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Take Off Your Jacket …

Sep 25, 2015
1 min

Take Off Your Jacket …

And stay a while. … Book jackets were never meant to be worn forever. They were ephemeral dust protectors designed to serve two masters—marketing and advertising. Destined for the trash bin, the DJs from the 1930s and ’40s that survived are indeed worn and tattered. But they are also fascinating indicators of graphic style and form. These are from a collection of good, bad and ugly jackets that made me look twice. And that’s the job of the jacket: Two looks often mean one sal

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Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Book Jacket Designers

Jul 8, 2015
2 min

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Book Jacket Designers

In February 1947 a select group of graphic designers founded the Book Jacket Designers Guild for “the purpose of promoting and stimulating interest in the art of book jacket design.” Their espoused intention was to “elevate the artistic level by means of systematic panel discussions and mutual encouragement,” and do this through annual exhibits. The catalog for the first exhibit in 1948 (pages excerpted below) stated: “The years 1940 through 1947 have seen no methodical displ

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Paul Bacon, Bestseller

Jun 10, 2015
10 min

Paul Bacon, Bestseller

Paul Bacon (1923–2015), master of the “Big Book Look” in cover design, died on Monday, June 8, 2015, at 91 of a stroke. This is an article on Bacon that was published in Print LVI:I, March/April 2002. During the last half of the 20th century, Paul Bacon designed influential book jackets, for bestsellers particularly, that revitalized the genre. “If I was born to do something,” comments Paul Bacon, “it was to design book jackets.” Bacon fulfilled that calling for about 50 yea

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Memories of Jackets Past

May 4, 2015
1 min

Memories of Jackets Past

We may not be able to tell a book by its cover, but we sure can remember a book we’ve read by its jacket. While digging through very ancient books that I read for pleasure or school, I found these jackets, and the memories of the reading experience returned. What’s more, I must have started to think as a collector even in junior and senior high school. Here are three different editions each of Moby Dick and Ulysses. In both cases the books were read for assignments, and I gue

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Book Jacket Modernism

Jul 31, 2014
1 min

Book Jacket Modernism

Book jackets are a wellspring of graphic styles and often mirror what is going on in the design culture. I’ve long admired this pastiche of Russian constructivism for the book The Diary of a Communist Undergraduate from 1929. The author Nikolai Ognev (1888-1938) was active as a writer “before the October Revolution,” which, we’re told, he embraced enthusiastically. Ognev wrote a lot about the radical changes in education in the Soviet Union in the twenties, especially the int

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When Typography Hit The Airwaves

Apr 23, 2014
2 min

When Typography Hit The Airwaves

Tony Wons was a popular personality during the 1930s Great Depression era receiving 2,000 fan letters a week. Tony Wons Scrapbook was a conversational show and he was like an old friend who stopped by for a chat. His catch-phrase to the audience was “Are you listening?” He was also known as “scrapbookman” as he collected works of writing from Shelley, Whitman, and other important literary figures, many of which were suggested by the fans of his show. Wons began looking at in

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Sporting Jackets

Feb 17, 2014
1 min

Sporting Jackets

Book jackets were functional appendages to books created to keep covers free of dirt and dust (hence the now antiquated term dust jackets). They’re also mini-posters designed to attract readers — like bees to the flower. Twenty years ago, Seymour Chwast and I authored a book titled Jackets Required, a survey of these dust repellent graphic designs from the ’20s through the ’40s. I recently came across the outtakes from the book. Here are some of the more intriguing of the rej

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