Adrian Wilson (1923 – 1988) was an American

book design Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components and elements of a book into a coherent unit. In the words of renowned typographer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974), book design, "though ...

er, and author of the influential 1967 work entitled, ''The Design of Books''.

Early life and education

Adrian Wilson was born on 1 July 1923 in Ann Arbor,

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

, and raised in Beverly,

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

. He attended

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

, only briefly. He left college to joined the war resistance movement, where he learned about book design and graphic design. During World War II he was

interned Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

at Camp Angel in Waldport,

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

where he printed William Everson's anti-war poems for Untide Press. After the war he and his new wife, Joyce Lancaster Wilson, settled in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

and helped to form the Interplayers Theater. In 1947 he studied architecture at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, but soon left, first to join

Jack Stauffacher Jack Werner Stauffacher (December 19, 1920 – November 16, 2017) was an American printer, typographer, educator, and fine book publisher. He owned and operated Greenwood Press, a small book printing press based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He ...

at the Greenwood Press, and afterwards to join the

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...

Career

After a few years he left the Press, but he accepted commissions from them for many years. In 1957 appeared his ''Printing for Theatre''. One of his apprentices was printmaker Peter Rutledge Koch. In 1958 he sold his press and he and his wife began a tour of Europe, where they met Will Carter,

John Dreyfus John G. Dreyfus (15 April 1918 – 29 December 2002) was a British book designer and historian of printing who worked for Cambridge University Press and the Monotype printing company. He was also president of the ATypI trade association. ''Into P ...

, Hermann Zapf,

Stanley Morison Stanley Arthur Morison (6 May 1889 – 11 October 1967) was a British typographer, printing executive and historian of printing. Largely self-educated, he promoted higher standards in printing and an awareness of the best printing and typefaces o ...

, Beatrice Warde and

Giovanni Mardersteig Giovanni may refer to: * Giovanni (name), an Italian male given name and surname * Giovanni (meteorology), a Web interface for users to analyze NASA's gridded data * ''Don Giovanni'', a 1787 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on the legend of ...

. In 1983 he was an early recipient of a

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

award. He developed an interest in early book illustration, leading to his ''The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle'' (1976), and (with his wife) ''A Medieval Mirror'' (1984), an account of early printed editions of the ''

Speculum Humanae Salvationis The ''Speculum Humanae Salvationis'' or ''Mirror of Human Salvation'' was a bestselling anonymous illustrated work of popular theology in the late Middle Ages, part of the genre of encyclopedic speculum literature, in this case concentrating on ...

''.Berkeley: University of California Press
online edition
/ref> He died of congestive heart failure on 3 February 1988 in a hospital in San Francisco.

References

External links

*Douglas C. McGill
"Adrian Wilson, 64, A Printing Teacher and Book Designer"
''The New York Times'', 6 February 1988.
Guide to the Adrian Wilson Papers
at

The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

1923 births 1988 deaths MacArthur Fellows Book designers University of California, Berkeley alumni {{Book-art-stub

Early life and education

Career

References

Further reading

External links