By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design

First ever survey on central subject of American design history. This book contains 200 beautiful full colour images. Famous practitioners are represented from all eras of American design. It covers many great authors including Joyce, Pound, Camus, Roth etc. It has a great cover of its own by “hot designer” John Gall. It makes a great reference album/idea book for the practitioner. “By Its Cover” is a survey of American book cover design, from the inception of the modern book industry at the turn of the 20th century to the present day. It is the first ever comprehensive examination of some of the most beautiful and influential works of American graphic design. “By Its Cover” traces the trajectory of such early masters of illustration as E. McKnight Kauffer, Rockwell Kent, and typographer W.A. Dwiggins. It follows their lead through the modernism of Alvin Lustig, Paul Rand, Roy Kuhlman, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast and concludes with contemporary masters such as Barbara de Wilde, Chip Kidd, and Michael Ian Kaye. As the authors write, “Books and their covers are vital, physical manifestations of an evolving American intellectual tradition. The cover is a book’s first communication to the reader, a graphic representation not simply of its content, but its moment in history – in the history of American design, in the history of American literature, in the history of American culture.