The ultimate magazine man

Outside of Germany Willy Fleckhaus (1925-1983) is best known for his art direction of the monthly twen* magazine through the sixties until it closed in 1970. This heavily illustrated (and beautifully designed) book covering his career will interested anyone who wants to see more of his creativity for German magazine and book publishers.

I bought twen during the sixties because visually it was a unique looking magazine with huge page and spread photos, mostly in black and white, relating to the interests of young adults, the book has pages of spreads showing how Fleckhaus used heading type in a pictorial way with white space and photos. The book makes an interesting point that twen was photo heavy but it wasn't until Fleckhaus art directed the supplement to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper (known as FAZ) that he did his best design work. The weekly was read by a much broader audience than 'twen' so the editorial allowed for a wider creative interpretation, the covers and spreads shown in the pages show a wonderful blending of images and columns of text. Page ninety-five has nine quite stunning Contents pages from 1980 to 1083. Like twen white space contributes to the overall page or spread impact.

Fleckhaus worked for several publishers, in particular Suhrkamp, where he created dozens of covers including the well-known series of paperbacks that created a rainbow effect with their spines (this is partially shown the book's front cover). Like his magazine work the book covers have a Fleckhaus feel, page 185 shows nine covers for Piper Verlag with simple graphics and precise title typography. The book's last pages have a selection of photobooks that Fleckhause created for various publishers.

The book is well produced and in German with an English section printed on thirty-five orange pages, which, rather annoyingly, you have to turn the book sideways to read. One of the authors, Hans Michael-Koetzle, has written a book about twen, unfortunately only in German.

*You can see lots of pages from twen in the Past Print blog, check out the Index in December each year:
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