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Oliver MundayBorn: 1984

Charleston, SC

Peter MendelsundBorn: ~1970

Sara CwynarBorn: 1985

Canada

Jessica HischeBorn: 1984

Charleston, SC

Ruth AnselBorn: 1938

New York City

Saul BassBorn: 1920

New York City

NCTSE 2 6

Fred WoodwardBorn: 1953

Louisville, Mississippi

8 10 12Paula Scher

Born: 1948Washington, D.C

Laszlo Moholy-NagyBorn: 1895

Bácsborsód, Hungary

14 16 18Neville Brody

Born: 1957Southgate, London

Mike PerryBorn: 1984

Charleston, SC

22

Erik SpiekermannBorn: 1947

Stadthagen, Germany

David CarsonBorn: 1954

Corpus Christi, Texas

“Designing is not a profession but an attitude... Thinking in

relationships.”

Instilled a modern aesthetic in American design and reinforced photography as a medium.

Born in 1895 in Austria-Hungary Laszlo Moholy- Nagy intiailly began studying law in 1913. However, in 1916 he was drafted into the Army and during his time as a soldier he began drawing and by the time he left the Army he decided to become a painter.

Moholy-Nagy practiced multiple styles before solidifying his work as abstract while in Berlin. He was influenced by Dadaism, Suprematism, and Constructivism. Although he considered himself a painter Moholy- Nagy also had an interest in photography and coined the term photogram.

In 1923 he was invited by Walter Gropius to teach at the Bauhaus. He took over the preliminary course from 1923-1928 and made the course more experimental, practical, and technological. Moholy- Nagy emphasized the unity of art and technology rather than the individual expression. During his time at the Bauhaus he also creathed the typography for the Bauhausbucher. By 1928 he retired from the Bauhaus due to political pressure and no longer considered himself a painter.

Between 1926 and 1936 Moholy-Nagy created eleven films. In 1932 he separated from his current wife and remarried. The rise of the National Socialists in 1933 caused Moholy-Nagy to rellocate to Holland and then London before moving to the United States.

In 1937, he negotiated a five-year contracts as the director at the New Bauhaus in Chicago after being recommended by

László Moholy-Nagy

Walter Gropius. However, after only a year the school went bankrupt. By 1939 he managed to reopen the school as the School of Design and recruited a board of members who supported his educational phiosophy. Among those were Walter Gropius, Alfred H Barr, Jr., and John Dewey. The faculty supported themselves through their own work and taught at the school purely out of devotion. World War II depleted the faculty and students but Moholy-Nagy kept the school alive through his inventiveness.

In 1944, a board formed by industrialists interested in the educational ideas of the school offering to support its administration and finances to the newly renamed Institute of Design.

Moholy-Nagy, however, became seriously ill and was diagnosed with leukemia in November 1945. After receiving x-ray treatment, he returned to work. In November 1946, he attended the Museum of Modern Art’s Conference on Industrial Design as a New Profession. where he proposed that art should guide industry rather than industrialists dictate design. He died from internal hemorrhaging soon after his return from Chicago.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy influenced multiple aspects of art due to his wide range of interests. One of his most apparent influences was instilling the use of technology as an art medium. However, his greatest effect was on the students he taught and the legacy he left behind as a teacher.

Source Credit: theartstory.org

SAULB A S S

Saul Bass is one of the most famous American graphic designers in 20th century.

“Try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story.”

From Saul Bass

Saul Bass was one of the most famous American graphic designers in 20th century, who created a lot of logos and corporate images for numerous American companies such as United Airlines, AT&T and Minolta. He did cover designs for motion picture titles and films. He became the founder of the conceptual cover design because he developed a simplified, symbolic and concise design language that visually communicates each concept.On May 8, 1920, in New York, Saul Bass was born into a European Jewish family. He attended James Monroe High School and received scholarships from the Art Stu-dents League in Manhattan after graduation. He went to Brooklyn College and was taught by a famous Hun-garian designer, Gyorgy Kepes. He worked as a com-mercial artist when he moved to Los Angeles. In 1954, Bass started his new career as a conceptual cover designer when he got a job offer from filmmaker Otto Preminger. He did a lot of film posters and get into Hollywood in 1955. Bass designed his work as an art with its unique purposes that were based on the phi-losophy of enlightening the audience about the subject of film and evoking their emotions. In the late 1980s, he moved away from main titles to focus on filmmaking and his children. Toward the end of his career, Bass was recalled by James L. Brooks and Martin Scorsese, who asked to Bass to return to main title design. Saul Bass’s first major break was a poster for the 1954 film, Carmen Jones. Bass changed the sophistication of movie posters with his unique minimal style and he rev-olutionized the role of title credits in films. Traditionally, credits were static and dull. They were considered unim-portant. Bass gave them a life by making them a part of the cinematic experience. Titles became interesting to

