E. McKnight Kauffer: A Designer and His Public

Edward McKnight Kauffer was one of the most gifted and internationally admired graphic designers of the last century. His work dominated the poster hoardings between the two world wars, and his advertisements, book illustrations and theatre designs brought him an audience of millions.
An American by birth, he studied in Paris before the First World War, then settled in London where his flair, his integrity, and his brilliant sense of colour and composition made him a leader of the new profession of graphic design. As a painter turned designer, who believed that an artist should serve his public, his pioneering work - radical, innovative and powerful - quickly impressed those impresarios of the interwar years, Jack Beddington of Shell and Frank Pick of the London Underground, who became his most important patrons.
In this biography, first published in 1979, Mark Haworth-Booth explores the complex individual behind the work and discusses his relationships with the clients who made his innovative career possible, as well as the friends - T. S. Eliot, Roger Fry, Aldous Huxley and Marianne Moore - who championed his efforts to make advertising 'worthy of the civilisation that needs it'.
This revised and updated edition is illustrated anew with a formidable body of McKnight Kauffer's best work and a fully updated checklist and bibliography, making it an invaluable work of reference as well as the definitive record of a great designer.