphic strokes and dense, aggressive masses
of tangled lines.
47
ALVIN LUSTIG SPEARHEAD

1947 New Directions
ALVIN LUSTIG NIGHTWOOD

1946 New Directions
ALVIN LUSTIG AMERIKA

1946 New Directions
48
ALVIN LUSTIG THREE TRAGEDIES ALVIN LUSTIG AMERICAN WOODS

1947 New Directions 1951 Watling & Company
Lustig also experimented with the integration of
photographs into the design of his covers, creating the
challenge of reconciling the transcriptive, literal visual
information of the photograph with the goals of the
design as a whole. His 1947 cover for Federico García
Lorca’s THREE TRAGEDIES creates a formal interplay of
lights and darks, sharp angles and delicately curved
shapes. The textures in the photographs play off one
another, and the text written in the sand becomes a
seamless marriage of type and photographic image.
The juxtaposed photographs suggest themes that
connect the images. The moon, waves, and beach
combine to conjure up associations with the cycles of
the tides and the passage of time. The impermanence
of the writing in the sand creates a tension between
natural forces and the intellectual and belief structures
suggested by the symbols of culture. These tensions,
both formal and conceptual, echo the opposing forces
in Lorca’s plays in which the characters are driven by
human passions that collide with social and religious
principles. Lustig orchestrated a visual poetry of subtle
association that transcends literal illustration. His
cover for AMERICAN WOODS incorporates the same
strategy, constructing an understanding of the topic 49
at hand through a tightly composed selection of

fragmentary images ranging from abstracted wood
grains to schematic renderings of trees.
As committed as he was to progressive experimenta-

tion within graphic design, Lustig understood the
practical parameters of his projects, particularly the
needs of his clients to create identifiable brands
through the visual language of modernist design.
He conceived of his cover designs as relating not only
to the content of an individual book, but to a series as
ALVIN LUSTIG THE CONFESSIONS OF ZENO
a whole. To Laughlin, Lustig’s New Directions system 1947 New Directions
was a success, conceptually and financially: “Lustig’s
revolutionary jackets for New Directions…set a
distinctive style which has come to symbolize in
physical terms the desired isolation of our editorial
program from that of the great commercial houses.
And the jackets have more than paid their way…
Our New Classics Series’ sales tripled after Lustig
jackets were adopted.”2 “It is perhaps not a very good
thing,” Laughlin mused, “that people should buy
books by eye. In fact, it’s a very bad thing. People
should buy books for their literary merit. But since
I have never published a book which I didn’t consider
a serious literary work and never intend to, I have no
bad conscience about using Lustig to increase sales.
His beautiful designs are helping to make a mass
audience aware of high quality reading.” 3
Modernist design was a means of expressing the
publisher’s dedication to an intellectual literary

tradition distinct from the mainstream—a sophisticat-
ed visual language that at once created and affirmed
its market. But to Lustig, well-conceived design could
make an impact far beyond the commercial realm.
Lustig believed that design had the capacity to express
creative individuality as effectively as any artistic
medium, and he moved freely between specific
practical design projects and general abstract studies
such as small gouache paintings. He saw his stylistic
development as a designer not only as a series of
50 strategies to solve formal problems, but also as a
struggle to integrate art and design. While his early
work had been an attempt to apply the lessons learned
from modern painting into the realm of design, he
seemed to have come to the conclusion in his later
work that the formal and typographic challenges
unique to graphic design could offer enough room
for creative investment to make it art in and of itself.4
As his career progressed, Lustig explored more

ALVIN LUSTIG THE ASPERN PAPERS AND THE EUROPEANS austere compositional structures, as in his 1950 cover
1950 New Directions for Henry James’s ASPERN PAPERS AND THE EUROPEANS .
Incorporating more reductive rigid geometric shapes
and subtler contrasts of color, Lustig seemed to
move farther from illustrative reference, allowing
abstract elements to be the focus of his design. While
he had been innovative with type from early in his
career, perhaps Lustig’s most consistently radical
and innovative work came in the years just before
his death when he began to use type as a self-sufficient
design element, as in his cover for Ezra Pound’s
ABC OF READING . Even more striking is his cover for the
Museum of Modern Art’s THE NEW DECADE: 22 EUROPEAN

PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS in which subtly contrasting
typefaces of different sizes, weights, and colors were

all Lustig needed, eschewing all recognizable image
and abstract forms.
ALVIN LUSTIG UNTITLED PAINTING 51
Gauche and ink on board ca. 1950
ALVIN LUSTIG ABC OF READING

1951 New Directions
52
ALVIN LUSTIG THE NEW DECADE

1947 Museum of Modern Art
ELAINE LUSTIG THE STRANGE ISLANDS

1957 New Directions
ELAINE LUSTIG IN THE WINTER OF CITIES

1956 New Directions
Without recourse to illustration, photographs, or even Lustig sensed that design could incorporate not
the biomorphic and geometric shapes reminiscent of only the simplified, efficient formal language of
modern art, Lustig seems to have seen these austere modernism, but also some of its dedication to social
compositions as the ultimate reconciliation of art progress. For him, like his European predecessors,
and design, where the formal and conceptual rigor of modernism reflected larger social goals of integrating
modernism is applied solely to typography. Lustig’s art and life, blurring the boundaries that had
late typographic experimentation often resulted from separated high art and utilitarian object.7 In Lustig’s
collaborations with his wife Elaine, who became view, the designer was obliged to nurture social
increasingly involved in his work as his eyesight consciousness, a task not to be taken lightly in an era
deteriorated due to diabetes. Elaine Lustig pursued in which technology offered so much promise, but
a purified modernist approach to type of her own also was intensifying the Cold War: “If I seem to place
in covers like THE STRANGE ISLANDS and IN THE WINTER a heavy mantle of responsibility on the shoulders of
OF CITIES , in which she superimposed different sizes those who are really only expected to make nice shapes 53
and weights of letter press type in an elegantly and colors, it is because history demands it. Every act
understated design. that allows productive facilities to serve only itself,
contributes inevitably to the threat of destruction that
Just after Lustig’s untimely death in 1955, James already looms on the horizon.”8
Laughlin wrote fondly of the designer’s innovations,
lamenting the fact that his creative significance may Lustig set out to rethink the very definition of a
have been somewhat obscured by his choice to be a designer. With the variety of means by which they
designer, instead of a fine artist. Yet Laughlin recog- might impact society as a whole, Lustig encouraged
nized that Lustig did not choose between art and young designers to avoid single disciplines and
design, because the two did not need to be distinct, work instead in a number of media and on a variety
and furthermore, design offered what Lustig saw as a of scales: “The designer is not a single-minded
unique opportunity for social impact. Lustig identified specialist, but an integrator of all the art forms–and
a “false barrier” between “fine” and “applied” arts simultaneously a spokesman for social progress.”9
and identified it as “one of the major obstacles in Lustig practiced what he preached: while he is best
establishing the base for a mature industrial culture, known for his work in print media, he also completed
as well as providing the main source for the unhappy architectural, interior, and industrial design projects,
divorce of art and life.”5 He was compelled, Laughlin ranging from apartment buildings to helicopters.
explained, “to work in the field he chose because
he had had his great vision of a new realm of art,
of a wider social role for art which would bring it
closer to each and every one of us, out of the museums
into our homes and offices, closer to everything we
use and see.”6
“PROSE INTO POETRY”
Although Alvin Lustig’s subtly sophisticated designs
and intellectual rigor make him the most remarkable
American designer to grapple with modernist book
cover design in the 1940s and 1950s, Paul Rand is
often seen as the quintessential American designer
of the post–World War II era. Rand was thoughtful,
inquisitive and extremely well read, gleaning lessons
about design from sources as broad as European
modernist painting, architecture, and design publica-
tions to philosophical, historical, and political
texts. Uncompromising in his dedication both to the
standards of design and to self-promotion, Rand

was remarkably adept at transforming the visual
vocabulary of the European avant garde into an
Americanized commercial language that could help
shape the corporate identity of his clients. Rand
reconceived the rigid, erudite, stolid forms of much
of European modernism into a gentler, sometimes
even humorous, approach to design that created a
sense of spontaneity. Rand’s strengths came from his
ability to synthesize seemingly opposing elements and
concepts. His art integrated into commerce, tempered
54 abstraction with representation, and offset the deadly
seriousness of modernist ideology with playful humor.
Rand studied traditional art as a teenager at Pratt

Institute, but got his first glimpses of modern art
as it was translated in the British and German trade
publications Commercial Art and Gebrauchsgrafik.10
These publications piqued Rand’s interest in the
work and theories of European designers like László
Moholy-Nagy and Jan Tschichold, and as he learned
PAUL RAND THE DADA PAINTERS AND POETS
1951 Wittenborn & Schultz
about the Bauhaus, he began to realize that fine art and
commercial art were not irreconcilable entities, but
could be integrated effectively. Over the course of his
career, Rand echoed sentiments of colleagues like
Lustig, proclaiming distinctions between fine art and
design misguided. And, like Lustig, Rand saw design
as a way to apply modernism’s reductive universality
in a way that could have a social role.
Rand was already well-established in the magazine
world by his early twenties and hailed as one of the
country’s most promising young designers by his
peers. Yet he questioned the conventions of magazine
design and advertising in 1930s America and looked
to blend the functional needs of commercial art with
the complex conceptualism of modernist abstraction.
“We have inherited from the great esthetic revolution
of the twentieth century the task of bringing to fruition
the new ideas and forms which it introduced,” wrote
Rand in 1952.11 His boldest early experiments with
combinations of simplified illustrations, photographs,
and abstract forms appeared in his 1938-45 covers 55
for Direction, a small anti-fascist magazine of art and

culture whose modest budget and political stance lent
themselves to bold simplified forms in limited colors
that despite their sparseness, spoke volumes. It was
in these magazine covers that Rand came closest to the
spirit of the politically engaged European avant garde,
but these outstanding formal and conceptual explo-
rations are evident in his early book covers as well.
While Rand is best remembered for his corporate PAUL RAND THE FERVENT YEARS
trademarks, his book covers are better reflections
of his applications of modernist reductivism,
sometimes stark and rigid, sometimes playful and
expressive. In the 1940s, Rand found a supportive
client for his experiments with color, form, and type
when he was hired by Wittenborn and Company to
design covers for its art books. He was among the first
American designers to break the simple illustrative
and typographic conventions of art-book cover design.
In both the cover and front board for THE DADA PAINTERS
AND POETS he used the stark, bold forms of the type
as both word and image. In 1945, Rand joined the

ranks of designers working for Alfred A. Knopf, a
group that spanned a broad spectrum of stylistic
and theoretical approaches, from the restrained
classicism of Dwiggins to the modernist technological
experiments of Reichl.
At Knopf, Rand was given great freedom and he
designed covers that continued the imposing sober
modernist reduction he had often incorporated into
his Direction covers. One of his most intriguing designs
for Knopf is his 1950 cover for THE FERVENT YEARS, in
which Rand presented the title text on a torn ticket
hovering in an unmodulated background field
of black. The design is bold in its sheer simplicity,
incorporating a sophisticated modernist purity while
at the same time alluding to the book’s subject of
theater history. Furthermore, the book is remarkable
because the interior was designed by W. A. Dwiggins,
providing an example of a collaboration between

designers with different styles and philosophies.
For the 1945 publication of Thomas Mann’s THE TABLES

OF THE LAW , Rand combined a stark brown background
that falls short of the bottom of the composition,

superimposed with the title in layered sans-serif type
and a high contrast close-up of the glowering face
of Michelangelo’s Moses from the tomb of Julius II.
The subtle overlaps of small type on large, of a field
of black from the spine onto the front, of the imposing
56 face of Moses onto the type, all reveal a calculated
compositional manipulation.12 The geometric inter-
play of forms reflect the grid system of European
modernism, and even contemporary observers saw
an architectural quality to the design.13 In the same
year Rand designed for Knopf the cover of Nicolas
Monsarrat’s LEAVE CANCELLED , a novel about the tragedy
of lovers torn apart by war. The cover, which Alfred
Knopf’s wife called “an expensive extravagance,”14
features not only understated lower case Futura and
a silhouetted photograph of a sculpture of Eros on
an unmodulated field of dull pink, but it also includes
PAUL RAND THE TABLES OF THE LAW
die cut holes peppering the jacket. In tandem with
the books theme, the series of holes conjure up
associations with the spray of machine gun fire.
On a more abstract level, the holes call attention
to the jacket as not simply an easily apprehensible
illustration, but as an object that is the result of a
creative process of conceptual and physical activity.
57
PAUL RAND THOUGHTS ON DESIGN

1945 Wittenborn & Company
PAUL RAND LEAVE CANCELLED

As one might expect from his formal and conceptual
engagement in modernist design, Rand established

himself by the mid-1940s as not only a calculating
designer, but as a prolific writer on design and a
passionate teacher (he taught at Yale for more than
thirty-five years).15 In the first of several major
publications of his ideas on the field, Rand presented
his take on the interrelationship of art and design.
The cover of his 1946 THOUGHTS ON DESIGN recalls the
spirit of his designs for books like THE TABLES OF THE
LAW . A photogram of an abacus forms simple, abstract
elements of lines and lozenge shapes that break from

58 strict geometric regularity to create a subtly complex
composition that serves as a metaphor for the depth
of the theoretical ruminations within the book’s pages.
By the late 1940s and early 50s, the theoretical and
formal sophistication with which Rand approached
his craft was reflected in the work of many other
designers, among them Jack Cesareo and Bill English.
In his book cover designs, Rand always considered text

not only as a carrier of conceptual meaning but also as
a fundamental graphic element that could amplify or
contrast both recognizable images and abstract shapes.
JACK CESAREO SKIING THE AMERICAS Rand wrote that “by carefully arranging his type areas,
1947 Macmillan Company spacing, size, and ‘color,’ the typographer is able to
impart to the printed page an aesthetic message which
in turn compliments the message conveyed by the
words.”16 Rand’s explanations of assignments given at
Yale reveal aspects of his take on modernism: “The
word serves a dual purpose, verbal and pictorial. This
involves the arrangement of letters in such a way as to
make the word a self-explanatory kind of universal
sign language.” 17
59
BILL ENGLISH ENCORE

1952 Doubleday
Rand’s book cover designs of the late 1940s and 1950s
reveal an intuitive side of the designer, one that would

have the greatest impact on the next generation of
book cover designers.18 As imposing as his early
designs for books such as THE TABLES OF THE LAW , LEAVE
CANCELLED and THOUGHTS ON DESIGN were, many of Rand’s
designs for Knopf and other publishers revealed

a calculated sense of spontaneous playfulness that
would become his forte. Using irregular, roughly
geometric fields of color, oddly shaped photographs
and whimsical hand rendered script, Rand created
a delicate balance of formal rigor and casual improv-
60 isation that could be quite humorous, even to the
point of being cloying. An early example of the fanciful
Rand is his 1946 design for Lucius Beebe’s THE STORK
CLUB BAR BOOK . Here the flattened asymmetric abstract
geometries are interwoven with the schematic

illustration of a dapper stork sporting a top hat. Early
on, Rand proved that modernism need not be deadly
serious, but could vacillate between the modular
simplicity of ZEN AND JAPANESE CULTURE or THE SOCIAL
HISTORY OF ART series and the playful whimsy of THE STORK
CLUB BAR BOOK .

PAUL RAND THE STORK CLUB BAR BOOK
1946 Rinehart & Company
61
PAUL RAND ZEN AND JAPANESE CULTURE

1958 Bollingen Series
PAUL RAND A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART #1

1957 Vintage Books
PAUL RAND A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART #4

1957 Vintage Books
62
PAUL RAND PREJUDICES: A SELECTION

1958 Vintage Books
PAUL RAND SOVIET MARXISM

1961 Vintage Books
By the 1950s, working for publishers like Vintage and
Meridian, Rand was applying this informal playfulness
to covers of a variety of books, from fiction and drama
to social theory and philosophy. For SOVIET MARXISM
and THE CONDEMNED OF ALTONA , Rand used Matisse-like
irregular shapes of color that looked as if they were
quickly clipped from colored paper or film overlays
to form casual but meaningful references to the books’
content. In H. L. Mencken’s PREJUDICES: A SELECTION ,
and added photographs to his repertoire, turning
an unflattering portrait of the cantankerous author
into a crude silhouette of an orator. All of these
covers incorporated hand-rendered script in place
of type, adding to the designs’ sense of informality
and spontaneity.19
Rand’s whimsical approach to design provides some

important insights into the American interpretation
of modernism in design. Practitioners like Rand
and Lustig placed value on their creative individuality
and in the case of Rand, his style underscored that
valuation. His 1959 cover for Philip Roth’s GOODBYE
COLUMBUS incorporated familiar devices of irregularly
cut out shapes and hand-rendered type, but the 63
striking mark of parted lips registered in lipstick red

on a field of white, lent a sense of physicality much
like the holes in LEAVE CANCELLED . Not only did the
image relay the sexuality of the text, it suggested the
sense of the designer’s hands-on process of design,
which, in this case, suggested a physical interaction
with the book itself. The kiss becomes a metaphor
for not only the content of the book, but the creative
investment of the designer.
While he used phrases like the “play instinct” to

describe an element of creative invention, whimsical
design was not intended simply to be cute or
clever–for Rand, play was a serious process in which
intuition and spontaneity could be avenues to true
creative expression.20 Like Lustig, Rand believed that
graphic design was a viable and legitimate means of
expressing creative individuality and book covers
that suggested a playful process of design reflected
the unique spirit of their maker. Both intuitive and
thoughtful, the designer could transcend mere
formalism and “transform prose into poetry.”21
PAUL RAND THE CONDEMNED OF ALTONA
PAUL RAND GOODBYE COLUMBUS

1959 Meridian Fiction
THE SIGNATURE AND IDENTITY Lustig and Rand signed their cover designs as if
As early as the 1930s, observers of design were looking they were paintings. Their signatures demand
for ways to foster and legitimize the expressive role of acknowledgment that design is an expression of
the designer. While he saw the application of geomet- creative individuality akin to any other form of artistic
ric abstraction as a more obvious connection between expression. Design historian Steven Heller has argued
art and design, Herbert Read wrote in 1937 that that American graphic design had been a field of
designers could learn from surrealism’s subjectivity virtually anonymous artisans until the 1930s, when
and free associative methods, specifically mentioning European emigrants including Herbert Bayer and
book covers as an appropriate forum for this “emotive” László Moholy-Nagy began to raise the profile of the
mode.22 In 1951 Marshall Lee observed that designer. He points out that it was then that “some of
the American followers of the modern movement also
A major development of modern literature is the realized the deleterious effects of anonymity on their
64 trend toward expressionism and away from the professional standing and began to seek ways to forge
literal, representational style of writing. Modern their own identities.” The signature, Heller claims,
writing plays heavily on the creation of mood and was a way for the designer to advertise his or herself,
atmosphere. The evocation of mood then becomes a and he cites Rand’s admission that “having my name
primary concern of the designer. It is not enough for on an ad or magazine cover in the public’s eye was the
the designer to be ‘unobtrusive.’ In dealing with a best promotion I could ever get.”24 Yet to attribute the
literature aiming at the subconscious, …the book inclusion of a signature on a designer’s work merely as
designer must now participate actively in the self-promotion would be a mistake. The fact that those
author’s attempt to contact the poetic sensibilities designers who were devoted to the modernist idiom
of the reader.23 were consistent signers of their work was evidence
that they valued that idiom, not just as a set of stylistic
tropes, but as a means of social engagement and
creative expression. The fact that their clients would
allow them to include the self-referential signature
was a sign that these designers had earned respect and
were granted creative autonomy. By the late 1960s
the signature was rarely, if ever, present on the cover
of the book, suggesting that both the social dedication
of the designers and the clients’ willingness to grant
unrestricted creative freedom had both waned.
Now, the thought of their publishers’ reaction to the
audacity of signing a cover design makes even the most
prestigious twenty-first-century designers grin and
shake their heads.
A GREAT COLLABORATION: PUBLISHER AND DESIGNER
Designers like Rand and Lustig set the stage for a
generation of book cover designers who would build
upon their experiments with the suggestion of an
intuitive design process and the interrelation of type,
image, and abstract forms. Among the most remark-
able successors to Rand and Lustig’s adaptation of
modernism was the vastly underappreciated book
cover designer Roy Kuhlman, who, at the start of
his career, was lucky enough to stumble into a job
at Grove Press, a publishing house that would rival
New Directions in its commitment to progressive
design. Grove, under the leadership of Barney Rosset, 65
who bought the publishing house in the early 1950s,

became one of the major conduits for avant-garde
European literature and drama and a primary outlet
for American beat writers. His unwavering dedication
to groundbreaking literature from at home and
abroad led Rosset to be one of the country’s most
outspoken opponents of censorship and to publish
D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Henry Miller’s
Tropic of Cancer, and William H. Burroughs’s Naked
Lunch. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the
help of Abstract Expressionist painters Joan Mitchell
(then his wife), Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning,
and Franz Kline, Rosset learned to appreciate the
expressive possibilities of nonrepresentational art.
As he acquired the rights to American editions of
progressive European publications, Rosset focused on
paperbacks as his primary format, foregoing the more
common practice of considering the paperback as an
adjunct to a hardcover edition.
ROY KUHLMAN CHEKHOV: A LIFE

1955 Grove Press
ROY KUHLMAN THE PIT

1956 Grove Press
66
ROY KUHLMAN THE GIRL BENEATH THE LION

1958 Grove Press
In 1951, Rosset was visited by Kuhlman, a young
designer with an art-school education and the fading
dream of becoming a famous painter. Kuhlman
presented Rosset with an unimpressive portfolio,
but accidentally showed him a couple of abstract
studies he was planning to pitch as a design strategy
for Atlantic Records. The paintings seemed to be the
sort of visual identity Rossett wished Grove Press to
project. Indeed Rosset, understanding the value of a
clear identity, had designed the first few covers he
published himself, emulating Lustig’s New Directions
style. In Kuhlman, Rosset saw the chance to fashion
his own look.25 67
Kuhlman took advantage of this golden opportunity,

thriving in the relationship that allowed him freedom
to foster his method of instinctual, spontaneous
design. Working with Grove for two decades, the pro-
lific Kuhlman produced one of the most consistently
distinctive bodies of work in the history of book cover
design. Produced quickly and cheaply, Kuhlman’s
designs were spontaneous, clever, and distinct. Often
with only a slight sense of the content of the book for
which he was designing, Kuhlman would follow his
instincts, building compositions with the materials
at hand. Given a great deal of autonomy in the design
process, Kuhlman would present his designs to Rosset,
who most often quickly accepted them. On the rare ROY KUHLMAN THE OTHER AMERICA
instances when Rosset was not pleased by a design, 1964 Penguin Books
Kuhlman would start from scratch rather than revise
the rejected design according to Rosset’s criticism.
68
ROY KUHLMAN KILLACHTER MEADOW

1960 Grove Evergreen
ROY KUHLMAN PING PONG A PLAY

1959 Grove Press
ROY KUHLMAN MURPHY

1957 Grove Press
Kuhlman’s quickly conceived experiments simplified
objects and images and transformed typography
into potent compositions. Reflecting his inspirations
from European modernist artists like Matisse and
Picasso, Kuhlman used torn films and fragments of
photographs to create vivid, semi-abstract collages.
His style could be subtle and restrained, as in THE OTHER
AMERICA , or it could be spontaneous and whimsical,
as in THE GIRL BENEATH THE LION . In his 1960 cover

for KILLACHTER MEADOW , Kuhlman transformed a high-
contrast photograph of the shadow of a Venetian blind
falling across a man’s back to create abstract shapes
that suggest a landscape. Covers like PING PONG and
MURPHY showed that Kuhlman was as adept as any of
his modernist colleagues in the use of type as image.

Of all the designers working in the wake of Lustig
and Rand, Kuhlman had the best instinctive grasp
of the potential of modernist spontaneity.
In the early 1970s after a tumultuous few years for

Grove, Kuhlman was fired by Rosset for freelancing
for a competitor. Kuhlman went on to work for
Columbia Records, IBM, and clients like the maga-
zines High Times and Dealer, but his designs never 69
again achieved the stellar consistent quality of his

work for Grove Press. By the mid-1980s Kuhlman
sensed that his innovations of the 1950s and 1960s
had become conventions and clichés, and he
retired from design.
Roy Kuhlman was not alone in his embrace of

improvisational modernism. Even Ernst Reichl
delved into the look of spontaneous process in his
designs for the American Century Series put out
by the newly founded Sagamore Press. Dedicated to
ERNST REICHL SISTER CARRIE
making respected literature both profitable and widely 1957 Sagamore Press
accessible, the series was a group of paperback books
that had previously been available only in rare and
more expensive editions. In covers such as his 1957
SISTER CARRIE , Reichl layered bits of torn colored paper
to construct the composition, creating a cover that

made little attempt to allude to the content of the
book, but created an abstract visual system for the
publisher’s series.26
One of the best examples of the integration of playfully
improvisational design is in the work of Leo Lionni.

