Typography and Graphic Design: From Antiquity to the Present
Roxane Jubert
Forewords by Serge Lemoine and Ellen Lupton
Paris: Flammarion, 2006
Translators: David Radzinowicz and Deke Dusinberre
Copy Editor: Lindsay Porter
Proofreader: Penelope Isaac
Typography and Graphic Design: From Antiquity to the Present, a broad history of graphic design by Roxane Jubert, appeared before the Eskilson and Drucker/McVarish books that have already been dissected on Blue Pencil. It is different from those books in several basic ways. Its captions are brief, limited (usually) to the name of the artist/designer, title of the work, date, country of origin, and sometimes dimensions. There are no extended discussions of the work. The works are not always mentioned in the main text and when they are they are rarely discussed in any detail. There are no textual cues referencing the images. Each of the five sections has footnotes.
The flaws of Typography and Graphic Design are different in nature from those of the Eskilson and Jubert books. There are fewer factual and typographical errors, but there are errors of judgement as well as “errors” of writing. This last claim is problematic since the book was originally written in French and the English translation may have distorted or changed Jubert’s words. Thus, I have listed the translators in the bibliographic information above. I also included the copy editor and proofreader since they are identified in the book.
I trust that Jubert will welcome, even if reluctantly, the criticisms listed here since she states on p. 12, “This work should be considered as a foundation rather than as a conclusion, to be enriched, refined, studied from all angles, and corrected where necessary.” Further on, Jubert correctly points out some of the pitfalls in writing a history of graphic design—pitfalls that bedevil all historical writing—yet she fails to explain how she determined which sources to trust and which to avoid.
“Special effort has been made to date the various tendencies, texts, and events. Many sources fail to agree and imprecision often subsists, while the investigation of certain dates has called for much laborious verification and crosschecking (for example, the date of birth of Claude Garamond). A certain number of uncertainties and doubts linger, in particular concerning facts in remote history (for instance, the portrait usually associated with the name of Gutenberg), and the spelling of proper names is sometimes erroneous.” p. 14
One of the most annoying aspects of Typography and Graphic Design: From Antiquity to the Present is Jubert’s frequent tendency to resort to lists of names (and other items) rather than to discuss philosophies, movements, or works in detail. Some lists are necessary or unavoidable but many of hers feel like padding. Those that are most egregious are noted in the commentary below. The pages where the remainder of those that seem avoidable are appear are flagged here rather than quoted in full:
pp. 14–15, 15 (twice), 111, 122, 128, 132, 147–148, 156, 162, 177–178, 181, 183, 191, 194, 196, 205, 206, 210, 216, 220, 231, 232, 246, 247, 257 (twice), 258, 258–259, 260, 268, 274, 275, 277, 278, 296 (twice), 312, 314, 315, 318, 323, 333, 336, 340, 341, 353, 354, 358, 360, 374 (twice), 381, 398–399.
fig. 15 p. 21 “Greek stone inscription in boustrephedon, c.500 BCE.”
[This is a terrific image that is unfortunately too small. It is not easy to see the alternating directions of the boustrephedon writing. The caption should include a definition of boustrephedon that would encourage the reader to scrutinize the image or an enlarged detail of the image could have been included. (The term is explained on p. 22 in the text.)]
figs. 22. p. 25 “Greek lapidary lettering (originally read boustrephedon), Latin text, fifth century BCE.” and 23, p. 25 “Roman lapidary lettering, second century BCE.”
[The images are from Die Schriftetwicklung (The Development of Writing / Le développement de l’écriture) by Hans Ed. Meyer (Zurich: Graphis Press, 1959), p. 9, figs. 1 & 2. (Meier, the designer of Syntax, changed the spelling of his name in later years.) It does not say so in the book or in subsequent editions but all of the examples were written out or drawn by Meier based on historical examples. His specific sources are not credited. If Jubert wants to use Meier’s examples because they are crisp and clear she needs to at least alert the reader to the fact that they are second-hand sources, no matter how accomplished and accurate. (I am unclear as to why she labels fig. 22 a “Latin text” when it is Greek lettering. Meier took his Roman sans serif from the Sarcophagus of Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus, 298 BC (originally in Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinae, 1912, plate 4) but also found in Lettering: Modes of Writing in Western Europe from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century by Hermann Degering (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929), plate 5. The Greek boustrephedon appears to come from plate 1 in Degering which he describes as the Lapis Niger from the Forum, Rome, 5th c. BC (and which he took from Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I, 2, 1st ed,, 2, p. 368). (This may explain the Latin text reference.) Meier took liberties with the Degering image! Other Meier artwork derives from Degering.]
figs. 29 and 30, p. 27 “Page from the Winchester Bible, Great Britain, twelfth century.” and “Ugo Cappellarii (scribe), medical texts, Paris, c.1280.”
[Why are these specific manuscripts chosen? The captions tell us only this and the main text makes no reference to them. We are not even told what scripts they are written in.]
fig. 31, p. 27 “Monocondylic script (‘without lifting pen from paper’) in red ink. Arithmetical Treatises, Byzantium, 1350–1375. 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.6 x 14.2 cm).”
[There is no point in showing this manuscript page other than to impress us with the unfamiliar word and the tour de force writing. The manuscript is not mentioned in the main text and the concept of monocondylic writing is also ignored. What does the text actually say? Images, no matter how beautiful or fascinating, remain useless if they are not discussed; they are mute decorations.]
fig. 32, p. 27 “Book of Isaiah with Glosses, France, first quarter of the thirteenth century. Two levels of commentary are organized around the main text, an ordinary explanatory gloss (written in the spaces between the line or in an external column), and a gloss on the gloss.”
[This is one of the lengthier captions in Jubert. It is quite good and easily the best image on p. 27. But Parisian glossed Bibles are not discussed in the main text. They are worthy of extended commentary and, especially, of having more than one spread shown. The one from Assisi that I show my students (dated 1291 and made in Paris) has a constantly shifting three-column format that is more sophisticated than anything done in print prior to the advent of digital page layout programs. This can only be appreciated by seeing a minimum of three spreads.]
fig. 33, p. 28 “Latin palimpsest: uncial (among the first Roman uncials on parchment), De re publica, end of the fourth century, obscured by a text of the eighth.”
[This is a wonderful image but the caption does not do it justice. (And once again it is not discussed in the main text.) The concept of a palimpsest—a manuscript whose text has been scraped away and then written over—is not explained and the reference to “the first Roman uncials on parchment” is unclear. The image shows two styles of writing at two sizes, but both are “uncials”. The larger writing is in the background and is a Roman or Latin uncial. But the smaller writing is also an uncial, though not as well formed. The original writing is apparently a text by Cicero, but what is the overwriting? According to www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Palimpsest) the covering writing is St. Augustine on the Psalms, written in the 7th c. not the 8th c. The manuscript is in the Vatican Library (Vat. lat. 5757). The fact that a pagan text was overwritten by a religious text by one of the Church fathers is significant and makes this image more than just an example of uncials or a palimpsest. The Palimpsest of Cicero’s De Re Publica by Albert William Van Buren (1907) has more information on this manuscript and is available at Google Books.
fig. 34, p. 28 “Progressive development from capitals to minuscule.”
[The image shows a line of D’s, a line of E’s and a line of G’s. Unfortunately, none of the stages—Roman Imperial Capitals (Capitalis Monumentalis), rustica, uncials, Carolingian minuscules, etc.— in the progression or evolution from capital to minuscule is identified.]
fig. 35, p. 28 “Italian and Merovingian scripts from the early Middle Ages. Dating, top to bottom, from: 504, 876, seventh century, eighth century.”
[Merovingian scripts are not discussed in the text. This image is just window-dressing.]
fig. 36, p. 29 “Unfinished page from The Book of Kells showing the order in which the pigments were applied, c.800 (f. 30v).”
[This is a good choice of pages from this famous manuscript. But the order in which the pigments—the number is not indicated—were applied is not clear from looking at the page.]
fig. 40, p. 30 “Carolingian minuscule, France and Germany. Dating, top to bottom, from: c. 800, beginning of the ninth century, eighth century, c.993.”
[What purpose is served by showing four examples of Carolingian minuscule, especially not in chronological order?]
fig. 41, p. 30 “Carolingian script, Prüm Gospels, manuscript written at Tours, ninth century.”
p. 30 “To implement the ‘unification’ of script, Charlemagne had summoned a scholar monk from England, Alcuin of York. In all probability, it was he who was charged with developing and disseminating a specific style of writing already employed in certain scriptoria. The measure consisted in halting the fragmentation of European script types, some of which, at least to our eyes, border on the illegible, and replacing them with a newly instituted, model form.”
[This paragraph talks around the topic. It should mention the scriptorium at Tours (which was responsible for the manuscript in fig. 41), the illegible European scripts (eg. Merovingian as in fig. 35), and the development of a hierarchy of scripts. The latter is not fully shown in fig. 41 which lacks examples of square capitals and rustic to go with the uncials and Carolingian minuscule. There are other images that would have been more instructive.]
fig. 42, p. 31 “Page from a Carolingian manuscript, ninth century.”
