The designer that set precedence for book cover designs and revitalizing how people engage with literary works in a commercial sense, is none other than Alvin Lustig. This specific cover was designed in 1941 and marks the very beginning of Alvin Lustig’s professional relationship with New Directions Publishing. This is a rather serious and bold…
Steven Heller is a very influential name in the design world. In addition to graphic design, his works are included in categories such as art critic, author, director, and editor (Famous Graphic Designers). Currently, Heller is credited with author rights on over 60 books. Not only has Steven Heller provided his own influence on the…
Alvin Lustig, known as a graphic designer and typography designer, also dabbled in designing furniture. After moving back to Los Angeles following a two-year relocation in New York City, Alvin Lustig was commissioned by Paramount Furniture to create this chair. Called the Lustig chair, the chair is created with molded plywood creating a graceful, curvy…
Ed Benguiat’s most famous project by far is his self-titled font, “ITC Benguiat.” The designer desired to create a font that was “pretty and legible.” This classic decorative serif was published in the late 1970s through the International Typeface Corporation (ITC), which housed the majority of Benguiat’s fonts. He had no intention to title the…
When one thinks of the field of graphic design and the designers that established what it is today, the name Alvin Lustig is undeniably included on that list. Although Alvin Lustig lived a short life, he had an immensely prolific career that took him across multiple sectors of design, revolutionizing each along the way. How…
The great American type design legend Ephram Edward Benguiat (pronounced Ben-gat) was born in the mid 1920s (“Ed Benguiat”). Ed Benguiat was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York (“Font Designer”). At an early age, he watched his father use creative abilities as one of Bloomingdale’s display directors. Inspired by his father’s art supplies, he…
“Until the nineteenth century, books remained the major product of the printer. By the beginning of industrialization, the traditions of roman, italic, and black-letter types had been well established” (Lawson, 363). However; script types did not readily join their serif and sans serif counterparts in the new century. At the time, very few script types…
Previously, type designers were unsuccessful in their attempt to create a sans-serif type that “could be considered both beautiful and utilitarian” (Lawson, 324). “For the better part of a century, sans-serif types tended to be unimaginative renditions of roman letter forms, although it was discovered that their monotone characteristics did allow for variations of weight…
With the design of Palatino in 1950, German calligrapher Hermann Zapf gained global recognition among typographers (Lawson, 120). Though the typeface took years to circulate, it’s talented, young creator made an immediate impact (Lawson, 120). This was because ‘Feder und Stichel’ (Pen and Graver) was published that same year, using Palatino in its introductory text.…
Early Life Hermann Zapf (pronounced “dzahff”) was a German typeface designer and calligrapher as well as a pioneer of computerized and computer aided typography (tdc). Zapf was born in Nuremberg, Germany on the 8th of November, 1918. At this time, World War I was just ending, and Germany was experiencing turbulent times as “the revolution…
The Yellow Book was a leading periodical in the 1890s for its distinctive and distinguished format, as it combined the avant-garde with the traditional in its visual and verbal contents and appeal to the popular readership interested in books as beautiful objects. Its concept was first formulated by Aubrey Beardsley and his friend Henry Harland. …
Salomé is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde, published first in France in 1891 and in English in 1894 The play tells one act of the biblical story of Salomé, the stepdaughter of Herod, who requested the head of John the Baptist, as a reward of doing the “Dance of the seven veils.” Beardsley accepted the challenge…
Max Huber was a pivotal and intriguing figure in the graphic design field in the mid-late twentieth century, heavily influential in Italy and Milan. His formative years were spent in Switzerland before he moved to Italy where he did most of his influential work. “Born in Switzerland” in 1919, he attends the “Kunstgewerbeschule, the “Zurich…
There were many designers that have influenced design itself over the course of humanity. Jean Carly was one of those said designers who influenced the graphic poster seen as well as how they were used during his long life. Carlu was born in the 1900s in Bonnières-Sur-Seine, France, and designing ran in his blood. From…
In 2006, Ed Fella created the lettering for the AIGA scholarship certificate. The AIGA award is a huge deal for graphic designers, because it is the most prestige award a graphic designer can receive. Ed Fella did indeed win a AIGA medal in 2007. I think the medal was way overdue for Ed Fella. His…