watch and Bass made an important note: “projectionist-pull curtain before titles.”Bass’s work process demanded designers seeking to create dynamic logos, but it can also bring designers and business managers corporate for better understand the philosophy, process, and function of company logo design. Some logos that Saul Bass created have last about 34 years. Some have yet to be replaced, like de-signs for Kose Cosmetics, Kibun, Warner Communica-tions, Girl Scouts and Geffen Records. Since the designs are solid, thoughtful and timeless, they do not have to be replaced.

By. HyungIhn Myung

an “accidental art director” becomes a design superstar

Media legends have legendary beginnings. Ruth Ansel made a dramatic debut as a

designer in 1962, when Harper’s Bazaar art director Marvin Israel fell in love with a

photo for a cover that looked suspiciously like the great Diana Vreeland. The editor-in-

chief loathed it. To make matters worse she thought it was a man in drag. She wanted to

kill it immediately, Israel went ballistic, the editor fired him — and, unexpectedly, Bea

Feitler and Ruth Ansel became co-art directors of Harper’s Bazaar. Ever since Ansel

became one of the youngest art directors in the history of magazines, she has pushed the

boundaries of magazine design.

In a career spanning nearly five decades, she has been responsible for era-defining magazine

pages and covers for Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair.

Along the way, she has collaborated with Richard Avedon (who pronounced her

“genius”), Diane Arbus, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Lee Friedlander, Hiro, Andy

Warhol, Peter Beard, Bruce Weber and Annie Leibovitz.

DESIGNEROF THETIMES

in a career spanning nearly five decades, she has been

responsible for era-defining magazine pages and covers

ruth ansel

an “accidental art director” becomes a design superstar

Media legends have legendary beginnings. Ruth Ansel made a dramatic debut as a

designer in 1962, when Harper’s Bazaar art director Marvin Israel fell in love with a

photo for a cover that looked suspiciously like the great Diana Vreeland. The editor-in-

chief loathed it. To make matters worse she thought it was a man in drag. She wanted to

kill it immediately, Israel went ballistic, the editor fired him — and, unexpectedly, Bea

Feitler and Ruth Ansel became co-art directors of Harper’s Bazaar. Ever since Ansel

became one of the youngest art directors in the history of magazines, she has pushed the

boundaries of magazine design.

In a career spanning nearly five decades, she has been responsible for era-defining magazine

pages and covers for Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair.

Along the way, she has collaborated with Richard Avedon (who pronounced her

“genius”), Diane Arbus, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Lee Friedlander, Hiro, Andy

Warhol, Peter Beard, Bruce Weber and Annie Leibovitz.

DESIGNEROF THETIMES

in a career spanning nearly five decades, she has been

responsible for era-defining magazine pages and covers

ruth ansel

P AU LAS CH

ERFor more than three decades Paula Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design. Iconic, smart and unabashedly populist, her images have entered into the American vernacular.

Scher has been a principal in the New York office of the distinguished interna-tional design consultancy Pentagram since 1991. She began her career as an art director in the 1970s and early ‘80s, when her eclectic approach to typog-raphy became highly influential. In the mid-1990s her landmark identity for The Public Theater fused high and low into a wholly new symbology for cultural institutions, and her recent architectural collaborations have re-imagined the urban landscape as a dynamic environment of dimensional graphic design. Her graphic identities for Citibank and Tiffany & Co. have become case studies for the contemporary regeneration of classic American brands.

“THE BEST WAY TO ACCOMPLISH SE-RIOUS DESIGN... IS TO BE TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED FOR THE JOB.”

-Paula Scher

“WORDS HAVE MEAN-ING, TYPE HAS SPIRIT”

-Paula Scher

“GREAT DESIGN IS SERIOUS, NOT SOLEMN.”

