pervasive that they work people over like a masseuse) was the first book for
the television age.New York Timescritic Eliot Freemont Smith wrote that
the large format of the hardcover took on “the aspect of a TV screen.”
Fiore, who initiated the project with the help of Jerome Agel, a book
packager, designed it as a kinetically flowing collection of word bites and
iconic images set in economical (Helvetica) type. He underscored
McLuhan’s ideas with what might be called a series of literary billboards—
double-page spreads with large call-outs and blurbs. McLuhan described
them (perhaps sarcastically) as “collide-oscopic interfaced situations.”
The Massageheralded a number of firsts: the first time that a
paperback preceded the hardcover version into the marketplace; the first
time such cinematic visual pacing was applied to American book design;
the first book coordinated by a “producer,” Jerome Agel, who takes credit
for orchestrating its “sound and music.” And although not a first, most
important, was the close conceptual relationship between the designer and
writer—like those of Lazar El Lissitzky and Vladimir Mayakovsky, John
Heartfield and Kurt Tucholsky, Guylas Williams and Robert Benchley.
Although the collaborators were not in constant contact during the creation
of the book, Fiore was in tune with McLuhan’s thinking so that the
concrete presentation of McLuhan’s often complex (and contradictory)
ideas was made accessible.
Fiore was born in New York in 1920. He had been a student of
George Grosz at the Art Students League and of Hans Hoffman at the
Hoffman School. He was a devotee of classical drawing, papermaking, and
lettering and began his career before World War II as a letterer for graphic
designer Lester Beall (for whom he designed many of the modern display
letters used in ads and brochures before modern typefaces were available in
the United States) and for Condé Nast,Life,and other magazines (where
he hand-lettered headlines for editorial and advertising pages). He left
lettering to become a graphic designer, and for many years designed all the
printed matter for the Ford Foundation in a modern but not rigid style.
Since he was interested in the clear presentation of information, he was
well suited as a design consultant to various university presses, and later to
Bell Laboratories (for whom he designed the numbers for one of Henry
Dryfuss’s rotary dials). In the late 1960 s he also worked on Homefax, an
early telephone facsimile machine developed (but never marketed) at RCA/
NBC, where he coordinated an early electronic newspaper.
Fiore predicted the widespread use of computer-generated design,
talking computers, and home fax and photocopy technologies. He also
predicted the applications of the computer in primary school education
long before its widespread use, and accordingly in 1968 he designed two
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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