 And welcome. My name is Caitlin Cundell. I'm the Associate Curator-in-Head of Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt. To make this program accessible to all of our audiences, our speakers will provide visual descriptions of themselves today. I am a white woman with light brown hair, wearing rose-colored glasses, and I am sitting in front of bookcases full of books. Today is our final program related to Cooper Hewitt's current exhibition, Underground Modernist E. McKnight Calfor. Underground Modernist E. McKnight Calfor is the largest ever retrospective to examine the designer's impact and legacy across media. Organized chronologically in 10 sections, the exhibition traces Calfor's career from his beginnings as a painter to his transformation into an internationally renowned commercial artist. The exhibition is open until Sunday, April 10th, 2022. If you are in New York, we hope you will come see it before it closes. If you are interested in purchasing the related book, E. McKnight Calfor, The Artist in Advertising, please follow the link in the chat for a 20% discount. A few housekeeping items before we begin. This program will run for one and a half hours, starting with a short presentation from our speakers, followed by discussion. If you need to take a break at any time, please feel free. The program will be recorded and available on our YouTube channel, so you'll be able to catch up on anything you missed. We welcome you to take part in the discussion by engaging with fellow attendees in the chat. In the last 30 minutes of the program, we'll open it up for the audience questions. To ask a question, please use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Live closed captioning is available during this talk. To turn on subtitles, simply navigate to the bottom of your Zoom screen and select the icon that says CC. During this panel, we will talk about the book jacket designs of E. McKnight Calfor and explore their lasting influence. We will also learn the changing demands of designing book jackets and covers today. Calfor was a pioneer of commercial art, the profession known today as graphic design. He was particularly prolific as a designer of book covers, producing over 200 published designs for everything from royal biographies and classics to mysteries and manifestos. I'm absolutely thrilled to introduce our two esteemed speakers. We're so pleased to have with us designer, writer and educator Gail Anderson. Gail is the chair of BFA Design and BFA Advertising at the School of Visual Arts and Creative Director of Visual Arts Press. She was recognized in 2018 with Cooper Hewitt's National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement. Also joining us is Steven Heller. Steve is the author and editor of over 130 books on graphic design, satiric art and popular culture. He co-founded several graduate programs at the School of Visual Arts, including the MFA Design Program, Design as Author and Entrepreneur, of which he is also co-chair. Steve is also the recipient of Cooper Hewitt's 2011 National Design Award for Design Mind. I'll now turn it over to Steve and Gail. I think that that's like what, Steve? 230, not 130 probably? 200. But who's counting? I'm counting. That's a lot. It's a lot of space. I gotta go. Come on. That's crazy. Well, thank you, Caitlin, for inviting us to this. By way of introduction, I'm a white male without any hair, getting older every day. And this photograph on the left is me when I was younger and just considering the world of book jackets. Oh, and I'm Gail. And that's me with my dad and my sister on the right. I kind of look the same now as I did then, apparently. My dad's the handsome one in the middle. I've got a lot of curly blonde, gray hair at this point in glasses. You want to go for it, Steve? Let's go for it. All right. Okay, what I'd like to do to begin is talk about E. McNough Knight Calfers' hands. In his hands, a book jacket, which was for him a mini poster, was designed to be interpreted rather than accepted at face value. He continually struggled with the paradox of how to meet his own creative needs, his client's commercial interests, and his viewer's aesthetic preferences all in a limited period of time. He was an expatriate, lived in England until the war broke out, and was involved with a number of design movements, and was considered one of the UK's greatest poster artists. In a speech before London's Royal Society of Arts in 1938, which is quoted by Keith Murgatroyd in an issue of Print Magazine, Calfers explained his methodology and the resultant angst that he had. So I'm going to quote Calfers verbatim. When I leave my client's office, I am no longer considering what form my design or my scheme will take, but the urgent fact that I only have so much time in which to produce the finished article. I find this irritating, and I'm often overcome by feelings of hopelessness and about the whole business. On my way home, I think, will my client understand what I propose to do? Will he understand? I may not give him an obvious logical answer to his problem. Does he suppose I have magical powers or does he believe that I can solve his sales problem as simply as one might add two and two together and make four? I have now reached my studio. I pick up a book. I lay it down. I look out the window. I stare at a blank wall. I move about. I go to my desk and gaze at a blank piece of paper. I write on it the names of the product. I then paint it in some kind of lettering. I make it larger. I make it smaller. I slant it. I make it heavy. I make it light. I make drawings of the object and outline shadow and color, large and small, within the dimensions I have. Within the dimensions I have now set myself. So I thought this cover that he did for one of his close friends, S.J. Perlman, in 1946, when he was back in New York, epitomized his work as a designer. Many of his jackets kind of suggest as any artist would, a personal agenda as well as the agenda of the client. Let's go to the next. This is one of Kaufer's early jackets from 1917. It was for a book of poetry by D. H. Lawrence. It is clearly abstract. It is clearly something that you would not see on the bookshelves today. It was definitely not made to sell, although it does attract the eye. Certainly today it attracts the eye. The word look demands that you look at it. But dust covers in those days were still somewhat of a novelty. Before the first jacket was produced in the early part of the century, it was mostly craft paper with a little hole cut into the center of the book to reveal the title of the author's name and protect it from dirt and brine. This one was for Chateau and Windus. He continued to experiment through his early years when he was mostly doing posters and remaining true to himself rather than conforming to sell books. Next. Victor Golantz was another of his commissioning publishers. Golantz is well known for his experimental approach to book jacket design. He picked those designers, some known and most unknown, who worked in ways that were representing an avant-garde feeling. In