The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Elegantissima: The Design and Typography of Louise Fili

For more than three decades, graphic designer Louise Fili* has been producing some of the most consistently exquisite typography, frequently hand-drawn and building upon thoughtfully curated vintage sources. In her decade as art director for Pantheon Books, she created nearly two thousand book jackets, each with remarkable attention to detail. Since 1989, she has expanded and extended her singular lens to restaurant menus and food packaging through her namesake design studio. The new monograph Elegantissima: The Design and Typography of Louise Fili (public library) offers, for the first time, a sweeping look at Fili’s work and the philosophy behind it.

But Fili’s greatest gift is perhaps the extraordinary ability to seek out vintage gems — and to do so with great taste — which she then reimagines and combines into entirely new designs that aren’t mere homage to the past but, rather, an entirely original visual language with an entirely original point of view.

In the foreword, the inimitable Steven Heller observes Fili’s power of combinatorial creativity, something another design hero, Paula Scher, has previously spoken to:

What Louise does instead is build upon things passé to enliven her contemporary graphic statements — even when the result has vintage resonance.

Almost every example in this book can be unpacked to discover its influences and inspirations (and herein are detailed case studies). However, the manner in which these component parts are reassembled is uniquely Louise’s. It is all too easy to add pre-cooked ingredients from archival sources, but to then transform them into designs that are at once familiar and entirely novel — well, that takes extreme discipline.

For a charming aside, here’s a heart-warming anecdote about Heller and Fili’s relationship:

Dear Louise,

I just wanted to tell you that I think your book and book jacket designs for Pantheon are excellent Consistently so.

Every time I am struck by a book in our bookroom or on the in-coming table it is something you’ve been responsible for.

Best regards,

[signed] Steve Heller

On March 9, 1982, when I was art director of the New York Times Book Review, I sent the grammatically challenged note above to Louise Fili, whom I had never met and, in fact, had never laid eyes on before. A little more than a year later we were married.

This intimate disclosure is essential, lest anyone reading this foreword to Louise’s monograph presume I lack critical objectivity. Strictly speaking, at the time I wrote the note I was a genuinely objective fan of Louise’s typographic elegance, visual flair, and conceptual ingenuity, as well as her keen expertise with illustration — an area I knew something about.

Appropriately lavish and stunning, Elegantissima is the perfect showcase of Fili’s intricate, arresting, and always elegant work.

* …who looks strikingly like Anaïs Nin


Published September 5, 2012

https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/09/05/louise-fili-elegantissima/

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