His career was punctuated by prestigious design
positions such as art director at Fortune and he
received cross-over recognition as a fine artist, his
paintings included in many prestigious exhibitions.27
Many of Lionni’s book covers incorporate playful
collages of overlapping shapes that seem to have been
quickly clipped or torn from colored paper, as in his
1962 design for THE AMERICAN CHARACTER . This strategy
proved especially apt in his design for the catalogue
for the blockbuster 1955 Family of Man exhibition of
70 photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. THE FAMILY
OF MAN cover celebrated good-natured creative
expression in both its forms and its photographic

image, echoing the exhibition’s heart-warming
universalization of human experience. Like many
a major designer before and after him, Lionni found
children’s books to be an ideal forum for playful
modernism, as seen in his whimsical constructions
of color and drawings in LITTLE BLUE AND LITTLE YELLOW .28
By 1960, designers like Lustig, Rand, and Kuhlman

had proven that modernism could be effectively
adapted and truly integrated into the realm of
American book cover design. They showed that it
could provide a language that spoke not only for the
publisher and the author, but for the designer as well.
The next generation of designers would continue to be
inspired by modernism’s spare, purified forms and its
potential for playful modification. This inspiration
would take forms ranging from further distillation of
its reductive marriage of type and image, to passionate
rejections of its austerity and claims to universality.
LEO LIONNI THE AMERICAN CHARACTER
1962 Time Books
LEO LIONNI THE FAMILY OF MAN

1955 Simon & Schuster
LEO LIONNI MICHAEL BAKUNIN
1961 Random House
LEO LIONNI LITTLE BLUE AND LITTLE YELLOW

1959 Astor
71
3 MODERNISM AND BEYOND
HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING THE FUTURE
3 MODERNISM AND BEYOND
HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING THE FUTURE
74 Lustig and Rand set the stage for book-designers These two distinct directions in design–the further
to explore the possibilities of marrying type with distillation of the modernist idiom and the embrace
illustrative elements reduced to essential, purified of historicist eclecticism–both reflect larger social and
forms. If references to the philosophical grounding cultural upheaval in 1960s America. As post–World
and potential social impact of modernism became less War Two optimism and economic boom gave way to the
frequent by the 1960s, designers including George political and racial tensions of the 1960s, the previous
Giusti, Fred Troller, Rudolf de Harak and the team generation’s styles seemed to offer great promise to
of Chermayeff and Geismar continued to push some and seemed hopelessly out of date to others.
modernism’s austere formality to new frontiers. On one hand, a modernist visual language offered
At the same time, others were beginning to look order and rationality at a time when nuclear weapons
for thoughtful alternatives to modernism’s severity, proliferated, race riots raged, and war in Asia dragged
embracing techniques that had been set aside by on. On the other hand, a broader conception of style
earlier progressive designers. Seymour Chwast, in which type, image, and illustration merged into
Vincent Ceci, and Milton Glaser, all working at Push what might be considered a more accessible, humanist
Pin Studio, advocated a more pluralistic and eclectic acknowledgment of history.
approach to design. The Push Pin group embraced
traditional illustration and historical typefaces, and
they were willing to create mélanges of styles that
would have been virtually unthinkable to their
modernist colleagues.
“DEDICATED TO THE CONCEPT OF FORM”
The work of George Giusti perhaps best exemplifies
the ability of the designer to give visual expression
to the conceptual or the abstract. His diagram-like
illustrations communicated complex information and
ideas from fields such as mathematics, physics, and
sociology in simple graphic form. Giusti studied art
in his hometown of Milan, receiving an education that
would provide him with the foundations to develop
into not only a highly respected graphic designer,
but a recognized architect and sculptor as well. Giusti
came to the United States in 1939 after several years
practicing design in Zurich, where he acquired an 75
appreciation for both the playful whimsy of Paul Klee,

and the rigid formalism of Mies van der Rohe.1
Among Giusti’s early American projects were a

number of ads in Fortune and a series of masterful
posters for the Forest Service with remarkable
graphic impact.2 From an illustrative style in the
1940s similar to Salter’s and Kauffer’s, Giusti went
on to develop a crisp, reductive style in which he
integrated schematic illustrations, diagrammatic
symbols, and straight-forward type. For Giusti,
modernism provided the primary foci of design:
purity, directness, and clarity. In his contribution
to the voluminous and somewhat extravagant 1967
GEORGE GIUSTI THE BIRTH OF A NEW PHYSICS pedagogical publication Famous Artists Course In
1960 Doubleday Anchor Books
Commercial Art, Illustration and Design, Giusti
repeatedly underscored themes like the “power of
simplification,” and “simplifying and subtracting.”3
Giusti was at his best with covers for books dealing
MODERNISM AND BEYOND
with the driest of material, bringing to life topics like

THE BIRTH OF A NEW PHYSICS . His covers for the Science
Study Series are emblematic of his ability to distill a

book’s theme into essential conceptual and graphic
elements. Studies from Giusti’s sketchbooks give a
sense of how he crafted compositions to create strata
of complexity in meaning. A selection of colored
rectangles superimposed on a map-like web of lines
suggest the process of analysis of AMERICAN SOCIAL
PATTERNS , and a pair of gracefully curving lines within
an organic plane of color is enough to illustrate the

76 concept of CLOUD PHYSICS AND CLOUD SEEDING . For the
cover of RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN AMERICA , Giusti created
a simple illustration of a steeple reduced to bold,
nonrepresentational colors. Then he overlaid that
image with a series of curving arrows that serve as a
conceptual translation of the book’s content, symbols
of the complex interplay of religion and American
culture. Finally, after the other graphic elements had
been reconciled, he added the type, almost as an
accent, and continued to tweak the design until he
came to the final version that appeared on the cover.
GEORGE GIUSTI AMERICAN SOCIAL PATTERNS

GEORGE GIUSTI CLOUD PHYSICS AND CLOUD SEEDING

77
GEORGE GIUSTI RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN AMERICA GEORGE GIUSTI Cover Studies, 1 & 2
1964 Doubleday Anchor Books RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN AMERICA c. 1964
78 As systematic and diagrammatic as his approach

could be, Giusti’s images are not entirely geometrically
precise, and his covers still have a hand made quality.
His many covers for the magazines Graphis and
Holiday reveal a more whimsical, collage-like style
that reflects the sensibility of Rand and Kuhlman.4
A contemporary of Giusti, Anita Walker Scott
conceived her own diagrammatic combinations
of bold, flattened, semi-representational forms
combined with schematic symbols for a series of
books dealing with history and the social sciences
addressing topics such as POLITICS, REFORM AND
EXPANSION and THE RISE OF THE WEST .
ANITA WALKER SCOTT POLITICS, REFORM AND EXPANSION

1963 Harper & Row
ANITA WALKER SCOTT THE RISE OF THE WEST

1966 Harper & Row
Like Giusti, Rudolph de Harak systematically
restricted shapes, composition and color, applying
a modernist essentialization of forms into rigid,
austere cover compositions and producing engaging
descriptions of a book’s content. The poignant,
conceptual play of text and purified image reflect
de Harak’s deep understanding of the reductive
modernist idiom. Before moving to New York,
de Harak was a founding member, along with Lustig,
Saul Bass and others, of the Los Angeles Society of
Contemporary Designers. De Harak remembered
being struck by both the content-consciousness
of Bass and the strong formalism of Lustig, aspects
that he would integrate into his own work.
As a formalist, de Harak described himself as

“dedicated to the concept of form. I was always
looking for the hidden order, trying to somehow
either develop new forms or manipulate existing
form. Therefore, I think my work was more obscure,
and certainly very abstract . . . One thing I did was to
sharpen my design sensibilities to the point that my
work generally fell into a purist category.” De Harak
was also inspired by German designer Will Burtin, 79
who first introduced him to the notion of “visual

communication” in which purified modernist forms
could suggest objective rationality without being
cold and inhuman. De Harak recalled that Burtin
described “four principle realities of visual commun-
ication: The reality of man, as measure and measurer;
the reality of light, color, texture; the reality of space;
the reality of science.”5 The “purist category” in which
de Harak placed himself, with its faith in the reality
of man and the rationality of science, was firmly
rooted in both the formal and philosophical tenets
of modernism. To de Harak, modernist design was RUDY DE HARAK THE STRESS OF LIFE
not only about forms that “were impeccable in their early 1960s McGraw–Hill
sense of order,” but also about forms that “covered
the entire emotional spectrum.” De Harak explained
in 1987, “I wanted, to create constellations so rich
that they could communicate content.”6
De Harak designed book covers for a number of
presses, including Meridian and New Directions,

but his most notable body of covers was made for
McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, who commissioned over
350 covers from him during the 1960s. Subtle
juxtapositions of type, abstract forms, and photo-
graphic images suggest adaptations of hard-edged
painting, and the op and conceptual art of the period.
These recognizable images and expressionistic forms
or colors made de Harak’s designs accessible to his
audience and communicative of the themes of the
publications they advertised.
80
For McGraw-Hill, de Harak devised a compositional

system in which the title and author usually appeared
in two colors, flush left, in the upper section of the
stark white cover in the typeface Akzidenz Grotesk.
In the field of white, de Harak placed a single, bold
image that served as an “objective,” visual parallel
to the theme suggested by the title. De Harak used
high contrast fragments of photographs to underscore
the themes of the texts, allowing recognizable objects
like a knot to play off the title THE STRESS OF LIFE , or an
old wheel to suggest the endless progression of time
RUDY DE HARAK A PREFACE TO HISTORY in A PREFACE TO HISTORY . In other covers, de Harak’s
early 1960s McGraw–Hill images were sometimes purely graphic, like the right
angle arrows that simultaneously form a swastika and
suggest converging forces in his 1964 cover for
7
THE SIEGE OF LENINGRAD .
81
RUDY DE HARAK THE SIEGE OF LENINGRAD

1964 McGraw–Hill
While his cover designs for McGraw-Hill are severe,
even radically distilled, they are rarely cold.8 As
precise and stark as de Harak’s designs could be, he
aimed at expressing emotion and meaning through
type and image, and while his graphic vocabulary was
indeed more similar to Minimalist and Conceptual
trends in the art of the 1960s, de Harak was a great
admirer of Abstract Expressionism and hoped his
designs could communicate on both rational and
alternative levels of perception.9 De Harak’s interest
in multi-leveled communication with his viewers led
him to pursue projects in three dimensions as well as
two, paralleling Lustig’s belief that the true designer

should not limit his or her activities to the printed
page. His dedication to thoughtful design of space
and control of a viewer’s experience of it is evident
in the many three-dimensional projects he took on,
from the Cummins Engine Company museum and
the Man, His Planet, and Space pavilion at the 1967
Montreal exposition, to the 1970 entrance of 127 John
Street in lower Manhattan, with its huge digital clock
and neon tunnel.10
82 Like de Harak, Fred Troller distinguished himself

by systematizing sober modernist typography with
striking diagrammatic illustrations. Born and
educated in Switzerland, Troller had his own design
studio in Zurich before coming to New York in 1960.
As he established himself in the design community
of New York, he befriended many of the leading
designers of the day, including Rand, Glaser, Giusti,
de Harak and Massimo Vignelli. Troller engaged a
variety of design media, becoming well-established
in corporate design, and he began designing book
covers for Anchor Books in 1967, going on to do work
FRED TROLLER SUPERIOR MATHEMATICAL PUZZLES for Random House and Simon and Schuster. Often
1968 Simon & Schuster Troller’s covers were inspired by forms he had derived
in his own personal artistic endeavors, leading his
designs to be less dogmatic than those of many of
his contemporaries who adopted a mechanically
precise abstraction in a more formulaic way.11 In
SEEING AND THE EYE , Troller laid spectral bars over an
image of a human eye, creating an arresting cover

from fragments of technical diagrams, and in
SUPERIOR MATHEMATICAL PUZZLES , he cropped and rotated
numbers to make an abstracted grid of forms that

encourages the viewer to see the cover as a puzzle
in and of itself.
83
FRED TROLLER SEEING AND THE EYE

FROM INDIVIDUALISM TO PLURALISM
Many of the more progressive established designers

of the 1950s had insisted on design as an act of
unique creative expression. This insistence legit-
imized their field and their status as artists. While
collaborations were certainly not unknown, many
designers felt the need to distinguish themselves
as individuals and to establish a market for their
particular style, just as their clients sought the services
of a designer to set them apart. Lustig seems to have
only resorted to collaboration with his wife Elaine,
herself a highly talented designer, when diabetes was
84 diminishing his eyesight. And Rand was a staunchly
independent worker, resisting the complexity and
dilution that “design by committee” could create.12
But several of the dominant forces in graphic design
that emerged in the 1960s were teams, among them
Chermayeff and Geismar.
Thomas Geismar and Ivan Chermayeff met as

graduate students at Yale, and after short independent
careers, they joined with Robert Brownjohn to form
their own firm in 1957, although Brownjohn left
the partnership in 1960 and moved to England.
BROWNJOHN, CHERMAYEFF & GEISMAR Well-versed in the formal tenets of modernism
COMMON SENSE AND NUCLEAR WARFARE from their mentors in and out of academia, they
were ready to push the limits of the canon, conceiving
of modernism as a logically shifting and evolving tool.13
They crafted book covers based on collages of photo-
graphic images, symbols, and simple forms, creating
layered compositions that reflected the themes of
the publications they enclosed. By the late 1950s,
Brownjohn, Chermayeff and Geismar were masters
of building meaning with the integration of text, type,
sharp graphic symbol and photographic image, often
creating visual puns that play the content of the title
off of the content of image. Some of the firm’s best
early covers present a bold literalness of text and
image that is at once remarkably forthright and clever.
Their 1959 cover for Bertrand Russell’s COMMON
SENSE AND NUCLEAR WARFARE creates a visual analogy
to the title through the image of a mushroom cloud

superimposed over a photo of the back of a man’s
head. Just as the two parts of the title seem diametri-
cally opposed (especially at the height of the Cold
War), the image of the incomprehensibly large nuclear
explosion is contained within the head. Similarly,
the simple, flat heart symbol, hovering in place of
the head of a bust-length photo of a man in the 1960
cover of Henry Miller’s THE WISDOM OF THE HEART creates
a graphic analogy to the ironic hand-scripted title.
The heart shows up again in Chermayeff and Geismar’s
cover for POKER FOR FUN AND PROFIT , a design that incor-
porates an inverted repetition of the title in opposite
corners, playing off the multi-oriented legibility
of a playing card. Their use of pictorial type in the
cover for TOWARD A SANE NUCLEAR POLICY is the result
of their systematic experiments into how the formal
arrangement of typography can heighten the
meaning of words.14
While much of their work of the late 1950s and 1960s

continued a reductive modernist tradition of balancing 85
type and image, Chermayeff and Geismar began to

diverge from the legacy of designers like Rand and
Lustig in the way they conceived the role of style in
design. For a designer like Lustig, the theory and
practice of modernist design were inextricably
interconnected as a means to marry effective social
impact with personal expression. A newer generation
of designers like Kuhlman and Giusti stayed true to
modernism, not because of an impelling devotion to
its theory, but because it provided a fruitful set of
formal strategies. Yet by the 1960s many designers,
including Chermayeff and Geismar, were beginning CHERMAYEFF & GEISMAR THE WISDOM OF THE HEART
to question the wisdom of fidelity to one particular 1959 New Directions
style. They proclaimed in 1959 that they operated
on a principle that design is “a solution to problems,
incorporating ideas in relation to that problem,
rather than a stylistic or modish solution.”15
By 1979, Chermayeff and Geismar cited the diverse Over the course of the 1960s, even Ernst Reichl, who
styles they had put to service in their designs of the had established himself by adapting modernism to
past decades. Distinguishing themselves from the his needs, would begin to question blind adherence
strict updated modernism and eclectic historicist to stylistic convention. Speaking in 1970, Reichl
pastiche that would become associated with their presented the work of such designers as Lustig, Rand,
colleagues at Push Pin Studio, they proclaimed, “we and Ladislav Sutnar as benchmarks of modernist
do not have an office style like some designers who design, but asked if perhaps “It is possible that we’ve
concentrate on graphics systems, such as grids. And abused the freedom given to us?” and that even some
we don’t have a special style of illustration like those of the pages by these exalted designers have a “some-
who are collectors of historical style motifs, Art what quaint, musty smell about them?”17
Deco or 19th-century typography. We are not involved
in style of fashion that way.”16 To them, a broader Milton Glaser recalled that part of his inspiration as a
86 spectrum of styles offered a wider selection of tools young designer was to break free from the modernist,
with which to approach design problems. Indeed particularly Swiss, canon. To Glaser and his associates,
their work in poster design and print advertising of modernism in design “wasn’t going anywhere, it was
the 1960s revealed a broader approach to design not improving on the original model. It seemed to
than strict modernism could accommodate. Keenly have limited people’s options enormously. . . . In terms
aware of the value of enhancing meaning through of its expressive potential it seemed to me it had
repetition and thoughtful, sometimes whimsical reached its fullness.”18 To Glaser, austere attempts at
juxtaposition, they felt that stylistic pluralism could universality through modernist reductiveness seemed
foster progressive design. arrogant and incapable of reflecting life’s complexi-
ties.19 In an era when political and social upheaval
were challenging the complacent optimism of the
1950s, the austere formality and diluted utopianism
of modernism seemed to lack the vitality of visual
forms that were emerging in popular culture. Glaser
and some of his colleagues began to reconsider
illustration as an innovative tool in book cover design.
Other designers echoed the low-budget visual vocabu-
lary of underground psychedelia, or fostered what
Steven Heller has called a “flea market aesthetic”
of pastiches of old type and ornament.20
87
CHERMAYEFF & GEISMAR POKER FOR FUN AND PROFIT CHERMAYEFF & GEISMAR TOWARD A SANE NUCLEAR POLICY
1968 Cornerstone Library Publications 1960 National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy
MORE THAN MODERNISM
While modernism had been recognized as the

predominant stylistic mode for progressive designers
at midcentury, some did look to thoughtful illustration
as an alternative to modernist austerity and to pulp
fiction’s hackneyed images. For instance, Ben Shahn,
an artist in many media, sought options not found in
modernism, options that could reflect his political and
social engagement with the world. Best known for his
painting and photography of the WPA era, Shahn is
strikingly neglected as a designer and design theorist.
He incorporated into his designs elements including
88 drawings, self-generated type, and hand-sketched
lettering. His covers were not merely illustrative,
but attempted to create meaningful analogies to the
content of the books while at the same forging a
unique, recognizable style. In designs for late 1950s
and early 1960s covers including THE QUIET BATTLE ,
THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE , and THE RISING GORGE , Shahn
paired his own drawings with collaged backgrounds

reminiscent of the seemingly spontaneous and
intuitive work of Rand. Yet with Shahn, the illustration
and hand crafted text are the predominant features.
The examination of social and historical issues in
these books is perfectly suited for Shahn’s deeply
charged drawing style, in which agitated ink lines
create striking images that are calculatedly crude
and awkwardly calligraphic.21
BEN SHAHN THE QUIET BATTLE

BEN SHAHN THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

1959 Vintage Books
89
BEN SHAHN THE RISING GORGE

By the 1960s Shahn’s desire to look to other fruitful
modes of design for book covers was echoed in the
work of innovative designers like Seymour Chwast
and Milton Glaser of Push Pin Studio. These designers
began to embrace illustration and enthusiastically
mine historical design sources, combining modernist
typography with playful mixtures of Victorian, Art
Nouveau and Art Deco inspirations. They found
new means of expression and problem solving in a
more pluralistic understanding and acknowledgement
of style.
As a youth in 1930s and 1940s New York, Seymour

Chwast was drawn to the vitality of the popular
imagery. In high school, instructors encouraged him
to explore the marriage of the formal principles of
design combined with illustration, a field deemed
unsophisticated and artless by staunch modernists.
Chwast went on to study at Cooper Union (his future
fellow founders of Push Pin Studio, Edward Sorel,
and Milton Glaser also attended Cooper Union).
Chwast shared Lustig and Rand’s belief in the social
responsibility of the designer, yet he was willing to
90 accept illustration as a dominating facet of design, and
he found affirmation in the work of socially engaged
illustrators like Honoré Daumier, Ben Shahn, and
George Grosz.22
Like Chwast, Glaser was devoted to illustration as a

legitimate tool of the designer, and he saw the role of
painter and illustrator as interchangeable in a history
of image making that spanned back to early humans
drawing on the walls of caves.23 Chwast and Glaser
helped found Push Pin Studio in 1954, after each had
SEYMOUR CHWAST FDR: ARCHITECT OF AN ERA explored the field a bit, both in big publishing and
1967 Macmillan Company on their own. As a means to promote their studio
and underscore the possibilities for the intersection
of illustration and design, they published Push Pin
Almanack and then Push Pin Graphic. Free from the
stipulations of clients’ needs and the dictations of
corporate style, the publications served as a laboratory
for graphic experimentation with type and illustration,
and, like the firm that produced them, they proved
to be influential in the design world in the late
1950s and 1960s.
The style of illustration Push Pin designers chose
to use could vary dramatically, from a dedication
to classic drawing to stylized pop imagery. Yet
representation, most often figural representation,
was a “germinal” element, and was, in the eyes of
contemporary observers, evidence of an undercurrent
of humanism and romanticism.24 Even when Push
Pin designers approached a distillation of type and
image that compared with the starkness of de Harak’s
McGraw-Hill work, the image often created as sense
of accessibility. Chwast subverted the cold anonymity
of a bold modernist “D” by cleverly transforming
it into the silhouette of FDR’s profile in his 1967 91
cover for Rexford Tugwell’s FDR: ARCHITECT OF AN ERA .

De Harak used similar juxtapositions of type and
image, but for him, the image served as a metaphor.
Push Pin designers embraced the direct connection
between image and text, shunning the symbolic
generalization of stricter modernists. This specifica-
tion and humanization of symbol is quite direct in
Glaser and Vincent Ceci’s cover for FREEDOM–NOT LICENSE!
The designers replaced the stars of the American flag
with a grid of photographs of people’s faces. While
these photographs do serve to represent types, they
are also unmistakably identified as individuals as well.
MILTON GLASER & VINCENT CECI FREEDOM-NOT LICENSE!

