Collections

A Book of American Trade-marks and Devices
A Catalogue of the Collection of Arms and Armor Presented to The Cleveland Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. John Severance, 1916–1923
A Dissertation upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies
A Guide to an Exhibition of the Arts of the Book
A Handbook of Style of The Princeton University Press: Being a Few More or Less Simple Rules for the Guidance of Proof-Readers and Compositors, with a Preface Especially Directed to Authors
A Handbook of the American Wing, Opening Exhibition
A History of Rutgers College, 1766–1924
Aldus Pius Manutius, With an Essay, Together with a leaf from the Aldine Hypnerotomachia Poliphili printed at Venice in 1499
Rare Book and Manuscript Library

During AIGA’s first century, juried selections from its longest-running annual book design competition, “50 Books/50 Covers” (including earlier iterations: “Fifty Books of the Year” and “The Book Show”) were collected in order to demonstrate the principles of good design and craftsmanship in the manufacture of contemporary American books.

These selections are held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML) at Columbia University’s Butler Library in New York City, where Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt (formerly of the Gutenberg Museum in Germany) was named curator of the rare book department in 1930. As a member of the Typophiles, another New York not-for-profit organization, he initiated a relationship between the organizations that included an annual book deposit from AIGA of the year's best designed books and book covers to the RBML, including titles dating back to 1923.

The history of printing and the book arts are strengths of RBML. The collection includes more than 5,000 books recognized for design excellence from nearly nine decades of AIGA competitions and is available for on-site use by researchers.

Currently, the Fifty Books of the Year (1925) are tagged in this repository. More will be tagged in the future.

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