Synopsis
Purity of Aim: The Book Jacket Designs of Alvin Lustig is a colorful and well-researched representation of Lustig’s book cover designs that were created primarily for New Directions Books and Noonday Press, among others. Lustig used the book cover as a vehicle of his bold graphic experimentation that was enhanced by a lifelong collaboration with James Laughlin, founder and publisher of New Directions Books. Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger cite many passages from these letters of correspondence between Lustig and Laughlin which include a range of topics from the early 1940s up to Lustig’s untimely death in 1955. As a modern designer, Lustig’s interests spanned many fields: architectural, industrial and interior design which served as an expression of his deeply held convictions. For him, the designer was not a single-minded specialist, but an integrator of many art forms―and simultaneously, as he saw it, a spokesman for social change.
About the Authors
Professor Ned Drew heads the Graphic Design area at Rutgers University-Newark, where he teaches various design and design history courses. Drew is a member of the AIGA National Design Educators Community Steering Committee and the Director of The Design Consortium, a student/teacher-run design studio that focuses on nonprofit, community-based projects. Drew is the co-editor of Design Education in Progress: Process and Methodology, Volumes 1, 2, and 3, and co-author (with Paul Sternberger) of By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design (2005) and Purity of Aim: The Book Jacket Designs of Alvin Lustig (2010). Drew is also a founding partner of the multidisciplinary design firm BRED, which is based in New York City (www.brednation.com). His work has been included in the sixth edition of Typographic Design: Form and Communication, Graphic Design Referenced, US Design 1975–2000, Working with Computer Type, the AIGA’s Rethinking Design 3: Speaking Volumes, Graphic Design Solutions, Color Management for Logos and 2D: Visual Basics for Designers and has been recognized by the AIGA, The Type Directors Club, the International Design Awards, the Art Directors Club, Creativity, the FPO Awards, the UCDA and the AAM as well as Graphis, Communication Arts, Print, and How magazines.
Paul Sternberger (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of Art History at Rutgers University-Newark, who specializes in American Art and the History of Photography. He is the author of Between Amateur and Aesthete: The Legitimization of Photography in America, 1880–1900 and co-author with colleague Ned Drew of By It’s Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design. Other publications include various journal articles in American Art, Photographies, and the Journal of the History of Collections.
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