About Walton Mendelson

In 1967, I made a small book of block prints, bound a dozen copies by hand, and gave them to friends. I didn't know at the time that I was starting a career. I've been designing and formatting books ever since — professionally since 1979.

My approach has always been the same: serve the problem. Every book has its own ideal design, from the font that fits its genre and audience to the margins and leading that give the page room to breathe. The goal is to find what works best without the solution calling attention to itself. The work should be invisible in the right way.

I attended Prescott College, where the photographer Frederick Sommer was on the faculty. In the fall of 1967, Sommer invited two music students to his house for dinner — and asked me to bring my flute. He showed us one of his drawings made in the manner of musical scores, framed above his piano. We looked at it, tried to play it, stopped midway through. When I asked my fellow student Stephen Aldrich where he was in the score, he pointed to exactly where I had stopped. We knew then that the scores could be played. On May 9, 1968, we gave the first public performance of the music of Frederick Sommer at Prescott College.

I was close to Fred — as friend, colleague, something like family — until his death in 1999. He drew scores from 1934 through 1997, longer than he worked in any other medium. Stephen Aldrich and I recorded our interpretations of the scores on a CD, The Isles of Melancholy and Madness, released through Nazraeli Press. More about Fred's music, and recordings of other music I perform, are on the Art & Music page.

In 1989, Fred offered me a house in Prescott if I moved back. I've been here ever since.

Beyond book design, I make photographs — landscapes and abstracts, shot on 4×5, 5×7, and 8×10, developed and printed by hand — and digital collages. I play the electronic wind instrument (EWI): a blend of blues, folk, and jazz, and thirty years of improvised performances of graphic scores. I hold one or two patents for heating equipment from an earlier chapter of my career, which I mention only because the same thing runs through all of it: finding what the problem requires.

I’ve been active on the KDP community forum for many years, where most of the questions are also, at root, problems looking for their right solution.

Books by Walton Mendelson

Available on Amazon. All designed, formatted, and published under One-Off Press.