1966 Hart Publishing Company
MILTON GLASER A SITTER FOR A SATYR

1965 E. P. Dutton
92
MILTON GLASER GERTRUDE

1969 Farrar, Straus & Giroux
SEYMOUR CHWAST THE PLAGUE

1962 Time Books
MILTON GLASER SEVEN MEN AND TWO OTHERS

1959 Vintage Books
Straight-forward accessible illustration predominated
in most covers by Push Pin designers. Glaser’s 1965
design for A SITTER FOR A SATYR features one of Glaser’s
light-hearted and expressive illustrations, creating an
easily apprehensible image that encouraged the viewer
to delight in the jocular representation rather than
piece together conceptual references more typical of
modernist generalizations. Similarly, his cover for
one of a series of Herman Hesse works, GERTRUDE ,
focuses attention on the designer’s remarkable talent
as an illustrator. The cover portraits in the series
reveal Glaser’s ability to make traditional illustrative Glaser explained that what he and his colleagues
methods contemporary and fresh, blending tech- did with various historic stylistic elements was
niques like watercolor with a loose calligraphic touch
to use them as subject matter, just as a painter might
and accents of bright color. In covers such as his
use a landscape to convey his personal perceptions.
1959 SEVEN MEN AND TWO OTHERS , Glaser juxtaposed a
It’s not hacking; there is simply no belief nowadays
somber drawing with a diverse typographic variation.
in any ‘correct,’ ‘true,’ or even ‘suitable’ styles or
If appropriate to the tone of the book, Push Pin
esthetic philosophies. We no longer believe that a
illustration could be strikingly dark as well, as in
particular philosophy or set of values is what we
Chwast’s cover for an edition of Albert Camus’s
must stick to in our work. We don’t need to dedicate
THE PLAGUE in which a grimacing profile dominates
ourselves to one or even a succession of styles
both the front and back covers.
anymore. In fact, it’s impossible.26
While Push Pin was tremendously influential in the The stylistic mélange of type and illustration that Push 93
legitimization of illustration as a tool in progressive Pin designers incorporated into their book covers was
American book cover design, they had an even more as diverse as the sources available to them. Chwast’s
momentous effect due to their willingness to quote 1969 design for THE CONNOISSEUR’S BOOK OF THE CIGAR ,
and commingle historical styles of both illustration was based on actual cigar boxes, contrasting modernist
and type. By the mid 1950s, Bradbury Thompson designers’ preference for cleaner, mechanized forms.
had been melding a modernist taste for layered, To the Push Pin designers, mixed references and
simplified forms with a love for old engravings, varied stylistic sources were not a stultifying contam-
integrating found, disparate appropriated images into ination of modernist purity, but rather a way to
tightly structured, often quite clever, designs.25 But enhance the graphic impact and communicative
more adamantly than any of their predecessors or potential of their designs. By superimposing a
contemporaries, Push Pin designers fostered an portrait of a Renaissance political theorist over type
eclectic new style that took Victorian, Art Nouveau, based on a contemporary newspaper financial page
and other historical styles and melded them into a for example, Ceci used anachronistic references to
playfully contemporary language of design. In a period underscore the application of centuries-old theory
when designers were beginning to carefully consider to modern conditions in Antony Jay’s MANAGEMENT
27
their stylistic heritage, Push Pin’s mixture of stylistic AND MACHIAVELLI .
quotations was a means to broaden the possibilities

of design in the wake of modernism, to use styles
of the past to construct a new contemporary style that
celebrated its own eclecticism.
94
SEYMOUR CHWAST THE CONNOISSEUR’S BOOK OF THE CIGAR

1969 McGraw-Hill
VINCENT CECI MANAGEMENT AND MACHIAVELLI

1968 Holt, Rinehart & Winston
SEYMOUR CHWAST OF MEN AND MACHINES

1963 E. P. Dutton
In his 1963 cover for OF MEN AND MACHINES , Chwast used
type that recalled old broadsides and newspapers and
constructed a face from images that seem to have been
lifted from nineteenth-century technical illustrations.
These historical sources are reconstructed into a
new, whimsical composition typical of Push Pin’s
light-hearted thematic association of text and image.
An excellent example of Push Pin’s humorous and
eclectic mix of styles is Chwast’s cover for BACKYARD
POULTRY RAISING , featuring a “chicken farmer” and a
lengthy title printed in eighteen different fonts from

various historical periods.
Over the course of the 1960s, Push Pin’s highly

visible commissions helped to establish its eclecticism
as a recognized graphic vocabulary. Receiving the
remarkable honor of being showcased in a 1970
exhibition at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décorativs,
Push Pin was heralded as the most innovative
and influential force in American graphic design.
Contemporary observers marveled at their “imag-
inative application of styles to diverse problems.”28
In some ways, the eclecticism of Push Pin and their
willingness to appropriate and quote from a variety of 95
historical sources was a foreshadowing of more highly

theorized postmodern design in the 1980s. However,
the earlier quotation of historical styles at Push Pin
was not a conscious reaction to cultural theory in the
manner of late-twentieth-century pastiche. Rather
than pointing the instability of meaning and historical
constructs as postmodernists would in the 1980s,
for Push Pin, quoting past styles was a means to
underscore historical continuity. “Why use the
Bauhaus as your only model, as the Modernists did,”
Glaser queried, “when you can see the Arts and Crafts SEYMOUR CHWAST BACKYARD POULTRY RAISING
Movement, and Mackintosh, Ruskin, William Morris, 1977 Doubleday & Company
Frank Lloyd Wright, the Viennese Secession, as
well as the Bauhaus as a continuing series of linked
ideas?”29 One of the tenets of postmodern theory is a
loss of individuality and authorship expressed through
a pastiche of already existing styles and images. For
the Push Pin designers, however, stylistic quotations
were framed as creative innovation, and designers
like Glaser could be described in 1969 as having
a “personal vision . . . more transcendent than their
contemporaries” with the “ability to transcend,
influence and mutate his environment, both physically
and intellectually.”30
4 THE BLAND BREEDING THE BLAND
AMERICAN BOOK COVER DESIGN DISORIENTED
4 THE BLAND BREEDING THE BLAND
AMERICAN BOOK COVER DESIGN DISORIENTED
98 The early to mid 1970s was a time of restraint in book These shifts in publishing made it less likely for
cover design, perhaps reflecting the broader social and designers like Lustig and Rand to emerge and
cultural upheaval brought on by a decade of war, racial pursue freely individual styles as romantic modernist
tension, and political scandal. The volume of truly expressions of their creative identity and commitment
innovative work in book cover design dropped, the to social growth. Large presses were more likely to
result of a number of factors within the world of publish covers incorporating the familiar blend of
publishing, most notably an increasing corporatization illustration and historical typefaces popularized by
of commercial publishers. Small presses like New Push Pin or starkly mechanical mixes of modernist
Directions and Grove, presses that had played such a type and unexpressive abstraction. While corporate
pivotal role in encouraging progressive design in their conservatism and the demands of big business did
covers, were eclipsed by big publishing houses. encourage a great deal of mediocre design in the
Editorial committees and executive boards replaced 1970s, designers like Paul Bacon emerged—designers
dedicated individual entrepreneurs like Laughlin and who were masterfully adept at building upon earlier
Rossett.1 At the smaller presses that flourished in the stylistic innovations within the framework of their
1950s and 1960s, the publishers perceived their task clients’ needs.
as a privilege to present the work of their authors
and a duty to present their audience with important
literature. On the other hand, the larger presses that
dominated the 1970s seem more authoritative, almost
dictatorial in their pursuit of commercial success.
99
MILTON GLASER HYPNOTISM

late 1960s E. P. Dutton & Company
HERB LUBALIN HARLEM ON MY MIND

1968 Random House
TYPE, IMAGE, AND CULTURE AT LARGE
THE BLAND BREEDING THE BLAND
By the late 1960s the commercial realm quickly

adopted graphic innovations like those being made
at Push Pin Studio and by inventive typographer Herb
Lubalin. In covers like HYPNOTISM , Glaser brought
an illustrative sensibility to the handling of clean,
modernist typography, playfully blurring the line
between type and image. Lubalin, a master of what
design historian Philip Meggs calls “figurative
typography,” experimented with phototypographic
techniques that enabled him to create and manipulate
type in unprecedented ways.2 Covers like Lubalin’s
100 1968 HARLEM ON MY MIND broke down barriers between
type, image, and illustration. Lubalin’s ground-
breaking magazine and advertising work of the 1960s
and early 1970s set the stage for type-dominated
book cover design throughout the 1970s. Designers
realized they could acquire or create just about any
typeface they could imagine, and they felt that the
type itself offered enough plasticity to be a solitary
design element. Covers like THE GODS THEMSELVES and
BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL reveal such purely
typographic solutions. Many of these covers seem to

aim at concrete directness rather than deep conceptual
connections between cover, text, and viewer.
DAVID NOVEMBER THE GODS THEMSELVES

1972 Doubleday & Company
JOHN GERBINO BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL

101
DESIGNER UNKNOWN PURPLE-VIOLET-SQUISH

1969 Zondervan Publishing House
102 After a decade of Push-Pin-inspired eclecticism,

the dialog between the broader cultural realm and
serious designers became much more active than
it had been for their modernist predecessors.
The undulating, nested, bubble lettering and vivid
complementary colors that had been the visual
language of a psychedelic counter-culture quickly
found their way into commercial publishing, as in
the cover for PURPLE-VIOLET-SQUISH . In his cover for
ASHES TO ASHES , Lawrence Ratzkin emulated the comic-
book look made fashionable by pop art. The brassy

impact of vernacular advertising and signage inspired
LAWRENCE RATZKIN ASHES TO ASHES
Bob Giusti’s cover for BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS and
1971 Simon & Schuster Neil Stuart’s cover for METROPOLITAN LIFE . Eclectic
juxtapositions of type styles and droll blendings of
text and image became standard tropes for designers
as in George Maas’s cover for BANKERS AND CATTLEMEN .
Alan Peckolick and Tom Carnase’s BEARDS and Ratzkin’s
THE FRANCHISER built upon the familiar Lubalin strategy
of type as illustration and Push Pin’s witty and

accessible interplays of word and image. In each of
these cases, the designers made the word an integral
part of the image, blurring the line between pictorial
and textual representation.
103
GEORGE MAAS BANKERS AND CATTLEMEN

ROBERT GIUSTI BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

1973 Delacorte Press
NEIL STUART METROPOLITAN LIFE

1978 E. P. Dutton
104
ALAN PECKOLICK & TOM CARNASE BEARDS

1976 Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich LAWRENCE RATZKIN THE FRANCHISER
THE VOICE OF BIG BUSINESS
An alternative to the light reincarnations of Lubalin
typographic innovation and Push Pin eclecticism was
a distillation of modernist austerity. This austerity
reflected the prevalence of increasingly pervasive
corporate identity programs that can be understood, at
least in part, as responses to the social upheaval of the
1960s. The intellectual optimism that had possessed
publishers like Laughlin and Rossett and had inspired
designers like Rand and Lustig was more difficult for
both designers and publishers to accept blindly. The
grand illusion of design changing the world was harder
to swallow after a decade punctuated by assassinations,
escalating racial tension, and deepening resentment
of military involvement in Southeast Asia. As the
Bronx burned, the subways fell into disrepair and the
city’s economy foundered, the New York-dominated
field of book cover design embraced a severe geometry
that mirrored the gargantuan anonymity of Sixth
Avenue skyscrapers. In an increasingly corporate
milieu of conglomerate takeovers of publishers, the
bottom line came under the scrutiny of managers
who were less likely to accept diminished profits for
the sake of literature. Publishing houses were less 105
apt to publish unknown or cutting-edge authors

and were more likely to opt for less risky bestsellers.
The industry embraced cover designs that reflected
its increasing conservatism.3
Inspired by Massimo Vignelli’s “Unigrid” model

and Ladislav Sutnar’s starkly functional “information
graphics,” many designers of the late 1960s and
1970s depended on strict systems of geometric forms,
hard edged shapes, and large scale type.4 As graceful
and efficient as Vignelli’s designs could be, systems
such as the one he developed for THE AUDUBON SOCIETY
FIELD GUIDES spawned less inspired, starkly reductive
corporate visual languages. The bold authority of

the corporate look was reflected in cover designs
produced for large presses.5 While earlier presses,
large and small, had most certainly attempted to
use design to create unique and recognizable visual
identities, by the 1970s that desire had grown to MASSIMO VIGNELLI THE AUDUBON SOCIETY
a point where it began to eclipse visual evidence
of the creative individuality of the designer and author
alike. The playfulness of Rand and the spontaneity
of Kuhlman gave way to the more distanced, cooler
sensibility of sanitized corporate programs. The
mythic designer-as-artistic-creator was waning in
favor of a more professionalized designer who could
be an effective cog in the gears of a corporate machine.
As Milton Glaser observed, modernism had become
a detoxifying agent for corporations that could use it

to appear “progressive and above the human squabble
without ever having to deal with human sweat.”6 Many
book cover designers adapted the grid, along with
mechanically precise typography and abstract shapes,
without the carefully conceived interplay of form and
idea that had driven earlier modernist experiments.
By the mid 1970s the superficial trappings of ultra-
pure modernist formalism had become a standard
design trope in run-of-the-mill book cover design.
106 Typical cover designs like I’M OK—YOU’RE OK incor-

porated flat abstract forms and simple type with little
attempt to communicate the book’s content. The
design carries little more expressive or interpretive
content than a corporate letterhead. This unexpressive
anonymity was compounded in later paperback
editions that not only included promotional quips,
but transformed a blue peace sign seen in earlier
hardcover editions by Harper and Row into a simple
blue circle (along with other slight modifications to
the design). Meaningful signifiers became decorative
abstraction. Even designers who, in previous decades,
had been quite adept at shaping meaning from
carefully crafted juxtapositions of type and image,
drifted toward this more anonymous corporate style. DESIGNER UNKNOWN I’M OK—YOU’RE OK
Rand had established himself as the corporate icon 1973 Avon Books
man; Kuhlman was doing uninspired ads for IBM

and low budget layout at High Times; and Giusti was
designing book covers with typical 1970s bubble
lettering and decorative geometric abstractions.
THE BIG BOOK LOOK
One of the most remarkable designers to adapt to the
needs of the corporate publishing world of the 1970s
was Paul Bacon. Bacon’s talent as a designer and
illustrator, blended with a humble attitude, allowed
him to bridge the eclecticism of the Push Pin legacy
and the austerity of corporate design. Bacon, recently
back from service with the Marines in the Pacific
during World War II, managed to work his way into
jobs combining his talent for drafting and his passion
for jazz. Designing for small jazz periodicals and the
newly established Blue Note and Riverside record
labels, Bacon made a place for himself in the New York 107
design scene. His foray into book cover design was

modest– in 1950 he was asked to do the cover for
Chimp on my Shoulder, a book he had illustrated.
Commissions trickled in, and Bacon’s reputation

grew slowly, until 1956, when he was asked to design
the cover for Meyer Levin’s COMPULSION , a book headed
for the bestseller charts. Bacon read each manuscript
for which he was asked to design a cover, a practice
that was not necessarily the norm. He looked for what
he called the “graphic key” on which he could base
a design that complimented both the book and its
publisher.7 This desire to create a connection with
the content of the book and healthy respect for the
efforts of the author led Bacon to foster an interpretive
element in all of his designs, even in the 1970s when
decorative anonymity was embraced by so many
corporate publishers.
PAUL BACON COMPULSION

PAUL BACON CATCH-22

108
PAUL BACON THE MOST OF S.J. PERELMAN

Bacon’s best known early cover is his 1961 design
for Joseph Heller’s CATCH-22 , a composition that went
through many manifestations before it was finally
accepted. This process sheds light on the publishing
world that would evolve into the 1970s. Bacon’s early
sketches included an isolated hand with its middle
finger raised in an indelicate gesture of defiance.
The publishers quickly rejected Bacon’s forthright
graphic interpretation of the novel and initiated a
process in which Bacon responded to their feedback.
Over the course of many sketches, the red figure in
the design became smaller and smaller as the name
of the author and the book’s title became bigger
and bigger.8 The graphic impact of the design was
systematically toned down to say less about the
design and more about the book.
Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Bacon designed

covers that incorporated progressive design ideas
of the era, from the eclectic mix of type faces in his
cover for THE MOST OF S. J. PERELMAN , to the hand
generated lettering and collage aesthetic of his cover
for Ken Kesey’s ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST . He
was equally comfortable creating meaningful imagery 109
through type, as in his cover for WE BOMBED IN NEW HAVEN

as he was using historical typefaces and illustrations
that recall the era of a bloody slave rebellion in the
novel THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER . By the late 1960s
Bacon had perfected an approach that paid homage to
the authority of author and publisher, an approach that
would be labeled “the big book look.” Bacon was a sort
of corporate chameleon–his covers were thoughtfully
and cleverly designed, yet the design was translucent,
PAUL BACON ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
letting the statement be that of the publisher as
1962 (facsimile) Viking Press
facilitator for the author. The look featured the
author’s name and the title in a large typeface along
with a centered spot illustration dominating a field
of unmodulated color. Hank O’Neil pointed out
that this approach, which he described as “sparse,
accessible, to the point, and completely lacking in
gratuitous ornament,” was most often used for a
noted author whose name would be the most effective
marketing tool for the book.9 Bacon’s 1975 cover for
RAGTIME showed how the cover could be a corporate
marketing tool, with the author’s name and an

advertising statement incorporated into a bold but
historically referential and handcrafted design.
110
PAUL BACON WE BOMBED IN NEW HAVEN

PAUL BACON THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER

1967 Random House
While observers like O’Neil and Steven Heller
applauded Bacon’s “big book look,” in truth that
look describes only part of the designer’s oeuvre.
Considering covers like SAINT JACK in comparison
with THE MOST OF S. J. PERELMAN or RAGTIME , it becomes
clear that Bacon had the capability to generate designs
in a vast spectrum of styles. Bacon’s stylistic plasticity
was less the result of the calculated eclecticism of
Push Pin, but rather more in the spirit of Chermayeff
and Geismar and their pragmatic avoidance of
stylistic continuity.10 Bacon’s gift as a designer was
that he was so adept at making his voice as a designer
subordinate to the voices of author and publisher. 111
An avid musician as well as designer, Bacon has been

described as “a sideman,” rarely taking center stage,
an accompanist and collaborator.11 Self-assured yet
completely unassuming, he was willing to put his
thoughtful creative voice in the service of the client in
a way that gave him a sort of anonymity that would
have been intolerable for a designer like Rand. Bacon
recalled, “I’d always tell myself, ‘You’re not the star of
the show. The author took three and a half years to
write the goddamn thing and the publisher is spending
a fortune on it, so just back off.’”12 Indeed, Bacon’s
ability to create designs that complimented author PAUL BACON RAGTIME
and publisher made him one of the most sought after 1975 Random House
designers in big publishing and earned him the praise

of some of the most respected popular writers in
America. Working for all the major publishing houses,
but most consistently for Simon and Schuster,
Bacon’s own estimates put the number of jackets
he designed at 6,500.13
FROM HISTORICISM TO PASTICHE
By the end of the 1970s, a few book covers began

to foreshadow themes that would become more
prominent in the 1980s and would come to be thought
of as characteristics of postmodernism. John E.
Johnson Jr.’s 1978 cover for “A” , with its striking field
of pink and sophisticated typography combined with
a photographic image, looks as if it could have been
designed twenty-five years earlier by Paul Rand.
Johnson’s direct emulation of an earlier style suggests
not only an awareness and understanding of the past,
but a willingness to quote from it unapologetically.
112 This sort of historical quotation would be a strategy
taken up in the 1980s by many designers who would
self-consciously appropriate styles and forms as a
means to engage the past and rethink the creative role
of the designer. George Corsillo’s 1979 cover for NANA
hints at another characteristic of postmodernism of
the 1980s– pastiches of discordant styles and images
that create a purposeful disjuncture. The collage of
hovering, unresolved photographic elements, com-
bined with a hodgepodge of typefaces, has an aesthetic
of rawness that suggests roots in both punk graphics
PAUL BACON SAINT JACK
and the postmodern theory that would help shape
1973 Houghton Mifflin Company the understanding of graphic design in the 1980s.13
113
GEORGE CORSILLO NANA

1979 Summit Books
JOHN E. JOHNSON JR. “A”

1978 University of California Press
5 THE PILLAGED, PARODIED, AND PROFOUND
POSTMODERNISM AND THE BOOK COVER
5 THE PILLAGED, PARODIED, AND PROFOUND
POSTMODERNISM AND THE BOOK COVER
116 Building upon the work of literary theorists like By the late 1970s important strides in the application
Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François of postmodern theory were being made by American
Lyotard, design’s postmodern theorists pointed out designers, but innovative strategies rarely found their
a slippage and contingency of meaning that exists in way into the more commercial realm of book covers.
a society barraged by images that seem farther and Designers such as April Greiman and Dan Friedman,
farther from the real. They sensed that the universal American disciples of the groundbreaking Swiss
truth and personal expression that modernism seemed typographer Wolfgang Weingart, applied the flattened
to promise were romantic delusions that had been forms and functional typefaces of modernism and
co-opted and defiled by corporate power. Those added layers of interpretive, subjective and formal
who attempted to apply these theories tried to tear elements. Weingart encouraged his students to
apart grand historical narratives through the juxtapo- consider the practice of design in a post-industrial
sition of purposefully discordant historical styles in society in which the logic and clarity of modernism
nonhierarchical, interwoven compositions. They might be destabilized by designs that allowed for
broke modernism’s rules of logic and legibility with intuitive and subjective readings. Combinations
dizzying layered images, fragments of type, and of styles, weights, and spacing of type were seen by
indecipherable signs. In graphic design, postmodern designers like Weingart as ways to acknowledge the
analysis engendered a variety of formal characteristics: transient nature of meaning and interpretation.
pastiches of traditional and vernacular styles;
unapologetic appropriation of historical sources;
mixed typefaces; collages of seemingly disparate
images; openly computer-generated images; and
purposefully vague and complex compositions that
defied direct reading and fixed meaning.1
POSTMODERNISM IN THE DESIGN LABORATORY
Building on ideas like those expounded by Weingart,
April Greiman laid much of the foundation for
American postmodern graphic design. Trained in
the tradition of Swiss modernism, Greiman began to
rethink the tightly structured logic of the grid as she
pursued graduate studies with Weingart and Armin
Hoffman at the Basel School of Design in the early
1970s. In the early 1980s, Greiman found that
advances in computer technology opened new paths
of exploration into the means by which images and
text could be combined. By 1984 she had acquired her
first Macintosh and used the then crude technology 117
to layer bit-mapped text with images from a variety

of sources, from digitally manipulated photographs
to computer-generated textures, to stills captured
from video.2 Greiman’s work was akin to graphic styles
labeled “techno” and “new wave” by critics in the
1970s. “New wave,” which was often used inter-
changeably with “postmodern” in the early 1980s,
characterized a pastiche of disconnected images,
type and patterns. The blips and dots, swishes, and
patterns were a melding of 1970s illustration and
early computer-generated images, and they shared a
similar aesthetic to the bright, contrasting, patterned
laminates of objects designed in the 1980s by Milan’s
APRIL GREIMAN BUILDING IN LOS ANGELES
1997 Southern California Institute of Architecture
highly influential Memphis group. Greiman’s work
was emblematic of a period of intense theoretical
reflection in the field of graphic design. This new
visual language, still evident in her 1997 cover for
BUILDING IN LOS ANGELES , lent itself to design that made
a self-conscious exploration of the mechanics of

legibility and meaning.
A CLASH OF THEORY AND PRACTICE
Rigorous investigations of syntactical structure and
the meaning of typography and image built much
of the foundation for postmodern design. Yet these
innovations, appearing in posters, pamphlets, and
design journals, tended to reach a limited academic
and design audience and thus seem more self-
referential, even self-indulgent, than designs
conceived for the more public realm. To understand
and appreciate many of these designs, the viewer had
to be conversant in the language of design and aware
An even more intense exploration of the application of the theoretical issues they addressed. While
THE PILLAGED, PARODIED, AND PROFOUND
of postmodern theory to design took place at The Cranbrook designers’ amalgamations of type and
Cranbrook Academy of Art. The school nurtured a image have been credited for the “denaturing of the
broad conception of the designer, not limited to a permanence that Modernism seemed to promise,”
single mode of design but rather a more Lustig-like they have also been described as illegible and chaotic.6
multifaceted practice of design. Under the guidance As early as 1981, work generated by Cranbrook
of co-chairs Katherine and Michael McCoy, who designers irked observer Marc Treib enough that he
directed the department of design from 1971 to 1995, labeled them “typographic blitzes [that] exceed mere
the program emphasized an exploration of different graphic affectations and enter the realm of actual
areas of design, from graphic to interior, while foster- graphic afflictions.” While in the hands of some
ing larger conceptual and sociological analysis. In the designers, postmodern design worked. Treib
1980s, the program encouraged the consideration of complained, “it is like listening to six radios playing
118 literary theory to take into account the interconnection at once, each with a different station. This is not
of the structure and semantics of visual language, charged complexity, it is noise.”7 Over the next
exploring how formal qualities of design effect two decades, devout modernists would assail
meaning. Faculty and students alike produced densely postmodernism and its practitioners– Massimo
packed designs that demanded focused reading, Vignelli launched a critical attack on Emigre and
allowing multi-layered meanings, and aiming at both Paul Rand resisted what he saw as the undisciplined,
complexity and intelligibility.3 opaque language of more recent approaches to
design.8 Even historian and critic Steven Heller
Another important innovator in postmodern design attacked the layered illegibility of Cranbrook design
in America was the design magazine Emigre, which in an infamous 1993 essay “Cult of the Ugly.”9 The
began publication in 1984. Founder Rudy VanderLans vehement resistance to highly theoretical, academic
and partner Zuzana Licko used the journal to showcase postmodernism came most vociferously from
experiments in computerized layout and font design designers whose practice was rooted in the practical,
in the presentation of theoretical and critical texts. commercial application of modernism.
Much to the consternation of modernists like Massimo
Vignelli, the magazine challenged traditional notions
of order and legibility in design, forcing a deeper,
more subjective engagement by its viewer.4 While
Emigre was undeniably an influential source of
innovative design, it was intended for a limited,
knowledgeable design audience. Such a forum fostered
a spirit of exploration, but also catered to a very small
realm of insiders familiar with the technological,
theoretical, and cultural issues.5
While academic postmodern exercises in design did 119
lend themselves to an insular community of insiders,

designers emerging from theoretically engaged
programs like Cranbrook’s have proved to be among
of the late-twentieth-century’s more thoughtful
designers. The McCoys have done book covers
for MIT Press, one of the few academic publishers
dedicated to innovative design. And Cranbrook
graduates have found ways to temper dramatically the
intensity of their theoretical background in cerebral
yet reserved covers such as Lorraine Wild’s 1985
MASK OF MEDUSA and Lucille Tenazas’s 1994 THE BODY .
Even so, with a few exceptions, broader applications

of aspects of postmodernism would tend to come
from less theoretically engaged designers who adapted
some of the formal characteristics associated with the
likes of Greiman, Cranbrook, and Emigre. These more
mainstream designs were not necessarily conscious
LORRAINE WILD MASK OF MEDUSA adaptations of the theoretical underpinnings of
1985 Rizzoli postmodernism, but nevertheless reflected the
LUCILLE TENAZAS THE BODY pluralistic historical sampling and depersonalization
1994 Chronicle Books of the postmodern spirit.
A POSTMODERN ANONYMITY
The plasticity of style encouraged by corporate

publishing beginning in the 1970s nurtured aspects
of postmodern design, particularly the questioning of
a coherent individual style. The publishing world that
dominated in the 1970s rewarded designers like Paul
Bacon who could shift from style to style. This denial
of a consistent style set the stage for depersonalized
historicism and unapologetic stylistic quotation of
1980s designers. Like Bacon, Fred Marcellino fostered
a vast spectrum of depersonalizing styles in the 1970s
and early 1980s in order to meet the needs of his
120 clients. Marcellino, who had been trained as a painter,
established his design career doing album covers,
but by the mid-1970s had switched to designing book
covers.10 Perusing his portfolio in 1979, critic Carol
Stevens praised “such a variety of graphic techniques
and interpretations that the separate pieces appear
to have been produced by more than one person.”
Later she proclaimed, “Marcellino has no desire to
use his work as a vehicle for the expression of some
compelling personal vision.” Working for many of
the major players in the publishing world, Marcellino
knew that his designs, rather than speaking with his
voice, had to speak for the publisher and the author.
Marcellino was quite self-conscious about setting
aside the notion that a designer must foster a grand,
coherent and individualized style: “I do something
different every time. The solution comes from the job.
I do not have a singular cohesive style.”11
BASCOVE HAD I A HUNDRED MOUTHS