this case, there's a little Russian constructivism, a little cubism, creating this notion of babble. Next. Murder by Rufus King. Murder latitude or murder by latitude by Rufus King is one of many books that Calford did for Rufus King. He was tied at the hip book designer. It was the double day crime club that he worked for and he created a series of jackets and covers that echoed some of the poster work he was doing in his most avant-garde period in England. You have any of these in your vast collection? I think I do. I don't know where my vast collection has disappeared to, but I think it's in one of the vast boxes. They're beautiful to behold. The murder mystery is tended to try to fit as much as possible on the cover, whether that was a directive by the publisher or not is not clear. Next one. The Island of Captain Sparrow was a Victor Golan's book. Typically Victor Golan's would use abstract design, expressionist design. He was following the art trends of the period, certainly of the post-war period, as this was done in 1928. These jackets are incredibly scarce these days, but they reveal a lot about how the artist McMan Kaffer worked. As Caitlin said, his name often appeared on jackets and certainly the posters. This was something that a number of designers who felt that they were also artists in the commercial art trenches insisted on doing, announcing who the jacket was for rather than be anonymous. Paul Rand is the most visible example in today's world, but more and more designers started doing the signature. Today, there's less and less designers putting their signatures on the book covers. Some because their styles are so recognizable, others because they're content to have a credit line on the flaps. Next. This is one of my favorites. I know very little about it other than it seems to have been either woodcut or pen and ink. It follows the art deco, sensibility and aesthetic. The of is just wonderful. It's such an inconsequential word made consequential. The meditations of a profane man. Lots of high work, you know. Next. Here you go. It was interesting that Harlem Renaissance was happening when Kaffer was working in England. There were a number of African American artists who were working at that time. But it was Kaffer who was the most prodigious of the illustrators and book designers to work on Black writer's work. This was done for Knauf. And Mrs. Knauf was really Kaffer's champion in getting in to do these books. Here it is reduced to symbology. It's a black hand, brown hand, in fact. Langston Hughes apparently was not pleased with the designs. He felt that the artists who work should work on this was E. Sims Campbell who was an African American cartoonist doing work for Esquire at the time. He also, Kaffer, that is, did these drawings, 12 illustrations for Hughes's poems. Hughes wrote to Carl VanVetchen who was really the impresario of the Harlem Renaissance. That it be removed from his books that were marketed to African Americans. He disapproved of some of the emphasis in the drawings. And he felt that Kaffer couldn't really do African American hair that was a flaw in his work. That is a delicate topic for us. So, yeah, we have to make sure the hair is right. So. Next. This is one of my favorite jackets. This Gail I have many copies of. Do you really, my dear Steve? Yes, my dear Gail. You may receive one as a gift someday. I've got witnesses. Yes, you do. It is obviously a reaction to the fascism that was raging in Europe on the continent, Germany and Italy and elsewhere, Middle Europe, Eastern Europe, but also in London itself with Mr. Mosley, who was the leader of the Union, the fascist group in London at that time. So Quack uses some of the vocabulary of constructivism in the Bauhaus, but creates a uniquely Kaffer composition. Next. I love this one. And this is one of my favorite covers. Kaffer made a lot of use of clip art, of classic sculpture, which was perfection in his eyes. He created something that was called the invisible or dynamic box. He also called it the space frame in which all these kinds of surreal happenings could take place. He didn't have to conform to a grid. He didn't have to conform to traditional or conventional ways of design. He could use the typefaces he so choose, and he could make stories. He could tell stories through the use of symbol. And art now is one of those great examples of what he was doing in posters at the time for the Great English Railway and for other institutions in England and London. There is a poster using this effect that is just gorgeous. So pick up the book and see. Do you have this one, Steve? You can go to the next. Excuse me. Do you have that book? I have that book and I have the poster. Wow. Native Son. This is a very important book by Richard Wright, who also wrote Visible Man. And Richard Wright's novel follows a young African-American man caught in a deadly downward spiral in the 1930s, Chicago, rather than interpreting a scene from the book for the cover, which was pretty much standard practice. Illustrators illustrated, which meant they copied and in style they interpreted, but essentially the content was mimicked from what was read. This was actually an original illustration from another book that was never used. It was from Carl Van Vetschens' 1926 novel. And Kaufer rendered a faceless figure that was slumped over a chair, placing a brick, which was the murder weapon at the character's knees. Next. An Invisible Man. An amazing book, a horrifying book in some respects. Also a Random House book. He follows his character, an experience of a college-educated African man, struggling in a segregated society that constantly denies his humanity. Ellison spoke highly of Kaufer's jacket design. It evoked the narrative emotions and tensions of feeling unseen, of feeling invisible in this culture in our society. And it does an excellent job of that. These book jackets are not meant to be read in 20 seconds, but rather savored and interpreted by the viewer. Next. Ulysses, we all know about Ulysses. It was James Joyce's epic novel. It was banned in the United States. And it went to court, to the Supreme Court, to lift the ban. And once it was, it was published by Random House. And this cover was done by Ernst Reichel, who was a German immigrant who did a lot of book covers and other illicit designs at the time. It is a magnificent piece of period design. But when it came to the classic version of Ulysses, Kaufer was tapped to do it. He retained the huge lettering in the U and the L, and changed the color. This is not an illustrated but a typographic cover. But at the same time, it has the power of an illustration without giving away any of the book's content. And it is a very economical cover. Kaufer understood that he couldn't really present the story. So he made something that was a mnemonic through type. Next. And this one is Karen Goldberg's design for vintage books, a redesign of Ulysses, but using some of the similar attributes. Paul Rand used to say if you're going to design a logo or redesign a logo, you have to retain some of what's familiar