Take a Look at Me Now (2)

Part 2 of an overview of the new book Against All Odds: Polish Graphic Design 1919-1949 by Piotr Rypson.

Design junkies need to buy this sucker immediately: 408 pages, full color, nice paper, hundreds of images unseen for decades, in an English-language edition which probably won't be around forever. With postage to the US it costs about $50 and the Blickfang-level monumentality makes it more than worth it. From the publisher's description:

Against All Odds is a painstakingly reconstructed universe of graphic design—for everything from book covers, posters, flyers, packaging and periodicals to postage stamps; it reviews all aspects of that bygone world's social, economic and cultural life: from the works of the leftist propagandists to the advertising used by various trades and industries ("Sugar fortifies"!) and on to such amazing curiosities as the photomontage book cover for poems by Polish fascists. Against All Odds also provides an articulate guide to the main currents running through artistic design and documents the creation of the modern age: the experiments of the futurists and the achievements of functionalism and constructivism.

See part 1, focusing on book and magazine covers

Thank you Daniel Mizieliński (hipopotam / blog) for turning me on to the book