Purity of Aim

Here is a colorful and well-researched representation of Alvin Lustig's book cover designs that were created primarily for New Directions Books and Noonday Press, among others. Lustig used the book cover as a vehicle of his bold graphic experimentation that was enhanced by a lifelong collaboration with James Laughlin, founder and publisher of New Directions Books. Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger cite many passages from these letters of correspondence between Lustig and Laughlin which include a range of topics from the early 1940s up to Lustig's untimely death in 1955. As a modern designer, Lustig's interests spanned many fields: architectural, industrial and interior design which served as an expression of his deeply held convictions. For him, the designer was not a single-minded specialist, but an integrator of many art forms-and simultaneously, as he saw it, a spokesman for social change. NED DREW teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and is also the director of The Design Consortium, a student/teacher run design studio that focuses on non-profit, community-based projects. Paul Sternberger is an Associate Professor of Art History at Rutgers University-Newark. He is co-author with colleague Ned Drew of By It's Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design.