so that the audience does not get confused. And confusion over a logo is extremely damaging. And that could be said about a book jacket. The McMan Kaufer jacket became a virtual logo. So when Karen Goldberg redesigned it, she maintained some of the elements, including the colors, although distributed in a different way. Next. Love this one. This one is just a beautiful cover. It suggests a part of Kaufer's life where he felt dispossessed. He left the Midwest, Montana. He came to Chicago. He went to New York, but then settled in London, where he met and lived with the textile designer, Marion Dorn. He did not want to leave England, but war broke out. And as a foreign alien, he was asked to leave, even though he would have worked for and fought with the British. When he came back, he started getting a lot of book jackets. Eventually, he got posters to do for American Airlines and some political groups and other clients working at many advertising agencies. But he never felt totally comfortable back in the United States, particularly in New York. So Pantheon was publishing the Bollinger series, which Paul Rand later took on. And this is a brilliant, simple, expressive cover for that. Next. Some of you may know McKinley Cantor's work. When I was a kid, he was the one who wrote the Collier's Magazine. What if there was a World War III, which sadly is coming back in our consciousness? And what if the South won the war, the Civil War? He was a speculative novelist, as well as a Western novelist. And this is where E. MacNight Calfor used his painting technique, a technique that he used in England for the Great Western Railroad. But he also came perilously close to becoming a cliche producer. Wicked Water is on a sign, which is one of the most frequently used tropes in book jacket design, if not magazine and other design media. Nonetheless, it still has an eye-catching flair because Calfor was a great artist. It could make even cliches seem terrific. Next. I mean, you've got the horsey, you've got the saloon, you've got the cowboy hat, you've got everything here. I love this. The widening stain sounds like a Philip Roth novel. I don't know much about the book itself, but it is typical of Calfor's surrealism. The eye plays an important role in his language of surrealism, the open book, and in this case, a gate for a banker or a gate for a train, but whatever it is, it is holding back the eye of perception. Next. Intruder in the Dust is a William Faulkner novel. It's about a black man who is accused wrongly of killing a white man. And while we don't see a lot of Calfor's early sketch work, these were sketches that he did in which a black man is in the book as a key player. In one, he's picking up coins, and in the other, he's just sitting. Neither of these books were accepted by Random House, partly because books with black images on them were not selling well in the South. This was a problem that existed well up until the 70s, where marketers were reluctant to show black people on book covers. Next. So this is the final cover, using a brush, stroke, lettering, and resorting to his painting technique, which was gouache, but also a little bit of airbrush, if not a lot of airbrush. And we are told that in the tree, there are the heads of African Americans who were in the graveyard who had suffered at the hands of white supremacy and Jim Crow. Next is. You see it, Steve? Say that again. Do you see heads when you work? I actually see the heads. I know that, but I had to be told. And once I was told, I saw heads, particularly on the left side of the tree. Otherwise, it also suggests cotton. And it suggests something that's old and dying. And the clouds behind it or the dusk suggests a ghost, an intruder in the dust. So you could read a lot into the image. And I have no idea whether my reading is accurate or not. Next. He did magazine covers. He was a renaissance designer, graphic designers of those times. Calford's Times did almost everything. He did textiles. He did rugs, as well as his printed work. And this is that optical space, the so-called space frame. He was an early adopter of photo montage, which Maholi Naj called a mechanical art for a mechanical time. And it finds its way into his book jackets as well. Next. And he did a lot of work for the Museum of Modern Art. The Museum of Modern Art had his first poster exhibition in 1939, which was the second poster exhibition that MoMA had. The first was for Cassandra. I would note that when McNeil Kauffer passed away, he was given an obit in the New York Times. It was a short obit, but it was an obit, nevertheless, with a photograph by Arnold Newman. When Cassandra passed away, he was not recognized by the New York Times obituary section. So these are catalogs that he did for MoMA. He liked using slab serif type. Otherwise, much of his work is drawn type. He didn't draw the serif type photography. It was too difficult, but he did draw these imperfect sans serif gothic letter forms. Caitlin mentioned he was an imperfect perfectionist. He talked about perfection, but when it came to his lettering, there were always flaws. And now I'm going to turn you over to Gail Anderson, my friend and colleague, to talk more about books and book jackets. Gail. Thank you, Steve. So this was the first cover piece I was familiar with. And I kind of ripped it off a little bit doing a project about a decade ago for the Type Directors Club. But seeing this compilation for non-such press got me curious about the person who created it. And so there wasn't the amazing book that there is now, but there was the internet. So I got to poke around and learn about him. And I was curious because his work was not easy to pinpoint. And I like that, that he had such range. I'll tell you about what I know from the book world, and that's working with Steve and the many, many books that we've done over the years, spanning from about 30 years back, graphic wit through the 2000 or so, and then moving into modern times. We've done like 15 books or something like that over the years, including this little series for Lawrence King in London. And most recently, this book that's out in the world now, Type Speaks, was just this sort of fun look at Type and Type that has some emotion to it. And it's playful. It's this little cube of a book that was such fun to work on. And it has Type everywhere, including on people like Dan Randigan, who was literally wearing type sleeves. That I don't have a tattoo, but if I did get a tattoo, it would be one of something like Dan's, because these are just so much fun. But anyway, working on books over the years was so hard at the beginning, pre-computer, and then pre-internet. And the process has certainly changed. Steve and I do stuff for SVA where we both teach and participated in putting together the Glazer Gazette, two issues out in the world now and one to come this summer. And so it's been really fun to have a life in publishing in many ways and to spend so much of that life in publishing, doing projects with Steve, including, you know, a big oversized catalog for a show at SVA and pulling