The book is a second bite of LA noir by the author, his previous title Sins of the city came out as a paperback in 1999 and like this new book it was basically news photos and captions. Whether several hundred photos from newspaper files is worth this chunky book with its rather lavish production is debatable. The twenty-one page illustrated introduction leads into the seven chapters: Down these mean streets; Murder & mayhem; Glamourland; Kooks, crackpots & salvation; Headline crime; Crime & corruption.
I thought it was rather unfortunate that, considering the subject matter, the pages look rather bland with large amounts of white space that could have been used for a much more flamboyant presentation. Maybe some large newspaper front pages (there are some but too small to read the copy) maybe a collage here and there, lots of police mug shots over a spread, some side-bars on colored panels. Possibly Taschen deliberately underplayed the look of the pages and relied on the nine colorful magazine inserts to add some sparkle.
They are between eight and sixteen pages, printed on tabloid paper and not as wide as the book's pages, designed to look like the real thing, with ads on some pages. Apart from the intro these magazine inserts provide the only long reads in the book, everything else are just picture captions. The Official Detective July, 1958 is all about Lana Turner and a Mickey Cohen mobster, True Detective May, 1933 deals with the kidnapping of twelve year old Marion Parker, Confidential November (no year) has an article about Marilyn Monroe and her lovers, Click August 1939 features a photo essay about the gambling ships anchored three miles off the coast.
There is an Appendices in the back pages with twenty movies or books that captured the noir of the city and illustrated with a poster or book cover. The three page index only refers to the news photos and nothing from the magazine inserts.
Graphic design gets the Taschen treatment: a huge book (380 millimetres deep) with 482 pages; 2500 images; beautifully designed and printed; in depth coverage; a second edition to bring it all up to date. The large page size certainly helps, there are several images (mostly posters) 330 millimetres deep.
The seven decades all kick off with a brief introduction spread, in three languages, followed by a time-line spread which has an intriguing collection of historical detail and lots of small images. For example, in 1936 Boulder Dam was completed in Nevada and The Phantom makes his first appearance in newspapers. The remaining pages of the thirties have a wide range of graphic material like posters, magazine and brochure covers, logos, book jackets, record covers, packaging and spreads devoted to designers Jean Carlu, Max Bill, Cassandre, McKnight Kauffer, Herbert Matter, Takashi Kono, Antonio Boggeri, Hisui Sugiura, Herbert Bayer, Lester Beall and others. These designer pages have several examples of their work and it shows the strength of the book's editorial because it's not just American or European designers who are included.
The pages covering 1890 to 1920 throw up some wonderful work from artists like Mucha, the Beggarstaff brothers, Talwin Morris, Ludwig Hohlwein, Lucian Bernhard, Theo van Doesburg. Graphic posters from northern Europe during this period have some interesting typography suggesting a lot of it was hand-lettered to get the close letter spacing. Throughout the book there are plenty of spreads (over sixty) that look at individual subjects like AEG (1907) Russian film posters (1927) Bauhaus (1928) Second world war poster (1940) Swiss typepography (1959).
I thought the selection of material particularly impressive and considering the large number of images there is nothing that would make me say "Why is that included", everything shows interesting graphic problem solving by several hundred designers and artists. Also evident is the slow change, over the decades, from a graphic pictorial style to an acceptance of abstraction and frequently just a typographic solution. Every piece has a date, designer and subject and the back pages have a bibliography and index of three pages each.
I assume the second book will be just as stunning and together they'll offer a remarkable look at the best of commercial graphics from past time.
On page 423 there is a poster for the Juillard School showing a red upright ladder almost reaching a cloud in a dark blue night sky, Milton Glaser says of his work: "I remember a painting by Joan Miro that used a ladder leading to the heavens. If you're going to steal, steal from the best". I could well apply those last eight words to the work in this remarkable book. Remarkable because the first poster is from 1962 for the School of Visual Arts and last for Blueform Design in 2017, between these years Glaser designed the 427 posters in the book and whether they are illustrative, photographic or typographic the creativity shows through every time.
Glaser's long time client the School of Visual Arts has the most entries, over forty I think, there are obviously dozens promoting American cultural events and several for European cities that had exhibitions of his work. What I found intriguing is that there is no real discernible style to Glaser's creativity even the illustrations, which tend to be unique to an artist, vary enormously throughout the book, perhaps the originality is the main style point.
When I first saw the book I thought it was too small for posters but there are 704 pages and in fact the book's just the right size for your hand and inside the format works well. Each poster fills the right-hand page and the facing page has some technical details plus Glaser provides some interesting thoughts about the poster, frequently there is some additional visual material, a rough, photo or maybe an historic painting that provided his inspiration. The book's last twenty-five pages has an interesting section with ninety-seven posters from 1966 to 2016, mostly four to a page, that Glaser, with hindsight (and maturity) says he no longer finds completely satisfying.
Milton Glaser designed this handsome book and it will appeal to anyone interested in visual promotion.
