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“A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when
there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to
take away.”
Antoine de SAint-exupéry (1900–1944), French, Author
abstraction
17
ab·strac·tion \ab-'strak-sh n, b-\ n
1: considered apart from concrete
existence
2: not applied or practical; theoretical
3: having intellectual and affective
artistic content that depends solely on
intrinsic form rather than on narrative
content or pictorial representation
Abstraction is indepen-
dent of our visual world.
It is an illusion of our own
visible reality and solely
a sensory experience. In graphic design, abstraction provides us
with alternative ways of communicating visual messages contain-
ing specific facts and experiences. It is a visual language that does
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th e la n guag e of gr ap hic d es i gn
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19 45
Nightwood
New York, New York, USA
One of the most prolific collaborations
between a graphic designer and client in
twentieth-century American design was the
one shared by Alvin Lustig (1915–1955)
and the progressive publisher New Direc-
tions Books in the 1940s and 1950s. During
this time period, Lustig designed dozens of
groundbreaking book covers and jackets
for the Modern Reader and New Classics
book series for New Directions.
A designer, writer, and educator in Los
Angeles and New York City, Lustig was one
of the first designers to approach his craft
and profession in a nonspecialized manner.
He believed that all design was a matter of
form and content and that the role of the
designer was that of a synthesizer, not of
a style maker. His diverse work included
books, book jackets, advertisements, maga-
zines, trademarks, letterheads, catalogs,
record albums, sign systems, furniture, tex-
tile design, interior design, product design,
and architecture.
Lustig’s first New Directions book cov-
ers began as an experiment with geometric
patterns, but soon he was adapting forms
familiar to him from his knowledge of mod-
ern painting. Within a few years, Lustig was
incorporating biomorphic glyphs or what
he called symbolic “marks” that recalled
the work of abstract modernist painters
such as Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Clifford Still,
and Mark Rothko. His most striking and
memorable book jackets combined mod-
ern typography with complex fields of line,
shape, form, color, texture, and image.
He explained, “The primary intention
in designing the book jackets of the New
Directions series was to establish for each
book a quickly grasped, abstract symbol
of its contents that would be sheer force of
form and color, attract and inform the eye.
not rely upon the literal nature of things—
familiar and identifiable to us in our own
world. Relying on an abstract visual language
can reshape the familiar into the expressive.
It is free from objective content, context, and
meaning. It can be symbolic, interpretive,
imaginary, impressionistic, nonrepresenta-
tional, nonobjective, or nonfigurative.
Historical References
Abstraction is not a twentieth-century
phenomenon. It has been a part of our visual
language since early mankind. From naïve
(continued on page 173)
Mende design
San Francisco, California, USA
C+g Partners LLC
New York, New York, USA
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