Presentation on the career of graphic designer Alvin Lustig.

1. G R A P H I C D E S I G N E R , I N T E R I O R D E S I G N E R & T Y P O G R A P H E R
ALVIN LUSTIG

2. LIFE/DEATH & MARRIAGE
•Born: 1915 in Denver, Colorado
•Deceased: Dec. 4, 1955 in New York
(age 40)
•Met his wife in 1948 at a Los Angeles art
museum opening.
•Spouse: Elaine Lustig Cohen
•That same year they got married in
December.

3. EDUCATION & CAREER
•Studied design at Los Angeles City
College, Art Center.
•In 1937 he began making book jackets in Los
Angeles.
•His first cover was in 1941 for a firm called
New Direction Publishing.

4. CAREER
•Lustig then designed a Cover for a magazine called, Perspective USA.
•There were 13 editions of the cover that Lustig designed. Here are three.
1952 1953 1955

5. MAGAZINE
•In 1944 he moved to New York to became the director of Visual
Research design department for Look Magazine until 1946.
•He designed six Covers.
•In house publication for
Look Magazine (1944-45)

6. MAGAZINE
•He also designed for Fortune Magazine & Girl Scout of the United
States.
•1946
•1952

7. INTERIOR & ARCHITECTURAL
•Lustig was an accomplished
interior and architectural
designer.
•In 1949 he designed the
“Lustig Chair” for Paramount
Furniture in Beverly Hills.

8. SUCCESSES
•Alvin Lustig maintained a successful relationship
with New Direction for almost a decade.
•He designed more than 70 dust jackets for the New
Classic Series from 1945 till his death in 1955.

9. AFTER DEATH
•After his death Lustig was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of
Fame in 1886.
•The American Institute of Graphic Arts
awarded Lustig a posthumous AIGA Medal.

10. QUOTE
“The words graphic designer, architect, or
industrial designer stick in my throat, giving
me a sense of limitation, of specialization
within the specialty, of a relationship to
society and form itself that is unsatisfactory
and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms
to describe an active life reveals only
partially the still undefined nature of the
designer.”
•Alvin Lustig (1915-55) in The Designer Says:
Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom