Design Literacy

by Steven Heller

  By 1927 Depero was recognized as an innovator. His synthesis of dynamic and expressionistic graphic forms was undeniably original. He reconciled craft, fine, and applied arts; and, believing that product advertising was the means to stimulate a dialogue with the public, he took on commissions in Italy, including a highly visible series for Campari. In the 1932 manifesto, “The Art of Advertising,” Depero announced, “The art of the future will be powerfully advertising art.” And he continued that “All last centuries [sic] art was advertising oriented.” The suggestion being that the paintings of the past, exalting war, religion and even love, were instruments of sales. Depero believed that the artist’s individuality expressed as a selling tool was the best means to stimulate artistic dialogue with the public. Therefore, he would only work for clients (such as Campari) who gave him license. With such assignments he deliberately used the product as the source of his own iconography, inspiring, he believed, “a new pictorial taste for the image.”

  Lorca: Three Tragedies

  ALVIN LUSTIG

  The 1953 paperback cover for Lorca: Three Tragedies designed by Alvin Lustig (1915–1955) is a masterpiece of symbolic acuity, compositional strength, and typographic ingenuity. It is also the basis for a great many contemporary book jackets and paperback covers. The American book jacket designers’ preference, in the late 1980s and 1990s, for fragmented images, minimal typography, and rebus-like compositions can be traced directly to the stark black-and-white cover for Three Tragedies. This and other distinctive jackets and covers designed by Lustig for New Directions transformed the photograph into a tool for abstraction through the use of reticulated negatives, photograms, and setups.

  Lustig’s approach developed from an interest in photomontage originally practiced by the European moderns, and particularly the American expatriate E. McKnight Kauffer. When Lustig introduced this technique to American book publishing in the late 1940s, book covers and jackets were predominantly illustrative and rather decorative, with an abundance of hand-lettered novelty faces. The Lorca cover was a grid of five symbolic photographs tied together in poetic disharmony. Before this type of cover was introduced, European art-based approaches were not even considered by American publishers. Perhaps they were thought foolhardy in a marketplace where hard-sell marketing conventions were rigorously adhered to. Or, just as likely, the leading book jacket designers of the day were ignorant of such methods.

  Lustig rejected the typical literary solution that summarized a book through one generalized image. “His method was to read a text and get the feel of the author’s creative drive, then to restate it in his own graphic terms,” wrote James Laughlin, the publisher of New Directions, in “The Book Jackets of Alvin Lustig” (Print, Vol. 10, No. 5, October 1956). Laughlin hired Lustig in the early 1940s giving him the latitude to experiment with graphic forms. New Directions’ eccentric list of reprinted contemporary classics, which featured authors such as Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, D. H. Lawrence, and James Joyce, was a proving ground for Lustig’s visual explorations and distinctive graphic poetry. While attaining higher sales was always an issue, Lustig believed that he should not “design down” to the reader. Although mindful of the fundamental marketing precept that a book jacket must attract and hold the average book buyer’s roving eye, Lustig crossed over into taboo marketing territory with his introduction of abstract images and small, discreetly typeset titles, influenced by the work of Jan Tschichold and other European moderns.

  Lustig’s first jacket for Laughlin, a 1941 edition of Henry Miller’s Wisdom of the Heart, eclipsed the previous New Directions books, which Laughlin described as jacketed in a “conservative, ‘booky,’ way.” At the time Lustig was experimenting with nonrepresentational constructions made from slugs of hot metal typographic material, The New Classics succeeded where other popular literary series, including the Modern Library and Everyman’s Library, had failed. Each New Classics jacket had its own character, yet Lustig maintained unity through formal consistency. However, at no time did his style overpower the book. Lustig’s jacket designs for New Directions demanded contemplation; they were not quick-fix visual stimulants.

  Lustig was a form-giver, not a novelty maker. The style he chose for the New Classics was a logical solution to the specific design problem. The New Classics did not become his signature style any more than his earlier typecase compositions did, for within the framework of modernism Lustig varied his approach, using the marketplace as his laboratory. “I have heard people speak of the ‘Lustig Style,’” wrote Laughlin in Print, “but not one of them has been able to tell me, in fifty words or five hundred what it was. Because each time, with each new book, there was a new creation. The only repetitions were those imposed by the physical media.”

  Lustig customized the modern visual language to fit his preferences.

  Lustig’s design appeared revolutionary (and so unacceptable) to the guardians of tradition entrenched at the AIGA and other book-dominated graphic organizations, but he was not the radical that critics feared. He stressed the formal aspects of a problem, and in matters of formal practice he was devout to a fault. In “Contemporary Book Design” (Design Quarterly, No. 31. 1954) he wrote, “The factors that produce quality are the same in the traditional and in the contemporary book. Wherein, then lies difference? Perhaps the single most distinguishing factor in the approach of the contemporary designer is his willingness to let the problem act upon him freely and without preconceived notions of the forms it should take.”

