White, Jan V. 1928-

PERSONAL:

Born April 6, 1928, in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); son of Emil (an architect and artist) and Karla (a music teacher) Weiss; married second wife, Clare Mallon (a language teacher), 1962; children: (first marriage) Toby, Alexander; (second marriage) Gregory, Christopher. Education: Cornell University, B.Arch., 1951; Columbia University, M.S., 1952. Politics: Liberal Democrat. Religion: Atheist. Hobbies and other interests: Sculpture.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Westport, CT. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Time, Inc., New York, NY, art director of House and Home, 1951-64; consultant, communication designer, lecturer, and writer, 1964—. Military service: U.S. Army, 1952-54; became sergeant.

MEMBER:

Typophiles, Century Association (New York, NY).

WRITINGS:

Editing by Design: Word-and-Picture Communication for Editors and Designers, R.R. Bowker (New York, NY), 1974, 2nd edition published as Editing by Design: A Guide to Effective Word-and-Picture Communication for Editors and Designers, 1982, 3rd edition published as Editing by Design: For Designers, Art Directors, and Editors; The Classic Guide to Winning Readers, Allworth Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Designing Covers, Contents, Flash Forms, Departments, Editorials, Openers, Products for Magazines, R.R. Bowker (New York, NY), 1976, 2nd edition published as Designing for Magazines: Common Problems, Realistic Solutions for Front Covers, Contents Pages, Flash Forms (Late-Closing News), Departments, Front and Back, Editorial Pages, Feature Section Openers, New Product, and New Literature Reports, 1982.

Graphic Idea Notebook: Inventive Techniques for Designing Printed Pages, Watson-Guptill Publications (New York, NY), 1980, 3rd edition published as Graphic Idea Notebook: A Treasury of Solutions to Visual Problems, Allworth Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Mastering Graphics: Design and Production Made Easy, R.R. Bowker (New York, NY), 1983.

Using Charts and Graphs: 1000 Ideas for Visual Persuasion, R.R. Bowker (New York, NY), 1984.

Graphic Design for the Electronic Age,Watson-Guptill Publications (New York, NY), 1988.

Color for the Electronic Age, Watson-Guptill Publications (New York, NY), 1990.

Great Pages: A Common-Sense Approach to Effective Desktop Design, selected and introduced by Tony Sutton, Serif Publishing (El Segundo, CA), 1990.

(With Jacques Jimenez and Timothy L. Johnson) The Devil's Business Dictionary, Helix Press (Rowayton, CT), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jan V. White told CA: "In 1972, Donald Holden, then editor in chief of Watson-Guptill Publications, heard me explain the rationale for my redesign of a magazine's format. He later suggested that I ought to write a book about magazine design because no such thing had ever been attempted. Despite my immediate demurral (‘I'm a designer, I don't know how to do a book!’) I began defining my functional philosophy, derived from my architectural training, and it resulted in Editing by Design: Word-and-Picture Communication for Editors and Designers, which has been in print ever since.

"There are two camps in the publishing world: the writer/journalists/editor and the artists/designers. Despite the fact that they cannot do without each other, they have been at loggerheads for as long as the professions have existed. In my seminars (nearly 2000 worldwide) I try to persuade verbal people to think visually and visual people to think verbally. When they manage to do that and escape the narrow restrictions that their professional education has instilled in them, they cannot help but produce more compelling communication.

"The best way to bring the two factions together is to show them how they can cooperate for their common good. The purpose of all my work has been to blend the verbal with the visual functions, the editing with the designing. Thus, the title Editing by Design is literally accurate.

"That first book was followed by others on various aspects of the process of communication-in-print: typography, space, color, and so on. Each led to subjects for a range of lectures and a long, happy career of pontification and consultation. (The fact that doing what I loved was also a reasonably good living should not be discounted.)

"My primary motivation for writing: the desire to pass on what I have learned both in practice and in solving my clients' problems. There are always underlying principles to be found that can be usefully applied by others in our profession. I never show examples as visual objects to be aped, but rather as logical thinking to be understood and followed. Perhaps I am lucky that I span both worlds: I can explain the value and techniques of design in words to word-people and vice versa.

"Writing process? Since my subject is always some form of how-to or why-to, there is little need for flowing narrative. Instead, the thinking is constructed of sequential, related short bits. I used to jot individual ideas on index cards, arrange them on my big desk in sense-making sequence, expand the points (by words or drawings), then add bridges and connections. Now the index cards are virtual, but I confess that I print out hard copy and continue arranging the sequence physically. It is much faster, and you can see a whole desk full of thoughts in relations to each other, instead of having to remember them from one onscreen image to another."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, April 1, 2004, Phil Hamlett, review of Editing by Design: For Designers, Art Directors, and Editors; The Classic Guide to Winning Readers, p. 92.

Technical Communication, May, 2005, Barbara Jungwirth, review of Editing by Design, p. 231.

Whole Earth Review, summer, 1989, Art Kleiner, review of Graphic Design for the Electronic Age, p. 105.