Ernst Reichl | An Artistic Autobiography (result over process)
“The tools of a designer are not type and ink and paper, but words and pictures and ideas…(put simply), the purpose of a book is…to be comprehended.” Ernst Reichl, from Books For Our Time, Lee Marshall, editor, 1951 https://archive.org/details/booksforourtime10000leem
On using technology: The flexibility of using photocomposition methods was a springboard to innovations in design. With Photolithography, Reichl created imaginative approaches combining typography and illustration…bringing forth fresh relationships between type and illustration, paper and binding methods, making full use of the freedom granted by the techniques of production.
Reichl’s concept of what a modern book should be, and how it could be made more contemporary, more legible, and more usable through the adaptation of available machinery, was demonstrated by him in his use of the double-page title page, the use of photography for title page illustrations, offset printing of illustration on bookbindings, the observance of inner consistency of typographic design within a particular book, and the use of unified design themes for identification of publisher series and the work of individual authors…all influencing the course of American book design.
Book Directing: combined art direction and production management, realizing that the design of a book has a powerful impact on how the author’s message is communicated, on the psychological aura of a publication, and on the subtle subjective and subliminal connotations of the book’s aesthetic appearance. His objective was the find the one correct expressive way of presenting a particular book so as to preserve its distinctive character.
Innovative designs reflected an essential relationship to the literary content of the book itself. For William Saroyan’s Inhale &- Exhale (Random House, 19 3 6), for exam pie, Reich I placed the type for the section titles as they appear throughout the book at different levels horizontally on the page, in descending order, giving the very feeling of exhalation, of space and time relationships. “The way the title page is split horizontally into nine parts, and the part titles march down the stairs gives the book a sense of time passing while you read-a principle of book designing I have repeatedly tried to pursue-here for the first time;’ Reichl wrote. The use of this device as a unifying element was developed into new ways of treating chapter heads and front matter. In Night Man, by Alan Ullman (Random House, 19 51), a suspense novel about an elevator operator, the position of the chapter headings mov s upward, chapter by chapter, suggesting an elevator’s ascent in graphic fashion. In Graham Billing’s Forbush and the Penguins (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), Reichl’s last book to b among the AIGA Fifty Books, Reich! replaced the chapt r numbers with a row of penguins “in easy company and conversation with each other.”
Although the essential unity of the double-page spread is not: a new concept, Reich! used the technique with such artistry and awareness that he has become identified with this development. 11 is design for James Joyce’s Urysses (Random House, 19 34) made design history with its dramatic double title-page spread. The enlarged initial letter “U” takes up one entire page in memorable fashion. In Urysses, typography becomes design; ornamentation is not used.
Chapters carry neither number nor title; each section break is indicated by a huge initial letter in black which fills the whole page. Reichl’s unforgettable treatment transforms the simple elements of the author’s name and title into a strong design that epitomizes the spirit of this modern classic. Strangely, this classic title-page design was dropped from later reprints of Urysses, although the enlarged initials for the cover titles remain.
https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20220525203150/http://www.ernstreichl.org/
