On display through Oct. 31, ‘Little Blue Books With New Looks' works by MSSU design students featured at the Post Art Library inside of Joplin Public Library. This event is free and open to the public.
Mr. Ed Outhouse, Associate Professor of Design, developed a project with the Post Art Library Director, Jill Halbach, to work with a recent donation of a large collection of “Little Blue Books” to the Post Art Library.
At the beginning of the semester, design students in Mr. Outhouse’s Introduction to Typography class examined the collection, took approximately 300 photos of the booklets, and the students then made designs inspired by, or directly based on, the booklets, some of which are over 100 year’s old.
A reception with refreshments for the students is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct 16 from 2-3:30 pm. The Joplin Public Library is located on the corner of 20th and Connecticut in Joplin.
Little Blue Books were a series of small staple-bound books published from 1919 through 1978 by the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company of Girard, Kansas. The goal was to get works of literature, a wide range of ideas, common sense knowledge and various points of view out to as large an audience as possible. These books, at approximately 3½ by 5 inches (8.9 by 12.7 cm) easily fit into a working man's back pocket or shirt pocket. They were extremely popular, and achieved a total of 300-500 million booklets sold over the series' lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Blue_Book.
