hundred computer-like “interactive” books for school children to help
increase literacy skills. McLuhan’s philosophy was a logical extension of
Fiore’s own practice.
The second coproduction with McLuhan was, by Fiore’s own
admission, less successful than The Massage. War and Peace in the Global
Village: An Inventory of Some of the Current Spastic Situations that Could Be
Eliminated with More Feedforwardwas assailed by one critic as a crankish,
repetitive, and disjointed tome in which McLuhan’s puns had become a
nervous tic. McLuhan based his book on the bewildering idea that war is a
result of the anxiety aroused when changing metaphors in perception fail to
yield up familiar self-images. Fiore’s design was a mosaic of disparate
imagery and text, which struggled with little success to reign in McLuhan’s
humorless meanderings. Fiore next worked on a book with Buckminster
Fuller, entitled I Am a Verb,which could be read from front to back and
back to front. Each is emblematic of the times.
Jerry Rubin’s Do It!was also designed in the manner of The
Medium is the Massage.Although universally panned by the critics, it
became a bible of the 1960 s. Fiore worked directly with the former yippie
leader, typographically emphasizing certain ideas in a manner vaguely
reminiscent of the dadaists and futurists. Photographs were also used as
icons and exclamation points and strewn through the text to add sight and
sound to an idea or pronouncement. Fiore was as anarchic as possible while
still working within the constraints of bookmaking. His design was ahead
of its time, but he believed that the methods he adopted were simply the
most appropriate ways to convey the information. “They were just jobs,
each requiring special treatment,” he said.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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