  Lorca: Three Tragedies exemplified Lustig’s versatility and was, moreover, one of many covers for New Directions that tested the effectiveness of inexpensive black-and-white printing as it pushed the boundaries of accepted modern design. For with this and other photo-illustrations (done in collaboration with photographers because he did not take the photographs himself), Lustig customized the modern visual language to fit his preferences. Of course, he was not alone. Paul Rand produced art-based book jackets, but Lustig’s distinction, wrote Laughlin in Print, “lay in the intensity and the purity with which he dedicated his genius to his idea vision.” While the others may have been graphic problem-solvers, Lustig was a visual poet whose work was rooted as much in emotion as in form.

  Merle Armitage’s Books

  MERLE ARMITAGE

  Merle Armitage (1893–1975) taught himself to design sets and costumes for the theater in New York. Next he became a theatrical impresario, managing concert tours for Will Rogers, Martha Graham, and Igor Stravinsky. Later he segued into the role of publicity and advertising director for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe before cofounding the Los Angeles Grand Opera Association, followed by a stint as manager of the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles, where he presented concerts with conductor Leopold Stokowski and the first staging of Porgy and Bess by composer George Gershwin—all before his thirtieth birthday.

  An avid attraction for the arts, and especially modern artists like Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, et al., inspired his ultimate and total immersion into typography and book design, often for books he authored, edited, or published about progressive artists of his time, many of whom became his friends. Armitage mined everything from his early career as inspiration for authorship and book design. However, he is perhaps best known for his book design (especially among book art aficionados), although he is considerably less celebrated than his modern contemporaries. Although his books are seriously collected today and his writings are occasionally cited, owing to his stylized “period” typography (which even he admitted became “outmoded”), he is nonetheless rarely taught as an exemplar or discussed as a member of the orthodox modern clan. Many of his over one hundred books evidence a formal bridge between celebrated classicists, like Bruce Rogers and T. M. Cleland, with modernists like Herbert Bayer, Paul Rand, and Alvin Lustig. In terms of current design history, however, Armitage’s work is a rather wobbly bridge.

  Rand grumbled that Armitage “overdid it,” referring to his signature mammoth type treatments,
usually on double-page title pages (which he “invented”), extremely generous margins, and often widely leaded serif body texts. Other orthodox moderns further accused him of being modernistic. Armitage considered himself modern, however, and even admitted with just a hint of false modesty in A Rendezvous with the Book (George McKibbin & Son, 1949), a treatise on book design, that each one of his books was “unsuccessful.” Yet there was a caveat: “I believe, [they were] failures in the right direction … for they represent attempts to speak to readers in a contemporary language of design … and to close the gap which now exists between the written word and the manner of its presentation.”

  The alleged ham-fisted typographical treatments that characterized Armitage’s design were resolutely contemporary—the result of a mission to demolish antiquated tenets and reflect his time. He angrily wrote that the books of his era were “anonymous among their fellows and are becoming comparatively impotent as a means of communication.” Referring to the book field in general, he wrote, “the grand escalator that has brought us all up from darkness and slavery into light and freedom, has, in our time, lost its leadership, and is uncertain of its function and its direction.” Sure, his prose often provided as much melodrama as his type, yet he was convinced that mediocrity had so contaminated book design that what he called “the stammering books of today” had to be totally cleansed. So, mustering self-taught skill and homegrown bravado, he took it upon himself to stem the tide, transform the medium, and leave a significant body of work, even if it doesn’t always pass the test of time.

  Born in Mason City, Iowa, in 1893, the son of a cattle rancher, Armitage’s passion for design may not appear to be genetic, but it definitely consumed him throughout his entire life. He developed a keen ability for making type reflect the Zeitgeist when, as an impresario for progressive composers and musicians, he found himself habitually disappointed that the circulars and posters advertising his concerts misrepresented his clients’ avant-garde practices. He deplored ersatz William Morris and other antique graphic forms used to promote the likes of Anna Pavlova, George Gershwin, or Igor Stravinsky. Thus, “the duties of writing copy and designing printed material for these attractions were therefore added to my general responsibility of building careers,” he wrote in A Rendezvous. Armitage replaced run-of-the-mill and inappropriate graphics with modern sans serif typefaces, custom-made hand letters, and bold pictorial images. He imbued in each book a certain monumentality that underscored the words and enhanced the pictures.

  He soon realized that the French were more successful in “marketing” the works of contemporary artists because they published beautiful and intelligent books explaining the theory that underscored progressive art. This astute observation encouraged Armitage to create (and often write) his own books, to both enlighten the public and foster greater appreciation for the new vanguard. “My aim was a synthesis of text, picture and design … a revealment of the general attitude expressed by the subject.” In practice, this meant books that were contemporary in form, structure, and pacing, that served to mirror their subjects’ unique sensibilities. “The book must be an outward expression of its content,” he wrote, not reflexive reproductions of Olde English, Renaissance, or other period styles.