-Paula Scher

Scher has developed identities, packaging for a broad range of clients that includes, among others, The New York Times Mag-azine, Perry Ellis, Bloomberg, Target, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the New 42nd Street, the New York Botanical Garden, and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. In 1996 Scher’s widely imitated identity for the Public Theater won the coveted Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy. She serves on the board of The Public Theater, and is a frequent design contributor to The New York Times, GQ and other publica-tions.

In 1998 Scher was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and in 2000 she received the prestigious Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. She has served on the national board of AIGA and was president of its New York chapter from 1998 to 2000. In 2001 she re-ceived the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in recognition of her distinguished achievements and contributions to the field. She is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich; the Denver Art Museum; and the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Scher holds a BFA from the Tyler School of Art and a Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. She has lectured and exhibited all over the world, and her teaching

career includes over two decades at the School of Visu-al Arts, along with positions at the Cooper Union, Yale University and the Tyler School of Art. She has authored numerous articles on design-related subjects for the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, PRINT, Graphis and other publications, and in 2002 Princeton Architectural Press published her career monograph Make It Bigger (2002) and MAPS (2011).

Article Source: Pentagram.com

P AU LAS CH

ERFor more than three decades Paula Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design. Iconic, smart and unabashedly populist, her images have entered into the American vernacular.

Scher has been a principal in the New York office of the distinguished interna-tional design consultancy Pentagram since 1991. She began her career as an art director in the 1970s and early ‘80s, when her eclectic approach to typog-raphy became highly influential. In the mid-1990s her landmark identity for The Public Theater fused high and low into a wholly new symbology for cultural institutions, and her recent architectural collaborations have re-imagined the urban landscape as a dynamic environment of dimensional graphic design. Her graphic identities for Citibank and Tiffany & Co. have become case studies for the contemporary regeneration of classic American brands.

“THE BEST WAY TO ACCOMPLISH SE-RIOUS DESIGN... IS TO BE TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED FOR THE JOB.”

-Paula Scher

“WORDS HAVE MEAN-ING, TYPE HAS SPIRIT”

-Paula Scher

“GREAT DESIGN IS SERIOUS, NOT SOLEMN.”

-Paula Scher

Scher has developed identities, packaging for a broad range of clients that includes, among others, The New York Times Mag-azine, Perry Ellis, Bloomberg, Target, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the New 42nd Street, the New York Botanical Garden, and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. In 1996 Scher’s widely imitated identity for the Public Theater won the coveted Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy. She serves on the board of The Public Theater, and is a frequent design contributor to The New York Times, GQ and other publica-tions.

In 1998 Scher was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and in 2000 she received the prestigious Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. She has served on the national board of AIGA and was president of its New York chapter from 1998 to 2000. In 2001 she re-ceived the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in recognition of her distinguished achievements and contributions to the field. She is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich; the Denver Art Museum; and the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Scher holds a BFA from the Tyler School of Art and a Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. She has lectured and exhibited all over the world, and her teaching

career includes over two decades at the School of Visu-al Arts, along with positions at the Cooper Union, Yale University and the Tyler School of Art. She has authored numerous articles on design-related subjects for the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, PRINT, Graphis and other publications, and in 2002 Princeton Architectural Press published her career monograph Make It Bigger (2002) and MAPS (2011).

Article Source: Pentagram.com

“We’re trying to extract the visual character from the written word.”eville ro dy

Neville Brody studied at Hornsey College of Art and London College of Printing, first establishing his name in record cover design. He worked with Rocking Russian, Stiff Records, Fetish Records and Cabaret Voltaire, defining the visual language of independent punk music and culture. Brody expanded into the world of magazines as art director of The Face and subsequently Arena. Since its founding in 1994, Re-search Studios has expanded internationally, working in Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Barcelona and New York. The studio’s branding, packaging, redesign and visual identity work has focused on a variety of clients, from Sony PlayStation to Bentley, and Kenzo to Nike.Brody was a founding partner of digital type library FontShop, for which he has designed many typefaces including Industria and Blur – the latter of which was recently admitted to the Museum of Modern Art’s architecture and design collection. He has also developed experimen-tal languages for FUSE, a communication and typography publication that inspired a conference and quarterly forum, as well as an exhibition at Ginza Graphic Gallery in Japan and FUSE 1-20 (edited by Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft, 2012).Neville Brody was received numerous awards and honours, including the D&AD President’s Award (2011) and a Prince Philip Designers Prize (2010). Brody became dean of the School of Communication and head of the Visual Communication programme at the Royal College of Art in January 2011.

