For a design researcher, few failures are more frustrating than being unable to find examples that are essential to whatever point is being made in a book, catalog and exhibition. The second-most frustrating thing: finding the lost artifact(s) after the project has been completed. Milton Glaser: POP by Mirko Ilic, Beth Kleber and me showcases more than 1,000 pieces from the mid-1950s through the mid-’70s, including hundreds of book covers and jackets, many forgotten for decades. Rather than closing the book on Glaser’s “pop” era, our book opened the doors to further lost artifacts, now found. Ilic has continued to uncover the covers of more than a dozen books that were completely unknown to us as editors, and probably forgotten by Glaser himself.
When so much work has been produced, even during a compressed period of time, it’s easy for some winners and losers to fall or be stuffed through the cracks. Below are covers and jackets that have resurfaced. Like the others in POP, this selection represents a range of styles and mannerisms, each an eclectic interpretation of the content.