Steve now into 75th anniversary projects for the college. And so, yeah, so my world has been in some form publishing since chewing on the edge of the Magic Castle, a book that my godmother gave me when I was a kid and wondering who got to do this for a living. Who did the drawings? Who made the book? How come this one was cut out? And just everything about books intrigued me then as a kid, one of my first books that I got to sort of stick in my bag and carry around and feel like a grown-up reading. It's like this cat that is still a favorite even in my dotage now. And also looking at publishing, looking at magazines that were so influential to me as a kid and looking at loud color and all the silliness and having a life in books, in magazines, in reading, in writing, and in popular culture. Getting to do things now through a career of 35 years, I guess, that have been itty-bitty things like a postage stamp, but have sort of the biggest thing I've ever done. And I guess in some way, and I don't compare myself to Goffer at all, but being a person who's spanned a whole bunch of different bits of design and has gotten to do things that feel like posters sometimes, but are often itty-bitty. This was cool because the postage stamp for the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation got to live on as a series of posters and that are much louder than the stamp. And getting to do lots of books over the years and book covers and things for fun and things that are race-related now more than ever. And again, trying to do work that, I suppose, I hope in some ways, feels like posters. And wondering now, oh, and something silly. Again, ripping somebody else off now in the laser, but I asked in this case. So the one thing that every designer does at some point is playing off this poster. In my case with the book cover with my friend Joe Newton. And how many sketches did you do back then? Because now we do lots of sketches. And in this case, this is just a few sketches for the end result on the left for the echo tree with my friend Brian Smith. But typically, we do lots and lots and lots of work. And to get to the end result of the final cover or jacket. And now what I do doesn't even live in print sometimes. Now it lives the dashboard of my car. I see it as an audiobook or I see it a little bitty on Amazon and something that Joe Newton and I have worked on over the years, a series of audiobooks and other projects for Audible. So what we do now as book designers lives postage stamp size as well as in the store, but often lives in this little bitty postage stamp size space on Amazon and other sites. That what you're doing most people will see at its absolute smallest. And what would designers of past times think of that. In the case I've gotten to do things on the left, a book cover on the right, the poster, notice the difference, the boobs are smaller on the poster than they were on the book cover, which I saw, I stopped at Barnes and Noble on the way home to find the book when it came out and saw, wow, she's got kind of big, big scoops there and was asked to take it down a couple of scoops for the poster when I was at Spocko. So, you know, getting to work in posters is the sort of dream for any designer and stuff for the School of Visual Arts, these with Terry Allen and many, many, many theater posters over the years with a team that I worked with at Spocko. I've had and even most recently worked with Disney theatricals with friends for the Lion King go figure. But again, what I just want to throw out there is, you know, what we go through as designers now to get to the end result, to get to that place of what's the final going to be, how many sketches are involved. In this case, probably for my favorite client ever, when I was at Spott, a man named Bob Greenblatt for nine to five, the musical, and you see every, every illustrator under the sun worked with us on these, including Seymour, Steve, as you'll see there. But, you know, how does that work? It's tough, you know, you're doing lots and lots and lots of everything now to get to the finish line. And what would that have been like for someone like Koffer would he have just like, oh, hell no. And I'm done here. You know, the problem that you sit with at the beginning of every project is now something, okay, how am I going to find 10 different directions for this? It's a different world. I will stop the share here. We should be back. So if any designers out there, if that didn't scare you a little bit to see all those sketches, but sometimes it takes a million to get to, to get to the one that's the right one. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn mid career. But I did. And sometimes it is the seventh or eighth. And I'm curious to see, and we don't know how others worked. But what would have been like for them doing doing the million versions that are sometimes requested now? Yikes. Well, we won't end on a scary note for designers. No, no. Yeah, I don't want that to be because that was actually, I think, and I've told us before, because I was so fond of the client for nine to five. He was just so nice and so sweet and was always would sit and chat. I'd be like, okay, pull two more. And just like, okay, here's some more and some more. So when the client is good to you, sometimes that that makes a difference too. So I remember at the start of the presentation, Steve read that quote from Calfer, and it seemed to me that he struggled with his clients also, and that they were a constant source of anxiety. So I think things haven't changed that much in all these years of design. We think time brings enlightenment, but the dark is always there. And because we've got computers, people think it's just you just hit a button and you can do another one. So there's that. Well, I know that Calfer during his lifetime would often return to designs that he made for one client or one project and repurpose them. And sometimes those were unpublished things maybe that have been rejected by a client. Or sometimes it seemed like he figured out a really great idea and he wanted to be able to keep returning to it. Gail, you talked a little bit about how stressful that is, but is it part of the iterative process? And do you have you found opportunities to return to things? Yes. Yes, when I started at Spot, some of the designers had notebooks that they would just, you know, print out all their millions of sketches and paste them in there. And sometimes when they start a new project, they just sort of sit and flip and sort of take a walk down memory lane and see if there's something to resurrect. And I thought, what are you doing? And then after a while, I was like, let me start one of those books too. So yeah, and when I work with Joe, which I do frequently, my friend Joe Newton, there are times like remember that thing that didn't work for this? Let's pull it out for that. So yeah. A good idea is a crime to waste. There you go. Yep. I want to invite all of our members of our audience. Thank you for all the wonderful things that you've put in the chat. Please feel free to start