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Design Category
Book design, 1996
Design firm
The MIT Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Collection
(1997) 50 Books/50 Covers of 1996
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There was a lot of art between the covers to choose from, but this photo stood out from the rest. Yet it raises more questions than it answers. First, it isn’t a piece of modern artwork. Who took it? Why is the type in reverse? Where are you in relation to the image?
You are in the year 1915, looking at the front window of the newly established Modern Gallery. The photograph looks toward the New York Public Library near the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.
I thought the ghosted reversed typography on the windowpane complemented the typography of the book title. The choice to make the bottom third of the photo a block of white was a difficult one and ultimately functions to showcase the author’s name.