Silent Syndicate by Hank Messick
Dust jacket designed by Herb Lubalin for Hank Messick’s 1967 book, The Silent Syndicate. The design is another example of a type-on-the-cover approach favored by Lubalin (see his covers of Fact Magazine, as well as The Bluest Eye jacket). The design is also a clever use of the blurb-as-cover approach.
The title, set in Goudy Old Style Bold, includes some slight adjustments like the ligatured Th and the trimmed tail of the y to avoid the clash with the H below. Lubalin’s studio often tinkered with the typesetting to create a better fit and appearance. The tighter leading creates a pleasant texture, which works well because of the relatively light weight of the typeface. Note also how “$25,000” is scaled down to better align in the line and to help the justification. The cover takes full advantage of the pronounced details of Goudy Old Style, like the diagonal hyphen, the diamond-shaped dots, the turn of the arm in the lowercase t and in the ear of the lowercase g.
