The Inventor’s Dilemma

The Inventor’s Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber
by David J. Gerber

This is a design I did for Yale University Press for a biography of the inventor H. Joseph Gerber. As an inventor/engineer, Gerber was both imaginative and precise, dreaming up big ideas and then drawing up meticulous plans. I wanted that to be reflected in the book, so the design should be both interesting but still orderly. The graph paper background I used for the title page and part openers provided a nice and pertinent tie-in to the subject. The display font also felt right to me—modern, in midcentury-modern sense, and clean. Joseph Gerber seems like a remarkable man, and I hope the design did him justice.