Background
Born in Chicago, Hunt grew up in San Mateo, California.
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Waldo Hunt
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Intervisual Books, his company, created popular-up books of all varieties—from The Human Body to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He terminated his college career at Stanford University early to serve in World World War World War II After the his Army stint, Hunt began a career in advertising, starting his own agency. He exited the advertising business to found a graphic design firm.
At the new firm, Graphics International, he developed an interest in popular-up design, initially focused on popular-up advertisements for magazines.
In a 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Hunt said, "I knew I"d found the magic key. Number one was doing popular-ups in this country.
Number one could afford to make them here. They had to be done by hand, and labor was too expensive."
In 1965, Hunt published a book called Bennett Cerf"s People’s-Up Riddles, which was sold as a product promotion for $1.00 and two Maxwell House coffee labels.
Cerf was the president of Random House at the time, and by 1967, Hunt had 30 popular-up books in production for Random House.
In the late 1960s, Hallmark bought Graphics International, and Hunt next founded Intervisual Books to produce popular-up and movable books Hunt became known as the "King of the People’s-Ups," and was considered by many to be "the father of the modern popular-up book industry" for his work in pioneering popular-up interactive books His companies dominated the popular-up book business from the 1960s until the late 1990s.
By 1996, Intervisual Books had published 1,000 movable books
Hunt"s personal favorites included best-sellers, The Human Body by David Pelham, Haunted House, and How Many Bugs in a Box? by David A. Carter. In its obituary of Hunt, The New York Times wrote that Hunt was "almost single-handedly responsible" for the revival of the popular-up book in the United States and noted:
"On the flat, foursquare pages of a printed book, Waldo H. Hunt could part the Red Sea.
He could make hearts beat, lungs fill and bones rattle. He could make dinosaurs rear up, ships set sail and bats quiver in belfries."
Cynthia Burlingham, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum, said of Hunt, "He was such an important publisher of popular-up books who really advanced them technically.
The popular-up designers who worked for him were amazing creative engineers."
In addition to producing popular-up works, he was a significant collector of popular-up and other movable books, amassing 4,000 antique and contemporary titles.
Hunt"s extensive collection was the basis for a 2002 exhibit, People’s Up! 500 Years of Movable Books, at the Los Angeles Central Library. Hunt lived for 30 years in Encino, Los Angeles, California. He retired in 2002 and moved to Springville, California.
He died from congestive heart failure at age 88.
