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book (design) story #214

nikolaj voronin:
la ricostruzione edilizia nell'u.r.s.s.

giulio einaudi editore, roma, 1946
printer: a. staderini, roma
size: ?? x ?? cm
designer: max huber

although this collection's focus is on german-language books, swiss graphic designer max huber (1919-1992) deserves to be treated as an exception. max huber trained at the kunstgewerbeschule zürich, but his career as a graphic designer happened mostly in italy.

huber designed many books for giorgio einaudi (1912-1999) who had founded his publishing house in 1933, together with other anti-fascist intellectuals. his father luigi einaudi was elected president of the italian republic in 1948.

for the cover of this book on reconstructional work in the ussr huber chose a modernist pictorial montage: slanted text in russian-avantgarde style, and steel frames in socialist red suggest to be the solution to the bombed city shown as a blurred image in the background.

this 1946 book suffers from the rather poor paper quality common in war-struck countries like italy.