Alvin Lustig found all sorts of ways to pull out rabbits from hats and show us an alternate reality. His was a visionary mind, drawn to disrupting the normative patterns of seeing and thinking, because, as he put it, “the incomplete relationship between society and form” troubled him. For Lustig, social needs are inseparable from the world of art and design, which is meant to address social needs with forms that fold within them a humanistic strategy. At Dan Alexander & Co., we believe so, too.

In his body of work, ranging from the Lustig Chair made for Paramount to LA’s Avalon Hotel and other breakthrough design achievements, the most iconic are his +70 dust jackets that he created over the course of his short life (1915-1955). For him, the image on the front cover must give a sense of where the writer is going, not a summary of their book.

He worked with geometric shapes that he took from his typeface, creating a special style of simple shapes, flat colors, and intensely interesting compositions influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he had trained, and inspired by Constructivism, Cubism, Dada, and Bauhaus.

There is one quote of his that we truly identify with in the work that we do at Dan Alexander & Co.: “Never make the mistake of confusing the quality of the form with the specific forms themselves.” Following in the footsteps of this pioneering giant, our design work is strategic to the core, producing forms from which you can pull out a rabbit and make magic happen.