1985 Clarkson N. Potter
BASCOVE BIG BOB

1981 Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich
121
FRED MARCELLINO THE TRUTH ABOUT LORIN JONES

As with THE TRUTH ABOUT LORIN JONES , most of
Marcellino’s book covers are at least partially

illustrative, marrying clean, smoothly rendered
images with equally polished lettering. An emphasis
on illustration, which can be traced back to Push Pin,
had a resurgence in the 1980s at the hands of many
designers in addition to Marcellino, among them,
Anthony Russo and Bascove. These designers’
combinations of text and image effectively suggest
the themes of the books they advertise, but rarely
call attention to themselves as designs. In a strategy
that was shared by many of his 1980s colleagues,
122 Marcellino explored various historical styles that
seemed appropriate for projects, and he particularly
favored variations of Art Deco lettering. In addition,
many of Marcellino’s covers create an illusion that
they have been pieced together, retaining a sense of a
constructed object with three-dimensional properties.
For instance, the lettering and portraits arranged in
the cover of ALIVE AND DEAD IN INDIANA are rendered so
they seem to protrude from the background plane.
Significantly, the illusion of space in ALIVE AND DEAD
IN INDIANA is not consistent–the regularly spaced lines
of the background deny traditional perspectival

diminution, creating a tension between two and
three dimensions. This sort of tension reflects the
complexities of representation created in collage.
Marcellino continued his experimentation with type
and spatial illusion in covers like RUMOR HAS IT , which
presents bands of text seeming to hover above the
open pages of a book, and THE RUNAWAY SOUL , in which
skewed type suggests a sense of depth.
FRED MARCELLINO ALIVE AND DEAD IN INDIANA

FRED MARCELLINO RUMOR HAS IT

1991 William Morrow & Company
The use of collage and collage effects like those in
Marcellino’s covers reflect the filtering of postmodern
theory into the larger, nonacademic design realm.
Not only would designers adopt a collage aesthetic to
create spatial contradictions, but they would also use
it to explore many styles simultaneously, constructing
postmodern jumbles that challenged modernist
notions of continuity and creative individuality.
Collage in the early 1980s was certainly a continuation
of a long history that included not only Surrealists,
Dadaists, and Constructivists, but also Rauschenberg,
Warhol, Push Pin designers, and the raw anarchic
visual language of the late 1970s punk scene that 123
seemed to be one of the inspirations of George

Corsillo’s 1979 cover for NANA [page 113].
By 1983, the observations of critics like Steven

Heller hinted at new uses for collaged imagery.
Heller complained that collages in design could be
“deceptively conceptual, giving the impression that
a statement exists, when in reality the pseudo-poetic
imagery camouflages the fact of a nonexistent point
of view.”12 Heller looked for the poetic, the personal,
and the expressive, applauding designer/illustrators FRED MARCELLINO THE RUNAWAY SOUL
who employed techniques of collage that were unique-
ly their own, missing the point that a “nonexistent
point of view” might have significance in and of itself.
124 Pondering changes in design practice in the last two

decades of the twentieth century, Milton Glaser noted
a transition of the designer from image maker to
image miner. He pointed out that not only was the
designer distanced from the image-making process,
but other makers of images, like photographers,
artists and illustrators were “reduced to the level of
anonymous image providers.”13 Naomi Osnos’s 1981
design for FABRICATIONS presents an illusionistic
landscape occupied by images and type appropriated
from many sources and collaged in a way that makes
no claim to a new stylistic resolution. Instead, the
cover is a hodgepodge of material from a variety of
sources, creating what some critics felt was visual
chaos. By the mid-1980s, designers would use collage
techniques to create more intriguing covers, like
the seemingly improvised INNER TUBE by Marc Cohen.
NAOMI OSNOS FABRICATIONS

MARC COHEN INNER TUBE

FROM ACADEMIA TO THE REAL WORLD
As the 1980s wore on, mainstream design would
incorporate postmodernism’s opacity of meaning and
depersonalized expression; the mixing of disparate
images and styles would become an indispensable
tool for mainstream postmodernist designers. Starting
in the late 1970s, in an approach sometimes labeled
“retro,” book cover designers built compositions
around Deco-inspired typefaces, as in THE STARS AT
NOON and WHERE THE JACKALS HOWL AND OTHER STORIES .
Other designers crafted whimsical but sophisticated

mélanges of styles and liberally spaced typefaces
mined from any source they found useful. Louise Fili 125
freely made references to past design sources; Paula

Scher was especially interested in historical typefaces
and formal arrangements, building and varying
themes from De Stijl and Constructivism; and Carin
Golberg used a spectrum of historical references and
typographical experimentation. Reflecting the critical
theory of the day, these designers quoted the past
unapologetically, creating a conscious and deliberate
questioning of originality and boldly obscuring the
creative presence of the designer. And, as design
historian Philip Meggs noted in 1989, the practition-
ers breathing new life into commercial design were
women, a sign that the previously male-dominated
field of design was beginning to overcome generations
of gender bias.14
ROBERT SCUDELLARI THE STARS AT NOON

PAUL GAMARELLO WHERE THE JACKALS HOWL

1981 Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich
126
LOUISE FILI THE LOVER

1985 Pantheon Books
LOUISE FILI PERFECT GALLOWS

1988 Pantheon Books
LOUISE FILI CHROMA

FORAGING THROUGH HISTORY
Louise Fili had worked with the master of innovative
typographic design, Herb Lubalin, in the 1970s.
Later, she adapted the light pluralism of corporate
publishing of that decade into a style of more forceful,
yet subtle historical reference. As art director at
Pantheon from the mid 1970s to the 1980s, she
appropriated and pastiched traditional styles, yet
tempered the audacity of her adaptations with artful
combinations of understated color and matte finishes.
Fili’s 1985 design for Marguerite Duras’s THE LOVER
was a subtle adaptation of 1930s style, marrying a
historicist typeface with an evocative photograph 127
of the author from the era addressed in her memoir.

The refined type, combined with the relentless,
knowing stare of the young woman in the photograph,
reveal Fili’s ability to use spare historical sources
to create striking covers in a style that has been
described as “hyper-elegant.”15 The strength of Fili’s
designs, and her true contribution to book cover
design at the end of the twentieth century, have
come from her love of the physicality of her sources
and her rigorous attention to history. Fili combed
French and Italian flea markets for ephemera with
inspirational typefaces, and when she adapted her PAULA SCHER UNCOMMON WISDOM
inspirations to book cover designs, the products
tended to be imbued with the tactility of her beloved
flea-market finds. Fili has also proven to be one of
the most historically savvy designers of her era. Along
with her husband, design historian Steven Heller,
Fili has authored several books exploring the styles
that she finds so inspirational.16 Historical quotation
for Fili most often began with a resurrected typeface
that would elicit the connotations and associations she
wished to conjure up. In covers like PERFECT GALLOWS
and CHROMA , Fili showed how elegant, historically
inspired typefaces can create a stage for the literary
exploration through visual associations, with or
without illustrative elements.
128
PAULA SCHER REAL ESTATE LORRAINE LOUIE THE QUARTERLY 4

1988 Poseidon Press 1987 Vintage Books
As a designer at CBS Records in the 1970s, Paula
Scher built upon the legacy of Push Pin eclecticism,
employing mixtures of typefaces mined from
historical sources she found scouring old type books
and specimen pages.17 By the late 1970s, she was
shifting freely between historical styles from project
to project, incorporating modernist aesthetics as
varied as Constructivism, Art Deco, Futurism, and
de Stijl. Scher’s admirers such as Philip Meggs saw
her stylistic pluralism not as design plagiarism, but
rather as a use of a past “vocabulary of forms and form
relationships, reinventing and combining them in Carin Goldberg, who had worked with Scher at CBS
unexpected ways.”18 Her historicist approach to design records in the 1970s, embraced a quiet style that often
congealed in her post-CBS career when she partnered incorporated unique and sophisticated typographic
with Terry Koppel. Their firm put out a 1984 self- constellations that seem to enhance and support
promotional brochure, Great Beginnings, in which the mood of the image. In the early 1980s, Goldberg
they designed the opening pages of great literary started her own business and began designing book
works in styles appropriate to the period of the text. covers, incorporating pastiches of historical styles
At their best, Koppel & Scher’s historical quotations and references in an attempt to find alternatives to
could be outrageous parodies of past design. Perhaps the formulaic bestseller designs of the previous decade.
the most famous and controversial was Scher’s 1986 For Goldberg, the history of graphic design provided
Swatch watch ad based on a 1934 Herbert Matter a vast array of modes of visual communication from
travel poster.19 which she could pick and choose appropriate elements
according to the demands of her project. Indeed, 129
Scher started designing book jackets while still at Goldberg, like Scher and Fili, established her career
CBS records, but book cover design for publishers in an era when the legacy of Push Pin eclecticism was
like Simon and Schuster and Random House firmly entrenched. Mining the past was, by the 1980s,
became a major focus of her work at Koppel & Scher. as legitimate an approach to design as any other.22
Because of her emerging reputation as a manipulator Goldberg’s covers for Dell’s editions of Kurt Vonnegut
of typography, publishers enlisted her to design novels played off contemporary postmodern styles of
books, in Scher’s words, “that had to look somewhat architectural ornament, reflecting her precise sense
important, but cerebral in nature.”20 Scher could of typographic structure and an understanding of
adopt and adapt an established style, as in her architectural education and practice. Her system
1988 Constructivist-inspired cover for UNCOMMON of simple lines of color forming the background for
WISDOM , or she could present a typically postmodern title and author, overlapping a large “V” combined
hodgepodge of unresolved images and style as with varyingly kerned secondary text created a sense
in her cover for REAL ESTATE from the same year. of flattened and applied ornament that echoed the
superficial decorative pastiches of style in the work
Lorraine Louie came to New York in the early 1980s of architects such as Michael Graves.
and by the middle of the decade was freelancing for
publishers like Vintage. Like Scher, Fili, and Goldberg,
she was inspired by styles of the first half of the
twentieth century, but distinguished herself from
her colleagues with a less intense focus on typography.
While she incorporated historically inspired typefaces
into her designs, she was equally drawn to color, com-
position, and imagery as design elements.21 Her covers
for the literary journal THE QUARTERLY exemplify her
willingness to combine carefully composed type with
layers of purely decorative geometric forms.
130 Goldberg’s dialog with graphic design history is

perhaps best revealed in her 1986 design for ULYSSES ,
[page 14] in which she based her composition on a
poster by Paul Renner and quoted the enlarged “U”
of Kauffer’s edition of the text. As Ronald Labuz rightly
observed, it is a book design about the history of book
design.23 Goldberg proved herself to be among the most
successful book cover designers to adapt theoretical
postmodernism’s inquiries into style and authorship,
earning praise from theoretically engaged historians
like Ellen Lupton who credited Goldberg with
creating a “series of icons that have functioned in
the brutal arena of retail sales while also engaging
head-on the cultural debates internal to the design
profession.”24 From the nostalgic collaged images
CARIN GOLDBERG SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
1989 Dell Publishing in A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES to the Constructivist style of
MUSSOLINI: A BIOGRAPHY and the Viennese Secessionist
style of THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS , Goldberg’s designs

from the 1980s reflect issues of postmodernism with
a versatility unmatched by most of her colleagues.
And Goldberg would continue to refine her style to
become one of the more innovative designers of the
1990s as well.
As impressive as work by designers like Goldberg
was, historical quotation and stylistic appropriation
were not without vocal critics. Influential and
respected designers like Tibor Kalman resisted
the purposeful historical eclecticism of postmodernist
practice, accusing designers like Goldberg of
“pillaging history” and creating “jive modernism,”
a superficial, decorative use of formal elements
of earlier twentieth-century styles without their
theoretical and revolutionary bases.25 Design historian
Ronald Labuz wrote that the deliberate historicism
of 1980s design reflected a desire to give the viewer
something that is already familiar and thus already
understandable.26 Even so, considering historicism
simply as cliché, even in what Labuz called a “rerun”
decade, may be an underestimation of the more
theoretically savvy designers of the era. Indeed, Lubaz
pointed out the duality of historicist practice that, on
one hand, presented the viewer with familiar visual
languages, and on the other, spoke to fellow designers
on a more sophisticated, self-referential level.
The audacity of the quotations like Goldberg’s should

be considered within a larger theoretical exploration 131
of authorship and appropriation during the 1980s.

Ideas that had been stewing for more than a decade
in literary theory and were beginning to boil over into
self-conscious explorations in the visual arts as in
the work of Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and Cindy
Sherman. Artists like these made work that suggested
that identity is merely a construct of society, that
originality is a myth, and that the notion of creative
individuality is a romantic fiction. Furthermore, the
self-reflective activity of historical quotation revealed
that graphic design was becoming aware of its
own historical legacy. This intensified historicism
coincided with the publishing of major works of
design history, like Philip Meggs’s 1983 A History of
Graphic Design, and with more sophisticated historical
inquiries using theoretical and methodological
approaches far more complex than linear narrative.27
CARIN GOLDBERG
WHERE WATER COMES TOGETHER WITH OTHER WATER
1985 Vintage Books
CARIN GOLDBERG A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

132
CARIN GOLDBERG MUSSOLINI

1983 Vintage Books
CARIN GOLDBERG THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS

Paul Rand lived to witness postmodern trends in
graphic design and, with a blustery self-assurance that
earned him a reputation as a curmudgeon, he soundly
condemned what he saw as an embrace of trendy flash
in lieu of formal rigor and thoughtful content.30 Rand’s
often unflattering self-importance might make it
tempting to attribute his uneasiness with approaches
to design in the late twentieth century to an ego
bruised by the waning popularity of his beloved
modernist take on design. Yet for Rand style wasn’t
just about style, it was a vehicle of meaning, a vehicle
THE PROMISE OF POSTMODERNISM that carried the burden of social responsibility.
While postmodernism infused intellectual life into the In 1946 he ended his Thoughts on Design with a
field of graphic design and made waves that did indeed consideration of the responsibility of the designer
jostle the realm of commercial book publishing, many within the social realm. “Even if it is true,” he wrote,
of the challenges that had faced book cover designers “that the commonplace advertising and exhibitions
at the beginning of the 1980s were still present in the of bad taste are indicative of the mental capacity of the
following decade. Media conglomerates were snapping man in the street, the opposing argument is equally
up a huge portion of the book-publishing industry, valid. Bromidic advertising catering to bad taste
and, with increasing frequency, they were making merely perpetuates that mediocrity and denies him
superstar deals with best-selling authors. Publishers’ one of the most easily accessible means of aesthetic
tendency to bet on a sure thing rarely fostered the development.”31 Rand’s grumblings were still relevant
support of inventive design.28 Paula Scher found the more than a half-century later–in 2001 Rick Poynor
process of designing book covers frustrating in an complained of the hollow trendiness of recent 133
increasingly market-driven environment where cover designs. While the books may be commercial
many corporate voices had opinions about design successes, chided Poynor, “to suggest that sales
and the authority to enforce those opinions. Louise are the ultimate yardstick of good design (or good
Fili was also inclined to refocus her energy on product anything), is to dive headfirst down the slippery
design and high-end restaurant identity programs in slope to Philistinism.”32
which she was able to design sumptuous objects and
environments for receptive clients. Milton Glaser The challenge to the book-cover designer at the
drifted away from a focus on print design in favor of end of the 1980s was to make use of the lessons
commissions in which he could assert more creative learned from postmodernism and apply them in an
control. He explained that “the design process has increasingly market-driven environment. Academic
now been integrated into a client’s control system.… postmodernism was design for designers and
Clients now have a much greater preconception of theoreticians, not a more general audience. Superficial
what they want.…The determinations of what is stylistic elements of these experiments had found
appropriate are very often those of a marketing their way into more mainstream design, but it would
department.”29 Glaser saw fewer possibilities for take further refinement to make the language of
experimentation and creative innovation in a field postmodernism work in the field of book cover design.
where publishers conformed to models that had In the eyes of some observers, the contemporary
already proved successful. designer needed to relearn some of the lessons of
modernism and apply them to the formal innovations
of postmodernism: re-marry poetry to structure and
ideal to practice.33 In its acceptance of opacity and
complexity, postmodernism opened up room for
subjective individuality in both the creation and
the reception of designs. As book cover design of
the 1990s would prove, the obtuse academicism of
early postmodernism could indeed be purged while
retaining the fluid meanings of layered images and
stylistic pluralism.
6 REDEFINE AND REDESIGN
MAKING POSTMODERNISM WORK
6 REDEFINE AND REDESIGN
136 Despite assertions of order and function, modernism If literary theory presented meaning as in a state of
in its earlier forms was essentially a romanticized constant flux, buffeted by the influence of external
search for the essential and the expressive. By the sociological forces, in design, this indeterminacy was
1970s, corporate adaptation of the idiom in America transformed into a means of internalized personal
had embraced its clarity and cleanliness, but quashed expression. Roland Barthes’s speculation of the
its attempts at meaningful expression. Academic post- “death of the author” was an attack on the possibility
modernism attempted to present the world not as a of unique individual expression. The fragmented
series of essential truths, but as a contradictory array constructions of 1980s academic postmodern graphic
of decentered contingencies in constant flux. In the designers seemed to affirm Barthes’s assertion that all
wake of what some saw as the “urbane and defeated cultural products are simply a rehashing of already
irony”1 of 1980s postmodernism, observers in the existing material and that a particular design is more a
1990s began to look for ways to reinsert meaning and result of particular cultural conditions and systems of
expression into design while at the same time applying communication than individual creative inspiration.
a juxtaposition of styles and layering of images. Yet ambiguity and contingency have been presented
over and over by more recent designers as vehicles
of the creative interpretation and expression Barthes
proclaimed dead. As Rick Poynor has pointed out, it
is in the last few decades that designers have received
greater recognition as creative individuals rather than
anonymous image-makers who simply give form to
the ideas of others.2
THE NEW INDIVIDUALIZED VOICE
Innovative designers have recently tried to reestablish
a sense of subjective creativity and interpretation
through the formal devices and theoretical bases of
postmodernism. In a way, they are returning to the
creative, communicative role espoused by designers
such as Lustig and Rand in the 1940s and 1950s,
but without the more romantic notions of a universal
creative language or the urgent sense of social
responsibility. Contemporary book cover designers,
especially those working within the realm of large
corporate publishing, are afforded little opportunity
to engage in deep sociopolitical commentary, and 137
they must be clever and diplomatic if they want to

pursue progressive graphic experimentation. The
most innovative recent book cover designers manage
to balance the often heavy-handed demands of
commerce with richly evocative graphic communica-
tion. The eloquent body of work produced over the
last decade represents a renaissance in evocative,
conceptually driven book cover design.
Some book designers have managed to use design as

a force of active professional re-evaluation. Bruce Mau
BRUCE MAU THE LIBERTINE READER
has found ways to integrate ideological rigor into his 1997 Zone Books
book designs, taking on projects where he can claim
a role as a collaborator rather than just as a packager
of others’ ideas who is “always singing someone else’s
song and never saying what he thinks should be said.”3
Since 1985, Mau has worked consistently on Zone
Books, a series of volumes of cutting-edge theoretical
writings on visual culture. Taking a cue from Lustig’s
New Directions series, Mau developed a visual system
that creates an identifiable visual connection between
the individual books yet also allows for experimenta-
tion. Mau’s Zone covers most often depend on subtle
but inventive imagery, with type as a secondary, less
conceptually dynamic feature.
In the 1990s, technological advances made the
REDEFINE AND REDESIGN
integration of various forms of media envisioned

by the previous decade’s designers more and more
viable. This integration of text, image, sound,
animation, and video was labeled “hypermedia”
by critics and historians. It provided a richness in
possibilities of interpretation because of the variety
of user-controlled paths of navigation in an interactive
environment. The notion of hypermedia most
obviously applied to the World Wide Web and
interactive digital environments, with their capacity
for animated multilinear structures.4 But, at times,
138 the fluidity of interpretation made possible with
hypermedia, combined with the formal visual
language of postmodernism, has inspired traditional
print-based publishing. Designers found that the
decentered, nonlinear, nonhierarchical narrative
of interactive environments could be produced by
layered images to produce “new associations out of
contradictory elements.”5 Critic Max Bruinsma has
observed that the “postmodern aesthetic favors much
more open relationships between fragments of
content” than the rigid hierarchies of modernism.
“It favors, the ad hoc narrative that is the greatest asset
CARIN GOLDBERG JILTED
of good storytellers, rearranging the basic elements
1993 Simon & Schuster of their tales each time they tell them.…The very
principles of transparency in ordering information,
which have ruled for so long, have been changed.
More than ever, graphic design is now about subjective
interpretation of signs.”6
139
CARIN GOLDBERG THE HISTORY OF THE BLUES

