Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

his virtuosity. In this book Dwiggins wed respect for tradition with passion
for the new. In Dwiggins’s work, the classics served as foils for a
contemporary decorative vocabulary that synthesized medieval, oriental,
and Mayan visual forms. Although his motifs are described as art moderne
(art deco), they were only remotely related to this machine age
international style. Actually, Dwiggins developed a distinctive manner that
was later adopted by other purveyors of commercial style. Dwiggins did not
conform to the times, rather the times conformed to him.
The Limited Editions Club publication of The Great Gargantua
and Pantagruelis certainly one of the finest on Dwiggins’s own shelf. Even
when compared to the unique spines he designed for numerous other
classics, these exuded a certain magic through their composition. Every
aspect of the books’ conception, production, and manufacture from the
deep green color of the cloth bindings and slipcase to the conceptual
acuity of the lighthearted illustrations to the composition of neo-baroque
ornament to the curvaceous hand lettering on the title and chapter breaks
made this a readable confection. Over time it has become a kind of
fetishistic design artifact.
George Macy, the irascible publisher of the Limited Editions
Club, commissioned a three-volume set; Dwiggins urged him to divide the
text into five separate volumes (The Great Gargantua and Pantagruelwas
written as five books under one cover). This number gave Dwiggins the
opportunity to create a virtual stage on which the characters in the books
could play. Dwiggins tied the five volumes together through the spine
illustrations. Separately each spine had its own integrity, but together they
became a frieze of the book’s leading characters. Dwiggins further created
individual title pages, which he precisely hand lettered in pen and ink in
actual-size layouts, often in more than one version, as if titles for a play or
film. Title page design was a time-honored part of bookmaking, and
Dwiggins respectfully played with the medium by busting through the rigid
constraints. Inside the books he designed vignettes that illuminated the
text, but not in the conventional mimicry of a passage or line. Personally
inscribed on the flyleaf of Dorothy Abbe’s copy Dwiggins wrote: “Although
the... vignettes might be considered gothic I tried to avoid a gothic
overtone in this book.” He succeeded in designing a book that, though set
in another time, was not merely relevant, but vital.
In Hingham, Massachusetts, far from the capitals of commercial
art and design, Dwiggins remained an iconoclast for his entire life. But few
mavericks were ultimately as influential. He inspired imitators, yet none
were able to recreate his panache. Dwiggins was the quintessential designer
and experimenter of his time. “Modernism is not a system of design—it is a