Whilst in New York we got to make a couple of special studio visits, but by far the best trip wasn't even a studio.
A couple of us were lucky enough to go to Cooper Union, where in the basement stowed away is the Herb Lubalin Study Centre for Design and Typography. We were met with the curator of the archive, Alexander Tochilovsky. It was a very small long room, more like a wide corridor really, and around a table he introduced us to Herb Lubalin.
We were there for over three hours looking through this amazing work, and we could touch and hold everything with our bare hands, even though some of them are the original works and sketches. Alexander said that the centre believed in sharing 'design as it was made to be experienced', and so we had all this opportunity to be up close to all these pieces as they were intended to be. I was most amazed by a series of magazines that Herb Lubalin and his studio made in collaboration with Ralph Ginzburg, an American author, editor and journalist called EROS.
EROS was a magazine about love and sex. All four volumes were published in 1962 (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) and was folded when both Ginzburg and Lubalin were arrested; at the time all mail was censored and censorship in the 60s included anything of a sexual nature. Both of them knew that this could perhaps be the end of their careers, but it was a project that both felt they had to pursue. Lubalin agreed to work with Ginzburg if he had full creative control, and he became art director. There's a nice little section in Ralph Ginzburg's wikipedia page about it.
Anyway, when Alexander mentioned that these were still in circulation online etc, I knew I had to have them. I'm planning my dissertation at the moment, and I want to write about sexuality, which makes these invaluable historically. Not to mention that they're beautiful! And lucky me (and Hannah too!) got all four for about £60. Definitely worth looking out for online!
Yay! Unboxing video!
