When The Medium Is the Massage was published in 1968 it was derided for having too few words per page and no table of contents. Yet it wasn’t long before the edition became a landmark of contemporary book design.
Unlike other illustrated books of its time, which followed the convention of having a designer create a visual layout based on a writer’s manuscript, The Medium Is the Massage not only had no manuscript, its concept was initiated by a designer. The book is a visual interpretation of the words of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) by Quentin Fiore (b. 1920), a self-taught designer who had attended the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Using aphoristic passages of McLuhan’s writings from previous publications, Fiore presented the communication theorist’s prose on individual spreads with accompanying artwork. Influenced by the work of Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, English painter and author Wyndham Lewis, and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Fiore imbued the pages of The Medium Is the Massage with the energy of magazine spreads and storyboards, while radically altering traditional hierarchies of images and captions, texts and illustrations.
Fiore felt that such a treatment was critical to convey McLuhan’s ideas, explaining that the book “had to convey the spirit, the populist outcry of the time, in an appropriate form.” As the designer explained, “The ‘linearity’ of the average book wouldn’t work. The medium, after all, was the message!” Fiore’s instincts paid off. The Medium Is the Massage was first published by Bantam, which issued an initial printing in paperback. (Random House released a larger hardbound version of the book.) International editions quickly followed and The Medium Is the Massage became McLuhan’s best-selling publication. McLuhan acknowledged Fiore’s immense role in the creation of The Medium Is the Massage, permitting the designer’s name to appear alongside his on the book’s front cover as a co-author.
P
For more reading see:
“McLuhan/Fiore: Massaging the Message,” in Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design
The Medium Is the Massage
By Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, 1968
The front cover of The Medium Is the Massage
When The Medium Is the Massage was published in 1968 it was derided for having too few words per page and no table of contents. Yet it wasn’t long before the edition became a landmark of contemporary book design.
Unlike other illustrated books of its time, which followed the convention of having a designer create a visual layout based on a writer’s manuscript, The Medium Is the Massage not only had no manuscript, its concept was initiated by a designer. The book is a visual interpretation of the words of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) by Quentin Fiore (b. 1920), a self-taught designer who had attended the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Using aphoristic passages of McLuhan’s writings from previous publications, Fiore presented the communication theorist’s prose on individual spreads with accompanying artwork. Influenced by the work of Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, English painter and author Wyndham Lewis, and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Fiore imbued the pages of The Medium Is the Massage with the energy of magazine spreads and storyboards, while radically altering traditional hierarchies of images and captions, texts and illustrations.
Fiore felt that such a treatment was critical to convey McLuhan’s ideas, explaining that the book “had to convey the spirit, the populist outcry of the time, in an appropriate form.” As the designer explained, “The ‘linearity’ of the average book wouldn’t work. The medium, after all, was the message!” Fiore’s instincts paid off. The Medium Is the Massage was first published by Bantam, which issued an initial printing in paperback. (Random House released a larger hardbound version of the book.) International editions quickly followed and The Medium Is the Massage became McLuhan’s best-selling publication. McLuhan acknowledged Fiore’s immense role in the creation of The Medium Is the Massage, permitting the designer’s name to appear alongside his on the book’s front cover as a co-author.
P
For more reading see:
“McLuhan/Fiore: Massaging the Message,” in Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design
Links:
The official site of Marshall McLuhan: www.marshallmcluhan.com
Marshall McLuhan on YouTube
Three spreads from The Medium Is the Massage, which was conceived as a visual interpretation of Marshall McLuhan’s theories.