by Gabriel Bauret, published by Assouline.
This book is a smaller version of a 5-1/2” x 7” reprint of a 10” x 13” book that I loaned to one of my design students years ago. It was never returned, and, of course, I didn’t write down who, what, when, etc. (If the person who has my book would return it, I’ll put you on my Christmas list!)
Alexey Brodovitch was the god of magazine art directors in the 1930s-50s. He was art director for Harper’s Bazaar and only used the best photographers and artists of his day. Bodoni was his choice typeface. ONLY BODONI! Both for text and heads.
Brodovitch was the father of the photographic spread. His covers made him and his photographers and artists famous! He said to his creatives, “Astonish me!” By that, he meant: go do your thing and come back with your best work to date.
They did.
Brodovitch, along with M.F. Agha over at Vogue magazine, were two art directors who didn’t just lay out an article with art and text supplied to them; they would talk to their editors about the article, then hire the artist or photographer, go to the shoot with them, then finally design the pages.
In the book, Brodovitch has one of his spreads in layout form — full size with photostats of all the art in place plus lines ruled at the correct width he wanted. Later, Bodoni type would replace his hand-drawn design. Text was set on the linotype machine and the heads set by hand. His assistants would paste all the elements in their proper place based on the dummy spread. All pages would then be pinned to a wall so he and his editor could see the flow and design of the issue. Along with his editor, Carmel Snow, they made magazine history!
You can see from the pages in Alexey Brodovitch that his photographers and artists did indeed ASTONISH him!