John Fass

Horseferry Typeface

N B

Cover of “The Face”

“We’re trying to extract the visual character from the written word.”eville ro dy

Neville Brody studied at Hornsey College of Art and London College of Printing, first establishing his name in record cover design. He worked with Rocking Russian, Stiff Records, Fetish Records and Cabaret Voltaire, defining the visual language of independent punk music and culture. Brody expanded into the world of magazines as art director of The Face and subsequently Arena. Since its founding in 1994, Re-search Studios has expanded internationally, working in Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Barcelona and New York. The studio’s branding, packaging, redesign and visual identity work has focused on a variety of clients, from Sony PlayStation to Bentley, and Kenzo to Nike.Brody was a founding partner of digital type library FontShop, for which he has designed many typefaces including Industria and Blur – the latter of which was recently admitted to the Museum of Modern Art’s architecture and design collection. He has also developed experimen-tal languages for FUSE, a communication and typography publication that inspired a conference and quarterly forum, as well as an exhibition at Ginza Graphic Gallery in Japan and FUSE 1-20 (edited by Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft, 2012).Neville Brody was received numerous awards and honours, including the D&AD President’s Award (2011) and a Prince Philip Designers Prize (2010). Brody became dean of the School of Communication and head of the Visual Communication programme at the Royal College of Art in January 2011.

John Fass

Horseferry Typeface

N B

Cover of “The Face”

W D

FRED was born in 1953, in Noxapater, Mis-sissippi, an agricultural community consist-ing of approximately 500 people. He didn’t have many connections to a diverse artistic community, and his interest in art was seen as merely a passing phase in his life. His par-ents remark, “My parents still think I must have been a doorstep baby.” He attended Mississippi State University, where he found his interest in graphic design. While still in university, he worked as a unpaid part-timer at an art studio and earned recognition. Af-ter university, he worked for about 10 years for various local magazines and outlets in Memphis and Dallas. In 1982 Woodward worked for the Sunday Magazine for the Dallas Times-Herald. During this period of time, Woodward gained experience and developed his own skills as an artist. In 1987, Woodward started working for Roll-ing Stone Magazine, where he would spend 14 years of his career. It is said that he oversaw almost 400 issues during that time, and it is the magazine his most associated with to this day. His contributions to Rolling Stone Magazine are ground breaking. The rules of graphic design were thrown out the window. Woodward had an eclectic and il-lustrative, his font style expressed a deeper meaning beyond the written text. His use of word placement, making the reader follows the words on the page in a specific direction. Woodward would often use text and photography in his spreads. One of his most remembered examples of work would be the spread he did with Arnold Schwar-zenegger, he used a black and white photo of Arnold sitting in the middle of an inner tube, where he then used text over the image, this would become the “O” in “Big Shot.” The letters were spaced evenly at the beginning gradually squeezing together, and then broadening out again. The cover was clever combination of photography and type to provide insight on the overall mes-sage of the magazine. The amalgamation of photography and text brought attention to the idea that photography was an artistic medium. For many years photography was not considered an art form such as painting and drawing. However, Woodward’s expres-sive use of photo and text gave photogra-phy the recognition it deserved as medium of art.

W D WARD

“I can never consider an object without some impulse to keep it. These are pictures of Avon Presidential Bust Cologne bottles I bought on Ebay. I removed their heads and now they’re shirts and jackets and ties; they’re printed the same size as my own torso. Five grids show the presidents arranged by most popular type at the time of my research. There are only two Theodore Roosevelts but 19 George Washingtons. This presidential index is combined with two images of makeup palettes by the company “Ultra Cosmetics” and two images of rugs.

In sum: products aimed at minor improvements of the self and the home, remains of high modernist idealism.

An old idea: you don’t notice something until it is broken, until it forces you to see it. One car slides into another’s spot, something is replaced. Everything works until it doesn’t. An inventory of the things I would have seen if I didn’t always look away. I hear things described as “shy” unless broken, fading into backgrounds, shelves, boxes, basements.

For example: the actual smell of the product. Spilled in my car on my studio floor on my clothes and in my hair. An odor of purchased good living. The smell of kitsch, and what needs to be covered up by cologne. That is to say – the smell of a real body.

