A NOD IS AS GOOD AS A WINK TO A BLIND HORSE
Alvin Lustig (1915–1955) was one of the most inspiring and prolific (and maybe among the very best) graphic designers of the last half-century. He designed countless book covers, advertising, and magazines (including the peculiar Gentry). Unfortunately, he had the misfortune of dying before graphic design became such a popular sporting activity. The result is that nobody seems to remember him. Like William Golden or Bradbury Thompson, he’s been remaindered to that heap o’ exquisite designers thrown in the closet (and the landfill) so that we may worship at the shrine of Paul Rand.
A number of years ago, Steve Heller hosted a series of conferences devoted to rediscovering “lost” design history. During one of those conferences I was fortunate enough to see Ivan Chermayeff give a presentation about his work and a question-&-answer exchange with the participants. It was marvelous to watch him and actually take the measure of him. He’s a wonderful guy.
One of the things that came up during this exchange was the interesting (and seemingly unknown) fact that Ivan apprenticed under Alvin Lustig when he was just starting out. Ivan’s father was an extremely well-known and successful and cultivated modernist architect, so getting an intro to the biz through a designer as accomplished as Lustig was not so big a deal to them. The way that Ivan causally mentioned it and the way that the audience seemed to quietly gasp was extremely interesting.
Even more startling to me, downright shocking even, was Ivan’s little story about how he worked with Lustig. It was fascinating. Alvin would kick back and—in his mind’s eye—design the piece at hand. He would then dictate the design to the young Ivan EXACTLY what it was to look like: “an 8½″ × 11″ sheet of white uncoated paper, start at the top, drop down six picas. Indent 12 picas, flush left. Use 10 or 12 point Futura Gothic extended lower case....” Lustig would work through the entire design and Ivan simply recreated it! Amazing, really.
The funny part of the story was when Lustig started to work out the color in his mind. Ivan said that Alvin wasn’t such a great colorist. So, he would just change it and never tell him about it. He got away with that because, at this point in his career, ALVIN LUSTIG WAS COMPLETELY BLIND!
Clunk.
OK. That seems pretty weird, right? We all know that Beethoven was deaf late in his career. We know that Herb Lubalin worked in black-and-white because he was color-blind (a color-blind designer is pretty mind-boggling, too), but a completely blind visual artist? Amazing!
Over the years I’ve encountered many “disabled” artists, sculptors with paralysis, painters with Parkinson’s. I actually met a man who was a master sign painter—the sign painter that was the greatest in Tacoma’s history, the guy who built the industry and established the standard of extremely high quality in the area. He was even the sign painter for the mob (locally very powerful). The guy who is still, to this day, revered by sign painters as the grand master of the ages. He was in his eighties when I met him. He seemed to have had a stroke and was essentially paralyzed on one side. I asked about it later and found out he was hit by a train WHEN HE WAS 19! He spent his entire career as a one-armed sign painter!
I was in a record store in Bellingham, Washington about 30 years ago. It had a really cool logo hand-painted in their picture window. Being a young design student, I commented on how much I liked their window. The woman behind the counter beamed and said that it was done by an artist with no hands or legs. He painted it with a brush stuck in his TEETH!!!
So, whenever I feel sorry for myself, start to complain about how tough it is to do this, how others are blessed with such talents and am feeling envious, all I have to do is think of old Alvin Lustig, design guru par excellence. Blind as a bat. I feel much better about myself.
These are a few of his great book cover/dust jackets. I assume he wasn’t yet blind when he did them. But you never know.