[This is not a page from a 9th c. Carolingian manuscript. It is a copy, probably made in the 19th c.]
fig. 43, p. 32 “Specimen of a florid Gothic capital (the origin of the ‘grotesque initial’), 1490.”
[The letters shown here are typical of 15th c. French and Flemish manuscripts. They decorative capitals are called cadels. “Grotesque initials” is a vague term as it means many things in art history and manuscript studies beyond letters such as these.]
fig. 44, p. 32 “Mayence” should be “Mainz“ since this is an English translation and not the original French text.
fig. 45, p. 32 “Traditional Bastard Gothic, manuscript taken from a book belonging to Emperor Maximilian I, c. 1467.”
[The term “bastard gothic” seems to be taken from The Coming of the Book by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin (1957) and seems equivalent to bâtarde or bastarda, which is not the script shown in the manuscript. The script shown is a French form of textura sometimes called lettre de forme. But the interesting thing about this image is what is unremarked: the top of the page contains the minuscule alphabet in two lines. This is a teaching manuscript (which is amplified by the historiated initial which shows a young girl being taught to read!). The alphabet includes three forms of r, two of s and two of a (neither of which matches the a in the text below).]
fig. 46, p. 32 “Sample of Humanistic script, fifteenth century. The form may be compared to the corresponding type, the Roman. Characteristics of this script include: the relatively flat attack of the curve of the n (generally rounder), the loop of the e, the bowl of the a, and the special shape of the g.”
[This image is taken from the Meyer (Meier) book, p. 35, plate 52. I do not know his source.]
[Discussing the characteristics of this script based on this example is a waste of time since this is not an original example of Humanist bookhand or antiqua. But if it were, then the discussion should go beyond the superficial comments about a, e and g to focus on the presence of entry and exit strokes (with the entry strokes possibly being replaced by beak serifs), the curved form of h that is often confused with b, continuing presence of the long s as well as the short version, the horizontal stroke on e that often overlaps the upper curve and thus became a model for the Venetian Oldstyle e with its characteristic “bump”, the minimal number of ligatures, and so on.’]
fig. 64, p. 38 “Printing press employed for typographical composition using movable type, c. 1500. Hand-press made entirely of wood (including the screw). The engraving has the mark of Josse Bade, bookseller-printer from 1503 to 1535.”
[See Fransz Janson who has written an essay on how incorrect all of these images are in showing actual operation of a press.]
[The caption should also describe the other activities in the image since they provide a fuller picture of the nature of early printing. The man at the far left is the pressman who is pulling the lever of the press. To his right is the man responsible for inking the formes. He is holding two ink daubers. At the right is a third man who is composing text using a composing stick. At his left are a stack of printed sheets.]
[The right side of this image is reused for fig. 77, p. 43 where the compositor is discussed.]
fig. 81, p. 45 “Handwritten religious bill on parchment (authorizing the choriers [corresponding to minor canons] to seek alms), Saint-Flour (France), 1454. It may be the oldest known French illustrated bill.”
[The image should be larger. Then the details of the writing could be seen. The text opens with a cadel initial P and then a form of textura, but the smaller text on the remainder of the lines is hard to make out.]
fig. 84, p. 45 “Peter Schöffer, earliest catalog of nineteen typographic-printed books offered for sale (an advertisement for his own bookshop), Mainz, c. 1470.”
[The image should be larger. The small type looks like a rotunda with the larger last line in textura.]
fig. 87, p. 46 “One of the oldest surviving French royal placards, c. 1550 (regulating the gabelle [salt excise] under Henry II).”
[Although this is a French printed item the large type used is a rotunda (the small type appears to be the expected textura). This should warrant a comment.]
fig. 89, p. 47 “Three types used in Mainz by 1460 (top: as in the Catholicon). Approx. 1/8–3/8 in. (2–4 mm) in height.”
[Why not describe the three types? And why is only the source of one identified?]
p. 48 “The handwritten book survived well into the sixteenth century, thought [sic] it became rarer.”
p. 48 “In a furthe sign of rejuvenation, Fraktur letters became the official form in Germany.”
[This is not adequately explained. Was Fraktur supported by the government, by the church? Who made it an “official” form?]
fig. 91, p. 49 “Giovanbattista Palatino, writing-book, Rome, 1553 (1st ed. 1540). Plate showing the ‘Lettera Mancina’: Cancellaresca typeface, written right to left.“
[The writing is not a “typeface”. A “mancino” in Italian is a left-handed person and this was probably an alphabet showing how a lefthander could write calligraphy with a broad-edged pen by writing in reverse from right to left. It is an odd choice of page from Palatino’s writing book (whose name should be given) to show.]
fig. 94, p. 50 “Roman type by Nicolas Jenson, Venice, 1475.”
[The image should be larger so that the type can be more easily compared to that of Swenheym and Pannartz in fig. 93 above.]
fig. 95, p. 51 “Page from Plutarch’s Lives of Famous Men printed in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, 1478. Roman characters. Illumination by Girolamo da Cremona. Jenson called upon the finest miniaturists when issuing Classical texts. The ornamental letter Q shows the author seated before his desk.”
[This is an excellent illustration, a reminder that the trappings of the manuscript book continued to be applied to printed books for several decades after the introduction of movable type in Europe. The caption describes the illumination but leaves out the bigger picture of the existence of these “painted” books.]
fig. 97, p. 52 “Griffo (Francesco da Bologna), engraving [?] with italic letterforms for Aldus Manutius, Italy, c. 1500.”
[The image is a block of text set in italic type. Where is the engraving?]
fig. 98, p. 52 “Aldus Manutius, text of a page from Pietro Bembo’s [De] Ætna, Venice, 1495.”
p. 52 “Capital letters in particular underwent rationalization. Redrawn along geometric lines in the Renaissance spirit, the letters were to an extent redefined. It was a tendency foreshadowed in the work of Felice Feliciano, epigraphist and a friend of Andrea Mantegna…. In the wake of these far-reaching proposals, many scribes, penmen, and artists in Italy came up with various solutions for the construction of capital letters.”
[The pursuit of geometrically constructed Roman capital letters was a dead end that has been overly emphasized in the 20th century and since. The work of Felice Feliciano, Luca de Pacioli, Damiano da Moylle and others had little if any impact on contemporary Renaissance inscriptions. The major influence was the work of the Paduan calligrapher Bartolomeo Sanvito and the Roman sculptor Andrea Bregno who made letters using pen and brush. See the tomb of Cardinal Ludovico d’Albret (1465), the tomb of Cardinal Niccoló Forteguerri (1473), and the cippus of Stefano Sacchi (1481). See “Towards a New Understanding of the Revival of Roman Capitals and the Achievement of Andrea Bregno” by Starleen K. Meyer and Paul Shaw in Andrea Bregno: Il Senso della Forma nella Cultura Artistica del Rinascimento edited by Claudio Crescentini and Claudio Strinati (Rome: Artout—Maschietto Editore, 2008).]
fig. 101, p. 53 “Construction of Gothic minuscules, beginning of the seventeenth century.”
[Who made these letters?]
p. 53 “In addition and during the same period, the king [Francis I] commissioned a special type from court printer Robert Estienne, who was to cut the famous royal types by Claude Garamond.“
[This sentence is garbled. It implies that Estienne cut the types attributed to Garamond.]
fig. 102, p. 55 “Jean Heynlin (German prior and vice-chancellor of the Sorbonne), lettering exercises, c. 1470. “Probablya model devised while the presses of the Sorbonne were in the process of being set up.”
[Who is being quoted? do these letters resemble those of books printed by the Sorbonne press?]
[The letters do not look like those in fig. 104 “First Roman alphabet by typographers of the Sorbonne employed by the first letterpress printworks to be established in France, Paris, 1470.”]
fig. 109, p. 57 “Letterform of the Garamond ‘r,’ contemporary version by ITC (International Typeface Corporation).”
[ITC Garamond is based on ATF Garamond which, in turn, is based on the types of Jean Jannon, NOT those of Claude Garamond. This r has no connection to Garamond or his types. It would have been better to use the space on the page to enlarge a letter from fig. 110 “Type by Claude Garamond, romain parangon, France, c. 1530–44.” The r, though, is not a good letter for this purpose. Better options would be a, g or R.]
fig. 111, p. 57 “Italic, gros-romain by Claude Garamond.”
[A note should be made about the bâtarde used in the caption to the specimen. Also, the specimen showss the “Lettre Romaine” as well as the “Lettre Italique”.]
fig. 112, p. 58 “Fragment of a page from a work published in 1585 by the Compagnie du Grand Navire (an association of booksellers and printers), France.”
[This is an excellent image but the caption fails to explain why and the main text is equally silent. Jubert devotes her text to a discussion of changes in typefaces in 16th c. France, ignoring the important changes in typography and layout that were occurring in the works issued by Simon de Colines, Robert Estienne, Jean de Tournes, Michel Vascosan and others. In this image we can see the concept of a rudimentary “type family” at work with italics subordinated to romans as well as the a sophisticated mix of initials, capitals, small capitals, lowercase to organize and rank the various components of a complex text. This book has folios, glosses, notes, a running head and probably more—the image is unfortunately cropped. Our modern book—in terms of the typographical elements and page layout—derives from the innovations of the 16th c. Parisian and Lyonese printers.]
fig. 113, p. 59 “Bernard Solomon” should be “Bernard Salomon”
fig. 115, p. 62 “Marks for various qualities of herrings, Hamburg, 1702.”
[The caption would be more useful if each of the marks was explained so that the reader knows which ones refer to spoiled herrings for instance. There is no mention of trade marks in the text and so this and fig. 116 below it (“Pottery manufactory mark, Tervueren, c. 1720.”) seem like orphans amidst discussions of printed ephemera and type designs.]
fig. 118, p. 63 “Flier for a hatter’s, Great Britain, eighteenth century.”
[It should be pointed out that the image is a woodcut.]
p. 64 “In spite of these progressive modifications, the alphabets remain under a single umbrella category, as described in 1723 by Martin Dominique Fertel who ’speaks only about the nineteen usual sizes of a single type which, since it could only be Roman, he does not even name.’”
[This is an awkward sentence. Fertel is not quoted despite the implication that he is. Instead, J. Laliberté is quoted who is citing Fernand Baudin discussing Fertel. Why not go directly to the source, Fertel?]
p. 65 “In the Netherlands, several creators distinguished themselves in the field of letterform design, including the German Johann Michael Fleischmann (1701–1768) and Jacques François Rosart (1714–1774), both engravers for the famous Enschedé en Zonen printing foundry and works.”
[Fleischmann cut punches for Hermanus Uytwerf (1729–1731), on his own (1732–1735), and for the Wetstein family (1736–1743) before he began work for Enschedé (1743–1768). Enschedé allowed him to work for other founders after 1748 and he did work for Van der Putte, Jacob Cambier and others. Rosart was initially an independent punchcutter in Haarlem(1740–1759). He cut punches for Enschedé as a customer not as an employee (1743–1748, 1753–1758). He cut types for Pfeiffer 1748–1752 who set up a foundry in Amsterdam in 1752. In 1759 Rosart moved to Brussels where he established a typefoundry which lasted until 1779. In the intervening centuries the Enschedé foundry has acquired other types by Rosart. (They earlier bought the Uytwerf and Wetstein foundries and thus acquired other Fleischmann types.) See Typefoundries of the Netherlands from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century by Charles Enschedé (1908).]
fig. 123, p. 66 “Caslon type, designed by William Caslon I (1692–1766), Great Britain, 1720s. (Version presented by J. Müller-Brockmann in Grid Systems.)”
[The “Caslon” taken from the Müller-Brockmann book doesn’t match any of the Caslon types shown in Caslon Old Face Roman & Italic issued by H.W. Caslon & Co. Ltd. in 1924, though it is close to the 48 pt size. I suspect that his Caslon came from the Haas Foundry of Munchenstein, Switzerland and was not a true Caslon.]
fig. 124, p. 67 “Baskerville type, designed by John Baskerville (1706–1775), Great Britain, c. 1757. (Version presented by J. Müller-Brockmann in Grid Systems.)”
[This is not original Baskerville type. It is a cut by Monotype (1923). Why show a 20th c. version of an historical typeface? And why take that version not from the foundry or composing machine company’s own specimens but from a book about grid systems by a Swiss modernist designer who rarely, if ever, used either Caslon or Baskerville in his work?]
fig. 141, p. 79 “Didot type, France.”
[This caption is too brief. It could refer to one of many Didot types cut between 1784 and the end of the 19th c. or even early 20th c. versions from the Peignot foundry.]
fig. 142, p. 79 “Form of the Didot ‘r,’ contemporary digital Linotype.”
[Full information on Linotype Didot , designed by Adrian Frutiger (1991) should be provided. But what is the point of showing a contemporary digital Didot letter rather than an original Didot letter by Firmin Didot or one of his descendants.]
p. 79 “The typeface that bears his [Bodoni’s] name represents one of his great contributions to typography.”
[The problem with this statement is that Bodoni cut many typefaces and those that bear his name today (whether metal or digital) often have little connection to them.]
fig. 145, p. 82 “Comparison between Didot and Bodoni: Didot digital Linotype (left), and Bodoni digital version Berthold (right).”
fig. 146, p. 82 “Comparison between two versions of Bodoni: Berthold version (top), and Bauer version (bottom).”
[Why show digital versions of historical typefaces rather than the real thing? Berthold issued two versions of Bodoni in digital form: Berthold Bodoni Antiqua and Berthold Bodoni Old Face. The former is the face being shown.]
p. 85, footnote 28 “Scripsit” should be italicized. “…P. Bain and P. Shaw (eds.), Blackletter. Type and National Identity (New York: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 1998); two works, including an exhibition catalog).”
[This is incorrect. There are two works with the same title, one a monograph from The Cooper Union and Princeton Architectural Press, and the other a catalogue from the American Printing History Association as a double issue of their journal Printing History.]
p. 85, footnote 33 “Wood entered the composition of paper in large quantities in the nineteenth century to compensate for a shortage of rag.”
[The invention of wood pulp paper was a major event in the history of printing and the specifics of its invention should be noted (dates, inventors, country of origin, etc.).]
p. 86, footnote 52 “Gothico-Roman” should be “Gotico-Roman”
p. 87, footnote 91 “American politician, author, and inventor, Benjamin Franklin was very interested in typography. The brother of a printer, he set up his own printing works in Phladelphia in 1730.”
[Franklin always considered himself a printer first and foremost. The epitaph on his gravestone reads, “The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents worn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding) lies here, food for worms. Yet the work itself shall not lost, for it will, as he believed, appear once more In a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by its Author.”]
fig. 157, p. 94 “Roger Fenton, Photograph of London, c. 1850.”
[The image is a photograph of hoardings in London which would be better if larger so that the reader could scrutinize the design and typography of the various broadsides and posters.]
p. 94 “In the nineteenth century, responding to the sudden dearth of worn fabric, it [rag] was mixed with wood chip and soon, around 1880, wood pulp was being used on its own [as paper]….”
[1866 Benjamin Tilghman developed a sulfite chemical process to create wood pulp; the first mill to use the process was built in Sweden in 1874 and by 1880 the process was used in the United States. In 1875 the S.D. Warren mill was the first to use blended wood fibers with rag pulp.]
fig. 163, p. 96 “Jean Andrieu, Désastres de la guerre. Pont d’Argenteuil, photograph registered for copyright in Paris in 1871.”
[The caption should indicate that the war in question was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.]
[This photograph in combination with the engraving based upon it (fig. 164) is an excellent pairing that deserves more discussion in the text or caption; the main text implies that the engraving was done directly from the photograph rather than using the photoengraving process but does not address figs. 163 and 164 directly.]
fig. 165, p. 97 “Linotype machine, Model 8, the United States.”
[The date or dates of the invention of the Model 8 should be noted. It was first shipped in 1911. This is long after the invention of the Linotype by Ottmar Mergenthaler. An earlier model should have been used.]
p. 97 “Linotype (the name is a contraction of the expression ‘line of types’)….”
[“line of types” should be “line o’ type”]
fig. 168, p. 100 “Narrow sans serif, including capital and small letters, manufactured by Schelter & Giesecke (foundry created in 1819 in Leipzig), Germany, c. 1825.”
[The date of c. 1825 had been challenged in recent years by type historians and it is now believed that this German sans serif did not appear before 1840; the design was called a “steinschrift”.]
fig. 171, p. 101 “Tuscan typefaces, nineteenth century. The top two lines show two variants of a typeface characterized by ornamentation of the outlines. The characters of the bottom line widen out to finish in serifs that are both solid and elegant.“
[The caption should explain that one of the defining characteristics of Tuscan faces is their bifurcated or split serifs (with or without a spike in the middle). The last line in the sample is NOT a Tuscan but an Egyptian with concave slab serifs.]
fig. 175, p. 101 “Victorian alphabet, Heather Lightface.”
[The caption should provide a date range for this design and, ideally, the foundry (and punchcutter) responsible for it. Heather Lightface is either an American or British design and probably dates from the 1870s or 1880s. See Attic (1879) by Mackellar, Smiths & Jordan which has similar features. At least the source for the typeface (why is it referred to as an alphabet in the caption?) should be noted.]
p. 102 “From the 1830s to the 1880s, many fancy alphabets carved in wood were created in Europe and probably still more in the United States.”
[The insertion of “probably” indicates that Jubert is unfamiliar with American type design developments in the 19th c., a supposition supported by the fact that her bibliography does not include Rob Roy Kelly’s definitive study of American wood types. Jubert also fails to mention the roles played by Darius Wells and William Leavenworth in making wood type possible. (She also does not include Nicolete Gray‘s important book on 19th c. ornamented typefaces in her bibliography either.)]
p. 103 “From this point of view, nineteenth-century typography as a whole could be said to have both inflected its trajectory towards autonomization and to have reinvigorated the visual potential of its own individuality.”
[This is the entire paragraph.]
p. 104 “For example, in the 1890s, one of the first exercises in type classification was undertaken by Morris Fuller Benton. 14”
[The footnote reference does not provide a source for this statement nor a fuller accounting of Benton’s classification scheme but, instead, simply explains who Benton was: “Morris Fuller Benton ranks among one of the major type designers for the American Type Founders Company (ATF), a company set up in 1892, which embraced a number of American foundries. After 1900, the ATF [sic] occupies [sic] a prominent role in the manufacture and distribution of type. Morris Fuller Benton designed more than two hundred fonts for this foundry, including Franklin Gothic (1905–12; designed 1902) and News Gothic (1908).” There is no mention of Benton’s role at ATF or the importance of his father Linn Boyd Benton who invented the pantographic punchcutting machine and whose foundry Benton & Waldo was one of those that constituted ATF when the merger occurred in 1892. Mac McGrew says that Franklin Gothic was designed in 1902 with additional members of the family being released in 1906, 1910 and 1912. Nothing for 1905. Benton’s birth and death dates are not provided. Many of the footnotes in Jubert are of this nature; that is, they do not provide sources for statements but instead simply elaborate upon an individual or concept mentioned in the sentence. This can be a reasonable use of footnotes but in many cases such as this one, it is aggravating.]
fig. 179, p. 104 the title of the poster “Patés Rivoire et Carret” should be “Patés Alimentaires Rivoire et Carret”
fig. 178, p. 104 the title of the poster “Encre japonaise, Antoine” should be “Encre [J]aponaise, N. Antoine & Fils”
[Meither fig. 178 nor fig. 179 is identified as a lithographic poster only as a “flyposter” and “poster” respectively. There is lettering in the “Encre Japonaise” poster that has some similarities to the Heather Lightface type of fig. 175.]
fig. 180, p. 105 “Journal de Paris, number 343, December 9, 1783. Le Journal de Paris was the first French daily, founded in 1777.”
[Why the “Le”? It is not in the masthead pictured. Or is this a slip-up in the translation from French to English? (Th main text calls it Le Journal de Paris.) More importantly, the caption should have mentioned that the typefaces used in Journal de Paris appear to be from Fournier or one of his competitors copying his styles. And the typography is very bookish in its mix of caps, small caps, italic etc., showing how newspapers had yet to find their own distinct voice—but also showing the limitations of the type palette prior to the 19th c. and the emergence of advertising types. None of this is mentioned in the main text, though Jubert does say of American newspapers that, “For economic reasons, typography remained small and dense.” (There is no illustration of an American “penny press” newspaper.)]
fig. 181, p. 106 “Journal” should either be “Le Petit Journal” or at least “Journal” in italics.
fig. 182, p. 106 “Advertising poster for Le Petit Journal, France, c. 1909.”
[This poster cries out for further discussion as it shows a dirigible (with Le Petit Journal written on its side) hovering over a field as a crowd watches. (The French tricolor is prominent at the right side, above a portrait of Comte Henry de la Vaux.) What is going on? Who is de la Vaux? The main text only discusses the size of the newspaper’s print run.]
p. 107 dates of founding are provided for The Studio, Jugend, La Revue Blanche but not for The Poster, Harper’s or Century Magazine and the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung.
p. 107 “Theodore Low de Vinne” should be “Theodore Low DeVinne”
fig. 185, p. 110 “William Morris, pages from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer….”
[The second (lower) image is too small to adequately see the “Chaucer type, for which Morris was inspired in particular by a Gothic type by Peter Schöffer used in 1462.” Mention should be made that in the first (upper) image the title is not set in the Chaucer type but is lettering drawn by Morris that Edward Burne-Jones cut in wood.]
p. 111 “Rare and costly, editions issued by the Kelmscott Press—like so many medieval manuscripts—could in general only be addressed to a cultivated, bibliophile elite.”
[The comma should be deleted.]
fig. 186, p. 111 “Arthur Mackmurdo, title page for Wren’s City Churches, Great Britain, 1883.”
[This method of attribution involving the country of origin is odd when applied to a book or publication and need not be done this way if the usual bibliographic format of including city and publisher were followed. This title page, which is frequently included in design history books, gives a misleading impression of the design of the entire book. In fact, the remainder of the book is a typically dull late 19th c. publication of the type that appalled Morris and inspired him to start his Kelmscott Press. A sample page of the interior would be a worthwhile contrast to the title page.]
p. 111 “Besides Updike, Goudy, and Rogers, other great names in typography emerged [in the United States], such as William Addison Dwiggins, Bertram Goodhue, and Thomas Maitland Cleland. The majority of these used Morris’s work as their model and thus enshrined his legacy.”
[This is not true of Dwiggins and is only briefly true of Goodhue who was an architect first and foremost]
p. 111 “Like their British counterparts, some American designers began in the commercial field before moving away to reconsider book or type design. Their work formed the basis for a (typo)graphical culture specific to the United States, a practice that hitherto had remained, to a greater or lesser extent under European influence.”
[This last sentence needs further explanation and elaboration; the first sentence is ridiculous: book design and type design are and were commercial activities.]
fig. 198, p. 117 “Paul Signac, Application du cercle chromatique de M. Ch. Henry….”
[The image includes the letters “T-L” prominently. Is this a reference to Henri Toulouse-Lautrec?]
p. 118 “As regards text, it was Chéret himself who determined the overall composition of his posters, though it was unlikely that he actually drew the lettering; that was probably handed over to Madaré.”
[There is no explanation who Madaré is. The index only lists a reference to him on p. 117 but there is none there and thus this must be a typographical error with p. 118 in mind. This information apparently comes from The Posters of Jules Chéret by Lucy Broido (1992), p. xiii. Broido takes her information from Ernest Maindron who wrote about Chéret in 1896 but does not give Madaré’s first name.]
[Les Affiches Illustrées by Ernest Maindron (Paris: H. Launette & Cie, Editeurs, 1886) with 20 chromolithographs by Jules Chéret, p. 141 has the reference to M. Madaré.
books.google.com/books?id=8pMqAAAAYAAJ&dq=Ernest+Maindron&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=1u648Q8dfC&sig=oB_Y95zq9x3x9RTZE4w4K4uPjbs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA141,M1]
p. 117 Jubert cites Maindron but gives the date of his statement regarding Chéret as 1896. Her source is Posters by Bevis Hillier (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1969) rather than Maindron directly. This would suggest that the reference is to Les Affiches Illustrées 1886–1895 by Ernest Maindron (Paris: G. Boudet, 1896), a successor to the previous book. Neither Maindron collection appears in Jubert’s bibliography.]
[The information about M. Madaré is of interest since one thing that sets the posters of Alfons Mucha apart from those of Chéret is his ability to unify lettering and image.]
p. 125 “Van de Velde’s solution [to the brief for a poster for Tropon] was an astonishing visual—a daringly modern project that has gone down in history.”
[This is a sample of the high-school quality of writing (in translation of course) that punctuates the text.]
p. 125 “For the lettering [on the Tropon poster], Van de Velde dared to employ a virtually geometric, sans serif typeface.”
[There is no type used in the poster otherthan the credits in the lower left hand corner. The text of the poster was created by hand.]
p. 126 “Conceived in 1895 to advertise an edible oil, it [Jan Toorop’s poster for Delftsche Slaolie] shows two women, one of whom is preparing a salad; throughout the poster there weaves a curvilinear mesh, creating an enveloping atmosphere (a style reminiscent of American psychedelic posters of the 1960s).”
[This description makes no mention of the fact that the oil is peanut oil which is indicated in the poster by a decorative pattern of peanuts to the left of the NOF logo (and above the seated woman making the salad). The “mesh” in the poster is the stylized hair of the two women. Also not mentioned is that the patterns on the two women’s dresses show the influence of Japanese ukiyo-e prints. [NOF is presumably Nederlands Oliefabrik].]
fig. 222, p. 129 “Thomas Theodor Heine” but pp. 129–130 “Thomas Theodore Heine”
p. 130 “Eckmann-Schrift probably represents one of the very first Art Nouveau typefaces.”
[Karl Klingspor said that it was the first typeface to be named after its designer. It is almost undoubtedly the first Art Nouveau typeface to be released. It preceded Auriol, Arnold Böcklin, Behrensschrift and others by at least a year. Ludwig Petzendorfer’s Schriften Atlas of 1903 is the best contemporary source of Art Nouveau typefaces.]
p. 131 “In the graphics of Koloman Moser and Alfred Roller, for instance, the repetition of motifs and the semigeometrical, semicurvilinear stylization of the lettering are accompanied by sacrifices in terms of legibility that are counterbalanced, however, by an attractively original idiom.”