I keep going back to these things for something solid. An object sized to hold in a hand. An image far from its sourcebut still ringing. A president who can truly infil-trate the living rooms of the nation. A population wear-ing out.

A presidential bust the same size as a woman’s shoul-ders. That’s about seventeen inches wide. I don’t care about the past presidents. I’m not even American. What do they have to do with me? I care because I have to. My body comes up against theirs. And I can’t make anything without thinking of them. “ - Sara Cwynar, 2015

b.Sara Cwynara.

Sara Cwynar, a Vancouver native who lives and works in Brooklyn, works with litera-ture, kitsch, and photographic tropes, which she cites as in-spirations. The process behind this work involves reprinting and scanning found images and reworking them in the studio, mixing them with new objects and materials—taking them out of the shared-image world and into a space for personal, often very obses-sive intervention. In her work, what might appear to be three-dimensional is flat, what might seem “beautiful” or “sophisti-cated” is made up of junk, and what might look old is new. The intention is to confuse the reading of the picture. ‘Emerging Photographer:Sara Cwynar’ 2013

- Siobhan Bohnacker

“I can never consider an object without some impulse to keep it. These are pictures of Avon Presidential Bust Cologne bottles I bought on Ebay. I removed their heads and now they’re shirts and jackets and ties; they’re printed the same size as my own torso. Five grids show the presidents arranged by most popular type at the time of my research. There are only two Theodore Roosevelts but 19 George Washingtons. This presidential index is combined with two images of makeup palettes by the company “Ultra Cosmetics” and two images of rugs.

In sum: products aimed at minor improvements of the self and the home, remains of high modernist idealism.

An old idea: you don’t notice something until it is broken, until it forces you to see it. One car slides into another’s spot, something is replaced. Everything works until it doesn’t. An inventory of the things I would have seen if I didn’t always look away. I hear things described as “shy” unless broken, fading into backgrounds, shelves, boxes, basements.

For example: the actual smell of the product. Spilled in my car on my studio floor on my clothes and in my hair. An odor of purchased good living. The smell of kitsch, and what needs to be covered up by cologne. That is to say – the smell of a real body.

I keep going back to these things for something solid. An object sized to hold in a hand. An image far from its sourcebut still ringing. A president who can truly infil-trate the living rooms of the nation. A population wear-ing out.

A presidential bust the same size as a woman’s shoul-ders. That’s about seventeen inches wide. I don’t care about the past presidents. I’m not even American. What do they have to do with me? I care because I have to. My body comes up against theirs. And I can’t make anything without thinking of them. “ - Sara Cwynar, 2015

b.Sara Cwynara.

Sara Cwynar, a Vancouver native who lives and works in Brooklyn, works with litera-ture, kitsch, and photographic tropes, which she cites as in-spirations. The process behind this work involves reprinting and scanning found images and reworking them in the studio, mixing them with new objects and materials—taking them out of the shared-image world and into a space for personal, often very obses-sive intervention. In her work, what might appear to be three-dimensional is flat, what might seem “beautiful” or “sophisti-cated” is made up of junk, and what might look old is new. The intention is to confuse the reading of the picture. ‘Emerging Photographer:Sara Cwynar’ 2013

- Siobhan Bohnacker

“Six years ago my wife and I had one of those classic brainstorming sessions … ‘What do you like to do?’ ‘What are your talents?’ Book design was never something we came up with.”

At the time, Mendelsund was a concert pianist and looking to make a bit more money in order to support his newborn daughter. He met Knopf’s associate art director and design guru, Chip Kidd, through a mutual friend, and the two clicked immediately. “Peter is that rarest of artists,” says Kidd, “a self-taught graphic designer whose skill and instincts seem to indicate that he had many years of formal training, chained to the feet of Paul Rand and Alvin Lustig. In fact, if he were their love child it would not surprise me.”

Kidd himself is the brightest star in the world of book design, perhaps the only member of his field to achieve cross-cultural recognition — he was recently featured on Time’s list of 100 most influential people, beside such giants as Barack Obama ’83 and Vladimir Putin. So his decision to take Mendelsund under his wing was no small act.

To start, Kidd placed Mendelsund at Vintage Books — an imprint that mostly reissues classic books in paperback — but Mendelsund soon graduated to Knopf. Now his hardcover designs crowd the display window at Barnes & Noble. In Mendelsund’s six years as a cover designer, he has designed for almost every imaginable genius, living and dead. The list of his subjects reads like a who’s who of 20th century writers and thinkers: Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin. “It was one of those weird kismet things where you find what you’re supposed to be doing. I never in a million years would have thought this was a job I would enjoy or be good at. The thing is, all I do is read. It’s incredibly fun.”

