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Industrial design in America, 1954. Farrar, Straus & Young, 1954
“Like several other designers of his generation, Lustig actually signed his work, in handwriting, laying claim to his personal interpretation, his conceptual work, which in his case is not always so formally consistent that it could be recognized without his signature. In Lustig’s work one sees an essential American variant on modernist graphic design (…) What’s “functional”, as interpreted by this first generation of American graphic designers, is truly connected to what is needed to “do the job” in terms of conveying an idea both visually and verbally, simultaneously, and is not necessarily keyed to the use of specific fonts, colors, or forms (…) This attitude accurately reflects what was going on in design teaching, as new pedagogic approaches at schools such as the Institute of Design in Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Black Mountain College in North Carolina emphasized the combination of conceptual work in concert with forms influenced by the entire range of avant-garde design and art activity, included abstract painting.”
Elizabeth Armstrong. Birth of the cool: California art, design, and culture at Midcentury. Newport Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2007 (p. 158-159)