1995 Hyperion Books
140 The work of Carin Golderg perhaps best exemplifies

the transition of book cover design in the late 1980s
and 1990s, a move away from historicist formalism
into more evocative, fluid narratives. While in covers
like ULYSSES [page 14] and THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS
[page 132], she proved adept at incorporating historical
styles with a sense of dispassionate bluntness, her
work in the 1990s began to use postmodernism’s
stylistic quotations and layered images to reveal an
expressive depth and whimsical humor. Plays of
type and image could be brash and disquieting
as in JILTED and THE HISTORY OF THE BLUES or wistfully
kinetic as in BONE . Like many of her contemporaries,
she frequently incorporated photographs into her
designs, creating complex relationships between
CARIN GOLDBERG BONE
fiction and truth, specific and general, real and
1993 Hyperion Books
imagined, as in her cover for SINATRA .7 While Goldberg
stands out as one of the most versatile and inventive
designers of the 1990s, she is one of the many recent
designers who have found it increasingly difficult to
do innovative freelance book cover design. In recent
years, she has moved on from the relative isolation
of independent book cover work to larger-scale,
total-publishing projects and magazine consulting.8
The trajectory of Goldberg’s career shows that while
new technology, combined with new ways of fostering
subjective interpretation, offered the book-cover
designer of the 1990s the potential for innovative
exploration, the designer in the realm of main-
stream publishing needed a nurturing corporate
environment. Trends in market-driven corporate
publishing for the previous two decades had made
that environment hard to find. Many book-cover
designers who had made an impact in the 1980s
became frustrated with commercial publishing and
moved on. Paula Scher noted that in the 1980s, young,
less-powerful art directors were forced to shuttle 141
design ideas between the various divisions of large

companies, and often a design that had already gone
through five or six revisions would be rejected by a
more powerful corporate authority. In the 1990s, she
felt the situation was made worse because publishers
could further micromanage the design process once
computer-generated layouts made comps of every
version of the design available for corporate scrutiny.
At the same time, editors also sought marketing advice
and feedback from major bookstores, bringing yet
another large corporate voice into the design process.9
Similarly, designer Richard Eckersly related how CARIN GOLDBERG SINATRA
the process of judging the 2001 American Institute 1995 Scribner
of Graphic Arts 50 Books/50 Covers competition left

many observers noting the “pernicious influence
of commercial distributors and bookstore chains”
in an atmosphere in which “market insecurity and
a resultant conservatism has eroded the confidence
and authority of the designer.”10
142
CAROL DEVINE CARSON WOMEN OF SAND AND MYRRH

1992 Anchor Books
CAROL DEVINE CARSON THE ASH GARDEN

CAROL DEVINE CARSON DAMAGE

A BASTION OF INNOVATIVE DESIGN
Despite the often stultifying demands of corporate
publishing, environments where innovative design
can flourish have been established, most notably
at Random House’s Knopf Group, which includes
the imprints Knopf, Anchor, Everyman’s Library,
Pantheon, Schocken, and Vintage. From its beginnings
early in the twentieth century, the press’s founder
Alfred A. Knopf expressed a steadfast dedication to
the quality of its product. That quality came not only
from the literary content of its books but also from the
books’ designs and materials. At one point or another,
Knopf employed most of the book cover designers
who made a mark in American book cover design,
from early serious practitioners like Dwiggins,
Kauffer, and Salter, to groundbreaking modernists
like Herbert Bayer, Lustig, and Rand.11 Yet Knopf’s
biggest contribution to American book cover
design may very well be its recent establishment
of an in-house design group that is able to navigate
the relentless demands of editors, marketers and
authors while maintaining a relatively high level
of creative autonomy.12
143
The strength of the current design group at Knopf is

the fortunate coincidence of the arrivals, in 1987, of
Sonny Mehta and Carol Devine Carson. Mehta was
brought in as editor-in-chief of Knopf and proved to
be a dedicated proponent of inventive, sophisticated,
and consistent design as a valuable corporate endeavor.
At the same time, Carol Divine Carson took over the
art department. Mehta gave Carson the opportunity to
build an in-house design department, and with shrewd
diplomacy, she was able to hire a stable of talented,
self-sufficient designers and provide them with a
remarkably supportive workplace. The distinctiveness
of Knopf’s team has earned the publisher and its
CAROL DEVINE CARSON & GABRIELE WILSON IF NOT WINTER
designers a great deal of respect from the design 2003 Vintage Books
field. The committee that awarded Alfred A. Knopf
the 1999 Design Leadership Award proclaimed,
“The most recent crop of book designers, who have so
refreshingly redefined what a book can look like, are
only the latest expressions of a corporate commitment
to quality and innovation in publishing that goes back
farther than most of us can remember.”13 And while she
points out that in-house teams make freelance careers
very difficult to pursue, Paula Scher observes that, “the
book jackets currently produced by Knopf are consis-
tently better than those of most publishing companies.
Knopf’s corporate management has a history of
valuing design and fosters a condition that has allowed
talented people to produce their best work.”14
In her work for Knopf, Carson has cultivated a style
that melds image, type, and ornament, creating

understated cover compositions that compliment the
authors’ work. Given the opportunity, Carson enjoys
designing the entire book, especially those by authors
she particularly respects. The decorative type and
ornament of many of Carson’s designs testify to her
appreciation of designers like Dwiggins and Rudolf
Ruzicka. Carson draws these elements from an archive
of vintage specimens she has built by combing flea
markets and antiquarian bookshops. In the cover of
WOMEN OF SAND AND MYRRH , she uses bold North African
144 patterns that seem to lock the type into place, and
in THE ASH GARDEN she incorporates a purposefully
pixilated line engraving with areas of type that look
like the labels from an old archive. Carson’s designs
can be austere and dramatic, as in DAMAGE , but more
often, the sparseness of her work is remarkably
subtle. Carson gives the viewer intriguing clues in
her designs, inviting the close inspection of details
in covers such as IF NOT WINTER: FRAGMENTS OF SAPPHO and
EVER AFTER . Using typography as a subordinate accent,
Carson is willing to let the image take center stage,

whether it hovers in a field of white or dominates
the cover, as in PHOENIX . Projects she has overseen,
like the Everyman’s Library series (relaunched in
1991), attest to a love of books as delicate, precious
objects. GARDEN POEMS incorporates an early
nineteenth-century engraving and ornate decorative
borders, creating a contrast between the richly
layered composition and saturated color of the front
and understated elegance of the back. The subtle type,
gold-embossed front boards and lack of dust jackets
employed in other books from the series pay homage
to early modernists’ desire to design the book as an
CAROL DEVINE CARSON EVER AFTER
elegantly crafted whole.15 1992 Alfred A. Knopf
CAROL DEVINE CARSON PHOENIX

145
CAROL DEVINE CARSON & BARBARA DE WILDE GARDEN POEMS

c. 2000 Alfred A. Knopf
Carson has led a team of talented and influential
designers, including Barbara de Wilde, Archie

Ferguson, Susan Mitchell, John Gall, and Chip Kidd,
and she has brought in a number of promising
young designers, among them Gabriele Wilson
and Abby Weintraub. In an environment that fosters
experimentation with new and challenging graphic
modes, the team has built upon earlier postmodern
eclecticism and helped revitalize book cover design
at the end of the twentieth century. Reaching far
beyond the corporate blandness of the 1970s and
impracticable early experiments in postmodernism,
146 these designers, each in his or her own way, have
worked with text and image to create meaningful
cover compositions that create sophisticated dialogues
with the content of the books.
While much of the excitement in the field of design

in the late 1980s and 1990s was spurred on by digital
technology, Knopf’s design team did not start using
computers until 1994. The depth of their designs
reflects their hesitance to embrace technology blindly.
Wary of the ease with which image and type could be
manipulated by the computer, Knopf’s designers were
dedicated to the conceptual rigor, interpretive plastic-
ity, and physical quality of their covers. Many of the
designers rejected the slick polish possible with the
computer-generated design, preferring to create
rawer images with scans of real objects and textures.
Even as digital technology has come to dominate their
design process, they have been able to maintain their
fidelity to the book as a finely crafted object and the
cover as a deeply communicative medium.
CHIP KIDD THE BOOMER

CHIP KIDD REMOTE

Knopf’s Chip Kidd, probably the highest-profile
contemporary book cover designer, has pursued a
range of sophisticated stylistic approaches, including
his early partiality for subtle minimalist interplays
of type, image, and fields of color. Kidd was hired at
Knopf in the mid-1980s, just after he had graduated
from design school. In over 1500 covers, as well as
in his freelance covers for other major publishers,
Kidd has helped define book cover design at the end
of the twentieth century.16 Kidd earned his reputation
combining a carefully honed sense of formal compo-
sition with a love of pop culture imagery, creating a
uniquely witty and irreverent stylistic voice.17 147
Kidd’s best-known work, however, depends not

only on subtle formal manipulation but also on an
integration of vernacular visual language that owes
something to such designers as Art Chantry and
Tibor Kalman. The mid-century designers’ desire
to distinguish high design from kitsch has been
tempered in the last few decades by a willingness to
accept and even embrace pop culture imagery. Kidd’s
comic-book look, the busty vamp, and the feel of
a supermarket window ad have become acceptable CHIP KIDD WATCHING THE BODY BURN
features of contemporary design. Not only is this
acceptance the result of a general cultural taste for
recycled nostalgic imagery in the 1980s and 1990s,
but it is a factor of increased professional self-esteem.
With a sense of their own history, recognition of
innovative work, and generally broader definitions
of art and art practice, designers like Kidd are free
to admit that they are creating pop culture and thus
that their work can be in dialogue with that culture.
As Steven Heller has pointed out, the “pioneering few”
waged and won the battle to distinguish thoughtful
modern design. With professionally and critically
legitimate ground to stand upon, subsequent designers
have been able to refine and redefine the tools
available to them.18
Kidd delights in the incorporation of elements he
adapted from realms beyond the traditional worlds

of art and literature. A lifelong fan of comics, science
fiction, and other facets of highly commercialized
popular culture, Kidd draws upon the sensational
visual and textual proclamations that have grown
to be an inextricable part of American culture since
the 1950s. Covers for BOOMER , WATCHING THE BODY BURN ,
and REMOTE reflect Kidd’s wholehearted embrace of
the clichéd pop culture of comic books and television.
Yet Kidd’s covers are not simplistic, superficial
adaptations of nostalgic pop culture. As crass as his
148 inspirations may sometimes be, Kidd’s designs are
not easy: his covers lead his viewers through a process
of perusing and decoding multi-leveled combinations
of images and type.19 DARLING is a subtler embrace
of middlebrow culture, in which the 1950s family
portrait, cowhide, and childish scrawl create a strange
interplay of textures and an unsettling rawness that is
appropriate for a book about bestiality and fratricide.
As an author himself, Kidd has had the luxury of

designing his own book, THE CHEESE MONKEYS: A NOVEL
IN TWO SEMESTERS . Even when the creative voice of
author and designer become one, Kidd shows how

calculated ambiguity, pastiches of objects, styles, and
vernacular visual language make an impressive cover.
Kidd incorporates a highly convincing photo of an
unfinished comp with an unexplained rebus on the
front board by illustrator Chris Ware, leaving his
viewer to ponder possible meanings. He has clever
messages printed on the sides of pages, encouraging
the book to be handled and bent to reveal the messages
while at the same time, recalling vernacular uses of the
same device as advertisements printed on the sides of
telephone books. At his best, Kidd manages to elicit
some the best interpretive dialogues between cover CHIP KIDD DARLING
and content in contemporary book cover design while 1992 Alfred A. Knopf
at the same time allowing his viewer to delight in his CHIP KIDD THE CHEESE MONKEYS
endearingly sophomoric humor, so apparent in covers 2001 Simon & Schuster
like SEXUAL SLANG .

149
CHIP KIDD SEXUAL SLANG

1995 HarperCollins
150
JOHN GALL A NEW WORLD

JOHN GALL PRAGMATISM
1997 Vintage Books
Among Knopf’s most versatile and sophisticated
designers is John Gall, who designs and art directs
covers for Vintage, Knopf’s trade paperback division.
Gall, who had served as art director at Grove/Atlantic,
greatly admired Roy Kuhlman’s work for Grove, and
has expressed a reverence for the egalitarianism of the
paperback that recalls his midcentury predecessors,
saying the “real life of the book is in paperback, which
is affordable to all.” Gall strives for a conceptual
complexity as well, though he tempers it with a wry
sense of humor. A cover truly works, he explains, when
it “satisfies all the communication needs of the book:
it conveys the subject matter in an interesting way, 151
sets the tone of the text, and draws attention to itself

while adding extra levels of meaning to the content.”20
Gall’s covers are emblematic of the conceptual rigor

and stylistic variety at Knopf. In covers such as
PRAGMATISM and A NEW WORLD , he uses highly detailed
digital images of real objects to echo the three-

dimensionality of the book itself, while at the same
time playing the images off the books’ content. Gall’s
designs can be heavily layered with provocative images
and carefully chosen combinations of typefaces or
they can be whimsically simple as with his covers
for THE VERIFICATIONIST , THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND , and
THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES . With consistently daring
and arresting covers, Gall manages to maintain a

restrained clarity that is apt to rivet the viewer with
his conceptual rigor and dry humor.
JOHN GALL VINTAGE AMIS

2004 Vintage Books
152
JOHN GALL THE VERIFICATIONIST

2000 Vintage Books
153
JOHN GALL THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES

2001 Vintage Books
JOHN GALL THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES

2002 Anchor Books
JOHN GALL THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

154
ARCHIE FERGUSON THE CINNAMON PEELER

Knopf’s Archie Ferguson and Barbara de Wilde are 155
each remarkable manipulators of layered type and

image. They are as comfortable building an image with
photographs as they are creating purely type-driven
compositions. In his cover for THE CINNAMON PEELER ,
Ferguson creates a subtle interplay of fields of type
and overlaid architectural motifs. For Jon Stewart’s
NAKED PICTURES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE , he builds an irreverent
image that echoes the humor of the author. Through

a reversal of tones and type arranged in an “x” in
the cover for THE REVOLUTION OF LITTLE GIRLS , de Wilde
transforms a cute vintage photo into a strikingly
disquieting image. In their designs for PUSH and
WHERE THE ROAD BOTTOMS OUT , Ferguson and de Wilde
each rely on type and its interplay with a background

field to compose covers with as intense an impact
as their photo-based designs.
ARCHIE FERGUSON NAKED PICTURES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE

1999 Rob Weisbach Books/William Morrow
ARCHIE FERGUSON PUSH

156
BARBARA DE WILDE WHERE THE ROAD BOTTOMS OUT

BARBARA DE WILDE THE LAST THING HE WANTED
157
BARBARA DE WILDE THE REVOLUTION OF LITTLE GIRLS

BARBARA DE WILDE & CHIP KIDD THE OLD MODERNS

158
ROBERTO DE VICQ DE CUMPTICH EAT ME

1997 Broadway Books
JAMES VICTORE GUERNICA AND OTHER PLAYS

1995 Grove Press
A SPECTRUM OF TALENT
As dominant as the Knopf designers have been
under the company’s accommodating patronage,
they do not have a monopoly on recent innovative
book cover design. Despite the intense competition
for market share, a number of mainstream presses
have encouraged both in-house and freelance
designers to produce remarkable covers. Even in
a corporate environment where marketing analysts,
editorial boards, and authors insist on significant
participation in the design process, designers such
as Michael Ian Kaye, Rodrigo Corral, and Paul Sahre
have distinguished themselves in the design of 159
book covers, and remarkable covers have been

produced by dozens of contemporary designers,
among them, Evan Gaffney, James Victore, Roberto
de Vicq de Cumptich, David High, Paul Buckley,
Steven Brower, Angela Skouras, Ori Kometani,
Christine Kettner, and Elizabeth Kairys, Krystyna
Skalski, and John Fulbrook III.
DAVID HIGH DID MONKEYS INVENT THE MONKEY WRENCH?

160
SUSAN MITCHELL JUST AS I THOUGHT

1998 Farrar Straus & Giroux
GABRIELE WILSON THE BIOGRAPHER’S TALE

GABRIELE WILSON THE YOKOTA OFFICERS CLUB

161
EVAN GAFFNEY PAIN MANAGEMENT EVAN GAFFNEY THE IBIS TAPESTRY
2001 Alfred A. Knopf 1998 Alfred A. Knopf

162
STEVEN BROWER SYLVIA PAUL BUCKLEY GIOVANNI’S GIFT

1992 Carol Publishing Group 1997 Viking Press
163
CHRISTINE KETTNER DIVE

1999 Hyperion Books
ORI KOMETANI THE SIMPLE SCIENCE OF FLIGHT

1998 MIT Press
ANGELA SKOURAS ANNIE LENNOX

1993 St. Martin's Press
164
ELIZABETH KAIRYS MCSWEENEY’S 8

2002 McSweeney’s Quarterly
KRYSTYNA SKALSKI ON CLOWNS

1992 Grove/Atlantic
Michael Ian Kaye became art director at Farrar,
Straus and Giroux in the early 1990s and took on
much of the cover design responsibility himself,
quickly transforming the look of the press. In 1996,
he was hired away to be creative director at Little,
Brown and Company. For his cover for LIKE A HOLE IN
THE HEAD , a novel that revolves around a rare first
edition of Jack London’s Cruise of the Snark, Kaye

created a replica of the vintage book’s cover and
overlaid it with dayglow fields containing the title
and author information, punctuated by an illusionistic
bullet hole. For ELIZABETH , Kaye deftly incorporated
understated, and quite elegant, fragments of 165
photographs and type, creating a design that is not

only visually striking, but also constructs a subtle
visual dialogues with the content of the book. With
a background as a conceptual painter and installation
artist, Kaye finds ways to use the juxtaposition of vague
images and objects to transform the mundane into
the profound. Keenly aware of artists who, in Kaye’s
own words, “made you see things differently,” he
has built upon the lessons of artists, including James
Turell and Jenny Holtzer, who transform space into
expressive and communicative environments, as
well as photographers such as Joel-Peter Witken and
Gary Winogrand, who transform the real world into
a seductive vision of horror or humor.21
MICHAEL IAN KAYE LIKE A HOLE IN THE HEAD

MICHAEL IAN KAYE SLOW LEARNER

166
MICHAEL IAN KAYE ELIZABETH

MICHAEL IAN KAYE ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY
The book cover design work of Rodrigo Corral and
Paul Sahre begins to shed light on future possibilities
for book cover design and testifies to the creative
flexibility some designers manage to assert even
within the realm of corporate publishing. Building on
the appreciation they share with colleagues like Carson
for the book as an evocative object, Corral and Sahre
have produced remarkable conceptual covers that
minimize and eliminate the use of type. While limited
edition and specialty books like the catalogue for
MoMA’s MUTANT MATERIALS IN CONTEMPORARY DESIGN and
Stefan Sagmeister’s MADE YOU LOOK have incorporated
unusual materials and text-free covers, Corral 167
and Sahre have managed to introduce such devices

into the less adventuresome realm of commercial
publishing. Covers like Corral’s LULLABY and Sahre’s
KILLING THE BUDDHA allow suggestive images alone
to shape the viewer’s interpretation of the cover.

The exile of type from the cover also underscores
the spine as an integral element in the book’s design
and has given recent designers another field on
which to explore the communicative possibilities
of cover design, sometimes with striking results.
The bookshelf browsers who encounter the spine of
John Gall’s MELANCHOLY OF ANATOMY [page 6], for example,
are confronted with an image of an eyeball staring
back at them.
RODRIGO CORRAL THE LIFE OF INSECTS

168
RODRIGO CORRAL A NEUTRAL CORNER

PAUL SAHRE HELLO WORLD: A LIFE IN HAM RADIO

2003 Princeton Architectural Press
169
ERIC BAKER WITH GAETANO PESCE & PESCE, LTD MUTANT MATERIALS IN CONTEMPORARY DESIGN
1995 Museum of Modern Art
170
STEFAN SAGMEISTER MADE YOU LOOK

2001 Booth Clibborn Editions
WHAT NOW?
Writing at the end of the 1980s, historian Maud
Lavin saw few places in the corporate world where a
designer could challenge “the profession as a whole
to redefine the societal role of the designer in a way
that more broadly engages the mass-communicative
powers of graphic design.”22 Personal expression has
been reintroduced even into the corporate world, but
what about the social engagement that was so central
to modernists like Lustig? What does this challenge
mean for the book cover designer who must survive in
a world where publishing is an increasingly corporate
realm in which business drives the availability of 171
literature? In her recent considerations of the role of

digital technology as a design tool, critic Ellen Lupton
looks back to the modernist conception of the artist
as producer where “artists and designers treated
techniques of manufacture not as neutral, transparent
means to an end, but as devices equipped with cultural
meaning and aesthetic character.”23 She revives a
call for the consideration of work, not as an isolated
creative act, but as an activity of integrating object,
means of reproduction, and audience. The best
contemporary book cover design reflects this sort of
broader engagement in which the designers consider
their viewers to be participants in the construction
of meaning. With this sort of conceptualized practice,
contemporary designers can aspire to much the same
goals as early modernists like Lustig; helping the
publisher sell its product while at the same time
expressing an individualized creative voice, engaging
to the viewer in an active interpretive exchange, and
maybe even encouraging someone to read a book.
RODRIGO CORRAL LULLABY

