sans serif typefaces, custom-made hand letters, and bold pictorial images.
He imbued in each book a certain monumentality that underscored the
words and enhanced the pictures.
He soon realized that the French were more successful in
“marketing” the works of contemporary artists because they published
beautiful and intelligent books explaining the theory that underscored
progressive art. This astute observation encouraged Armitage to create
(and often write) his own books, to both enlighten the public and foster
greater appreciation for the new vanguard. “My aim was a synthesis of
text, picture and design...a revealment of the general attitude expressed
by the subject.” In practice, this meant books that were contemporary in
form, structure, and pacing, that served to mirror their subjects’ unique
sensibilities. “The book must be an outward expression of its content,” he
wrote, not reflexive reproductions of Olde English, Renaissance, or other
period styles.
When Wassily Kandinsky first exhibited at a gallery in Hollywood
in 1939 , Armitage was asked to write an essay that explained the
unprecedented work to a befuddled public. And when requests for the essay
turned into a small deluge, the publisher E. Weyhe (New York) invited
Armitage to design a slender book called So-Called Abstract Art, which not
only shed light on the idea of abstraction, but did so with stark typography
that echoed the new artistic sensibility. Similarly, with his self-published
Martha Graham( 1937 ), Armitage developed a typographic scheme and
pictorial pacing using dramatically lit photographs that became the visual
identity for this visionary dancer. “Taking Martha Graham on her first
transcontinental tour convinced me that she was the greatest dancer of our
time,” wrote Armitage in Merle Armitage, Book Designer(University of
Texas Press, 1956 ). “Through subtle handling I attempted to make the book
‘dance’ in a most contemporary manner.”
For his 1938 memorial book George Gershwin(Longmans, Green
and Co.), Armitage infused the project with what he called “some of the
vitality, color, and excitement that were so manifest in this great American
composer.” He later followed up with a second book on his friend titled
George Gershwin (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1958 ), with a simple sans serif
“GG” on the cover, which included the art that influenced the composer
and he in turn influenced.
New approaches to book design coincided with modern
innovations in other arts; for Armitage, Frank Lloyd Wright, Serge de
Diaghilev, and Raymond Loewy were among the leading progenitors.
He wrote that what men like Loewy had done for the machine must be
similarly applied to publishing. Of course, the streamlined aesthetic
tuis.
(Tuis.)
#1