putting questions in the Q&A box. We're going to be chatting for a few more minutes and then I'll try to get to your questions. Stephen Gail, Kaufer was a voracious reader. We know that from reading his correspondence. His one of his first jobs as a young man was for the Paul Elder bookshop. And it seems like that's where he really developed a love of literature. And then he sought out friendships when he arrived in London with lots of contemporary writers and authors. And they were often his closest friends throughout the rest of his life. So we know that he really loved reading. But I'm curious a little bit about what the process is when someone gets the job to design a book jacket, both possibly for Kaufer and of course into the present day for designers. Do they get to read the book that they're assigned? How does that process work? I don't know what it was like with Kaufer, but book designers are often given a summary. And the summary is often given to the art director. So you never really know the full texture or flavor of the book because Kaufer was friends with Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot and other authors. He doubtless read as much as he possibly could because he'd also go in and those images that he made while they may not have exactly echoed what the content was, they should certainly spiritually echoed it. So he knew what was going on. Sometimes when you're designing fiction, you get to read fiction. But often nonfiction, there's a summary or a sample chapter. But yeah, you're going by what someone else has put together a lot of the time to figure out a direction. And what do you think the choices go into about whether or not you're making a cover that's focused on a typographic approach or uses symbolism or imagery along with type? I think it comes down often to what the marketing department sees as possible. As I said, African-Americans weren't used on covers 20, 30 years ago because it would limit the market, would put it into a niche. So less benign imagery, more typography. Also, in part, it's the decision of the art director in conjunction with the designer. If the designer sees what the interpretation is, is typographic with a good art director, they can mix and work. And sometimes you get a direct request like this should be an all-type cover. So sometimes it's budget. Sometimes it's knowing that the person you've assigned it to is good at expressive type. I know for the postage stamp way back, the one thing that they said was don't do all that. It was like, really? So it's like, what am I going to do? And so the first thing I did was all type. So in the nature was all type. So it all worked in the end. So once you showed them what they said they didn't want, they realized it was exactly what they wanted. Luckily what we wanted. Perfect. And everything else I tried that was sort of illustrative was like, yeah, not so much. So yeah. So I had mentioned Stephen Gillett in an email about Calfer's approach to typography, that he was sort of lovingly imperfect, I thought, in his approach. And I wondered if you could both talk a little bit about why you think Calfer approached typography and the way he did a little bit about what it was like to actually try to use a formal typeface at that time and how that's evolved to this day. Well, it was hot metal back then. And it took time to spec. It took money to pay for. It was cheaper to do your own type. I mean, I don't have any evidence of Calfer's rationale. But I do remember Paul Rand telling me he used hand lettering because he didn't want to pay for, you know, he was paid such a small amount for the design itself. Why blow some of it on the type? And hand lettering could work just as well. Same with Alex Steinweis, who did Calfer-like work for record covers. He was the first record cover designer. And a lot of his type was very similar to what Calfer was doing, slabs, tariffs, Italianate types. And then there were gothics, news gothics, railroad gothics. And those were pretty easy to draw. But even then, you know, I could see Calfer, who got himself involved with drink, sitting down to draw the perfect typeface and just saying, I forget about it. And, you know, leaving it the way it is with its little imperfections. It's so much more soulful that way. I mean, Steve, even back at the time, if I think of at the globe or even at Rolling Stone, you know, setting type was a pain, you know. And especially when you were setting, specking it and then waiting for it to come and then working with it. So you young folk think of it as just tap, tap, tap, and I can try different typefaces. Trying to get 10 different typefaces cost money and time. So, you know, you did start to what if and draw yourself. So, Steve, you pointed out that Calfer would often put his name or his monogram on the covers that he designed. And that was a practice that some designers employed. I noticed that Calfer didn't include that on some of his later covers for publishers like Modern Library. And you said something that I love that some people were content to have the credit line inside the book jacket. Do you think that's always true? That's how that decision got made for Calfer and for people today? Or is that more of a publisher decision than a designer decision now? Well, part of it's a publisher decision. I don't really know whether today's designers think of they need it. I mean, when Paul Rand did it, he was advertising himself. So his advertisement, instead of going into a design magazine, was on the front of that cover. Sometimes it was very prevalent, you know, up in the right hand corner where the eye always goes first. And sometimes it was hidden a little bit. But Calfer had the confidence and the perspective publishers to keep that name in there. And whether or not people bought books because of a particular designer's cover is another story I do. I let a cover guide me. I don't like Kindle. Steve, if our contemporaries were putting their signatures on covers now, how do you think it would be perceived? I don't think it would be perceived in a negative way. But there'd be an awful lot of signatures on covers that might conflict with the authors. And authors now have more control over their covers than they did when Calfer was working. Actually, that transitions nicely to a question from our audience. One member of our audience is a published author, and he said that he was thrilled with the final cover for his book, but he didn't get a lot of input into the art direction. And he's asking about is that sort of a common practice now? And as designer, Gail, do you like having in exchange with the author more access to their work? Yeah. Yeah. I want to know up front. You know, I'd love to know what everyone's thinking up front and any contact you can have with the real person beyond the tip sheet, particularly the author. It's their book. It's great to have that back and forth. So I'm all for it. And it's nice sometimes when you do get to know someone a little bit, and then they're really happy in the end, and they send you a note, or it's like, oh, that