Book by/for Unit Editions

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CLIENT

Unit Edi­tions is a pro­gres­sive pub­lish­ing ven­ture pro­duc­ing high-qual­i­ty and good val­ue books on graph­ic design and visu­al cul­ture. They com­bine impec­ca­ble design and pro­duc­tion stan­dards with insight­ful texts and infor­ma­tive com­men­taries on a wide range of subjects. 

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BRIEF

This book is the first com­pre­hen­sive study of cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty design man­u­als, and fea­tures 20 exam­ples from the 1960s to ear­ly 1980s—the gold­en era of iden­ti­ty design. The book includes man­u­als cre­at­ed for insti­tu­tions and cor­po­ra­tions such as NASA, Lufthansa, and British Steel. 

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APPROACH

All of the man­u­als have been lov­ing­ly pho­tographed and pre­sent­ed in a spa­cious and func­tion­al lay­out allow­ing the observ­er to ful­ly appre­ci­ate these won­der­ful exam­ples of infor­ma­tion design at its best. Man­u­als 1 is print­ed in Italy, con­form­ing to the high­est pro­duc­tion standards.

Judge’s Com­ments
Man­u­als, by Unit Edi­tions, was extra­or­di­nary for its sheer phys­i­cal­i­ty. The thought­ful doc­u­men­ta­tion of these style man­u­als was a delight­ful chron­i­cle of a cer­tain world his­to­ry as well as design his­to­ry, doc­u­ment­ing the cor­po­rate appear­ance of indus­tries that moved, pow­ered, med­icat­ed, chron­i­clers, enter­tained, and con­nect­ed peo­ple. Much of the delight of the images in this book is the yel­low­ing pages, the dog-eared binders, the pages that curl in the clasp of giant three-ring binders, each prov­ing its use and show­ing its age, prov­ing Mas­si­mo Vignel­li’s obser­va­tion, “The def­i­n­i­tion of a good man­u­al is a man­u­al that gets used.” Author Adrain Shaugh­nessy con­trasts the pix­e­lat­ed present to the “splen­did phys­i­cal pres­ence” of these mas­sive tomes, which are often left to speak for them­selves in this gor­geous vol­ume, which pre­serves their mem­o­ry with under­stat­ed rev­er­ence. From the incor­rect usage page from NASA’s man­u­al, to the sin­gle cap­i­tal let­ters and then sin­gle low­er case let­ters, each on it’s own page in Vignel­li’s own mas­sive 176-page 1970 New York City Tran­sit Author­i­ty tome, this book, for design­ers, is a high-calo­ry delight. — Stephen Doyle