Books Beautiful for the Common Man:
The Trade Book Designs of W. A. Dwiggins
Dwiggins is frequently associated with the gorgeous books that he created for The Lakeside Press, Random House, Crosby Gaige, and The Limited Editions Club. However, although he clearly welcomed these commissions for their prestige, and for the income they brought him, his greatest desire lay elsewhere: in making books for ordinary readers. While others in the publishing world explored their passions for limited editions, WAD was a populist at heart; he worked steadily to provide average readers with a taste of the fine books they could not afford. This presentation will demonstrate WAD’s devotion to the common man through examples that were mass-produced by machinery, but were memorable and beautiful nevertheless.
William A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) was a man of many talents – designer of books and typefaces, illustrator, calligrapher, insightful writer on graphic design and advertising, humorist, essayist and playwright, marionette-maker, theatrical set designer, and expert kite-maker. He developed a style very much his own, creating works that were whimsical and lively while always keeping simplicity and readability in mind. During the thirty years that followed his first project for Alfred A. Knopf in 1926, Dwiggins played a key role in the success of Knopf’s business, producing over 300 titles for this one client! Beyond establishing the Knopf house style, he created inexpensive editions for other publishers as well, always giving them a high degree of visual character and personality. WAD did not simply attend to the visual qualities of his typography, illustration, binding designs, and jackets – he was also deeply interested in the processes and raw materials of manufacturing, considering their behavior and their costs in every book he made, striving to make beauty something the common man could always afford.
Bruce Kennett is a book designer and photographer based in North Conway, New Hampshire. A former managing director of Maine’s celebrated book-printing house, The Anthoensen Press, he has lectured widely on printing and design since the 1980s, for institutions such as American Association of University Librarians, Bookbuilders of Boston, Dartmouth’s Baker Library, Harvard’s Houghton Library, Maine Historical Society, Rochester Institute of Technology, Smith College, The Society of Printers, and The Society of Typographic Arts. Bruce’s teaching experience includes the University of Southern Maine, the Art Institute of Boston, Northeastern’s Graphic Arts Management Program, and the Center for Creative Imaging. He is currently writing a biography of W. A. Dwiggins, which he hopes will be useful (as well as beautiful!) in expanding the general public’s awareness of this multi-faceted artist.
http://www.brucekennettstudio.com/
