Modern American Book Jacket

アメリカ近代ブックジャケット / 1940s–1950s / Style / Publishing and Editing

The jacket style Lustig built at New Directions: suggestion by sign and abstraction instead of illustration, turning literary covers into small modern artworks and raising postwar American book design.

Modern American Book Jacket — Lustig, cover for Nausea (CC BY 2.0) · © Karen Horton, diseño de la cubierta de Alvin Lustig, The New Classics Series publicado por New Directions, c. 1952 — Lustig, cover for Nausea (CC BY 2.0) · CC BY 2.0 · © Karen Horton, diseño de la cubierta de Alvin Lustig, The New Classics Series publicado por New Directions, c. 1952

Modern American Book Jacket — Lustig, magazine spread (CC BY 2.0) · © 80magazine — Lustig, magazine spread (CC BY 2.0) · CC BY 2.0 · © 80magazine

Modern American Book Jacket — Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake, first edition dust jacket 1943 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake, first edition dust jacket 1943 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

At a glance

Visual cues

Abstract suggestion of content
Compositions of sign and shape
Hand lettering with type
Series coherence

Best used for

Literary series covers made one by one without showing the plot
A dress that reads as one series when shelved beside earlier volumes

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Dictionary entry

Type: Title in hand lettering beside type, author name kept small
Composition: One shape set off center with generous emptiness around it
Material: Two or three flat inks over the bare paper color
Caution: Choosing an abstract shape without tying it to the book yields an ornament that would fit any title, so the series stops being distinguishable.
Further study: Alvin Lustig / the New Directions series / Paul Rand's jackets

Related entries

Penguin Cover System (ペンギン・ブックスの表紙)Same Publishing and Editing lineage.Compare Modern American Book Jacket and Penguin Cover System
Surrealism (シュルレアリスム)Shared effects: Rebellion / Calm.Compare Modern American Book Jacket and Surrealism

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