Annotation
Books can be read, but they can also be viewed. The viewing has an effect on reading, directs and affects it. In addition to advertising for themselves, book covers can serve as well as medium and propagator of modern art, photography and typography, as well as medium of national ideas and political ideologies. They are part of visual communication. Particularly in the age of the avant-gardes (Dadaism, Futurism, Poetism, Constructivism,
Surrealism), typography is given a communicative function, according to Karel Teige, “poetry must be typographically terminated”. The lecture will show comparatively how all the elements of graphic design are used in the medium book, which is a unit of text, title page, colophon, binding, cover etc., which theories and which persons are behind specific designs.