developed by Loewy and other industrial designers in the 1930 s was as
concerned with veneer as with function, and that was echoed in Armitage’s
work, too. Nonetheless, even given his typographic excesses, on the whole
Armitage’s books goosed book design out of complacency. He was
unforgiving when in came to “publishers who purchase manuscripts they
have never read and assign them to designers who will never read them,” he
wrote. To the contrary, he conceived of a book as a whole entity, not the
sum of disparate parts. In fact, the publishing convention that dictated (and
still dictates) an artificial division between cover and interior designers
prompted Armitage to assert, “We read that ‘dust wrapper and title page
have been designed by so and so’... but a Cadillac advertisement
proclaiming, ‘front fenders and steering wheel have been designed by so
and so’ would be an impossible absurdity.” While jackets on many of his
own books were usually more neutral than the startling cover or interior
typography, everything was designed as one totality, and thus evoked an
unmistakable identity.
Designers throughout the late 1920 s and 1930 s copied the
elegant calligraphic scripts and Mayan-influenced decorations of W. A.
Dwiggins, yet few if any pilfered Armitage’s style. Perhaps his approach
was just too idiosyncratic or maybe too horsy for some. Whatever the
reason, his distinctive method was exclusive to the few independent
publishers—including the famed Ward Ritchie Press in Los Angeles, which
also published Alvin Lustig’s early type-case experiments—who realized
that book design had to reflect the times. Consequently, his personal
fingerprint is the explicit graphic force of his type and the prominence he
gives to illustrations, art, and photographs.
Despite Armitage’s preference for modern aesthetics rooted in
what he called the “tension” of demonstrative letter and color combinations
(i.e., black and red and some yellow were his favorites), he did not promote
a single method or ideology. “No system is readily at hand to solve the
problem; it is not a matter of formulas,” he wrote. “‘Modern’ is not
something you can put on or take off as you would a hat.” But it is
something that has various interpretations and his, while at odds with other
Modern practitioners, was for type to emote rather than stay neutral.
Armitage’s timely books were designed to be unashamedly theatrical, just
like the concerts and plays he promoted so successfully on the big stage.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
#1