The cloth binding on the first edition was, perhaps, even more dramatic than the dust jacket.
In 1967 Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan of Toronto published The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects. This highly visual work was a collaboration with American graphic designer Quentin Fiore. In The New York Times obituary of Fiore published on May 1, 2019, designer Steven Heller is quoted as calling Fiore's design for this book, "the first interactive/interconnected book of the information age." This was, of course, before the term interactive carried the electronic or computerized implications that it does today.
The obit by Katharine Q. Seelye also had this to say about the book:
"By the time of their collaboration, McLuhan had already coined the phrase “the medium is the message” in his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” (1964). His point was that the medium in which we acquire information is more important than the information itself. He was speaking chiefly of television and the neurological and temperamental effects of its mosaic of dots and lights on the viewer, but he later enjoyed a revival as an oracle of the cyber age.
"Mr. Fiore’s first book with McLuhan was “The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects” (1967). “Massage” was a printer’s error, but McLuhan, a wordsmith who delighted in puns, liked the typo and kept it, believing that it amplified his theory about how different forms of media thoroughly “massage” the senses in the “mass age” of communications."
The first edition was a 6 7/16 x 11 inch hardcover book with 160 pages published in an edition of 9,500 copies. It was printed sheetfed offset by Kingsport Press, Inc. on Warren Patina supplied by Lindenmeyr Paper Corporation, and bound by Kingsport Press, Inc. in Arkwright-Interlaken Tonaro, with endlinings in Lindemeyr Multicolor Black. Illustrated and designed by Quentin Fiore; Art Director: R. D. Scudellari. Composed in Standard Medium and Standard Bold with display in Standard Medium and Standard Bold by Volk & Huxley, Inc.
The cloth binding on the first edition was, perhaps, even more dramatic than the dust jacket.
