John Alcorn's illustration and designs were everywhere in the Sixties. He had a lovely whimsical style that lent itself to all kinds of commercial work, like the Eve cigarette pack, and he was also a talented designer as you can see from this 1962 book.
With only forty-eight pages (7.75 by 4.7 inches) Alcorn makes Murray McCains words sparkle but what intrigued me about the book when I first saw it was the clever use of Day-Glow inks. They are usually associated with bright and breezy print design but the colors work perfectly here.
You can see lots of John Alcorn's lovely work here:
http://www.alcorngallery.com/John_Alcorn/
New Graphic Design magazine, in it's short publishing history (1958-1965) helped to establish 'Swiss Style' outside the country. The editors: Richard Lohse; Joseph Muller-Brockmann; Hans Neuberg Carlo Vivarelli were all successful Zurich designers and it was their idea for the publication to promote the Swiss Constructive design concepts to a wider audience, as well as selling their own creative services.
Carlo Vivarelli designed the grid for the eleven by ten inch page and it was followed rigorously with articles and captions in three languages. Because the typographic format was so uncompromising I always thought it was a bit of a struggle to read the articles. The continental style of having no par indents made many columns, especially in German, sold blocks of text, though captions were fortunately grouped together in each language. Oddly the text was set in Monotype Grotesque 215 rather than the Swiss favored Anzidenz Grotesk.
Publication of the magazine was rather erratic because the four editors were working professionals rather editors and the last issue in 1965 was a combined seventeen and eighteen. I still love the look of the first cover, now fifty-five years old and a timeless piece of design. I hope to upload all the issues. Issue two is in the September 2013 Archive