  When Wassily Kandinsky first exhibited at a gallery in Hollywood in 1939, Armitage was asked to write an essay that explained the unprecedented work to a befuddled public. And when requests for the essay turned into a small deluge, the publisher E. Weyhe (New York) invited Armitage to design a slender book called So-Called Abstract Art, which not only shed light on the idea of abstraction, but did so with stark typography that echoed the new artistic sensibility. Similarly, with his self-published Martha Graham (1937), Armitage developed a typographic scheme and pictorial pacing using dramatically lit photographs that became the visual identity for this visionary dancer. “Taking Martha Graham on her first transcontinental tour convinced me that she was the greatest dancer of our time,” wrote Armitage in Merle Armitage: Book Designer (University of Texas Press, 1956). “Through subtle handling I attempted to make the book ‘dance’ in a most contemporary manner.”

  For his 1938 memorial book George Gershwin (Longmans, Green and Co.), Armitage infused the project with what he called “some of the vitality, color, and excitement that were so manifest in this great American composer.” He later followed up with a second book on his friend titled George Gershwin (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1958), with a simple sans serif “GG” on the cover, which included the art that influenced the composer and he in turn influenced.

  New approaches to book design coincided with modern innovations in other arts; for Armitage, Frank Lloyd Wright, Serge de Diaghilev, and Raymond Loewy were among the leading progenitors. He wrote that what men like Loewy had done for the machine must be similarly applied to publishing. Of course, the streamlined aesthetic developed by Loewy and other industrial designers in the 1930s was as concerned with veneer as with function, and that was echoed in Armitage’s work, too. Nonetheless, even given his typographic excesses, on the whole Armitage’s books goosed book design out of complacency. He was unforgiving when it came to “publishers who purchase manuscripts they have never read and assign them to designers who will never read them,” he wrote. To the contrary, he conceived of a book as a whole entity, not the sum of disparate parts. In fact, the publishing convention that dictated (and still dictates) an artificial division between cover and interior designers prompted Armitage to assert, “We read that ‘dust wrapper and title page have been designed by so and so’ … but a Cadillac advertisement proclaiming, ‘front fenders and steering wheel have been designed by so and so’ would be an impossible absurdity.” While jackets on many of his own books were usually more neutral than the startling cover or interior typography, everything was designed as one totality, and thus evoked an unmistakable identity.

  Designers throughout the late 1920s and 1930s copied the elegant calligraphic scripts and Mayan-influenced decorations of W. A. Dwiggins, yet few if any pilfered Armitage’s style. Perhaps his approach was just too idiosyncratic or maybe too horsy for some. Whatever the reason, his distinctive method was exclusive to the few independent publishers—including the famed Ward Ritchie Press in Los Angeles, which also published Alvin Lustig’s early typecase experiments—who realized that book design had to reflect the times. Consequently, his personal fingerprint is the explicit graphic force of his type and the prominence he gives to illustrations, art, and photographs.

  Despite Armitage’s preference for modern aesthetics rooted in what he called the “tension” of demonstrative letter and color combinations (i.e., black and red and some yellow were his favorites), he did not promote a single method or ideology. “No system is readily at hand to solve the problem; it is not a matter of formulas,” he wrote. “‘Modern’ is not something you can put on or take off as you would a hat.” But it is something that has various interpretations and his, while at odds with other Modern practitioners, was for type to emote rather than stay neutral. Armitage’s timely books were designed to be unashamedly theatrical, just like the concerts and plays he promoted so successfully on the big stage.

  About U.S.

  LESTER BEALL, BROWNJOHN CHERMAYEFF GEISMAR, HERB LUBALIN, GENE FEDERICO

  In 1955 Aaron Burns (1922–1991) was the Composing Room’s type director and quality control expert, responsible for facilitating the difficult hot metal settings demanded by agency art directors. Burns, who later cofounded the International Typeface Company, was also “a seeker-outer of people who were cutting edge,” recalled Ivan Chermayeff. This was more than the typical designer and supplier relationship; Burns developed formative outlets and forums for graphic designers to express themselves through typography. Under his direction the term cutting edge had at times a very literal meaning. This was the period when the constraints of hot metal composition made it difficult to achieve such now common effects as tight spacing, touching, or overlapping without the designer cutting with a razor
blade, repositioning the proofs, and then making an engraving of the mechanical. Burns explored any reasonable ways to push the limits of typography. One of his most satisfying attempts was a series of four sixteen-page booklets produced in 1960 titled About U.S., which gave four American designers an opportunity to wed type and images without any conceptual constraints and push the edges of production in any way possible.

  The four booklets (written by Percy Seitlin) were: Lester Beall’s The Age of the Auto, where type was laboriously composed in long, thin, and contoured lines to suggest the path (or tire tracks) of an automobile ride; Herb Lubalin’s Come Home to Jazz, a pictorial jam of jazz instruments photographed in high contrast with drop-out type in different sizes and weights running in and out of the images, suggesting the discordance of the music itself; Brownjohn Chermayeff Geismar’s That New York, which flirted with typographic abstraction against a New York cityscape; and Gene Federico’s discourse on the Love of Apples, an exercise to see how close he could touch slugs of type without using a razor blade. “I wanted to try something where I used metal type in extreme ways without having to cut it—without cutting up proofs or playing with stats,” explained Federico. “For some time I had known that if you stacked title gothics they would have a different look than traditional types. So the whole book was based on that simple idea.”