Alvin Lustig Essay

Alvin Lustig was a graphic designer who was born in 1915, and died at the age of 40 in 1955. He designed books and book jackets, textiles, magazines, and interiors. His designs were bold, simple, and abstract. He liked to keep his designs to two or three colors. Each design has either triadic, analogous, or split complimentary color schemes. As well as warm and cool colors. He had a distinct style, which makes it easy to tell that it is his work. He mixed organic shapes with geometric lines. His designs were so striking and caught your attention, so that you would pick the book, or the magazine up and actually want to see more. He had a very strong use of grids, and affectively using them. His compositions were strong. He used minimal typography
in his designs, and used more images and objects. The use of colors, objects, images, and typography were all used to portray a feeling or emotion that would represent overall message.
Lusting didn’t just limit himself to books, interiors, or magazines he also did advertisements, logos, typography, and packaging. But he never lost his sense of identity in design. He still had his use of grids, use of abstract form, images, and minimal typography. The use of form was always the focal point of the design. His logos were very clean, and minimal. His use of small abstract shapes was just enough to catch your attention. The way Lustig used type in his designs, were so simple yet effective. He used type in a way to create lines, or shapes within the design. When designing packaging, he still used clean designs. The packaging was always straight to the point.
The use of shapes, and negative spaces in any form of Lustig’s designs stayed consistent.
Furniture, signs, interior, exterior, ads, logos, packaging, books, and magazines, all has abstract shapes and negative space. His natural sense of clean crisp designs is breathtaking. He was known for all design disciplines. Lustig’s talent was definitely something to be known and famous for. He kept a consistency throughout all of his work. You could name his work by looking at it. It’s admirable. Most designers will design anything that you may need them to do, which is also admirable, but there is no signature look for them. Not like Lustig.
Everyone wonders what would have happened if Lustig had lived past the age of 40. What he would have created, what would of become of his work, how much further he would’ve gotten. His work was constantly challenging what the “norm” was back then. The use of graphic design back then was limited. It was no where near as advanced as it is now. He pushed boundaries no one else dared to push. But those boundaries that he pushed came naturally to him. “He once proclaimed that he was "born Modern" and had made an early decision to practice as a "Modern" rather than a "traditional" designer” (Heller,
1993).