Unlike many cover designers, Mendelsund feels compelled to read the complete manuscripts for the covers he designs. “For me, it’s like, we’re not paid a lot, so what are the fringe benefits? I get to work on a Julian Barnes book or a Martin Amis book — I get to work with these people who are just gods.”

“Illustration in covers really interests me,” he says. “When I first came here, basically all the jackets that were done were photographs, which I have a fundamental philosophical issue with. Authors prefer illustrations. People don’t want to have their characters literally represented. It takes the place of narrative. ▪ by Adam Wilson

Covers, from left to right:

Amerika, Franz Kafka The Zone of

Interest, Martin Amis; Crime and

Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky;

Reflections, Walter Benjamin

From Covering Bach to Covering Books

“Six years ago my wife and I had one of those classic brainstorming sessions … ‘What do you like to do?’ ‘What are your talents?’ Book design was never something we came up with.”

At the time, Mendelsund was a concert pianist and looking to make a bit more money in order to support his newborn daughter. He met Knopf’s associate art director and design guru, Chip Kidd, through a mutual friend, and the two clicked immediately. “Peter is that rarest of artists,” says Kidd, “a self-taught graphic designer whose skill and instincts seem to indicate that he had many years of formal training, chained to the feet of Paul Rand and Alvin Lustig. In fact, if he were their love child it would not surprise me.”

Kidd himself is the brightest star in the world of book design, perhaps the only member of his field to achieve cross-cultural recognition — he was recently featured on Time’s list of 100 most influential people, beside such giants as Barack Obama ’83 and Vladimir Putin. So his decision to take Mendelsund under his wing was no small act.

To start, Kidd placed Mendelsund at Vintage Books — an imprint that mostly reissues classic books in paperback — but Mendelsund soon graduated to Knopf. Now his hardcover designs crowd the display window at Barnes & Noble. In Mendelsund’s six years as a cover designer, he has designed for almost every imaginable genius, living and dead. The list of his subjects reads like a who’s who of 20th century writers and thinkers: Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin. “It was one of those weird kismet things where you find what you’re supposed to be doing. I never in a million years would have thought this was a job I would enjoy or be good at. The thing is, all I do is read. It’s incredibly fun.”

Unlike many cover designers, Mendelsund feels compelled to read the complete manuscripts for the covers he designs. “For me, it’s like, we’re not paid a lot, so what are the fringe benefits? I get to work on a Julian Barnes book or a Martin Amis book — I get to work with these people who are just gods.”

“Illustration in covers really interests me,” he says. “When I first came here, basically all the jackets that were done were photographs, which I have a fundamental philosophical issue with. Authors prefer illustrations. People don’t want to have their characters literally represented. It takes the place of narrative. ▪ by Adam Wilson

Covers, from left to right:

Amerika, Franz Kafka The Zone of

Interest, Martin Amis; Crime and

Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky;

Reflections, Walter Benjamin

From Covering Bach to Covering Books

Think More, Design Less.

Do more, with less.

Some-times it’s just an accident.

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”

Oliver Munday is a designer who’s beautiful works are simple and straightforward. He cap-tivates viewers with his minimalistic designs that hold great meaning to what he is designing for. His use of bold colors and simple shapes are what lures in people’s eyes.

Using out-of-the-box imagery, unconventional methods of typography, shapes, and bold colors in a playful manner are what makes Munday’s graphic designs so alluring and attractive. He al-lows his instincts to take over when he is creat-ing a new design. and a lot of the time, accidents are blessings for him. He tries to bring in ele-ments of his subject in new and creative ways to stand out.

Munday lives by one major design rule: think more, design less. He explains in an interview, “If you spend a lot more time thinking about an idea, when you actually sit down to design, it’s complete. You have less work to do there.”

He currently resides in New York City, working at his own studio. He co-founded, “Piece,” a so-cially based design collaborative, with Bernard Canniffe and Mike Weikert that believes that de-signers play a significant role in positive change and social justice through their works. Munday was named one of PRINT magazine’s “20 un-der 30,” in the new visual artists review back in 2010.O

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