[The lettering of Moser, Roller and the other members of the Vienna Secession was heavily influenced by the theories of Rudolf von Larisch [1856–1934] as set forth in Beispiele künstlerischer Schrift (1900, 1902, 1906, 1910 and 1926) and Unterricht in ornamentaler Schrift (1905; 11th edition 1934). The former were collections of contemporary lettering from throughout Europe and the United States (among those included were Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Rudolf Koch, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hector Guimard, Otto Eckmann and members of the Secession). He was the lettering advisor to the group [cite book] and emphasized figure/ground relationships as much as legibility and also stressed that letters should reflect the materials with which they are made—ideas that influenced the lettering found in the architectural work of Josef Hoffmann, Moser and Joseph Maria Olbrich. Roller’s lettering as shown in fig. 224, p. 131 “Alfred Roller, poster, Twelfth Exhibition of the Vienna Secession, 1901.” was a major influence on the lettering in San Francisco psychedelic posters of the 1960s. [Since Jubert mentions these in connection with the Toorop poster this connection deserves to be noted here.]]
[The title should be rendered in German and then translated into English: “XII Austellung der Vereinigung Bilden der Künstler Österreichs Secession”]
[Von Larisch is mentioned in passing on p. 197 in connection with Jan Tschichold but neither he nor his work is described, even in a superficial manner. The experimental nature of his work made the transition from organic, flowing letters to more geometric ones easy since it did not involve any change in theory or thinking.]
figs. 225 and 226, p. 131 are both pages from Ver Sacrum, the magazine of the Secession. Both have text set in a roman typeface, a fact that goes unremarked in the captions and in the text. In the late 19th c. blackletter was still commonly used in German-speaking countries, including Austria, and thus the use of an antiqua was a radical step. Eckmannschrift and Behrensschrift were typefaces designed to bridge fraktur and antiqua. The curvilinear, organic nature of much Art Nouveau imagery and lettering was at odds with the angularity of blackletter, posing an aesthetic as well as political problem for German and Austrian artists.
p. 132 “Here [posters by Moser and Roller from 1901 and 1902 respectively as seen in figs. 224 and 227], the lettering may occupy up to half the surface area of the poster, and may even become a graphic element in its own right, an element to lok at rather than to read, to the point of jettisoning legibility in an effort to ensure impact and originality.”
[This is where von Larisch’s theories are important—the goal is not originality but unity and harmony, a gesamtwerk. This can be most readily seen in fig. 227 “Koloman Moser, poster, Thirteenth Exhibition of the Viena Secession, 1902….” in which the circular motif of the letters echoes the circles that form the hairdos of the three women as well as the halo that unites them. The circles are contrasted with the checkerboard pattern that later became a fixture in the Wiener Werkstätte graphics. The letters are pure von Larisch experimentation as the attempt to force their forms into curved shapes leads to an R that looks like an A.]
p. 134 “Integrating text and image to an astonishing degree, the book [Histoire du roi de Bohême et de ses sept châteaux by Charles Nodier with illustrations by Tony Johannot (1830)] also boasts some surprising typography….”
[Jubert spends a paragraph describing the wonders of Nodier’s book but neglects to show any part of it.]
p. 136 “…inspirred by the endeavors of his close colleague Mallarmé, James McNeil Whistler designed asymmetrical layouts for a number of books.”
[Whistler’s The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890), with its glossed layouts, preceded Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés (1897) by a considerable number of years so how is it that the latter is influencing him? [see fig. 231, p. 134 for Whistler and figs. 235–239, p. 137 for Mallarmé. Monet introduced Whistler to Mallarmé in 1888 according to Carl Paul Barbier, Correspondance Mallarme-Whistler (Paris: Nizet, 1964).]
Dimensional information on works is sporadic in Jubert. For instance, there is none for the Priester matches poster by Lucian Bernhard c. 1905 (fig. 245, p. 142) but there is for the Ernemann Cameras poster by Ludwig Hohlwein c. 1912 (fig. 246, p. 143). In this instance the omission is especially critical since the text on p. 142 says, “If it was novel in terms of graphic impact, the German poster [of Bernhard, Hohlwein et al] often seemed to limit itself to modest formats….”
p. 142 “Over time, Ludwig Hohlwein won fame and fortune, and his creations began to serve needs other than product promotion, such as propaganda and ideology.… in the interwar period, his acknowledged talent as a graphic designer led him to accept commissions from the Nazi regime.”
[Hohlwein is discussed on p. 251 and one of his Nazi posters is shown as fig. 462, p. 250. A reference to this later discussion should be inserted into this paragraph.]
fig. 247, p. 143 “Logotypes for AEG (General Electricity Company), Germany, from c. 1896–1914. From top to bottom: Franz Schwecten, c. 1896 (column 1), Peter Behrens, 1908 and 1914 (column 2).”
[There are six AEG logos shown in two columns of three each. Which one is by Schwecten is not entirely clear, though it is presumably the first one in the left-hand column. The third (or bottom) one in the left-hand column is by Peter Behrens as well as all three in the right-hand column. Otto Eckmann’s logo is not shown but is mentioned in the text on p. 143—“A comparison with the logo designed by Otto Eckmann for AEG in 1900 (in an Art Nouveau vein) demonstrates that a new industrial design vocabulary was in the offing, showing Behrens moving away from Art Nouveau and towards functionalism.” (There is much more that can be said about these AEG logos: how the first two in the left-hand column are typical of 19th c. logotypes; how three of those by Behrens use experimental letterforms of his that eventually became typefaces, and how the logo with the hexagons was made to suggest a honeycomb and thus the industriousness of bees, a common logo motif in the past.) AEG should be explained as Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft not “General Electricity Company” which is a translation of the German name.]
p. 145 “As we have seen, the breathtaking creative drive that gripped Paris for twenty or more years was extinguished after 190 it appears that few poster artists managed to take up the flame of their illustrious predecessors from the turn of the century until the 1920s, at which point a new generation of great artists entered the scene.”
[“190” should presumably be “1900”. There is probably some punctuation missing also as this is a very awkward sentence.]
fig. 254, p. 146 “Akzidenz-Grotesk, Berthold types [sic] catalog, Berlin, 1988. Alternatives: light, plain, demi-bold, bold, extra-bold; dating respectively to 1902, 1898, 1909, 1909, and 1968.”
[Why show samples from a 1988 specimen of phototype for a typeface (or group of typefaces) that was originally made in metal?]
fig. 253, p. 146 “Clarendon type. The first typeface of this kind was designed by Robert Besley and cut by Benjamin Fox in about 1844–45 within the ambit of the Fann Street Foundry, London.”
[This caption is written so as to sidestep the fact that the image is not Besley’s Clarendon but a 20th c. version. It would be better to show Besley’s original design. The discussion of the typeface in the text makes no mention that it was designed for use in newspapers.]
fig. 256, p. 147 “Series of variations on Cheltenham, c. 1918.”
[The date is misleading. It apparently refers to the date of the specimen book or source from which the image has been taken not to the date of the design of the typefaces. The source should have been listed. But ideally, each version of Cheltenham should have been identified and the date of its release provided.]
p. 147 “One of the more representative alphabets bearing the stamp of this new vogue [for sans serifs], Akzidenz Grotesk, made its appearance in the collections of the German foundry Berthold, in 1898…. Akzidenz Grotesk was taken up in the United States and in Great Britain, where it was renamed ‘Standard.’”
[Standard was not imported into the United States until the mid-1950s. Akzidenz Grotesk Light was originally Royal Grotesk, issued by the foundry of Ferdinand Theinhardt in 1880.]
p. 147 “…Akzidenz Grotesk went on to inspire, in a more or less direct fashion, the creation of many alphabets, such as Franklin Gothic….”
[There is no evidence that Benton derived Franklin Gothic from Akzidenz Grotesk. English grotesques from Stevens Shanks or Stephenson, Blake or American gothics by the foundries that merged to create American Type Founders are more likely to have provided inspiration.]
p. 147 “…Rudolf Koch’s output is particularly impressive, as his [type design] work covered covered Gothic [blackletter], calligraphy-inspired letterforms, sans serif alphabets (Neuland and Kabel, in 1923 and 1927 respectively), and even fancy geometric sans serifs (Zeppelin, 1929).”
[Zeppelin, as well as Prisma, is a decorative variation of Kabel. None of Koch’s typefaces are illustrated in the book.]
p. 147 “The 1890s saw the rise of Bruce Rogers, a figure who is considered to be one of the very first independent typographer-type designers.”
[This is the only sentence referring to Bruce Rogers in the book. It says very little and what little it says is ambiguous. Rogers was a pioneer as a typographer, that is, someone who was not a printer or compositor but who determined the typographic appearance of books. He did this for the Riverside Press, the printing plant of Houghton Mifflin Co., from 1896 to 1911. Although Rogers designed a few typefaces it was not his principal activity and thus he cannot be considered a pioneering independent type designer. That honor belongs to Frederic W. Goudy.]
fig. 259, p. 148 “Factory making wooden type, Lucerne, Switzerland (undated document, c. 1900?).”
