This piece is the cover of Reginald Reynolds’ book entitled Beards designed by Alan Peckolick. Published in 1976, this book is a philosophic curation of beards, their discourse, and the art of barbering. Enough about chin hair — let’s talk about design.

This piece was designed and lettered by Alan Peckolick under Herb Lubalin’s leadership. Lubalin was the long-time business partner of Peckolick and was great at organizing creatives together under his design agency. And Peckolick was the genius behind typography. Instead of using a basic “BEARDS” type, Peckolick used his expressive genius to brilliantly illustrate the letters B-E-A-R-D in the shape of a chin or bottom half of a face (PRINT Magazine). Adding even more personality, he crafted the handlebars mustache style to the bottom of letters ‘A’ and ‘R,’ and every letter has a hair curl at the top or bottom.

For its time, this project sort of followed the trend of flowy, disco shaped lettering, but it was extremely forward thinking in its way of replacing part of a face with letters. A lot of Peckolick’s work would leave you filling in the blank. By placing objects over letters or replacing letters entirely with objects, Peckolick become a visionary in this sort of thing.

Bibliography

Heller, Steven. “My Favorite Lubalin.” PRINT Magazine, 5 Aug. 2011, https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/my-favorite-lubalin/