2002 Anchor Books
PAUL SAHRE KILLING THE BUDDHA

2003 Free Press
NOTES
INTRODUCTION - JUDGING THE BOOK

1 Tracy Mayor, “Book Industry Adapts to Digital Revolution,” 5 Marshall Lee, “What Is Modern Book Design,” Books for Our Time
CNN.com, 20 September, 2000, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1951), 14.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/09/20/
6 Wild, “Europeans in America,” 154.
electrifying.book.industry.idg/index.html.
7 “Ernst Reichl Offers Revealing Pointers on ‘The Look
CHAPTER 1 - A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM: of the Book,’” Printing News, 26 October, 1968, 18.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK JACKET IN AMERICA 8 Quoted in “Ernst Reichl,” Contemporary Books,
1 See Peter Curl, Designing a Book Jacket (London and New York: February/March, 1936, n.p.
Studio Publications, 1956); James A. Findlay, “Brief History 9 Steven Heller, “The Essential Modernist,” Annual of the
of the Book Jacket,” Pictorial Covers: An Exhibition of American American Institute of Graphic Arts 13 (1992) 26–36; Keith
Book Jackets: 1920–1950 (Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Bienes Murgatroyd, “E. McKnight Kauffer: The Artist in the World
Center for the Arts, 1997); Alan Powers, Front Covers: Great of Commerce,” Print, January/February 1969, 30–34.
Book Jacket and Cover Design (London: Octopus Publishing
Group, Ltd, 2001), 6–11; George Salter, “The Book Jacket,” 10 Heller, “The Essential Modernist,” 30.
Third Annual Exhibition: Book Jacket Designers Guild (New
11 George Salter, “Book Jacket Designs: 1940–1947,”
172 York: The Book Jacket Designers Guild, Inc., 1950), n.p.
Print VI, 1 (1948): 13–4.
2 Herbert Read, “A Choice of Extremes,” Penrose Annual,
12 Salter, “The Book Jacket,” n.p.
1937, 22. See also Herbert Read, Art and Industry (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935). 13 Lee, “What Is Modern Book Design,” 20–1.
3 Sutnar emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1939 under the 14 Desmond Flower, The Paper-Back: Its Past, Present and Future
sponsorship of Ernst Reichl. (London: Arborfield, 1959), 10.
4 Describing Herbert Bayer’s treatise on design, published in 15 A popular alternative to public libraries, commercial lending
the trade journal PM, design historian Lorraine Wild described libraries were often run out of retail establishments and
one of the basic tenets of Bauhaus philosophy, “he conflated required readers to pay membership and rental fees. Richard
art and design, presenting irresistible arguments for the A. Lupoff, The Great American Paperback (Portland, Oregon:
devising of beautiful new forms as the only rational response The Collectors Press, 2001), 21–3.
to modern conditions.” Wild presents an excellent overview
of the various manifestations of European modernism 16 Flower, The Paper-Back: Its Past, Present and Future, 21; 28.
that would be adopted and adapted by American designers.
17 Paperbacks: USA An Exhibition of Covers (New York: American
Lorraine Wild, “Europeans in America,” in Graphic Design in
Institute of Graphic Arts, 1959), n.p.
America: A Visual Language History, ed. Mildred Friedman
(New York: Harry Abrams, 1989), 153–69. 18 He used Roy Kuhlman’s arrangements of lettering, type, and
color as his first example of notable paperback design. Ray Nash,
“For the Graphic Artist Challenge and Expanding Opportunity,”
New York Times, 17 January, 1960.
19 Flower, The Paper-Back: Its Past, Present and Future, 34.
20 Lorraine Wild sees the difference between European and
American modernist design as one of “ideological framework”
versus “visual aesthetic.” Wild, “Europeans in America,” 154.
CHAPTER 2 - AMERICANIZING UTOPIA:
1 Alvin Lustig, “Notes for PW on Jackets,” undated manuscript, 16 Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design, (New York: Wittenborn Schultz,
Archives of American Art, n.p. 1946), 113.
2 James Laughlin, “The Designs of Alvin Lustig,” Publishers 17 Quoted in Hefland, “Paul Rand: The Modern Professor,” 158.
Weekly, November 5, 1949, 2005–6.
18 By the late 1960s, Rand was pursuing a more typically rigid style
3 Bookjackets by Alvin Lustig for New Directions Books with in his book covers reflecting both his quest for formal rigor and
Statements by James Laughlin and Alvin Lustig (New York: his skill at crafting slick corporate identities.
Gotham Book Mart Press, 1947), n.p.
19 Innovative uses of improvised and hand-rendered shapes and
4 The emphasis on individual creative expression in the work lettering were necessary for many designers working with tight
of several of the first and second generation American deadlines and meager budgets. At times, Rand and Ben Shahn
modernist designers, Lustig among them, may reflect the used hand-rendered lettering because budgets lacked funds
growing influence of Abstract Expressionism. By mid century, for type and typesetting. For Rand, the hand-rendered lettering
Abstract Expressionism was receiving international recognition reflects his earlier work at Direction, which may have paid him
as a groundbreaking product of post-war America. Its rhetoric little and provided him few resources, but also allowed him
of individualized, spontaneous expression aimed at universal great freedom to experiment with collaged forms and informal
themes seemed to have captured the attention of designers like script. Steven Heller, “Cheapskates in History,” Critique,
Lustig and Rand, who were key members of the first generation Winter 2000, 26; 28.
of American designers to make book cover design a forum in
20 See Paul Rand, “Design and the Play Instinct” in Education
which they could create a natural amalgam of modernist formal
austerity and expressive individuality. of Vision, ed. Gyorgy Kepes (George Braziller, 1965).
21 Rand, Paul. Design, Form, and Chaos (New Haven, Yale University
5 Alvin Lustig, untitled draft of a grant application in the Archives
of American Art, c. 1950, 1. Among the many projects that Press, 1993), 3.
reached beyond the realm of commercial design and traditional 22 Herbert Read, “A Choice of Extremes,” Penrose Annual,
academics, Lustig proposed workshops coordinated between 1937: 23–4.
Yale University and the Museum of Modern Art as well as
a book on his design and design philosophy. 23 Marshall Lee, “What Is Modern Book Design,” Books for Our Time
(New York, Oxford University Press, 1951), 15.
6 James Laughlin, “The Book Jackets of Alvin Lustig,”
Print, October/November, 1956, 54. 24 Steven Heller, “The Anonymous Profession,” in Lift and
Separate: Graphic Design and the “Vernacular,” ed. Barbara
7 See Alvin Lustig, “Contemporary Book Design: 1” Glauber (New York: Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and 173
Design Quarterly 31 (1954): 2. Typography, Cooper Union, 1993), 15.
8 Quoted in “Alvin Lustig, A Young Man of the West,” 25 Steven Brower and John Gall, “Grove Press at the Vanguard,”
undated manuscript in the Archives of American Art, 5. Print, March/April 1994, 60–7.
9 “Alvin Lustig: Biographical Notes,” manuscript in the Archives 26 “Basic Design for Paperback Series,” Book Production,
of American Art dated 1939–40, 4. August 1957, 53.
10 For a benchmark study of Rand that includes detailed 27 See Carol Stevens, “Bursting through Boundaries: Leo Lionni’s
biographical information see Steven Heller, Paul Rand Life with Design,” Print, May/June 1980, 35–40; 93; Steven
(New York: Phaidon, 1999). Heller, “Deeper Meanings,” Critique, Spring 1999, 35–41.
11 Paul Rand, “Modern Typography in the Modern World,” 28 Lionni was not the only major designer to explore the
Print, January/February 1964, 14. (Essay originally published creative sphere of children’s books: Rand found them to be
in Typographica in 1952). an intriguing creative outlet; Milton Glaser collaborated on
12 Rand also designed the bindings of The Tables of the Law several and a number of European artists like George Grosz,
and Leave Cancelled. The first featured a loose configuration El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters had made books for children.
of embossed gold glyphs on a green background and the second
a series of embossed lines and images of the broken hands
of a clock.
13 Will Ransom, “Problems in Book Design: No. 99,”
Book Binding and Book Production, October 1945, n.p.
14 Quoted in Steven Heller, “Paul Rand’s Laboratory:
The Art of Book Jackets and Covers,” Baseline, 27, 1999, 22.
15 See Jessica Hefland, “Paul Rand: The Modern Designer,”
and “Paul Rand: The Modern Professor,” Screen: Essays on
Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 136–49; 150–63. Allen
Hurlburt, “Paul Rand,” Communication Arts, March/April
1999, 119–35. Yale was a hot bed of advancement in the theory,
practice, and teaching of design, as well as, the first American
university to establish a degree in graphic design. The
department was founded in 1950, and headed by Joseph Albers.
It attracted prestigious lecturers including Herbert Matter,
Walker Evans, Leo Lionni, Lester Beall, Bradbury Thompson,
Alvin Eisenman, and Alvin Lustig. See Rob Roy Kelly, “The
Early Years of Graphic Design at Yale University,” Design Issues,
Summer 2001, 3–14.
CHAPTER 3 - MODERNISM AND BEYOND: HISTORICAL
FOUNDATIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING THE FUTURE
1 R. Roger Remington, “Remembering George Giusti,” 15 Quoted by de Harak in his presentation of the 1979 AIGA
Graphis, May/June 1993, 96–101. medal to Chermayeff and Geismar. “AIGA Medallists, 1979:
Ivan Chermayeff and Thomas Geismar,” Annual of the American
2 Giusti was quite respected for his posters–in 1950 he was Institute of Graphic Arts 1 (1980) 15.
identified by Charles Coiner, art director at N. W. Ayer and
Sons, NY as one of fifteen designers pushing the limits of the 16 “AIGA Medallists, 1979: Ivan Chermayeff and Thomas Geismar,” 16.
medium of poster design. Charles T. Coiner, “Pictures for
17 Quoted in “Overview of Modern Book Design Given by Reichl
Sales,” Fortune, August 1950, 90.
in Heritage Talk,” Printing News, 14 February 1970, 12.
3 See “Principles of Experimental Design,” Famous Artists Course
18 Interview with Steven Heller, “Milton Glaser,” Eye, Summer
In Commercial Art, Illustration and Design (Westport, Conn.:
Famous Artists Schools, 1967), Sect. 18, 16–8. 1997, 12.
19 Glaser, Chermayeff, and de Harak. “Some Thoughts
4 By the 1970s, however, Giusti had further sanitized his style,
incorporating fewer forms that seemed hand-rendered and on Modernism: Past Present and Future,” 132.
NOTES
instead relying on bloated pop-art-inspired shapes, type, 20 Steven Heller, “Cheapskates in History,” Critique,
and colors that were typical of less-inspired 1970s design. Winter 2000, 26; 29.
5 Quoted in Steven Heller, “Rudolph de Harak: A Humanist’s 21 William Golden at CBS recognized the marriage of “humanistic”
Modernist,” Annual of the American Institute of Graphic Arts 14 and graphic impact in Shahn’s style, using his drawings in
(1993): 14; 15. advertisements for late 1950s documentaries about social issues.
6 Milton Glaser, Ivan Chermayeff, and Rudolph de Harak. Maud Lavin, “Design in the Service of Commerce,” in Graphic
“Some Thoughts on Modernism: Past Present and Future,” Design in America: A Visual Language History, ed. Mildred
in Design Culture: An Anthology of Writing from AIGA Journal Friedman (New York: Harry Abrams, 1989), 137–8.
of Graphic Design, ed. Steven Heller and Marie Finamore 22 Steven Heller, “The AIGA Medallist 1985: Seymour Chwast,”
(New York: Allworth Press, 1997), 137. Graphic Design USA 7 (1986): 14.
7 De Harak was probably as comfortable using either photographs 23 Marshall Arisman, “Toward a Holistic Profession:
or purely graphic forms–he had worked as a professional An Interview with Milton Glaser,” AIGA Journal of
photographer to make ends meet and he clearly knew how Graphic Design 18, 1 (2000): 16.
to extract the essential from photographic specificity.
24 Jerome Snyder, “Milton Glaser: The New Imagery,”
8 Their austerity could inspire design historian Steven Heller Print, January/February 1969, 97.
174 to call them “paradigms of purist visual communication,”
yet they could also earn the designer the label of “humanist.” 25 See for instance Eugene M. Ettenberg, “Bradbury Thompson,
Heller, “Rudolph de Harak: A Humanist’s Modernist,” 20. Designer in the American Tradition,” American Artist,
April 1955, 52–7.
9 Steven Heller and Karen Pomeroy, “McGraw-Hill Paperback
Covers: Rudolph de Harak,” Design Literacy: Understanding 26 Quoted in Jean Progner, “Art Deco: Anatomy of a Revival,”
Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 1997), 167–9. Print, January/February, 1971, 32.
10 For descriptions of other de Harak environmental projects see 27 Interestingly, Ernst Reichl designed the interior of the book.
Joel C. Cahn, “The Graphic Designer as Architect, as Landscape
28 Jerome Snyder in The Push Pin Style (Palo Alto: Communication
Architect, as Interior Designer,” Print, November/December
Arts Magazine, 1970), n.p. Glaser left Push Pin in 1974, starting
1970, 52–5.
his own studio which did both graphic and interior design.
11 Mark Owens, “Soft Modernist: Discovering the Book Jackets
29 Heller, “Milton Glaser,” 12.
of Fred Troller,” Dot Dot Dot 6 (2002): 70–8; Steven Heller,
“Fred Troller, 71, Champion of Bold Graphic Style,” New York 30 Snyder, “Milton Glaser: The New Imagery,” 97.
Times, 24 October 2002, B8.
12 Jessica Hefland, “Paul Rand: The Modern Designer,”
Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 145.
13 Chermayeff worked for Lustig in New York in the summer
of 1954 and his father, Serge, was president of the New Bauhaus
in Chicago and taught architecture at Harvard and Yale. See
Lustig correspondence May 1954, Archives of American Art.
Glaser, Chermayeff, and de Harak. “Some Thoughts on
Modernism: Past Present and Future,” 134–5.
14 The most famous manifestation of these experiments is
Brownjohn, Chermayeff, and Geismar’s 1959 pamphlet
Watching Words Move.
CHAPTER 4 - THE BLAND BREEDING THE BLAND: CHAPTER 5 - THE PILLAGED, PARODIED, AND
AMERICAN BOOK COVER DESIGN DISORIENTED PROFOUND: POSTMODERNISM AND THE BOOK COVER
1 These changes were not necessarily a dumbing-down of 1 See Rick Poynor, No More Rules: Graphic Design and
publishing. While the mass marketing of best sellers was Postmodernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
indeed a focus, big presses also published erudite social theory, Poynor’s book is by far the best source for an analysis of
philosophy, and literature in inexpensive paperback editions. postmodernism and graphic design.
2 Philip B. Meggs, A History of Graphic Design, Third Edition 2 Sharyn O’Mara, “April Greiman: You Can’t Fake the Cha-Cha,”
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998), 355–61. Annual of the American Institute of Graphic Arts 20
(1999): 23–35.
3 Valerie Brooks, “New York Books,” Print, November/December
1982, 50–1. 3 Susan Braybrooke, “Cranbrook at Sixty,” Print,
November/December 1985, 77–89; 124–6; Rick Poynor,
4 See Steven Heller, “[Sutnar],” Eye, Summer 1994, 44–56; “Katherine McCoy,” Eye, Spring 1995, 10–6.
Allon T. Schoener, “Sutnar in Retrospect,” Industrial Design,
June 1961, 732–7. 4 Michael Dooley, “Critical Conditions: Zuzana Licko,
Rudy VanderLans, and the Emigre Spirit,” Annual of the
5 In her analysis of the corporate and design realms, historian American Institute of Graphic Arts 19 (1998): 40–9.
Maud Lavin makes several astute observations about the
interrelationships of design and corporate identity. Drawing 5 Designers like David Carson, art director of the magazine
on cultural critics like Stuart Ewen and a bit of Lacanian Ray Gun, managed to bring the look if not the theory of
psychoanalysis, she notes that design increasingly served postmodernism to the mainstream. Carson introduced some
to promote corporations as sanctified individuals with a sort of the visual tropes of theoretical postmodernism to a broader
of paternalistic authority. Maud Lavin, “Design in the Service audience, incorporating the intuitive, anti-hierarchical mélange
of Commerce,” in Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language to advertising. These stylistic characteristics began to be graphic
History, ed. Mildred Friedman (New York: Harry Abrams, markers of corporations catering to an audience eager to be
1989), 127–43. affirmed as a hip, stylish “Generation X.” Poynor, No More
Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism, 61–3.
6 Milton Glaser, Ivan Chermayeff, and Rudolph de Harak.
“Some Thoughts on Modernism: Past Present and Future,” 6 Bruce Wright, “The McCoy Generation,” Print,
in Design Culture: An Anthology of Writing from AIGA Journal November/December 1996, 30.
of Graphic Design, ed. Steven Heller and Marie Finamore
7 One of the few postmodern designs Treib really seemed to
(New York: Allworth Press, 1997), 133.
admire was Greiman’s now famous California Institute of
7 Hank O’Neal, “This is Not a Comb,” The Graphic Art of Arts Bulletin. He seemed to find it acceptable because, “as a
Paul Bacon (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania: Sordoni Art Gallery, publication for an art school, it establishes its own validity.”
175
Wilkes University, 1999), 11. Marc Treib, “Blips, Slits, Zits and Dots: Some (Sour) Notes on
Recent Trends in Graphic Design,” Print, January/February
8 Authors’ interview with Bacon, 28 March, 2003. 1981, 30; 33–6; 90.
9 Hank O’Neal, “This is Not a Comb,” 11–2. 8 Jessica Hefland, “Paul Rand: The Modern Designer,”
10 It comes as no surprise that Chermayeff and Geismar received Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual
the AIGA medal in 1979, at the end of a decade in which the Culture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 141.
sacrifice of individualized graphic style in service of corporate 9 Steven Heller, “Cult of the Ugly,” Eye 3, 9, 1993, 52–9.
authority became increasingly admired.
10 Steven Heller, “Fred Marcellino, 61, Designer of Elegant
11 Stanley I. Grand, “Jacket Design by Paul Bacon,” The Graphic Best-Seller Covers,” New York Times, 15 July 2001.
Art of Paul Bacon (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania: Sordoni
Art Gallery, Wilkes University, 1999), 16. 11 Carol Stevens, “Special Interests,” Print, January/February 1979,
58; 62; 64.
12 Quoted in Steven Heller, “The Man with the Big Book Look,”
Print 56, 1 (2002): 49. 12 Steven Heller, “Passionate Collagists,” Print,
September/October 1983, 47–67.
13 Heller, “The Man with the Big Book Look,” 48–57.
13 Milton Glaser, “The War is Over (Part Two: Illustration),”
AIGA Journal of Graphic Design 14, 3 (1996): 46.
14 Philip Meggs, “The Women Who Saved New York!,”
Print, January/February 1989, 61–71; 163–4.
15 Illustrator R. O. Blechman quoted in Tracie Rozhon,
“Louise Fili: Design Archaeologist,” Graphis, September/October
1999, 36–51; 116–8; 132–5.
16 Ellen Lupton, Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in
Contemporary Culture (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1996), 117–9; Ronald Labuz, Contemporary Graphic
Design (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991), 107–8;
Meggs, “The Women Who Saved New York!,” 71.
17 While she never worked for Push Pin, Scher had more than
a casual inclination toward that firm’s idiosyncratic historical
quotation– she not only wrote for its humor magazine, but
twice married Seymour Chwast. Melissa Milgrom, “Visual
Environmentalist: Paula Scher,” 365: AIGA Year in Design,
2001: 33–47.
18 Meggs, “The Women Who Saved New York!,” 70.
CHAPTER 6 - REDEFINE AND REDESIGN:
19 Labuz, Contemporary Graphic Design, 102–6; Meggs, “The Women 1 Natalia Ilyin, “Warm, Fuzzy Modernism,” AIGA Journal of
Who Saved New York!,” 61; 70. As Frederick Jameson has Graphic Design 16, 2 (1998): 4–5. Ilyin sees a revival of
pointed out, a parody, which can pay tribute as well as mock, the clarity of modernism as a nostalgic embrace of the familiar.
is more self-conscious than a simple stylistic pastiche and
2 Rick Poynor, No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism
reflects a more critical engagement with the past. This critical
self-awareness helps distinguish Push-Pin-inspired eclecticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 120.
from a postmodern sensibility. 3 For the book S,M,L,XL Mau worked with the subject of the
20 Paula Scher, Make It Bigger (New York: Princeton massive volume, Rem Koolhaas, helping to shape the nature as
Architectural Press, 2002), 77. well as the presentation of the book’s content. Will Novosedlik,
“The Producer as Author,” Eye, Winter 1994, 44–53. Donald
21 Meggs, “The Women Who Saved New York!,” 71; 163. Albrecht, Ellen Lupton and Steven Skov Holt. Design Culture
Now: National Design Triennia (New York: Princeton
22 Lupton, Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Architectural Press, 2000), 166–7. Dan Friedman found the
Culture, 119; Meggs, “The Women Who Saved New York!,” 71. world of commercial design, even at a progressive firm like
NOTES
23 Labuz, Contemporary Graphic Design, 111. Pentagram, too stifling, too strongly dictated by corporate
demands. In order to pursue the design’s subjective possibilities
24 Ellen Lupton, “Carin Goldberg’s Variations on Book and social responsibilities, Friedman forged his own career in
Cover Design,” Graphis, November/December 2001, 76. which he could practice graphic design as a facet of a larger
creative endeavor that existed within the world of fine art as
25 Kalman quoted in Lupton, “Carin Goldberg’s Variations on
much as that of graphic design. Peter Rea, “Born in Ohio:
Book Cover Design,” 76. Still, Kalman was willing to appropriate
Dan Friedman,” Eye, Autumn 1994, 10–6.
the somewhat clumsy language of vernacular advertising into
the realm of serious design. 4 See Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver, Understanding
Hypermedia: From Multimedia to Virtual Reality (London:
26 Labuz, Contemporary Graphic Design, 101–3.
Phaidon Press, 1993).
27 See for instance, Andrew Blauvelt, ed., New Perspectives:
5 William Owen, “Design in the Age of Digital Production,”
Critical Histories of Graphic Design in Visible Language 28; 29,
Eye, Autumn 1994, 35.
3–4; 1 (Spring 1994; Fall 1994, Winter 1995). Blauvelt’s
dedication to attempt to bring theoretical rigor to design 6 Max Bruinsma, “The Aesthetics of Transience,”
history is testimony to his Cranbrook education. For an Eye, Summer 1997, 43.
insightful evaluation of this series, see Rick Poynor,
“Book Monitor,” AIGA Journal of Graphic Design 13, 1 7 Recent critics have pointed out that the use of conceptual
176
(1995): 44–5. photography has become a marker of cutting-edge literature
and that illustration seems a bit passé. Véronique Vienne,
28 Randall Rothenberg, “A Love Child in Hell: Book Design at Chip Kidd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 7; 13; 15.
the Millennium,” Speaking Volumes 3 (New York: American
Institute of Graphic Arts, 1995), 10–6. 8 Ellen Lupton, “Carin Goldberg’s Variations on Book Cover
Design,” Graphis, November/December 2001, 79.
29 Quoted in Steven Heller, “Milton Glaser,” Eye, Summer 1997, 10.
9 Paula Scher, Make It Bigger (New York: Princeton Architectural
30 See Paul Rand, “From Cassandra to Chaos,” Design, Form, Press, 2002), 78–82.
and Chaos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
10 Richard Eckersly, “Book Design: 50 Books/50 Covers,”
31 Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design (New York: Wittenborn Schultz, 365: AIGA Year in Design 23 (2002): 345.
1946). 136.
11 Véronique Vienne, “The Company It Keeps,” Annual of the
32 Rick Poynor, “You Can Judge a Cover by Its Book,” American Institute of Graphic Arts 21 (2000): 42–53.
Eye, Spring 2001, 10.
12 Still, even the designers at Knopf have claimed to be stifled
33 Max Bruinsma, “Sampling the Modern Inheritance,” by a corporate marketing sensibility. Chip Kidd: “We really don’t
Eye, Spring 1999, 3. get a say in this”; Archie Ferguson: “They’re trying to cloak
everything in something they’ve done already”; Carol Carson:
“they only want to see what they’ve seen before.” Randall
Rothenberg, “A Love Child in Hell: Book Design at the
Millennium,” Speaking Volumes 3 (New York: American
Institute of Graphic Arts, 1995), 10; Authors’ interview with
Carol Devine Carson, 13 January, 2004.
13 Vienne, “The Company It Keeps,” 42–53.
14 Paula Scher, Make It Bigger, 78–82.
15 Authors’ interview with Carol Devine Carson, 13 January, 2004.
Many of Knopf’s designers aim to acknowledge and even amplify
the viewers’ understanding of the book as an object, as Ellen
Lupton put it, “a concrete, physical artifact, not simply as a
neutral solid to be cheerfully concealed by a paper wrapper.”
Ellen Lupton, Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary
Culture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 119.
16 Vienne, Chip Kidd, 9–10; Ken Coupland, “Chip Kidd,”
Graphis, March/April 2002, 62–75.
17 In his cover for the paperback version of Sexual Slang, Kidd
overlaid parts of images of nude figures with their slang labels,
replacing words with pictorial icons. He managed to convince
the publishers to have male and female versions of the cover,
but ran into trouble when major book chains bristled at the
female version of the cover. Chip Kidd, “Run with the Dwarves
and Win: Adventures in the Book Trade,” Print, May/June
1995, 21–3.
18 Steven Heller, “Culture Wars,” AIGA Journal of Graphic
Design 17, 2 (1999): 5.
19 Kidd’s covers with their evocative, multifaceted combinations
of photographs and text have been compared to those of Alvin
Lustig. Vienne, Chip Kidd, 16.
20 Gall rates Lustig’s cover for Lorca’s Three Tragedies as an
example of a design that satisfies these needs and at the same
time “pushes the design envelope.” John Gall, In the Hat’s
Designer, John Gall,” Critique, Winter 1998, 64.
21 Steven Heller, “Complex Understatement,” Print, July/August
1996, 44–9.
177
22 She points to Barbara Kruger as an example of a designer who
has stepped beyond the design world into a socially active role
as a fine artist. Kruger worked at Mademoiselle from 1967–78
as a designer and picture editor. Maud Lavin, “Design in the
Service of Commerce,” in Graphic Design in America: A Visual
Language History, ed. Mildred Friedman (New York: Harry
Abrams, 1989), 139–43. Rick Poynor, contemplating the early
1960s manifesto by Ken Garland, recently restated the need for
the designers to be aware of how their practice shapes society,
echoing observers like Katherine McCoy and Johanna Drucker
who point out that design is neither passive nor neutral, but
is a tremendously active medium that reflects the agendas
of its clients. Rick Poynor, “First Things First,” AIGA Journal
of Graphic Design 17, 2 (1999): 6–7.
23 Ellen Lupton, “The Designer as Producer,” AIGA Journal
of Graphic Design 15 (1997): 6.
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INDEX
A B C
INDEX
“A” 112, 113 BACKYARD POULTRY RAISING 95, 95 Camus, Albert 92, 93
ABC OF READING 50, 51 Bacon, Paul 7, 98, 107, 107, 108, 109, 109, 110, Canetti, Elias 28
Abstract Expressionism 82 111, 111, 112, 120 Cape, Jonathan & Harrison Smith 31
Adamov, Arthur 68 Baker, Eric 169 Capra, Fritjof 127
Adams, John F. 95 Banbury, Jen 165 Carnase, Tom 102, 104
Advertising Arts 22 BANKERS AND CATTLEMEN 102, 103 Carol Publishing Group 162
Albers, Josef 22 Barnes, Djuna 46, 47 Carr, E. H. 71
ALIVE AND DEAD IN INDIANA 122, 122 Barthelme, Frederick 126 Carson, Anne 143
Al-Shaykh, Hanan 142 Barthes, Roland 116, 136 Carson, Carol Devine 7, 142, 143, 143,
AMERICAN CHARACTER, THE 70, 70 Bascove 120, 122 144, 144, 145, 146, 167
American Century Series 69 Basel School of Design 117 Carver, Raymond 131
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, THE 88, 88 BASES OVERSEAS 32, 33 CATCH-22 16, 107, 109
American Institute of Graphic Arts 7, 40, 141 Bass, Saul 79 Cather, Willa 26
50 Books/50 Covers 141 Battan, Louis J. 76 CBS Records 129
AMERICAN SOCIAL PATTERNS 76, 76 Bauhaus 22, 54, 95 Ceci, Vincent 74, 91, 91, 93, 94
AMERICAN WOODS 48, 49 Bayer, Herbert 22, 64, 143 Cesareo, Jack 58, 58
AMERIKA 47 Beckett, Samuel 68 Chantry, Art 147
182
Amis, Martin 151 BEARDS 102, 104 Chaudhuri, Amit 150
Anchor Books 6, 82, 142, 153, 170 Beebe, Lucius 60, 60 CHEESE MONKEYS, THE 148, 148
Andrzeyevski, George 91 Beerbohm, Max 92 CHEKOV 65
ANNIE LENNOX 163 Begbie, G. Hugh 83 Chermayeff and Geismar 74, 84, 85, 85,
Antonelli, Paola 169 BIG BOB 120 86, 87, 111
Antrim, Donald 152 BIOGRAPHER’S TALE, THE 160 Chermayeff, Ivan 74, 84, 84, 85, 85, 87, 111
Applied Arts of Bavaria Exhibition Poster 15 Bird, Sarah 160 CHROMA 126, 127
Armory Show, 1913 35 BIRTH OF A NEW PHYSICS, THE 75, 76 Chronicle Books 119
Arrabal, Fernando 158 Black Mountain College 22 Chwast, Seymour 74, 90, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 95
Art Deco 24, 35, 86, 90, 122, 129 Bloch, Robert 28 CINNAMON PEELER, THE 154, 155
Art Nouveau 90, 93 Blue Note 107 CLOUD PHYSICS AND CLOUD SEEDING 76, 76
Arts and Crafts Movement 95 Bock, Dennis 142 Clurman, Harold 55
ASH GARDEN, THE 142, 144 BODY, THE 119, 119 Cohen, Elaine Lustig, see Lustig, Elaine
Asher, Marty 146 Bollingen Series 61 Cohen, I. Bernard 75
ASHES TO ASHES 102, 102 BONE 140, 140 Cohen, Marc 124, 124
Asimov, Isaac 100 Boni, Charles 38, 38, 39 Columbia Records 69
ASPERN PAPERS AND THE EUROPEANS 50, 50 Book Jacket Designers Guild 44 COMMON SENSE AND NUCLEAR WARFARE 84, 85
Astor 71 BOOMER, THE 146, 148 COMPULSION 107, 107
Atlantic Records 67 Booth Clibborn Editions 170 CONDEMNED OF ALTONA, THE 63, 63
AUDUBON SOCIETY FIELD GUIDE TO NORTH Boyd, Blanche McCrary 157 CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, THE 109, 110
AMERICAN BUTTERFLIES, THE 105, 105 Bradford, Sarah H. 166 CONFESSIONS OF ZENO, THE 49
Avon Books 106 Brass, Dick 8 CONNOISSEUR’S BOOK OF THE CIGAR, THE 93, 94
BREAD AND CIRCUSES 28, 29 Constructivism 115, 129
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS 102, 103 Cooper Union 90
BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL 100, 100 Coover, Robert 131
BRITAIN AT WAR 36, 37 Cornerstone Library Publications 87
Broadway Books 61 Corral, Rodrigo 159, 167, 167, 168, 171
Broch, Hermann 34 Corsillo, George 112, 113, 123
Brodkey, Harold 123 Cranbrook Academy of Art 118, 119
Brodovitch, Alexey 22 CRITICAL STUDIES ON WRITING AS AN ART 26, 26
Brogan, D. W. 70 Cruise of the Snark 165
Broun, Hob 124 Cubism 21, 35, 36
Brower, Steven 159, 162 “Cult of the Ugly” 118
Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar 84, 84 Cummins Engine Company Museum 82
Brownjohn, Robert 84, 84
Bruinsma, Max 138
Buckley, Paul 159, 162
BUILDING IN LOS ANGELES 117, 117
Burroughs, William H. 65
Burtin, Will 22, 79
Byatt, A. S. 160
D F H
DADA PAINTERS AND POETS, THE 54, 55 FABRICATIONS 124, 124 H. Wolff Book Manufacturing Co. 31
Dada 21, 123 FALSE COIN 22, 23 HAD I A HUNDRED MOUTHS 120
DAMAGE 142, 144 FAMILY OF MAN, THE 70, 70 Hall, Peter 170
DARING YOUNG MAN Famous Artists Course In Commercial Art, Harcourt, Brace & Company 24, 32, 36, 104,
ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE 30, 31 Illustration and Design 75 120, 125
Dark, Larry 153 Farrar, Straus and Giroux 92, 104, 122, 160, HARLEM ON MY MIND 99, 100
DARLING 148, 148 165, 166, 167, 168 Harper and Row 78, 106
Dartmouth College 40 Fast, Howard 162 HarperCollins 149
Daumier, Honoré 90 Faulkner, Harold U. 78 Harper’s Bazaar 22
Davidoff, Zino 94 FDR: ARCHITECT OF AN ERA 90, 91 Harrington, Michael 67
Davis, Francis 139 Ferguson, Archie 146, 154, 155, 155 Harris, Thomas A. 106
de Cumptich, Roberto de Vicq 158, 159 FERVENT YEARS, THE 55, 56 Hart, Josephine 142