was really what I was hoping for. You know, yeah, you feel like a real partner. So I appreciate the connection. I think it really depends on who the author is. There's that. The author is in your book, in the essay that I did, I quoted eldest Huxley as having written to Kaufer. They were friendly. And Huxley had the temerity to say, this and this are not right, and this would be better. And that's the last thing as designer you want to hear. There are ways of making that statement. But you don't want it in a letter from the author. And I've known designers who have gotten nasty letters from authors saying, because they were out of the loop in the contract, either said they have no control over the covers or whatever. Another member of our audience, I believe is trying to ask a question about Alvin Lustig. Steve, you might be able to answer this. So wondering if Alvin Lustig believed firmly in reading the book before designing the book jacket. And I guess if new directions would give him that luxury. And also, if Elaine Lustig Cohen, who was married to him at one point, believed that it was best to limit book covers to two to three colors in order to best convey the mood of the book. So I don't know if you know much about if that was Alvin and Elaine's preferences. And also if that's the best approach in today's design landscape. And also if that had to do also with printing limitations from the time. Well, Alvin had different acts in his bookmaking, book designing career. He had certain styles like where he was more constructivist and rather than drawing. Rather than montage. So he used book covers and jackets as a way to experiment in his own work. He worked primarily for new directions or meridian or smaller companies. Elaine Lustig Cohen didn't work with Alvin making covers until Alvin went blind in his last couple of years alive. I think covers in those days cost more money. So two or three colors would have fit into the limited budgets that were being used. But did Alvin actually read the books? He probably didn't read all of them. If you look at his new directions, many books that Arthur Cohen published for Noonday Press, they're very interpretive, very abstract. I mean, he was more interested, I think, in interpreting abstract expressionist artists than he was in the content of the book. There's very little you can say you can relate from his work to the book itself. There's no way that that cover tells you a story of what the book is going on. Unless, of course, you can read minds and then some people might say you're bipolar. Gail, we have a few questions about the timeline of designing a book jacket or a book cover or I think any of the things that you've shown us today. So there's a few questions about how that process has changed, going from paystuffs to working entirely digitally and also about the timeline for projects. Can you talk a little bit about that? What's changed in the beginning of my career, advantage books at Random House as an assistant designer to now doing freelance covers for folks is the number of comps that you're showing. You're showing many versions, many different ideas. Early on, it was sort of this or that or maybe this and here are some color options. And now it's many different directions, certainly as you saw for the theater work. And there were many directions for the stamp, even though we sort of knew where we were going. The work that he did at Rolling Stone, it was sort of one and done. But the work in the theater and in publishing, so many versions. And it's not, again, it's entirely different directions, not small tweaks on an idea. And what you're doing has sort of final approval, not just from the art director, but really from the marketing people. So they're weighing in big time in a way that maybe I just wasn't, you know, I was so junior that I didn't know what happened to the sketch when the art director showed it around. But I've certainly seen in my time that it's all about marketing now. So it's also what it's like on Amazon when it's this big. Yeah, there's also cover meetings. Whenever I hear the term cover meeting, I try to put my head under the pillow and let sleep take me through the day. Because everybody has an opinion. And sometimes there's a consensus. And sometimes there's, well, this is nice, but why don't we take a piece from column A and a piece from column B and throw it together? And I don't think that's the case with all publishers. But, you know, Kaufer was working for major publishers, Double Day, Random House, and he was working for smaller independent publishers, Go Lons and others. I'm sure he got a better deal in terms of creative freedom from the smaller houses. I mean, I would, that's not always the case for me that sometimes I take on a project from a smaller house because it sounds interesting or something I believe in. And I'm going to assume there are going to be fewer cooks in the kitchen, but they're not. So there are as many opinions and folks weighing in, sometimes at a university press or something smaller than there are doing it for one of the big, the big giant publishing houses. So and it's hard. It's hard for any of this stuff. It was certainly hard for the theater to work when there was roomful of people weighing in on the spot as you were presenting the work. And it's different as a freelancer on the outside that you're not presenting the art director is. And so it's all on them. And then the information's relayed back to you to the changes and all that. It's, it's hard. It's, it's hard. And it's, it's, it's, these projects are not big budget projects typically. So you start to clench your teeth when you realize I'm going back again. Really? So it's, it's tough. But again, like anything that we do, and certainly something that's printed that is so rare now to see the final result, to see those laser gazettes, which had nobody weighing in to give us a hard time or anything. But to see something that you did, where part of a group working on live and print is such a joy still, you know, and to see something like that that's oversized and colorful. And, and it's just like, you're just like, yeah, let's do it again. Let's do it again. So I can imagine the pleasure then of seeing it was somebody who was so prolific seeing so much work. Yeah, we have a question specifically for you about what rules or guidelines you utilize in creating a book design that translates well into a square avatar format. And I also wanted to open this up into a broader question about how you think about designing when something has to now be sort of used for many different types of media. Calfair to a certain extent had a luxury when he was designing a book jacket that it was for one very specific purpose. I mean, of any, everything that I do because of the work doing the theater stuff for about a decade, I think of how does how does it work when it's a square when it's a rectangle and when it's a web banner when it's when it moves, especially when it moves, that's that's certainly important now. And I see that on social media that you see book covers come