[The document indicates that it was from Roman Scherer of Lucerne. This is the only sample of wood type in the entire book! There is no mention of Darius Wells, William Leavenworth, William Page or any of the pionerring American wood type manufacturers.]
p. 148 “Theodore Low de Vinne” should be “Theodore Low DeVinne”
p. 148 “This sans serif type [Franklin Gothic], available in numerous variants, is still widely available today. These creations [Franklin Gothic and its variants?] offer confirmation of the noteworthy expansion of the sans serifs group, with the ATF catalog featuring some fifty models by the beginning of the century.”
[The date of the ATF catalogue is not indicated (major ones were issued in 1896, 1906, 1912 and 1923), making it difficult to tell which sans serifs Jubert is referring to. But if ATF had over 50 versions before 1900, then it seems likely that they served as the models for Franklin Gothic rather than Akzidenz Grotesk as indicated on the prior page!]
footnote 8, p. 150 “First employed in Great Britain to print the Times newspaper in 1814, the steam press allows a run of some eight hundred to one thousand sheets an hour….”
[The verb tense should be “allowed”.]
footnote 11, p. 150 “It seems commonly held that characters with slab (rectangular) serifs were baptized ‘Egyptian’ because of the passion for Egypt that had caught on during Napoleon’s campaigns in the country. It is equally possible that this designation is not unconnected with the arrival of the first collection of Egyptian art in the British Museum in 1834.”
[The most common name for the earliest slab serif typefaces was Antique. It was Robert Thorne (1820) who first used the term Egyptian to describe them, but even after that many typefounders (as well as American wood type manufacturers) continued to use the term Antique. See chapter 11 in Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design by Walter Tracy (Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1986) and American Wood Type 1828–1900 by Rob Roy Kelly (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969. The latest thinking on the origin of the term “Egyptian” is “Why Egyptian” by Walter Tracy (Printing History 31–32 vol. 16, nos. 1 & 2, 1994).]
footnote 22, p. 150 “Cited in DGraphic Design Sourcebook (Little, Brown, 1987).”
[The title shoud be “Graphic Design Sourcebook”.]
footnote 27, p. 150 “…Owen Jones and Charles Knight numbered among the best British printers.”
[Owen Jones was an architect, decorative artist, author and educator but not a printer. Charles Knight & Co. was a 19th c. London publisher.]
footnote 34, p. 150 “Hermann Muthesius founded the German Werkbund in 1907.”
[It should be the “Deutsche Werkbund” or, if the English translation is insisted upon, “German Work Federation”.]
Typographical errors are few in Typography and Graphic Design, though there are numerous awkward phrasings. The latter are probably due to the translation from French to English. More serious are the inconsistencies of style.
The writing veers from the high-schoolish—as cited earlier—to the academically nerdy (e.g., the constant use of Latin phrases such as a fortiori and inter alia). But a bigger problem is that there are numerous sentences that are unclear (with too many points tacked together) or empty (with no point to make at all).
There are also no keys to the images in the text and not enough references or parallels to them, while there are discussions that are not illustrated and illustrations that are not discussed. Sometimes the disconnect between the text and the images on the adjoining pages is often quite jarring.
p. 155 “Picasso, for his part, caused a scandal with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907.”
[This is the entire discussion of Picasso and his groundbreaking painting. It is not illustrated.]
[Joubert often leaves out the first names of artists she mentions, presumably on the assumption that everyone knows who she is talking about. But this is not a good assumption for a book that will be used as a textbook, especially for the English edition. Picasso is not the only instance of this tendency. Also see Rodin in the same paragraph and p. 156 where Kandinsky, Kupka (who?), Delaunay (Sonia or Robert?), Picabia, Larionov, Goncharova, Balla, Mondrian, and Malevich are all trotted out with a list of their paintings (none of which are shown).]
fig. 271, p. 157 “Vojtech Preissig (Czech artist, typographer, and teacher, 1873–1944), typeface eschewing the use of curves, c. 1914.”
[The image is clearly an alphabet, but was it a typeface? The only typeface that Preissig designed was Preissig Antikva (1925).
The image comes from Czech Cubism and the Book by Jindrich Toman (Prague: Kant, 2004); it only exists as an ink rendering and should not be considered a type design (even though P22 also uses this terminology http://www.p22.com/terminal/preissigtype.html). The image is not complete as it is missing the last line of capitals N to Z.]
fig. 273, p. 159 “Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Manifeste du futurisme, part of the front page of Le Figaro, dated February 20, 1909, France.”
[This is a good image to include but why crop it? Show the entire page of the newspaper so that the manifesto can be seen in full context and the contrast between its radical language and conservative appearance appreciated.]
figs. 297, 299 and 300, p. 166 should be larger so that the details of the work of Carlo Carrà (fig. 297), Guillaume Apollinaire (fig. 299) and Marius de Zayas (fig. 300) can be properly seen. Who is de Zayas? He is not mentioned in the text and his name is not well known like that of Apollinaire or even Carrà. The answer is that he was a Mexican-born artist (1880–1961) who began his career as a caricaturist before becoming part of the avant-garde in New York and Paris (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marius_de_Zayas).]
fig. 301, p. 167 “Sonia Delaunay and Blaise Cendrars, La Prose du Transiberien et de la petite Jehanne de France….”
[This image is too small to see the text properly. This work always presents difficulties. Some books show it larger but cropped. The best solution is to show it whole as here with an enlarged detail so that the collaborative work of Delaunay and Cendrars and the interaction between painting and text can be appreciated.]
fig. 308, p. 170 “Johannes Baader, Gutenberggedenkblatt (Homage to Gutenberg), 1920. Collage, 13 3/4 x 18 1/2 in. (35 x 46.5 cm).”
[This is an unfamiliar and fascinating image. There should be more discussion of the image and at least some indication of who Baader was. (He is not mentioned in the text.) The image shows a collage of strips of headings taken from German magazines or newspapers with a photograph of a man (Baader?). The typefaces are almost roman (including some sans serifs). The only blackletter is a German version of Bradley Text (ATF). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Baader
Baader (1875–1955) was an architect, writer and artist associated with the Berlin Dadaists.]
pp. 170–171 discusses Edward Johnston’s Railway Sans but does not show it. “In what was by all accounts a trailblazing move, the calligrapher had come up with a new type, the ‘geometric sans serif”….“ This is not an accurate description of Johnston’s design which owes more to calligraphy and Roman and Renaissance inscriptional letters than to the compass and set-square. Why is Johnston’s typeface part of the discussion of the avant-garde of the 1920s? It may have been visually radical but it sprang from conservative impulses and was not meant to shock.]
fig. 321, p. 176 “B. Chavannaz, national loan poster, Emprunt national, France, 1918.”
[This poster and artist are not mentioned in the text. But the poster seems worthy of some additional commentary for the way in which the image conjures up 19th c. French paintings by Corot, Monet and even Van Gogh. There is a weak suggestion of Impressionism and if one pays close attention there is a military scene in the clouds that contrasts with the domestic farming one in the foreground. It is a much subtler poster than the others that Jubert reproduces from France.]
p. 178 “…and Fred G. Cooper [among a list of WWI poster artists]. This last, also a type designer, based many of his posters around text, although he would also choose powerful images redolent of German posters.”
[Fred G. Cooper never designed a typeface. Jubert may be confusing him with Oswald Cooper, a contemporary of his. None of Fred G. Cooper’s posters is depicted.]
p. 180 “In the immediate postwar period, an entire section of the avant-garde was intent on reconstruction, moving away as much from Futurist extremism as Dada raillery. The burning issue was how to revive the failing environment and improve daily life.”
[“environment” is the wrong word. Perhaps what Jubert meant was “society” or even “the economy”?]
p. 180 “…the Wiener Werkstätte, and the German Werkbund.”
[If it is the Wiener Werkstätte then it should be the Deutsche Werkbund (or Deutscher Werkbund).]
fig. 331, p. 182 “Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, poster for the film The General (Buster Keaton, United States, 1926). Soviet Union, 1929. Chromolithograph, 3 ft. 6 1/2 in. x 2 ft. 6 in. (108 x 71 cm).”
[It should be noted that the Stenberg Brothers did another poster for The General in 1929; see Stenberg Brothers: Constructing a Revolution in Soviet Design byChristopher Mount (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1997), pp. 90–91.]
p. 184 “El Lissitzky busied himself with famous Dlja golosa (For the Voice), a book with origins in a text by Vladmir Mayakovsky, published in 1923 and composed entirely of experimental typefaces.”
[As famous as this book is, it is not illustrated at all in Jubert. There are no experimental typefaces in For the Voice. Mayakovsky’s text is set in an ordinary seriffed Cyrillic typeface of the time and a Cyrillic grotesque is used for the innovative tabs. El Lissitzky’s typographic experimentation occurs in the ‘pictorial” pages where he uses existing typefaces to create “illustrations” for each of Mayakovsky’s poems. Some of the letters are created from type rule, an idea El Lissitzky may have gotten from Wendingen magazine.]
p. 184 “Another major exponent of photomontage, El Lissitzky also left a sizable and multifaceted oeuvre, including in the graphic domain.”
[The last clause is just dangling with no purpose.]
fig. 336, p. 185 “Gustav Klutsis and Salomon Telingater, Soviet Union, 1931. 11 x 8 1/4 in. (28.2 x 21.2 cm).”
[There is no title or description for the image (despite the detailed dimensions). It includes the same poster by Klutsis Fifth Plan for Work (1930) that is in fig. 335 above. Is this a spread from a magazine or brochure or catalogue?]
fig. 337, p. 186 “Karel Teige, frontispiece and title page for the book of poetry, S lodi, jez dovázi caj a k.”
[The lack of birth/death dates continues on p. 200 with the many Bauhauslers; there is no excuse for this since this information is in many publications—and Jubert made a big deal about dates in her introduction. Gropius, Kandinsky, Itten, Klee; on pp. 201–202 Moholy Nagy, Bayer and Schmidt have birth dates only. Here is the missing information: Bayer (1900–1985), Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), Gropius (1883–1969), Klee (1879–1940), Kandinsky (1866–1944), Itten (1888–1967)—and we can add Albers (1888–1976), Breuer (1902–1981), Schmidt (1893-1948) and Mies van der Rohe [listed p. 203 without info] 1886–1969. One thing that birth and death dates do is to give the reader an idea of which individuals belonged to which generations (eg. Bayer and Tschichold and Schmidt; but Itten, Bernhard and Albers).]
fig. 376, p. 202 “Herbert Bayer, project for a kiosk selling and advertising ‘P’ cigarettes (illuminated sign with a smoking cigarette), 1924. 25 x 14 in. (64 x 36 cm).”
[Did this project influence Fortunato Depero’s better known design for a publisher’s pavilion in 1927 (see figs. 284, 285)? What about the fact that it anticipated in a way the spectaculars of Douglas Leigh in Times Square in the 1930s? Also see fig. 393, p. 211, a neon sign by Walter Dexel for a hotel 1925 that uses a giant H.]
fig. 380, p. 203 “Joost Schmidt, promotional document for Bauhaus wallpapers, c. 1930.”
[This image is not a printed piece but a maquette (notice the roughness of the handlettered text “bauhaustapeten”). See p. 146, fig. 165 in Das A und O des Bauhauses (1995) which gives the date as 1931 and the design as a maquette or mock-up for a cover.]
p. 203 “Joost Schmidt (born in 1893) succeeded Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus. In the meantime, the workshop had been renamed the ‘advertising studio’ (Walter Peterhans was to direct the photography section from 1929). Another alumnus, Joost Schmidt, designed one of the posters for the famous Bauhaus exhibition at Weimar in 1923.”
[The last sentence should be rewritten as “Schmidt, another Bauhaus alumnus, designed one of the posters….”. As it is it could be misread as that there were either two Joost Schmidts or the author made a mistake and repeated Schmidt’s name when it should have been that of another Bauhaus alumnus.]
p. 206 the members of the Ring Neuer Werbegestalter (Trump, Robert Michel, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Hans Lestikow, Werner Gräff) are not given birth/death dates [I am leaving out those members who are mentioned earlier by Jubert; see my notes above. Here are is the missing information: Trump (1896–1985), Vordemberge-Gildewart (1899–1962), Michel (1896–1957), and Gräff (1901–1978). I was unable to find birth and death dates for Lestikow.
fig. 388, p. 208 “Kurt Schwitters, Käte Steinitz, Theo Van Doesburg, inside page of Die Scheuche Märchen, Merz, no. 14/15, 1925.”
[Jubert does not explain who Kate Steinitz [the English spelling] was and what her contribution to this celebrated book was (to be fair, Meggs and others also skip over her). The book is not discussed in the text at all. See www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/kate-steinitz/ for information on Kate Steinitz (1889–1975) but not on Die Scheuche Märchen. Also see Steinitz, Kate: Kurt Schwitters, Erinnerungen aus den Jahren 1918-1930. Zürich 1987. www.rbpathways.com/steinitz/San%20Bernadino/essays/Children's%20books/childrensbook1.htm says “Steinitz attributes the idea for Scheuche to van Doesburg, but the finished product is obviously the result of close collaboration of all three artists and a very cooperative typesetter, Paul Vogt.”
http://www.eprarebooks.com/cgi-bin/phillips/86 says that Steinitz contributed 18 drawings to the book.]
p. 210 repeats the earlier laundry lists of Domela, Leistikow, Trump, Baumeister, Dexel among others but still without specifiying the work they did or showing any of it!
“Experiments in graphic design and typography were undertaken in Berlin (Domela, Bayer), Frankfurt (Leistikow, Renner), Leipzig (Tschichold), Munich (Tschichold, Trump, Renner), Stuttgart (Baumeister), Hanover (Schwitters and, sporadically, El Lissitzky), Bochum (Burchartz, Canis), Essen, Jena (Dexel), and in schools at Dessau (Moholy-Nagy, Albers, Bayer, Schmidt), Magdeburg (Dexel, Molzahn), and Breslau./Wroclaw (Molzahn).”
[Molzahn is Johannes Molzahn (1892–1965) http://www.germanexpressionism.com/printgallery/molzahn/. Paul Renner (1878–1956) was the designer of Futura (which is discussed p. 212 and shown). In the following paragraph Jubert does discuss Burchartz and Canis and Dexel (his work is shown in fig. 393, p. 211).]
p. 211 “Each of these projects (the Isotype [of Otto Neurath], public signage, the ‘diagrammatic’ map [of Henry Beck for the London Underground]) stems from visual solutions to which the New Typography and contemporary events brought concrete and innovative elements.”
[This is a stretch, especially in the case of Beck’s map for the London Underground which had no connection, direct or indirect to the efforts and theories of the New Typography in Germany. The question of “public signage” is unclear since Jubert does not discuss it in her text and only shows three disconnected examples of enamel signs (figs. 360, 391 and 394) along with the Bayer cigarette company proposal (fig. 376) and the Dexel neon hotel sign (fig. 393). None of the enamel signs is an example of the New Typography at work.]
[http://www.drleslie.com/Timeline/Timelines.html says that Dexel “designs first illuminated exterior advertising in Germany” but does not say who the client was or where it was and no picture is included. But it is unlikely that it was an example of the New Typography given the early date. Jubert does not show the Beck map until p. 235 where it can be seen in three stages in figs. 442, 443, and 444; it is discussed p. 233. (This is another instance where some keys in the text would help the reader.)]
p. 211 “Theo Van Doesburg developed a typeface in keeping with the aesthetics of De Stijl, composed of capital letters inscribed within a square format (with the exception of the ‘I’).“
[Van Doesburg’s design was an alphabet not a typeface (at least not until The Foundry released it in digital form in the early 1990s).]
p. 212 “Only a handful of the experimental typefaces from the period (such as Futura, Kabel, and Erbar) were ever actually manufactured and widely distributed.”
[Jubert does not understand the difference between an alphabet design and a typeface. The experiments of Bayer, Albers, Schwitters, et al that she discusses on pp. 211 and 212 (and elsewhere in this chapter) were never typeface designs. While the only one of these three typefaces that could reasonably be called experimental was Futura (though Heinrich Jost made sure the experimental part of Renner’s design was scrapped). Very few typefaces in the metal era can be said to be experimental in the true scientific sense of the word. Albers’ alphabet could be said to be a typeface since it was intended for manufacture by a glassmaking firm (see fig. 401, p. 213).]
[One indication of the conservative nature of Renner is his inclusion of f ligatures, old style figures, and the Carolingian forms of a and g in his early drafts of Futura. They are the mark of a book designer.]
p. 212 “Kabel presents geometrizing letterforms (as the designs for ‘b’ and ‘g’ betray) that, just like Futura and Erbar, possess rather long ascenders.”
[The long ascenders show the influence of calligraphy and book design on all three designers; calligraphy is also evident in Kabel in its angled or sheared terminals. Jubert shows Futura and Erbar but not Kabel. Instead she shows the 1908 Block from Berthold!]
fig. 401, p. 213 “Block face issued by the Berthold type-foundry [sic], Germany, 1908. Page presenting the typeface from the catalog Berthold Types, 1985 (Berlin).”
[The inclusion of Block in this chapter is not explained as the text makes no mention of it. The face belongs to a different typographic era, that of the post-Morris years in which Kelmscott typography led to an interest in “rugged” lettering and types, both seriffed and sans serif. For examples, see the work of Peter Behrens for AEG, the lettering by Lucian Bernhard on his pre-World War I posters, the lettering of Oswald Cooper and Fred G. Cooper, several of the typefaces of Frederic W. Goudy, and Lo-Type by Louis Oppenheim (1914). It has nothing to do with the New Typography or the geometric sans serif typefaces that emerged at the end of the 1920s. H. [Heinz?] Hoffmann designed Block. A similar face called Hermes was issued by Schriftguss and by William Wollmer. Finally, a sample from a 1985 phototype catalog should not be used to illustrate a metal typeface!]
p. 213 “He [Tschichold], too, had fallen prey to the prevalent taste for geometric figures.”
