Jesse Reed is one half of 'Standards Manual', a New York based publisher focused on archiving and preserving artifacts of design history to make them available for future generations. We stock a number of their titles on Counter-Print, including the reissues of the NASA and New York City Transit Authority graphics standard manuals. Here Jesse shares with us his favourite book cover and the genius behind its design…
"Maybe no one knows when the first time a lowercase 'i' has been replaced with an exclamation mark to establish greater meaning, but maybe th!s !s !t. The reasons why the cover is so brilliant doesn’t need explanation to anyone who reads the title. Letters become emotions, and the title is a result of itself—I guess you could qualify this as meta? Many people have done this trick before, including myself (even though I honestly thought it was original at the time—probably everyone does), but I’d put money on Ivan Chermayeff to be the first."
Jesse Reed
Standards Manual
Order Design