de Graff, Robert 38 FIERY FINGERS 41 Hart Publishing Company 91
de Harak, Rudolf 74, 79, 79, 80, 80, 81, 82, 91 Fili, Louise 125, 126, 127, 129, 133 Hauser, Arnold 61
de Kooning, Willem 65 FILM SENSE, THE 36, 36 Hawkins, Arthur 24, 31, 31, 32, 33, 36
De Lynn, Jane 128 Flower, Desmond 40 Hejduk, John 119
de Mandiargues, Andre Pieyre 66 Foden, Giles 153 Heller, Joseph 107, 109, 110
De Stijl 21, 115, 129 Fortune 22, 33, 70, 75 Heller, Steven 7, 64, 86, 111, 118, 123, 127, 147
de Wilde, Barbara 145, 146, 155, 156, 157 FRANCHISER, THE 102, 104 HELLO WORLD: A LIFE IN HAM RADIO 168
Dealer 69 Free Press 171 Herder, Milton 41
Delacorta 113 FREEDOM–NOT LICENSE! 91, 91 Hesse, Herman 92, 93
Delacorte Press 103 Friedman, Dan 116 Higgins, Aidan 68
Dell Publishing 130 Friedwald, Will 141 High Times 69, 106
Derrida, Jacques 116 Fulbrook III, John 159 High, David 159, 159
Dial Press 28 Futurism 129 History of Graphic Design, A 131
Dickinson, Charles 122 HISTORY OF THE BLUES, THE 139, 140
Dickinson, Peter 126 G Hoffman, Armin 117
DID MONKEYS INVENT THE MONKEY WRENCH? 159 Hoffman, Jill 138
Didion, Joan 156 Gaffney, Evan 159, 161 Holiday 78
Die Neue Typographie 22 Gall, John 6, 7, 146, 150, 151, 151, 152, 153, 167 Hollander, John 145
Dinesman, Howard P. 82 Gamarello, Paul 125 Holt Rinehart & Winston 94
Direction 55, 56 GARDEN POEMS 144, 145 Holtzer, Jenny 165
DIVE 163 Gardner, Erle Stanley 41 Houellebecq, Michel 153
Doctorow, E. L. 111 Gebrauchsgraphik 22 Houghton Mifflin Company 112
Dodd, Mead & Company 31 Geismar, Thomas 74, 84 84, 85, 85, 86, 87, 111 Hyperion Books 139, 140, 163 183
Dolan, J. D. 144 Gerbino, John 100 HYPNOTISM 99, 100
Donoghue, Dennis 157 GERTRUDE 92, 93
Doubleday 31, 59, 75, 77, 83, 88, 95, 100 GIOVANNI’S GIFT 162 I
Dreiser, Theodore 69 GIRL BENEATH THE LION, THE 66, 69
Duras, Marguerite 126, 127 Giusti, Bob 7, 102, 103 I’M OK—YOU’RE OK 106, 106
Dutton, E. P. 91, 94, 99, 103 Giusti, George 74, 75, 75, 76, 76, 77, 78, 79, IBIS TAPESTRY, THE 161
Dwiggins, William A. 24, 26, 26, 27, 28, 44, 82, 85, 106 IBM 69, 106
55, 56, 143, 144 Glaser, Milton 74, 82, 86, 90, 91, 91, 92, 93, IF NOT, WINTER 143, 144
95, 99, 100, 106, 124, 133 ILL TEMPERED CLAVICHORD, THE 35, 36
E Glynn, Thomas 147 IN THE WINTER OF CITIES 52, 53
GODS THEMSELVES, THE 100, 100 INNER TUBE 124, 124
EAT ME 158 Goldberg, Carin 14, 15, 129, 130, 130, 131, 131,
Eckersly, Richard 141 132, 138, 139, 140, 140, 141, 141 J
Eggers, Dave 164 Golden, Griffin Books 21
Eisenstein, Sergei 36 GOODBYE COLUMBUS 63, 63 Jackson, Shelley 6
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, THE 151, 153 Goure, Leon 81 Jaivin, Linda 158
ELIZABETH 165, 166 Goyen, William 120 James, Henry 50, 50
Elkin, Stanley 104 Graphis 78 Jay, Antony 93, 94
Emigre 118, 119 Graves, Michael 129 Jay, John 58
ENCORE 59 GREEN AND THE RED, THE 21, 22 JILTED 138, 140
English, Bill 58, 59 Gregory, Danny 168 Johnson, Denis 125
Erskine, John 41 Greiman, April 116, 117, 117, 119 Johnson, John E., Jr. 112, 113
Estabrooks, G. H. 99 Gressley, Gene M. 103 Joyce, James 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 30, 31
EVER AFTER 144, 144 Griffin, Adele 163 JUST AS I THOUGHT 160
Everyman’s Library 143, 144 Grosz, George 90
Ewing, William A. 119 Grove Press 40, 65, 65, 66, 67, 68, 90, 98, 151, 158
Grove/Atlantic 151, 164
GUERNICA AND OTHER PLAYS 158
Gustavson, Carl G. 80
K M N
Kafka, Franz 47 Maas, George 102, 103 Naked Lunch 65
Kairys, Elizabeth 159, 164 Macintosh 117 NAKED PICTURES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE 155, 155
Kalman, Tibor 131, 147 Mackintosh 95 NANA 112, 113, 123
Kandinsky, Wassily 21 Macmillan Company 58, 90 Nash, Ray 40
Kauffer, Edward McKnight 11, 12, 24, 34, MADE YOU LOOK 167, 170 National Committee
35, 35, 36, 37 Magarshack, David 65 for a Sane Nuclear Policy 87
Kaye, Michael Ian 159, 165, 165, 166 MAN WHO DIED, THE 46, 46 National Traveler Club 32
Kent, Rockwell 24, 24, 25, 38, 38, 39 MANAGEMENT AND MACHIAVELLI 93, 94 Neil, A. S. 91
Kepes, Gyorgy 22, 23 Manea, Norman 164 NEUTRAL CORNER, A 168
Kesey, Ken 109, 109 Man, His Planet, and Space 82 NEW DECADE, THE 50, 52
Kettner, Christine 159, 163 Mann, Thomas 56, 56 New Directions 40, 45, 46, 46, 47, 48, 49, 49,
Kidd, Chip 146, 146, 147, 147, 148, 148, 149, 157 Manseau, Peter 171 50, 51, 52, 65, 67, 85, 98, 137
KILLACHTER MEADOW 68, 69 Marcellino, Fred 120, 121, 122, 122, 123, 123 NEW WORLD, A 150, 151
KILLING THE BUDDHA 167, 171 Marcuse, Herbert 62 Ng, Fae Myenne 140
Klee, Paul 75 Mars-Jones, Adam 124 Nicol, Mike 161
Kline, Franz 65 Martinetti, Filippo 21 NIGHT AT THE MOVIES, A 130, 131
INDEX
Knopf, Alfred A. 26, 28, 31, 55, 55, 56, 56, 57, Martone, Michael 122 NIGHTWOOD 46, 47
60, 63, 100, 103, 105, 110, 122, 124, 125, 142, 143, MASK OF MEDUSA 119, 119 Norris, Frank 65
144, 144, 145, 146, 146, 147, 147, 148, 150, 151, Mason, Jerry 70 November, David 100
153, 154, 155, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161 MASTER OF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT, THE 38, 39
Kometani, Ori 159, 163 Matisse, Henri 63, 69 O
Koppel & Scher 129 Matter, Herbert 22, 129
Koppel, Terry 129 Mau, Bruce 137, 137 O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES, THE 153
Koslow, Jules 21 Maugham, William Somerset 59 O’Brien, Lucy 163
Kuhlman, Roy 7, 65, 65, 66, 67, 67, 68, 69, 70, McCoy, Katherine and Michael 118, 119 O’Neil, Hank 109, 111
78, 85, 105, 106, 151 McGraw-Hill 79, 80, 80, 81, 82, 91, 94 OF MEN AND MACHINES 94, 95
MCSWEENEY’S 164 OLD MODERNS, THE 157
L ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY 166 ON CLOWNS 164
Meggs, Philip 7, 100, 125, 129, 131 ON WRITING 26, 26
Labuz, Ronald 130, 131 Mehta, Sonny 143 Ondaatje, Michael 154
Lady Chatterley’s Lover 65 MELANCHOLY OF ANATOMY, THE 6, 167 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST 16, 109, 109
Lane, Alan 38 Melville, Herman 25 Osnos, Naomi 124, 124
LANGUAGE OF VISION, THE 22, 23 Memphis Group 117 OTHER AMERICA, THE 67, 69
LAST AND FIRST MEN 31, 31 Menand, Louis 150 Oxford University Press 29
184 LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, THE 151, 153 Mencken, H. L. 62, 63 Oz, Amos 125
LAST THING HE WANTED, THE 156 Meridian Books 63, 63, 80
Lathen, Emma 102 Merton, Thomas 52 P
Laughlin, James 46, 47, 49, 53, 98, 105 METROPOLITAN LIFE 102, 103
Lavin, Maud 171 MICHAEL BAKUNIN 71 PAIN MANAGEMENT 161
Lawrence, D. H. 46, 46, 65 Michelangelo 56 Palahniuk, Chuck 171
LEAVE CANCELLED 56, 57, 60, 63 Microsoft 8 Paley, Grace 160
Lebowitz, Fran 103 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 75 Pantheon Books 34, 126
Lee, Marshall 22, 37, 64 Miller, Henry 45, 46, 65, 85, 85 Paperbacks: USA 40
Lessing, Doris 100 Minimalism 82, 147 Parkes, Henry Bamford 88
Levin, Meyer 107, 107 Miró, Joan 46 PAUL BUNYAN 24, 24
Levine, Isaac Don 32 MIT Press 119, 163 Peckolick, Alan 102, 104
Levine, Sherrie 131 Mitchell, Joan 65 Pelevin, Victor 167
Lewis, Arthur O., Jr. 94 Mitchell, Susan 146, 160 Penguin Books 38, 67
LIBERTINE READER, THE 137 MOBY DICK 24, 25 Perelman, S. J. 35, 89, 108, 109, 111
Licko, Zuzana 118 Modern Library 15 PERFECT GALLOWS 126, 127
Liebling, A. J. 168 Moholy-Nagy, László 22, 54, 64 Perutz, Leo 39
LIFE OF INSECTS, THE 167 Mondrian, Piet 21, 57 Peterson, William 76
LIKE A HOLE IN THE HEAD 165, 165 Monsarrat, Nicolas 56 Philbrick, Francis S. 78
Lionni, Leo 22, 70, 70, 71 Morris, William 95 PHOENIX 144, 144
Lish, Gordon 128 Morrow, Bradford 162 PING PONG, A PLAY 68, 69
LITTLE BLUE AND LITTLE YELLOW 70, 71 Morrow, William and Company 122, 155 PIT, THE 65
Little, Brown and Company 23, 121, MOST OF S. J. PERELMAN, THE 108, 109, 111 PLAGUE, THE 92, 93
165, 165, 166 Motherwell, Robert 54 Pocket Books 38, 40, 41
London, Jack 165 MURPHY 68, 69 POKER FOR FUN AND PROFIT 85, 87
Lorca, Federico García 48, 49 Museum of Modern Art 36, 37, 50, 52, 70, 169 POLITICS, REFORM AND EXPANSION 78, 78
Los Angeles Society of Contemporary MUSSOLINI 130, 132 Popular Library 41
Designers 79 MUTANT MATERIALS IN PORTRAITS AND PRAYERS 33, 33
Louie, Lorraine 128, 129 CONTEMPORARY DESIGN 167, 169 Poseidon Press 128
Louvre 95 Potter, Clarkson N. 120
LOVER, THE 126, 127 Pound, Ezra 50, 51
Lubalin, Herb 99, 100, 102, 105, 127 Poynor, Rick 7, 133, 136
LULLABY 167, 171 PRAGMATISM 150, 151
Lupton, Ellen 7, 130, 171 PREFACE TO HISTORY, A 80, 80
Lurie, Alison 121 PREJUDICES: A SELECTION 62, 63
Lustig, Alvin 21, 31, 44, 45, 45, 46, 46, 47, 48, 49, Princeton Architectural Press 168
49, 50, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 74, Printing and Graphic Arts 40
79, 82, 84, 85, 86, 90, 98, 105, 118, 137, 143, 171 PRIVATE LIFE OF HELEN OF TROY, THE 41
Lustig, Elaine 7, 52, 53 PRIZE POEMS, 1913 – 1929 38, 38
Lyotard, Jean-François 160 Pulp fiction 40, 44, 88
PURPLE-VIOLET-SQUISH 101, 102
PUSH 155, 155
Push Pin Studio 31, 74, 86, 90, 91, 93, 95, 98,
100, 102, 105, 107, 111, 122, 123, 129
Pynchon, Thomas 165
Q S T
QUARTERLY, THE 128, 129 Sagamore Press 69, 69 TABLES OF THE LAW, THE 56, 56, 58, 60
QUIET BATTLE, THE 88, 88 Sagmeister, Stefan 167, 170 Tenazas, Lucille 119, 119
Sahre, Paul 159, 167, 168, 171 Tennekes, Henk 163
R SAINT JACK 111, 112 Tester, William 148
St. Martin’s Press 163 Theobald, Paul & Company 23
Raab, Earl 77 Salter, George 24, 28, 28, 29, 37, 40, 75, 143 Theroux, Paul 112
RAGTIME 111, 111 Sapphire (Ramona Lofton) 155 Thompson, Bradbury 93
Rand, Paul 21, 31, 36, 38, 44, 54, 54, 55, 55, Saroyan, William 30 THOUGHTS ON DESIGN 57, 58, 60, 133
56, 56, 57, 58, 60, 60, 61, 62, 63, 63, 64, 65, 69, Sartre, Jean-Paul 63 THREE PLAYS 31, 31
70, 74, 78, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 98, 105, 106, SCARF, THE 28, 28 THREE TRAGEDIES OF LORCA 48, 49
111, 112, 118, 133, 137, 143, 165 Scher, Paula 125, 127, 128, 129, 133, 141, 143 Time Books 70, 92
Random House 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 25, Schocken Books 143 TIME MACHINE, THE 26, 27
27, 30, 31, 33, 71, 82, 99, 110, 111, 129, 143 Schoener, Allon 99 TOWARD A SANE NUCLEAR POLICY 85, 87
Ratzkin, Lawrence 102, 102, 104 Schoonover, Shelley E. 48 TOWER OF BABEL, THE 28, 28
Rauschenberg, Robert 123 Science Study Series 76 Treib, Marc 118
Read, Herbert 21, 64 Scott, Anita Walker 78, 78 Troller, Fred 74, 82, 82, 83
REAL ESTATE 128, 129 Scribner 141 Tropic of Cancer 65
RED SMOKE 32, 33 Scudellari, Robert 125 TRUTH ABOUT LORIN JONES, THE 121, 122
Redel, Victoria 156 Sedaris, David 166 Tschichold, Jan 22, 54
Reichl, Ernst 9, 10, 12, 16, 17, 24, 30, 31, SEEING AND THE EYE 82, 83 Tugwell, Rexford 90, 91
33, 33, 55, 69, 69, 86 Selye, Hans 79
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN AMERICA 76, 77 SEVEN MEN AND TWO OTHERS 92, 93 U
REMOTE 146, 148 SEXUAL SLANG 148, 149 ULYSSES 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 30, 31,
Renner, Paul 12, 15, 130 Shahn, Ben 88, 88, 89, 90 36, 130, 140
REVOLUTION OF LITTLE GIRLS, THE 155, 157 Shaw, Bernard 31, 31 UNCOMMON WISDOM 127, 129
Reynolds, Reginald 104 Shephard, Esther 24 University of California Press 113
Richie, Ward 45 Sherman, Cindy 131
Richter, Alan 149 Shields, David 146 V
Rilke, Rainer Maria 132 Sibley, Mulford Q. 88
Rinehart & Company 60 SIEGE OF LENINGRAD, THE 80, 81 Vachss, Andrew 161
RISE OF THE WEST, THE 78, 78 Simenon, Georges 120 VanderLans, Rudy 118
RISING GORGE, THE 88, 89 Simon and Schuster 35, 38, 70, 82, 82, 84, VERIFICATIONIST, THE 151, 152
Ritchie, Andrew Carnduff 52 89, 102, 107, 108, 111, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, Victore, James 158, 159
Rizzoli 119 138, 148, 159 Vignelli, Massimo 82, 105, 118, 105
Rochester Institute of Technology 7, 77 SIMPLE SCIENCE OF FLIGHT, THE 163 Viking Press 109, 162
185
Rosset, Barney 65, 67, 69, 98, 105 SINATRA 140, 141 Vintage Books 61, 62, 88, 92, 128, 131, 132,
Roth, Philip 63, 63 SISTER CARRIE 69, 69 143, 150, 151, 152, 153
RUMOR HAS IT 122, 122 SITTER FOR A SATYR, A 91, 93 VINTAGE AMIS 151
RUNAWAY SOUL, THE 122, 123 Skalski, Krystyna 159, 164 Vonnegut, Kurt 103, 129, 130
Ruskin, John 95 SKIING THE AMERICAS 58
Russell, Bertrand 84, 85 Skouras, Angela 159, 163 W
Russo, Anthony 122 SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE 130
Wagner, Charles A. 38
Ruzicka, Rudolf 144 SLEEPWALKERS, THE 34, 36
Ware, Chris 148
SLOW LEARNER 165
WATCHING THE BODY BURN 147, 148
Smith, Denis Mack 132 Watling & Company 48
SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART 60, 61
WE BOMBED IN NEW HAVEN 109, 110
SONNETS TO ORPHEUS, THE 130, 132, 140
Weingart, Wolfgang 116, 117
Sorel, Edward 90 Weller, George 32
Southern California Wells, H. G. 27
Institute of Architecture 117
Wheeler, Monroe 37
SOVIET MARXISM 62, 63
WHERE THE JACKALS HOWL 125, 125
SPEARHEAD 47
WHERE THE ROAD BOTTOMS OUT 155, 156
Stapledon, W. Olaf 31
WHERE WATER COMES TOGETHER
STARS AT NOON, THE 125, 125
WITH OTHER WATER 131
Staten, Vince 159 Whitman, Willson 29
Steig, Irwin 87 Wild, Lorraine 31, 119, 119
Stein, Gertrude 33, 33 Wilkerson, David 101
Stevens, Carol 120 Williams, Tennessee 52
Stewart, Jon 155, 155 Wilson, Gabriele 143, 146, 160
Still, Clyfford 46 WISDOM OF THE HEART, THE 45, 46, 85, 85
STORK CLUB BAR BOOK, THE 60, 60
Wittenborn and Company 54, 55, 57
STRANGE ISLAND, THE 52, 53
WOMEN OF SAND AND MYRRH 142, 144
STRESS OF LIFE, THE 79, 80
Wright, Frank Lloyd 45, 46, 95
Stuart, Neil 102, 103
Styron, William 110 Y
Summit Books 113
SUPERIOR MATHEMATICAL PUZZLES 82, 82 Yale University 22, 58, 84
Surrealism 28, 64 YOKOTA OFFICERS CLUB, THE 160
Sutnar, Ladislav 21, 22, 86, 105
Suzuki, D. T. 61 Z
Svevo, Italo 49
Swados, Harvey 23 ZEN AND JAPANESE CULTURE 60, 61
Swift, Graham 144 Zondervan Publishing House 101
SYLVIA 162 Zone Books 137, 137
Zukofsky, Louis 113
CREDITS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
John Gall, Shelley Jackson, The Melancholy of Anatomy, Ernst Reichl, William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on
Anchor Books, 2002. the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories, 1934. Used by permission
of Random House, Inc.
INTRODUCTION - JUDGING THE BOOK Ernst Reichl, James Joyce, Ulysses (title page), Random House,
1934 (later printing). Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Ernst Reichl, James Joyce, Ulysses, Random House, 1934.
Designer’s mock-up, Columbia University Rare Book and Arthur Hawkins, W. Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men,
Manuscript Library. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1931.
E. McKnight Kauffer, James Joyce, Ulysses, Random House, 1949. Arthur Hawkins, Bernard Shaw, Three Plays,
Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Dodd, Mead and Company, 1934.
Designer Unknown, James Joyce, Ulysses, Modern Library, 1940. Arthur Hawkins, Isaac Don Levine, Red Smoke,
Used by permission of Modern Library, a Division of Random House, Inc. National Traveler Club, 1932.
Carin Goldberg, James Joyce, Ulysses, Vintage Books, 1986. Used Arthur Hawkins, George Weller, Bases Overseas,
by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944. Copyright renewed 1972
186 by George Weller. Reproduced by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
Ernst Reichl, James Joyce, Ulysses, Random House, 2002.
Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Ernst Reichl, Gertrude Stein, Portraits and Prayers, Random House,
1934. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
CHAPTER 1 - A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM: E. McKnight Kauffer, Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers,
THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK JACKET IN AMERICA Pantheon Books, 1947. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Used
by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Ladislav Sutnar, Jules Koslow, The Green and the Red,
Golden Griffin Books, 1950. E. McKnight Kauffer, S. J. Perelman, The Ill -Tempered Clavichord,
Simon and Schuster, 1952.
Gyorgy Kepes, Language of Vision, Paul Theobald and Company, 1959.
E. McKnight Kauffer, Sergei Eisenstein, trans. by Jay Leyda,
Gyorgy Kepes, Harvey Swados, False Coin, The Film Sense, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942.
Little, Brown and Company, 1959. Copyright renewed 1969 by Jay Leyda. Reproduced by permission
Rockwell Kent, Esther Shephard, Paul Bunyan, of Harcourt, Inc.
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1924. Copyright renewed 1952 E. McKnight Kauffer, Monroe Wheeler, ed.,
by Esther Shephard. Reproduced by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Britain at War (front board), Museum of Modern Art, 1941.
Rockwell Kent, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Rockwell Kent, Charles A. Wagner, ed., Prize Poems, 1913 – 1929,
Random House, 1930. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Charles Boni Paper Books, 1930.
Rockwell Kent, Herman Melville, Moby Dick (interior), Rockwell Kent, Leo Perutz, The Master of the Day of Judgment,
Random House, 1930. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Charles Boni Paper Books, 1930.
W. A. Dwiggins, Willa Cather, On Writing, Alfred A. Knopf, 1949. Designer uncertain, John Erskine, The Private Life of Helen
Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of of Troy, Popular Library, 1948.
Random House, Inc.
Milton Herder, Erle Stanley Gardner, Fiery Fingers,
W. A. Dwiggins, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, Pocket Books, 1956.
Random House, 1931. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
George Salter, Robert Bloch, The Scarf, Dial Press, 1947.
George Salter, Elias Canetti, The Tower of Babel,
Alfred A. Knopf, 1947. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc.
George Salter, Willson Whitman, Bread and Circuses,
Oxford University Press, 1937.
CHAPTER 2 - AMERICANIZING UTOPIA:
Alvin Lustig, Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, Paul Rand, Arnold Hauser, A Social History of Art #1,
New Directions, 1941. Vintage Books, 1957. Used by permission of Vintage Books,
Alvin Lustig, D. H. Lawrence, The Man Who Died, New Directions, 1950.
Paul Rand, Arnold Hauser, A Social History of Art #4,
Alvin Lustig, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, New Directions, 1946. Vintage Books, 1957. Used by permission of Vintage Books,
Alvin Lustig, Franz Kafka, Amerika, New Directions, 1946. a division of Random House, Inc.
Alvin Lustig, James Laughlin, ed., Spearhead, New Directions, 1947. Paul Rand, Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism,
Vintage Books, 1961. Used by permission of Vintage Books,
Alvin Lustig, Federico Garcia Lorca, Three Tragedies of Lorca, a division of Random House, Inc.
New Directions, 1947.
Paul Rand, H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: A Selection,
Alvin Lustig, Shelley E. Schoonover, American Woods, Vintage Books, 1958. Used by permission of Vintage Books,
Watling and Company, 1951. a division of Random House, Inc.
Alvin Lustig, Italo Svevo, The Confessions of Zeno, Paul Rand, Jean Paul Sartre, The Condemned of Altona,
New Directions, 1947. Alfred A. Knopf, 1961. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
Alvin Lustig, Henry James, The Aspen Papers and The Europeans,
New Directions, 1950. Paul Rand, Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus, Meridian Fiction, 1959.
Alvin Lustig, Untitled painting, gauche and ink on board, ca. 1950. Roy Kuhlman, David Magarshack, Chekhov: A Life,
Archives and Special Collections, RIT Library, Rochester Institute Grove Evergreen, 1955.
of Technology.
Roy Kuhlman, Frank Norris, The Pit, Grove Press, 1956.
Alvin Lustig, Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading, New Directions, 1951.
Roy Kuhlman, Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues,
Alvin Lustig, Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, ed., The New Decade: The Girl Beneath the Lion, Grove Press, 1958.
22 European Painters and Sculptors, Museum of Modern Art, 1955.
Roy Kuhlman, Michael Harrington, The Other America,
Elaine Lustig, Thomas Merton, The Strange Islands, Penguin Books, 1964.
New Directions, 1957.
Roy Kuhlman, Aidan Higgins, Killachter Meadow,
Elaine Lustig, Tennessee Williams, In The Winter of Cities, Grove Evergreen, 1960.
New Directions, 1956 187
Roy Kuhlman, Arthur Adamov, Ping-Pong, A Play, Grove Press, 1959.
Paul Rand, Robert Motherwell, ed., The Dada Painters and Poets,
Wittenborn and Schultz, 1951. Roy Kuhlman, Samuel Beckett, Murphy, Grove Press, 1957.
Paul Rand, Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years, Ernst Reichl, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, Sagamore Press, 1957.
Alfred A. Knopf, 1950. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Leo Lionni, D. W. Brogan, The American Character, Time Books, 1962.
Leo Lionni, Jerry Mason, The Family of Man,
Paul Rand, Thomas Mann, The Tables of the Law, Simon and Schuster, 1955.
a division of Random House, Inc. Leo Lionni, E. H. Carr, Michael Bakunin, Random House, 1961.
Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Paul Rand, Nicholas Monsarrat, Leave Cancelled,
Alfred A. Knopf, 1945. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Leo Lionni, Leo Lionni, Little Blue and Little Yellow, Astor, 1959.
Paul Rand, Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design,
Wittenborn and Company, 1945.
Jack Cesareo, John Jay, Skiing the Americas,
Macmillan Company, 1947.
Bill English, William Somerset Maugham, Encore, Doubleday, 1952.
Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
Paul Rand, Lucius Beebe, The Stork Club Bar Book,
Rinehart and Company, 1946.
Paul Rand, D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture,
Bollingen Series, 1958.
CHAPTER 3 - MODERNISM AND BEYOND: HISTORICAL
FOUNDATIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING THE FUTURE
George Giusti, I. Bernard Cohen, The Birth of a New Physics, Brownjohn, Chermayeff and Geismar, Bertrand Russell,
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960. Used by permission of Doubleday, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, Simon and Schuster, 1959.
Chermayeff and Geismar, Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart,
George Giusti, William Peterson, American Social Patterns, New Directions, 1959.
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956. Used by permission of Doubleday,
a division of Random House, Inc. Chermayeff and Geismar, Irwin Steig, Poker for Fun and Profit,
Cornerstone Library Publications, 1968.
George Giusti, Louis J. Battan, Cloud Physics and Cloud Seeding,
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1962. Used by permission of Doubleday, Chermayeff and Geismar, Toward a Sane Nuclear Policy,
a division of Random House, Inc. National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 1960.
George Giusti, Earl Raab, ed., Religious Conflict in America, Ben Shahn, Mulfor Q. Sibley, ed., The Quiet Battle,
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1964. Used by permission of Doubleday, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1963. Used by permission of Doubleday,
a division of Random House, Inc. a division of Random House, Inc.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
George Giusti, Sketch for Religious Conflict in America, c. 1964. Ben Shahn, Henry Bamford Parkes, The American Experience,
Archives and Special Collections, RIT Library, Vintage Books, 1959. Used by permission of Vintage Books,
Rochester Institute of Technology. a division of Random House, Inc.
George Giusti, Sketch for Religious Conflict in America, c. 1964. Ben Shahn, S. J. Perelman, The Rising Gorge,
Archives and Special Collections, RIT Library, Simon and Schuster, 1961.
Rochester Institute of Technology. Seymour Chwast, Rexford G. Tugwell, FDR: Architect of an Era,
Anita Walker Scott, Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform Macmillan Company, 1967.
and Expansion, Harper and Row, 1963. Used by permission The Push Pin Studios:Glaser /Ceci, A. S. Neill, Freedom-Not License,
of HarperCollins Publishers. Hart Publishing Company, 1966.
Anita Walker Scott, Francis S. Philbrick, The Rise of the West, Milton Glaser, George Andrzeyevski, A Sitter for a Satyr,
Harper and Row, 1966. Used by permission of HarperCollins E. P. Dutton, 1965.
Publishers.
Milton Glaser, Hermann Hesse, Gertrude, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
Rudy de Harak, Hans Selye, The Stress of Life, 1969, Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
McGraw–Hill, early 1960s.
188 Seymour Chwast, Albert Camus, The Plague, Time Books, 1962.
Rudy de Harak, Carl G.Gustavson, A Preface to History,
McGraw–Hill, early 1960s. Milton Glaser, Max Beerbohm, Seven Men and Two Others,
Vintage Books, 1959. Used by permission of Vintage Books,
Rudy de Harak, Leon Goure, The Siege of Leningrad, a division of Random House, Inc.
McGraw–Hill, 1964.
Seymour Chwast, Zino Davidoff, The Connoisseur’s Book of the Cigar,
Fred Troller, Howard P. Dinesman, Superior Mathematical Puzzles, McGraw-Hill, 1969.
Vincent Ceci, Anthony Jay, Management and Machiavelli,
Fred Troller, G. Hugh Begbie, Seeing and the Eye, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1973. Used by permission of Doubleday,
a division of Random House, Inc. Seymour Chwast, Arthur O. Lewis Jr., Of Men and Machines,
E. P. Dutton, 1963.
Seymour Chwast, John F. Adams, Backyard Poultry Raising,
Doubleday and Company, 1977. Used by permission of Doubleday,
CHAPTER 4 - THE BLAND BREEDING THE BLAND: CHAPTER 5 - THE PILLAGED, PARODIED, AND
AMERICAN BOOK COVER DESIGN DISORIENTED PROFOUND: POSTMODERNISM AND THE BOOK COVER
Milton Glaser, G. H. Estabrooks, Hypnotism, April Greiman, Southern California Institute of Architecture,
E. P. Dutton and Company, late1960s. Building in Los Angeles, Southern California Institute of
Architecture, 1997.
Herb Lubalin, Allon Schoener, ed., Harlem on My Mind:
Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, Random House, 1968. Lorraine Wild, John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa: Works 1947–1983,
Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Rizzoli, 1985.
David November, Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves, Lucille Tenazas, William A. Ewing, The Body: Photographs
Doubleday and Company, 1972. Used by permission of Doubleday, of the Human Form, Chronicle Books, 1994.
Bascove, William Goyen, Had I a Hundred Mouths,
John Gerbino, Doris Lessing, Briefing for a Descent into Hell, Clarkson N. Potter, 1985. Copyright © 1985 by Doris Roberts
Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, and Charles William Goyen Trust. Used by permission of Clarkso
a division of Random House, Inc. Potter/Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.
Designer Unknown, David Wilkerson, Purple-Violet-Squish, Bascove, Georges Simenon, Big Bob,
Zondervan Publishing House, 1969. Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1981. English translation by
Eileen M. Lowe. Copyright © 1969 by Hamish Hamilton, Ltd.
Lawrence Ratzkin, Emma Lathen, Ashes to Ashes, Reproduced by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
Fred Marcellino, Alison Lurie, The Truth About Lorin Jones,
Robert Giusti, Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions, Little, Brown and Company, 1988.
Delacorte Press, 1973. Used by permission of Delacorte Press,
a division of Random House, Inc. Fred Marcellino, Michael Marcone, Alive and Dead in Indiana,
Neil Stuart, Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life, E. P. Dutton, 1978. a division of Random House, Inc.
George Maas, Gene M. Gressley, Bankers and Cattlemen, Fred Marcellino, Charles Dickinson, Rumor Has It,
Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, William Morrow and Company, 1991. Used by permission
a division of Random House, Inc. of HarperCollins Publishers.
Alan Peckolick and Tom Carnase, Reginald Reynolds, Beards, Fred Marcellino, Harold Brodkey, The Runaway Soul,
Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1976. Reproduced by permission Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991. Jacket design © 1991 by
of Harcourt, Inc. Fred Marcellino. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus
Lawrence Ratzkin, Stanley Elkin, The Franchiser, Farrar, Straus and and Giroux, LLC. 189
Giroux, 1976. Jacket design © 1976 by Lawrence Ratzkin. Reprinted Naomi Osnos, Adam Mars-Jones, Fabrications,
by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
Massimo Vignelli, Robert Michael Pyle, The Audubon Field Guide a division of Random House, Inc.
to North American Butterflies, Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Used by Marc Cohen, Hob Broun, Inner Tube, Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Used
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House, Inc. by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Designer Unknown, Thomas A. Harris, I’m OK– You’re OK, Robert Scudellari, Denis Johnson, The Stars at Noon,
Avon, 1973. Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
Paul Bacon, Meyer Levin, Compulsion, Simon and Schuster, 1956. a division of Random House, Inc.
Paul Bacon, Joseph Heller, Catch-22, Simon and Schuster, 1961. Paul Gamarello, Amos Oz, Where the Jackals Howl,
Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1981. Copyright © 1965 by Amos Oz
Paul Bacon, S. J. Perelman, The Most of S.J. Perelman, and Massade Ltd., copyright © 1980, 1976 by Amos Oz and Am Oved
Simon and Schuster, 1958. Publishers Ltd., English translation by Nicholas deLange and Philip
Simpson copyright © 1981, 1976, 1973 by Harcourt, Inc. Reproduced
Paul Bacon, Ken Kesey, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,
by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
Viking Press, 1962 (facsimile).
Louise Fili, Marguerite Duras, The Lover, Pantheon Books, 1985.
Paul Bacon, Joseph Heller, We Bombed in New Haven,
Translated by Barbara Bray, copyright © 1975 by Random House, Inc.
and William Collins & Co. Ltd. Used by permission of Pantheon
Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Paul Bacon, William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner,
Random House, 1967. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Paul Bacon, E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime, Random House, 1975.
Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Paul Bacon, Paul Theroux, Saint Jack,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973.
John E. Johnson, Jr., Louis Zukofski, “A”, University of California
Press, 1978. Copyright © 1993. Reprinted with permission of
The John Hopkins University Press.
George Corsillo, Delacorta, NANA, Summit Books, 1979.
CHAPTER 6 - REDEFINE AND REDESIGN:
Louise Fili, Peter Dickinson, Perfect Gallows, Bruce Mau, Michel Feher, Ed., The Libertine Reader: Eroticism
Pantheon Books, 1988. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France, Zone Books, 1997.
Carin Goldberg, Jill Hoffman, Jilted, Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Louise Fili, Frederick Barthelme, Chroma,
Simon and Schuster, 1987. Carin Goldberg, Francis Davis, The History of the Blues,
Hyperion Books, 1995.
Paula Scher, Fritjof Capra, Uncommon Wisdom,
Simon and Schuster, 1988. Carin Goldberg, Fae Myenne Ng, Bone, Hyperion Books, 1993.
Paula Scher, Jane De Lynn, Real Estate, Poseidon Press, 1988. Carin Goldberg, Will Friedwald, Sinatra, Scribner, 1995.
Lorraine Louie, Gordon Lish, ed., The Quarterly, 4, Carol Devine Carson, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Women of Sand and Myrrh,
Vintage Books, 1987. Used by permission of Vintage Books, Anchor Books, 1992.
a division of Random House, Inc. Carol Devine Carson, Dennis Bock, The Ash Garden,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carin Goldberg, Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five,