to life in these little animations. And so you're, and it's exciting for a designer to think that way, but it's a lot. It's it's there are a lot of hats that you're wearing. So I don't have a it's it's always in the back of my mind always. And even the black magic cover that I worked on with my friends upon, we did a little animation of the finger snapping that was on social media. And there's just more and more of that. So I don't I don't know if I answered your question, but it's it's a concern with everything that you do, even a poster, the things that we do at school have to live in so many different places. So you don't have to know how to do it yourself necessarily, but you have to be aware that it probably should be able to happen in some some way. And I think that because of the work that I do at the Postal Service, there were always in the mindset of what's it like when it's an inch, what's it like when it's an inch, working with the art directors, and then through them working with the illustrators and people doing type and all that, it's work small, work small, work small, you know, reduce it down, print it out, things that we say to our students now at SVA, did you print it out, did you print it out, did you print it out so that you can look at scale and hierarchies and all that. And so I guess I'm lucky to have lived in the pre digital world as well, where that seems like a no brainer, where it certainly doesn't to students that we work with now of the idea of printing it out, and certainly losing, you know, a year or two in the pandemic, where everybody who was home and nobody had a printer, and now coming back to real life and it's like remember that thing, like I know, yeah, I know you didn't print for two years, but let's start printing again, and looking at things in paper, and it's hard, it's a real struggle. And somewhat of the opposite way, I know Calfer when he very first started making poster designs didn't realize that he could draw at a different scale than the final poster, and it actually took him a little bit of time to realize that he could work on the scale he was comfortable at and that would be printed in proportion. Steve, we got a question to ask it the space frame that Calfer uses not just in his book jacket designs, but repeatedly in all of his graphic work. One of our audience members would like to know if you know more about that space frame, if other artists use it, or if it's a Calfer signature piece. Well, I think if you look at some of the surrealist artists, they work with something that's akin to a space frame. When I first started seeing it emerge in Calfer's work, I saw it in some posters and covers of the breast graphic, but Herbert Bayer would use the space frame as well. I think it's a really good term to indicate something that really requires a certain amount of intuition to do. Rand always said you do it, and then after it's done you come up with reasons why you did it. I don't think Calfer created it as a rule or regulation for him to follow, but it just occurred, and others like Jean-Claire Will would do something similar. Pivoting a bit, one of our members asked, have you ever been asked to design something to promote texts or ideas that you don't agree with, and how do you handle that as a creative person with opinions, but also as a person that needs to pay the bills? I know Calfer, in at least a few instances, designed illustrations and book jackets for books that it seems very unlikely he agreed with the material within them. Well that's a question that's between you and your heart. I have the luxury of not being a designer, so I don't have to face the moral dilemma, but I think Calfer proved himself to be politically on solid ground when he did his poster to free Greece from fascist domination. He did one about Yugoslavia during World War II, which had an image of Tito in it. I think it's in your book. I don't think Calfer was a political being. His work wasn't ideological, but I'm sure that at some point throughout his career he was asked to do questionable things, and then you just have to make the decision. I was sitting once with Seymour Quast in his office, and he got a call from the newspaper that I won't mention, and when he hung up the phone after accepting the job, I said, do you know that that paper is so-and-so? And he called up the art director and said, I can't take the job. If you do it once, you realize like, I shouldn't have done that, and then you don't do it again. Once or twice, it's like, it just feels bad. Even though I know that sounds like money will just drop down, but yeah, you got to go with your heart on stuff. We had a wonderful question about Calfer's friendships with African American writers. It says that he managed never to indulge in racial stereotypes in his images for their books. Did he ever comment on this? I don't know, Steve or Gail, if you feel comfortable answering this. I don't know. I mean, I would defer to you on that. I never read anything about it. The only thing I ever read him writing on race, which is in my essay in your book, was a speech he delivered saying that artists should be more political and take account of what's going on in the world, which includes, in quotes, the Negro issue. Yeah, to my knowledge, Calfer did not have close friendships with any African American writers, and certainly for the images that we illustrated in today's talk, for Richard Wright, for Ralph Ellison, and Langston Hughes, as far as we know, he didn't really have any meaningful friendship with any of those writers. He was extremely close with Carl Van Vechten, who was a white man who spent a lot of time in Harlem and had very close relationships with a lot of those Black authors, and he seems to have been sort of involved in helping Calfer be selected for some of those projects. But one of the things that's so interesting about Calfer is that he's not in America for several decades of his career and returns, and he begins spending some time in Harlem in the early 40s during the war. But I really think of him as an outsider whooping in on this world when he's requested to design for that. And it seems in Hughes' comments anyway that he felt that way too, although, you know, we understand Ralph Ellison to have been pleased, very pleased with the cover design. We have a question about the original drawings for Faulkner's covers, Steve, which you showed, and other covers. And if they're in the Cooper Hewitt collection, and I'm also happy to say that they are. And we have a number of really wonderful designs for Calfer's covers, both roughs and final designs in Cooper Hewitt's collection. But the majority of those are for his work that was done in America after 1940. And some of the earlier designs can be found in our collection. Some can be found at the Victorian Albert Museum in London. And some we have never figured out exactly where they went. Although I do know that Calfer would sometimes give artwork to the authors whose work he illustrated. We have a few different questions about the relationships between posters and book jackets. And I wonder if both of you sort of talked about the poster a little bit in an elevated way, I noticed, as distinct from the book jacket. