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The front and back covers of a book are shown. A collage of black-and-white photographs completely bleeds off all sides of the two covers. The cut-and-pasted photographs depict Black people of different ages, some with natural Afro hair styles. The title “RE:CREATION” and the author’s name are typeset in red Futura caps. One figure is highlighted with red ink, printed transparently over the black photograph. An outdoor sign for Jackson State College appears on the back cover.
Broadside Press and Black Graphic Design
Broadside: A single sheet of paper printed on one side only. For centuries, broadsides were a popular ephemeral format for distributing news, announcements, advertisements, or commentary in the form of ballads.  Between 1966 and 1975, Broadside Press in Detroit, Michigan published 81 books and dozens of poetry broadsides written and designed by Black writers and...
Image features a wallpaper printed in greens, reds, browns and yellows on a glazed cream ground, illustrating scenes from the poem "The Diverting History of John Gilpin." The vignettes include Gilpin riding his horse, and highway and tavern scenes in a random arrangement, with lines from the poem accompanying each one. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
John Gilpin’s Diverting Ride
Early children’s wallpapers were designed to be educational, with many based on popular books. This wallpaper illustrates four scenes from William Cowper’s poem The Diverting History of John Gilpin written in the 1780s. The story contains some silly antics that would capture the fancy of children. The nutshell version of the tale goes like this:...
Cover Art Cubism
This 1948 jacket for William Carlos Williams’ book-length poem Paterson was designed by Alvin Lustig for New Directions Publishing’s New Classics series, a collection of reprints of modern literature. Lustig and Williams, a self-expressive graphic designer and a painterly writer, respectively, are a particularly complimentary pair, of the many authors whose work Lustig visually rendered....
gelman 1
Poetry and Posters
Russian-born designer Alexander Gelman worked in the United States during the 1990s and early 2000s. His simple icons strive not so much to capture the essence of a subject, but rather to offer an off-kilter view of it. Here, a table lamp represents a poetry reading. The illustration is, one might say, beside the point....
lustig cohen
Elaine Lustig Cohen: An Interview
Designer and artist Elaine Lustig Cohen was married to Alvin Lustig from 1948 to 1955. She managed her husband’s studio, serving as a secretary, production assistant, and draftsperson—the “office slave,” as she recalls. As Lustig lost his eyesight to diabetes, he increasingly relied on his wife to execute his concepts. Following Lustig’s death in 1955,...
Alvin Lustig
Hand-Lettered Illuminations
A book cover must quickly capture a viewer’s attention and provoke curiosity about the content within, contributing an enduring element to the reader’s experience. The covers designed by Alvin Lustig in the 1940s and 1950s employ abstracted iconography and simple typography and lettering to create emotionally compelling representations of a book’s themes. Lustig, who died...