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A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK JACKET IN AMERICA

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A UNION OF FUNCTION AND FORM THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK JACKET IN AMERICA

The book jacket evolved from a simple utilitarian object into a highly visual and conceptualized means of communication. While the first book jackets date to the 1820s, until late in the century they had only been used as protective packaging and tended to be nonpictorial, labeled wrappers with little focus on design. Book jackets began to gain importance in the 1890s with the recognition that they could be a way to attract the attention of potential buyers. Thus the book jacket became a focus of design in and of itself, separate from the front board of the book. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the book jacket began to take root as a promotional tool, and its design received more attention.1 By mid-century in America, what had begun as prosaic illustration and straightforward lettering grew, through the adaptation of European modernism, into a sophisticated integration of type and image. The rise of the book jacket as an object of graphic design in America coincided with the definition of the field of graphic design as a profession. Just as it offered ways to add formal complexity to design, modernism also gave designers a means to reconceive the theoretical bases of their practice. By the 1930s, many of America’s leading graphic designers looked for ways to reconcile the utilitarian and economic

demands of their field with a self-image based on individualistic creative expression. Perhaps this tension between the demands of commerce and the possibility for conceptual depth made modernism attractive to so many American designers: it offered an interweaving of rigorous formal aesthetics and potential for creative expression with an ultimate goal of social and economic utility. As a forum for designers to engage modernism and define their practice, the book jacket was an intriguing choice. Book cover design required reconciliation of the individuality of the designer with the needs of the client. The jacket was understood to be an ephemeral utilitarian protective device and odious marketing necessity whose useful purpose was all but depleted when the book was purchased by the consumer. Furthermore, any book claiming to have literary merit was understood to be the creative expression of its author, thus the designer presented with the task of creating a cover for that book was asked not only to speak for the publisher but for the author as well. Yet, despite all its reputation as a crass commercial device, and the challenge to serve both publisher and author, the book cover was a vital forum for experimental graphic expression by some of the most progressive designers in America.

A NEW VOCABULARY ARRIVES

Many of the experimental approaches to book cover design in America had their stylistic and theoretical roots in Europe. European movements in the fine arts inspired new ways of thinking about graphic design. Cubism presented a means of