Dell Publishing, 1989. Used by permission of Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc.
a division of Random House, Inc. Carol Devine Carson, Josephine Hart, Damage,
Carin Goldberg, Raymond Carver, Where Water Comes Together Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
with Other Water, Vintage Books, 1985. Used by permission a division of Random House, Inc.
of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Carol Devine Carson and Gabriele Wilson, Anne Carson,
Carin Goldberg, Robert Coover, A Night at the Movies, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, Vintage Books, 2003. Used by
Simon and Schuster, 1987. permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Carin Goldberg, Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini: A Biography, Carol Devine Carson, Graham Swift, Ever After,
Vintage Books, 1983. Used by permission of Vintage Books, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
Carin Goldberg, Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus, Carol Devine Carson, J. D. Dolan, Phoenix,
Simon and Schuster, 1985. Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
190 Carol Devine Carson and Barbara de Wilde, John Hollander, ed.,
Garden Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, c. 2000. Used by permission of
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Chip Kidd, Marty Asher, The Boomer, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Used
by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Chip Kidd, David Shields, Remote, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Used
Chip Kidd, Thomas Glynn, Watching the Body Burn,
Chip Kidd, William Tester, Darling, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Used
Chip Kidd, Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters,
Chip Kidd, Alan Richter, Sexual Slang, HarperCollins, 1995,
Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
John Gall, Louis Menand, Pragmatism, Evan Gaffney, Andrew Vachss, Pain Management,
Vintage Books, 1997. Used by permission of Vintage Books, Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
John Gall, Amit Chaudhuri, A New World, Evan Gaffney, Mike Nicol, The Ibis Tapestry,
Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
John Gall, Martin Amis, Vintage Amis, Vintage Books, 2004. Used Steven Brower, Howard Fast, Sylvia, Carol Publishing Group, 1992.
by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Paul Buckley, Bradford Morrow, Giovanni’s Gift, Viking Press, 1997.
John Gall, Donald Antrim, The Verificationist, Vintage Books, 2000.
Used by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Ori Kometani, Henk Tennekes, The Simple Science of Flight,
MIT Press, 1998.
John Gall, Larry Dark, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Anchor Books, 2002.
Angela Skouras, Lucy O’Brien, Annie Lennox: Sweet
John Gall, Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland, Dreams Are Made of This, St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
a division of Random House, Inc. Christine Kettner, Adele Griffin, Dive, Hyperion Books, 1999.
John Gall, Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles, Elizabeth Kairys, Dave Eggers, ed., McSweeney’s 8,
Vintage Books, 2001. Used by permission of Vintage Books, McSweeney’s Quarterly, 2002.
a division of Random House, Inc. Krystyna Skalski, Norman Manea, On Clowns:
Archie Ferguson, Michael Ondaatje, The Cinnamon Peeler, The Dictator and The Artist, Grove/Atlantic, 1992.
Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Michael Ian Kaye, Jen Banbury, Like a Hole in the Head,
a division of Random House, Inc. Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
Archie Ferguson, Jon Stewart, Naked Pictures of Famous People, Michael Ian Kaye, Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner,
Rob Weisbach Books/William Morrow, 1999. Used by permission Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
of HarperCollins Publishers.
Michael Ian Kaye, David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day,
Archie Ferguson, Sapphire (Ramona Lofton), Push, Little, Brown and Company, 2000.
a division of Random House, Inc. Michael Ian Kaye, Sarah H. Bradford, Elizabeth:
A Biography of Britain’s Queen, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996. 191
Barbara de Wilde, Joan Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted, Jacket design © 1996 by Michael Ian Kaye. Reprinted by permission
Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Rodrigo Corral, Victor Pelevin, The Life of Insects,
Barbara de Wilde, Victoria Redel, Where the Road Bottoms Out, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. Jacket design © 1990 by Rodrigo
Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Corral. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Rodrigo Corral, A. J. Liebling, A Neutral Corner: Boxing Essays,
Barbara de Wilde, Blanche McCrary Boyd, The Revolution Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997, Jacket design © 1997 by Rodrigo
of Little Girls, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Used by permission Corral. Reprinted by permission of North Point Press, a division
of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Barbara de Wilde and Chip Kidd, Dennis Donoghue, Paul Sahre, Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre, Hello World –
The Old Moderns, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Used by permission A Life in Ham Radio, Princeton Architectural Press, 2003.
of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Eric Baker with Gaetano Pesce and Pesce, Ltd,
Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, Linda Jaivin, Eat Me, Paola Antonelli, Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design,
Broadway Books, 1997. Museum of Modern Art, 1995.
James Victore, Fernando Arrabal, Guernica and Other Plays, Stefan Sagmeister, Peter Hall, Made You Look,
Grove Press, 1995. Booth Clibborn Editions, 2001.
David High, Vince Staten, Did Monkeys Invent the Monkey Wrench?, Rodrigo Corral, Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby, Anchor Books, 2002.
Paul Sahre, Peter Manseau, Killing the Buddha, Free Press, 2003.
Susan Mitchell, Grace Paley, Just as I Thought,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. Jacket design © 1998 by
Susan Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, LLC.
Gabriele Wilson, A. S. Byatt, The Biographer’s Tale,
Gabriele Wilson, Sarah Bird, The Yokota Officers Club,
192 TYPEFACES
Filosofia, designed by Zuzana Licko in 1996, Emigre Fonts.
DIN, designed by the typefoundry H. Berthold AG in 1936.

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BY ITS COVER

Princeton Architectural Press New York

For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657.

© 2005 Princeton Architectural Press

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright.

Editing: Mark Lamster

Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek,

i JUDGING THE BOOK 8

2 AMERICANIZING UTOPIA: PROGRESSIVE DESIGN IN AMERICAN HANDS 42

3 MODERNISM AND BEYOND: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING THE FUTURE 72

6 REDEFINE AND REDESIGN: MAKING POSTMODERNISM WORK 134

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 178

IMAGE CREDITS 186

Books are a thing of beauty, but so are horse-drawn carriages.

Is the printed book destined for eventual extinction?

ERNST REICHL ULYSSES 1934 Random House

E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER ULYSSES 1949 Random House

UNKNOWN ULYSSES 1940 Random House

CARIN GOLDBERG ULYSSES 1986 Random House

America’s most innovative designers would look to

ERNST REICHL ULYSSES 2002 (uncredited) Random House

innovation as both personal and social expression

The challenge to the commercial designer was to put

designers the opportunity to learn the theoretical

GYORGY KEPES LANGUAGE OF VISION

GYORGY KEPES FALSE COIN

As American designers started to focus their efforts

ROCKWELL KENT PAUL BUNYAN

ROCKWELL KENT MOBY DICK (front board)

ROCKWELL KENT MOBY DICK (interior)

of THE TIME MACHINE , with its slip cover rather than a

W. A . DWIGGINS THE TIME MACHINE

28 George Salter was another designer who firmly

respectability. By mid century, Salter was not only a

GEORGE SALTER THE SCARF

GEORGE SALTER THE TOWER OF BABEL

GEORGE SALTER BREAD AND CIRCUSES

ERNST REICHL THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE

ERNST REICHL ULYSSES (title page)

features in the design of the interior of ULYSSES as well:

The decorative, semi abstract style of Reichl’s ULYSSES

ARTHUR HAWKINS THREE PLAYS

ARTHUR HAWKINS RED SMOKE ARTHUR HAWKINS BASES OVERSEAS

Even if some of the designs by Reichl and Hawkins

explained that he had to attack his task as a product

Still, Reichl attempted to set high standards that

E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER THE SLEEPWALKERS

studies in academic fine art in San Francisco and

the London Underground and Shell Oil products.10

36 By the time he returned to America, Kauffer had

environment for the advance of book cover design.

At the same time, Marshall Lee was making similar

designed by Rockwell Kent, created an impressive

short lived.14 The real impetus to make the modern

ROCKWELL KENT PRIZE POEMS 1913 –1929

ROCKWELL KENT THE MASTER OF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

European modernism, both in fine art and in design,

DESIGNER UNCERTAIN THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HELEN OF TROY

MILTON HERDER FIERY FINGERS

Lustig’s work was characterized by his use of uniquely

Educated in Los Angeles, Lustig worked for three

ALVIN LUSTIG THE WISDOM OF THE HEART

The primary intention in designing the book jackets