27 марта 2014 года в Университете Амстердама (De Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) успешно состоялась защита диссертации «Взаимоотношение вербального и визуального на обложках книг Владимира Маяковского: скрытый смысл авангардного текста» Андрея Ромахина, выпускника факультета истории искусств, а ныне заместителя директора издательства Европейского университета в Санкт-Петербурге.
In his dissertation The Mutual Relation Between the Verbal and the Visual on the Book Covers of Mayakovsky: the Hidden Meaning of the Avant-Garde Text (written in Russian) Andrei Romakhin (Saint Petersburg) discusses the editions of Mayakovsky's books that were published during his life. It pays particular attention to the "hidden" meaning of a book cover: the pictorial-textual composition of the book cover does not only have utilitarian and decorative functions. It sometimes reflects the author's intentions and even may become a key to the understanding of the book, particularly when the cover is designed by the author himself, which was frequently the case with Mayakovsky (who was trained at an art academy). In a number of his book covers he plays with the so-called Magic Square and the numerical "code" of the Russian avant-garde (a predelection for the numbers "7" and "13"). The visual-verbal complex of the book covers, the synthesis of word and image (which was particulary apparent in Russian Constructivism), emphasizes the "magic" and the "mathematical harmony" of poetic discourse and can be perceived as an important indication of the deeper meaning of the text. The dissertation offers a complete catalogue-album of the 110 books by Mayakovsky published during his life.