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit, each of you, about the role that the poster plays in relationship to other designs. And if you treat a jacket like a mini poster, or if it feels like a different beast. Well, in terms of collectability and hierarchy and museums or histories, the poster takes precedent because it is the closest thing to work of art, although multiple. And posters that are done as posters rather than smaller pieces that are blown up from something else are even more valuable because they're making use of the space deliberately instead of just in an ad hoc way. Book jackets, just as record album covers, use poster techniques because everything is about capturing the eye. A book jacket, even though in bookstores, they were usually displayed spine out rather than face out. They were still advertising tools. And when you reduce it to its advertising function, a book jacket is very similar to a poster. It's just not going to grab you from across the street as opposed to well. But all graphic design when you come right down to it is about promoting advertising and communicating. And the poster is the B-52 of that kind of weaponry. And as a designer, boy, it feels good to see something you've done as big as a poster. It really, really does. And as well as even just, I was in my Barnes & Noble up here in Kingston, it's a new store, so it's all fresh and clean and everything's in its place. And to just walk through the aisles and look at all these great book covers, it's the same feeling of just seeing design, design, design. And it's certainly got a job to do, competing with so many other pieces, just as a poster does out in the world or in the subway. It's got some heavy lifting to do, but what a joy to see it. And certainly for a book to hold something that you've done is a great feeling still and makes it all worthwhile. Hey, there was a cow for book that was reprinted for a contemporary edition. Yes, actually, right here. The Invisible Man was reprinted by Modern Library just in recent years. So it was temporary looks. Yeah. And I think Ulysses is something that I grew up with having on my shelf as well as Invisible Man. And it's been reprinted over and over again. And it's been fabulous to see Karen Goldberg's Ulysses cover to come up in this presentation, which I love and have had on my shelf. We have a question about that comment about sort of redesigning logos and Paul Rand's comments about that. Do you both think that classic book should, when possible, keep something of the previous cover design or is a reset needed, even when it's reprinted by a great design solution? I think a reset is always needed. But remembering the past is always worthwhile. I decided to read a few classic books this COVID year. I read Catcher in the Rye, which I hadn't read since high school. And I wanted to get it in its original jacket. I have to say that I hated the book. I hated the language. It drove me crazy. I couldn't figure out why it was such a big deal when I was a kid. But I like the jacket. I'm hanging up now. So I was happy to see that it was reprinted. Yeah. Someone has asked specifically, if you have a favorite work of literature that you'd like to design a cover for, I guess that might also be a challenge with Catcher in the Rye. But is there something that you particularly want to do? Would I ever do that? And then I see stuff that Peter Mendelssohn's done or other folks like, okay, this is brilliant. The Kafka's, yeah. That would keep me up at night to work on something like that. That's scary. That would be coffer and roaming around and opening windows and looking out and doing whatever you do to get yourself motivated. That would be hard. So I'm good. We have another question looking back at Calfers covers, which are mostly dust jackets. He did do some book covers for paperbacks mostly in the early 40s during the war. And the audience is asking, how do these fine press covers respond to the often sensational paper book covers? Steve, I don't know if you can talk a little bit about that. Well, you know, I think there was a book cover or book jacket organization that was founded in the 50s, maybe late 40s. And if you go through the pages of their catalog, everybody belongs to a kind of mid-modern group. There's a span of work. There's the typographic cover and the conceptual covers of Paul Rand. And then there's the covers of George Salter, who was more calligraphic. And I think that it really comes down to fashion sense, what is going to be appropriate and what is not. Although I don't think I answered your question. That's okay. That was quite interesting. Gail, do you have any final thoughts on that? I have one final thought that isn't related at all. It's that your book, and I'm not just saying this because you're here, but your book is fantastic and beautiful. And just the paper, everything about it, it's just what we miss of touching something gorgeous. So if you're getting a 20% discount, buy the book. Buy the book. If you can't come to New York and see the show, you still have time. So take a bus, take a train, take a plane. But if you can't, get the book. The book is fantastic. You should be so proud. Thank you very much. I owe a lot of credit to Emily Ora, my co-editor and particularly Lucinda Hitchcock, who designed this book. I have to say working with book designers is one of my favorite parts of my job. They always teach me something new. And I learned new ways to look at Kaufer's work through making this book. So that was fantastic. We've gotten to almost everyone's questions, but I'm afraid we're out of time. So I want to thank everyone for joining us. This will be available on YouTube in just a few days. We love your feedback about the program. So please take a moment to come to the short survey that will pop up once closing the Zoom. It's incredibly helpful to us to know who you are and more about what you'd like to hear in the future. And especially, I want to say thank you to Stephen Gale. This was a joy for me. It's a real pleasure to have a time to listen to both of you talk about your work and talk about Kaufer's work. So thank you for all of the knowledge that you've shared. Yay. We had a great time. Now I have to think about- I can speak for Gale. Yeah, really. Now I have to think about Catcher and the Rai again. I hope I- I'm going to have to read it again. I hope I like it as much as I did if I could. The other one I didn't like was Slaughterhouse 5. It's hard to return to books that you love when you were younger. I've found you- you maybe read them with a different perspective, right? Well, they were novel, so to speak. All right, we'll see. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. If you are in New York, please come see the exhibition. We would love to have you at Cooper Hewitt Physically at the Carnegie Mansion and join us again for our future programming. Have a wonderful day, everybody. Thanks a lot.