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book (design) story #257

j. p. mcevoy:
revue girl

e. p. tal & co. verlag, leipzig / wien, 1929
printer: manzsche buchdruckerei, wien
size: 18 x 12 cm
designer: georg salter (jacket + cover)

j. p. mcevoy (1897-1958) – sometimes credited as john p. mcevoy or joseph patrick mcevoy – was an american writer. this book is a german translation of his funny epistolary novel "show girl", first published in 1928. the story of showgirl dixie dugan soon spurred a musical, a film, and a comic strip.

the impressum credits georg salter (1897-1967) for the design of the cover and jacket. the cloth cover features a shadowed display typeface as it was popular for theatre posters.

comparing this jacket to the previous one shows the wide range of styles salter was a master of: there we had a painting of wild, informal brushstrokes – here a brilliant design constructed with typesetting material only: based on the telegram-style sections of the novel, identical telegram letterheads (orange-red) with varying messages (turquoise) are repeated in slighty offset rows – creating a rhythmic diagonal pattern contrasted by the slanted title (identical to the cover but in black).

orange-red and turquoise – this (complementary) contrast was salter's favourite colour scheme, as jürgen holstein notes in his great book (isbn 300010772x).

the epistolary novel consists of letters, telegrams, newspaper articles, etc. – the different media are reflected in the typography: uppercase typewriter fonts and telegraph company letterheads for telegrams, ...

... while newspaper articles are set in blackletter, the common typeface used in german papers at the time.