By Dan Fergus
Originally written October 8, 2007
Published on-line October 25, 2007
At the height of the Russian revolution, El Lissitzky, synthesized the ideas of Cubism, Futurism with those of his countrymen Malevich and Rodchenko and created a revolutionary new approach to graphic design and illustration. His book of poetry For the Voice and the children’s book Of Two Squares exhibit a dynamic, experimental, and expressive approach to typography and design that is still heralded by design historians and practitioners today. In the decades since Lissitzky’s time, numerous designers have taken his ideas and built upon them; but until recently, the design of children’s books, despite the existence of Of Two Squares, has been largely unaffected. For the most part, the graphic design found in these works has been fairly straightforward and unimaginative. But there are signs that things are starting to change as a number of books have appeared in recent years that approach the design of the book holistically, and treat layout and typography as more than an afterthought. These books exhibit much of the dynamism, abstraction and expressiveness of Lissitzky’s groundbreaking work.
Of Two Squares, published in 1922, was a children’s book unlike any children’s book seen before—or since —for it was both a political fable and a design experiment. The book tells the story of two individuals—represented as a black and a red square respectively—each of which sets out to build a better society. The black square is a capitalist, and in the end his efforts lead to chaos and collapse; meanwhile the red square, a communist, succeeds in building a Utopian society. In keeping with the Constructivist idea that art and design should serve society, Lissitzky’s book does more than entertain; it is a fable with a moral, a propaganda piece aimed at those most impressionable—children. But it is more noteworthy for its design; it is a completely constructed book, with illustrations, typography and layout working together in unison. The pictures are not realistic depictions; rather abstract constructions of rectangles and circles that utilize a dynamic asymmetry. The text, which is set horizontally, diagonally, and vertically, and uses a variety of type sizes, weights and letter spacing, is carefully placed on the page to echo and balance the action in the accompanying illustrations. Drawing inspiration from the Futurists and Dadaists, Lissitzky believed that typography when properly used had an expressive power that went beyond a literal reading of the words. Letterforms he demonstrated, could communicate ideas in and of themselves, depending on how they were placed in relation to one another and to other elements on the page.
But despite its innovation, Of Two Squares had relatively little impact as either a children’s fable or a design object. In his forward to Graphic Design History (2001), Jorge Frascara claims “El Lissitzky’s famous abstract book was not understood by anybody outside of his group of abstract friends. When he went back to Russia and started working, he had to give up his triangles and squares because nobody could understand the profound meaning he was intending.” Whether Frascara is referring to Of Two Squares or For the Voice is unclear, but his observation applies in either case. And while it is debatable as to what extent Lissitzky inspired mainstream graphic design, it is apparent that the field of children’s literature was almost completely unaffected by his ideas. Throughout the 20th century, children’s book design followed a consistent and familiar formula—a static block of plain text placed next to (or on top of) a representative, realistic or “cartoonish” illustration that matter-of-factly depicted the content of the text. The text was meant to be read, nothing more.
But in the 1990s, experimental and revolutionary ideas in graphic design began to creep into children’s books. Dave Macaulay’s Black And White (1990) consists of four separate stories illustrated in four distinct visual styles, which are presently simultaneously in four quadrants of the printed page spread. Although they seem at first to be disparate and unrelated, the four stories are actually cleverly interrelated, which becomes apparent when they come together in a literal and visual collision at the book’s climax. In one of the stories, the picture disintegrates, dissolving into a field of what appears to be random scraps of torn newspaper covered with printing. These scraps overwhelm the image and eventually rain down upon the story below. In another story the image of a field of cows becomes more and more abstract, until only a collection of black and white shapes is left. The book was lauded by artists and critics alike for its inventiveness and awarded a Caldecott.
Another example of dynamic and playful design is The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (1992) written by Greg Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith, and designed by Smith’s wife, Molly Leach. Scieska, Smith, and Leach did not work in isolation; rather they combined their talents and approached the book as a whole; each of their parts (story, pictures, layout) works in concert with the others. For his part, Smith’s artwork is hardly traditional. His Cubist inspired collage illustrations make use of paint, photographs, printed text, textures, and other abstract elements that draw more upon modernism than traditionalism. Leach’s use of typography is dynamic and playful; typography is used to convey emotion, illustrate actions, and provide visual structure. On some pages the text is printed upside-down; there are extreme changes in type size and color; and some of the pages appear out of sequence. In one memorable passage, the character of the Giant tells a tale, which consists of a random collection of story parts (“Once upon a time,” etc) represented as an equally random collection of scraps of type torn from the pages of other books and printed materials. The accompanying illustration is of a character similarly created Frankenstein-like from a mish-mash of other images. When the narrator Jack insults the Giant’s story, the Giant threatens to eat Jack. Jack stalls by telling an endlessly repeating story represented by a block of text that gets progressively smaller and smaller until it becomes completely illegible and runs off the bottom of the page. Narrative, design, and illustration all work together to convey an idea greater than the sum of their parts. Like Black and White, The Stinky Cheese Man won a Caldecott award. What’s more, it has become one of the most popular children’s books on the market.
To the casual observer there may little to link For the Voice or Of Two Squares to Black and White and The Stinky Cheese Man. The colorful and sometimes bizarre visions of Dave Macaulay and Lane Smith seem to have nothing in common with the mechanical, geometric, duotone abstractions of Lissitzky. But when one looks deeper, the connections become evident: the dynamic and expressive use of type, the abstraction of images and the concept of constructing a book as a whole, —ideas which are integral to both Black and White and The Stinky Cheese Man—all owe a debt to the innovations and ideas of Lissitzky. Critics like Frascara may be correct in asserting that El Lissitzsky had little direct impact on his time. However, his legacy does live on, and is even now influencing the design of children’s books, some seventy years later.
Frascara. J. (2001). Graphic Design History (S. Heller, G. Balance, Eds.). New York: Allworth Press.
Macaulay, D. (1990). Black and White. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Scieska, J. & Smith, L. (1992). The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. New York: Viking.
All images and work shown herein copyright Daniel C. Fergus. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.