Abbott Miller

Abbott Miller: Design and Content is the first monograph on the award-winning graphic designer known for his innovative work at Pentagram, where as a partner he leads a team designing books, magazines, catalogs, identities, exhibitions, and editorial projects, creating work that is often concerned with the cultural role of design and the public life of the written word. Collaborating with performers, curators, artists, photographers, writers, publishers, corporations, and institutions, Miller has created a unique practice that alternates between the printed page and the physical space of exhibitions. In his work as an editor and writer he pioneered the concept of designer-as-author, both roles he assumes for this beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated edition. Miller presents his work as a catalog of design strategies, emerging from the unique circumstances of form and content. Four categories—books, exhibitions, magazines, and identity—provide insight into Miller's influences and working process while also showcasing his best designs.

This anthology turns a critical eye on advertising, newspapers, commercial photography.

Explores the spatial potential of typography in virtual environments.

Analyzes domestic consumer culture through photos and ads.

“I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.” In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard brought the man—and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality—to trial. And, surprisingly, she won. Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard’s hand—and then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. But Pollard struck back, suing Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, America is still obsessed with women’s sexual morality. And in the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, we’ve witnessed fraught public reckonings with a type of sexual exploitation unnervingly similar to that experienced by Pollard. Using newspaper articles, personal journals, previously unpublished autobiographies, and letters, Bringing Down the Colonel tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back.

A breathtaking celebration of contemporary dance, featuring the best work from the award-winning magazine DANCE INK (1990-96). This striking volume includes many new and previously unpublished photographs. Essays on five renowned choreographers offer insight into the distinctive style and personality of each artist. DANCE INK: PHOTOGRAPHS captures the spirit and power of dance itself. 5 color sections. Over 200 duotones.

While Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are more famously known for their straight comedy routines, they did make a number of films in which horror played a crucial role. The first part of this critical reference examines the Abbott and Costello "Meet the Monsters" spoof films (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Mummy). The second sections deals with Abbott and Costello's films with horror elements that do not follow this formula: Hold That Ghost, The Time of Their Lives and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. The plot of each film is examined in detail with special attention paid to the comedians' styles of comedy, the effect of the horror scenes, and the place of the film in the Abbott and Costello canon. The reactions of critics (then and now) and the influences the films have had on the horror and comedy genres and on pop culture are also discussed. A lengthy introduction provides background on the lives of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello and the development of Universal Studios as the premier horror factory.

The vitality of the language and the verve of Scott Medlock’s illustrations truly echo the energy and joy of participating in athletics in this unique collection of sports poems by a first-string team of beloved poets, including Jane Yolen, Walt Whitman, and Gary Soto. “A handsome addition to the expanding trove of sports anthologies.”--The Horn Book

The recreation of a landmark in 1930s documentary photography. The 1939 book Changing New York by Berenice Abbott, with text by Elizabeth McCausland, is a landmark of American documentary photography and the career-defining publication by one of modernism's most prominent photographers. Yet no one has ever seen the book that Abbott and McCausland actually planned and wrote. In this book, art historian Sarah M. Miller recreates Abbott and McCausland's original manuscript for Changing New York by sequencing Abbott's one hundred photographs with McCausland's astonishing caption texts. This reconstruction is accompanied by a selection of archival documents that illuminate how the project was developed, and how the original publisher drastically altered it. Miller analyzes the manuscript and its revisions to unearth Abbott and McCausland's critical engagement with New York City's built environment and their unique theory of documentary photography. The battle over Changing New York, she argues, stemmed from disputes over how Abbott's photographs—and photography more broadly—should shape urban experience on the eve of the futuristic 1939 World's Fair. Ultimately it became a contest over the definition of documentary itself. Gary Van Zante and Julia Van Haaften contribute an essay on Abbott's archive and the partnership with McCausland that shaped their creative collaboration. Copublished with Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto