Hasta La Ideas

James Victore’s new monograph is so slick that a stranger on the subway asked us what we were reading because he “needed a new book.” The design strikes such a careful balance between craft and irreverence that has the same appeal as the cool kid in school that never followed the rules but still graduated on time.

The matte black pages provide a striking contrast to a typically bound book, even when closed, and the cover painting sandwiches those uncommon pages between a carefully defaced oil painting festooned with Victore’s trademark hand illustrations (scrawled painted words and a Van Dyke goatee) combined with a stark typeface arrangement. The cover itself actually forms a fold-out of the painting that can serve as a poster, Victore’s stock and trade. From the cover on in, the monograph is just as boisterous and freewheeling an exploration of the bounds of graphic design as James Victore’s career has been.

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