drama design

martha graham. merle armitage. an alliance i love. not sure how many of you out there know mr. armitage’s work. he made his way, his own way. the linked article fills you in and gives you a nice overview. i discovered his work after buying an annual of aiga’s fifty best books. these are amazing references for any book collector. (the current fifty best books exhibition is up now.) i sought out early copies of these books and then tried from the illustration of each book to determine its value and sought out the ones that looked interesting to me. i discovered many book designers i had never heard of.  i think there should be a show of fifty books from fifty years. the best of the best. that’s one jury i would love to be on.
as you can see in this book on martha graham, mr. armitage has a flair for the dramatic. i would never say his designs were subtle; expressive would be more like it. this is my favorite of the books he designed. it was the first book on graham and he does it right. i have not read it, though, so i can’t opine on the prose. in the article i reference, he says he often wrote the books just so he could design them. his books are not expensive to collect. i don’t know many people or designer friends who collect his works or have heard of him, for that matter, but i’m happy i started collecting his book designs twenty years ago. maybe you’ll enjoy discovering his work.



4 Comments Leave us a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. wow! this is beautiful.
    so glad you are posting more often.

    Comment by erin — 20/01/2012 LINK TO THIS COMMENT

  2. “He says he often wrote the books just so he could design them.” And why not? Off to Abebooks to look for this one..

    Comment by Shelf Appeal — 22/01/2012 LINK TO THIS COMMENT

  3. [...] That is some nice type. Merle Armitage + Martha Gram from Amassblog. [...]

    Pingback by Bird And Banner — 24/01/2012 LINK TO THIS COMMENT

  4. great post! have you read this book for more then it’s type, had this book as a child, it was my mothers, it open my eyes to the beautiful world of dance. I bless with a prima ballarina, waiting for the next generation. awesome wonderful beautiful, The print captivates your mind to the subject, his wording is simple that it effects your soul to help dig deeper.

    Comment by Therese Herrema — 01/02/2012 LINK TO THIS COMMENT

Leave a comment