In 1951, at age 28, he showed his portfolio to
Barney Rosset, publisher of the avant-garde Grove Press, after trying to make it as an abstract artist. Rosset was not impressed. However, as Kuhlman was putting away his book, two pieces of
abstract art that he had not intended to show fell from one of the side pockets. Kuhlman was hired to design Grove's book covers and did so until the late 1960s. In Kuhlman's covers for Grove, he gradually began to apply abstract art in a more graphic way, not only to imagery, but also to type. Rosset described Kuhlman's designs as an attempt to "go between being a purely creative act and a commercial one." His work was occasionally representational, but often conceptual, with a distinctive style that was more edgy than most of other
mid-century modern designs of the time, and appealed to the
counterculture of the 1950s and 60s. While at Grove, Kuhlman created over 700 covers, at a rate of over 50 per year, cementing him as a pioneering designer of modern book jackets. Kuhlman also designed the original format, now known as "trade paperback", that allowed for affordable printing of new literature, == Career in advertising ==