[Jubert is referring to Tschichold’s experimental alphabet shown in fig. 368, p. 198). What she is leaving out of her discussion is the subtle calligraphic aspects of the design: the lightness of weight which avoids certain problems that Bayer encountered in his Universal alphabet; and how the cursive form of e, the mix of capitals and minuscules and uncials (d) show Tschichold’s calligraphic knowledge which set him apart from everyone else, except Renner, trying new alphabets in the 1920s.]
p. 214 “The considerable uptake of photography and montage into the graphic repertoire, combined with the search for optical synthesis and typographical effectiveness, is the key characteristic of visual communication in the interwar period, a tendency highlighted by the emerging concept of graphic design per se. The first known use of this term [graphic design] dates to 1922 in the writings of the American William Addison Dwiggins, yet another multitalented creator.”
[Jubert does not cite the specific publication in which Dwiggins first used the term (it was The Boston Evening Transcript) nor the context in which it appears. This is a common problem. Other textbooks also mention his role without actually quoting him or identifying the situation that he was addressing. (The entire text, however, has been reproduced at the end of The Origins of Graphic Design in America 1870–1920 by Ellen Mazur Thomson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997.) Jubert has wasted an opportunity to discuss what graphic design meant to the practitioners of the 1920s and afterwards. Jubert’s description of the elements that characterize graphic design are not those that Dwiggins is concerned with in his article. He is not concerned with the stylistic or technological elements of an item but with its purpose. He is looking at the production of printed items that do not fall into the old categories of books, magazines or newspapers: ephemera which includes advertising in its direct mode, something which he had considerable experience with. (Jubert does not show any of Dwiggins’ work in her book.)]
[The term “graphic design” was not common until nearly fifty years after Dwiggins coined it. Dwiggins only used the term once in his article and never again in his writings, both public and private. The term appears sporadically in English and American sources before 1950, but it is not until that decade that it begins to slowly catch on and it finally becomes widespread in the 1960s and 1970s!]
fig. 402, p. 215 “Herbert Bayer, press announcement appearing in the American magazine, Vanity Fair, September 1922.”
[The implication of this caption is that Bayer designed this advertisement, but that is highly unlikely since he was only 20 years old at the time and in Germany rather than New York. So, what is the real story of this image which is an advertisement for tires manufactured by the Pennsylvania Rubber Company of America, Inc.?]
p. 215 “In 1922, Herbert Bayer employed photography and montage in a newspaper advertisement for a make of tire that was reproduced in several American reviews….”
[This item does not appear in Bayer’s 1967 survey of his career nor in the book by Arthur Cohen’s 1984 survey of Bayer’s work. Where is it from?]
I am not going to list every instance where Jubert provides lists of names without giving their birth/death dates but others are p. 215 in her discussion of the pioneers of photomontage. eg. Heartfield, Grosz, Hoch, et al; or p. 217 list of French Art Deco poster designers. Elsewhere in the book she does, on occasion, provide birth and death dates when introducing design figures. (E.g., no dates for Erhard Ratdolt but dates for Laurence Sterne, William Caslon and John Baskerville.
p. 215 “(Heartfield, originally Helmut Herzfeld, had, along with George Grosz, originally Georg Gross, anglicized his name in 1916 in reaction to the injustice suffered by Britain during the war.)”
[Georg Groß changed his name to George Grosz “out of a romantic enthusiasm for America[1] that originated in his early reading of the books of James Fenimore Cooper, Bret Harte and Karl May….” (Karl May was a German writer whose best-selling books were often set in the American West.)]
p. 217 “Charles Loupot’s poster for Twining Teas (1930), dominated by a gigantic capital T, is a prime illustration of the evolution of attitudes to the poster, above and beyond the nature of the technique employed.”
[The poster in question is fig. 431, p. 227. The poster and its reference in the main text are separated by ten pages. This is a prime example of why Jubert should have included references in her text to the relevant illustrations in the book.]
fig. 408, p. 218 “Jean Arp, Oscar Dominguez, Marcel Jean, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Cadavre exqus (Exquisite corpse), 1937. Torn printed photographs, pencil on paper folded and unfolded, 24 1/4 x 9 in. (61.6 x 23.6 cm).”
[The concept of the Exquisite Corpse is not explained here or in the text. Lines marking the folds would help enable the reader to see the individual contributions of each artist to this collective work.]
fig. 411, p. 219 “Fernand Léger, rough for the poster advertising the film, La Roue by Abel Gance, 1922. Gouache, 12 x 9 1/2 in. (31 x 24.5 cm).”
[Did Léger do the final poster? What did it look like?]
fig. 414, p. 220 “‘Leonetto Cappiello, sketch for a stock cube, Bouillon Kub. Ink on paper, 9 1/4 x 6 in. (23.5 x 15 cm).”
[This implies that Cappiello’s design is for the bouillon cube itself (or perhaps its packaging or logo) when in fact it is for a poster advertising it. (See fig. 415 for the final design.)]
p. 220 birth dates are provided for Cassandre (1901), Loupot (1892), Carlu (1900) and Colin (1892) but not death dates! Why? the death dates are 1968, 1962, 1997 and 1985, respectively.
p. 221 “In the publishing field, the Art Deco outlook on graphic design was made better known through the publication of Mise en page by Alfred Tolmer, published in 1931.”
[Mise en page was indeed influential, especially in Great Britain and the United States where editions of the book were published by The Studio. At least one if not more sample pages from it should have been included in Jubert. And a brief explanation of who Tolmer was would have been informative. (The book was far more influential than anything written by Tschichold or the Bauhauslers at the time.)]
fig. 416, p. 221 “Classification of typefaces according to Francis Thibaudeau: Elzevir, Didot, Antique, Egyptian. In La Lettre d’imprimerie, 1921.”
[Thibaudeau’s two-volume book is well known in France and was highly influential, but it is barely known in the United States. Jubert does a service with her description of his classification system in the text, but the book has nothing to do with Art Deco (the chapter in which it is placed). In fact, the book is set in the types of George Auriol which are Art Nouveau in origin.]
p. 221 “…usually called the ‘Thibaudeau classification’ amd often heralded as being the first of its kind….”
[How does this square with her comment on p. 104 that Morris Fuller Benton created one of the first type classification schemes?]
figs. 421 and 422, p. 223 “…Dutch lithograph for an electricity company…” and “…Dutch lithograph for a brand of coffee…” should read “…Lithograph for a Dutch electricity company…” and “…Lithograph for a Dutch brand of coffee…{
p. 224 “…and for the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar, for which he [Cassandre] was to design a cover every month from 1937 on.”
[This falsely implies that Cassandre designed covers for Harper’s Bazaar from 1937 until he died in 1968. Cassandre began designing covers for the magazine in 1936 (not 1937) and quit in 1939 because of the Second World War.]
p. 225 “Peignot is an original, even strange, face, whose lowercase borrows more extensively than usual from capital forms, in what is a sort of hybrid of the two categories.”
[The lowercase of Peignot was influenced by uncials. Cassandre was in touch with French paleographers Jean Mallon and Robert Marichal when designing the typeface.]
p. 226 “In the 1910s, he [Charles Loupot] would have witnessed the beginnings of the modern poster in Switzerland, where he had lived for a time.”
This is an odd sentence. Loupot was born in Switzerland and left there for France in 1923.]
[The locution “would have” is the mark of an amateur historian. Write about the past in the past tense and not in the subjunctive.]
fig. 436, p. 231 “Printed wallpaper designed by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, 1925.” and fig. 437, p. 231 “Eileen Gray, ‘Ivory-ebony’ rug, c. 1930.”
Throughout the Typography and Graphic Design Jubert identifies the country in which a design occurs but here she doesn’t. Ruhlmann’s work was done in France and Gray’s in England (or Great Britain as Jubert prefers).]
[There are other instances where Jubert has overlooked or forgotten to include the information about the country of origin. It is another sign of inconsistency in the book’s writing style.]
pp. 232 and 233 have no illustrations yet the text mentions Tom Purvis, Ashley Havinden and E. McKnight Kauffer, none of whose work is included in the book. (Kauffer is mentioned several other times throughout the book!) This spread could also have shown the calligraphy of Edward Johnston which is noted in the text (though not in a manner that explains why he was important and influential).]
p. 232 “Here [Railway Sans], Johnston not only demonstrated his mastery of letter design, but he also added a feel for construction, resulting in an ingenious cross between two approaches (whereas the tendency up until now had been to adhere to one and decry the other).”
[Jubert does not explain what these two approaches are other than to mention geometry. Her reference to “up to now” is ambiguous as “now” in the book is after 1927 and the design of Futura, yet Johnston’s face was designed in 1916. She does not mention the role that calligraphy played in the design of the typeface, preferring to focus instead on geometry.]
p. 233 “Over about thirty years, Pick was to develop for London Transport….”
[Use the past tense! “Over a span of thirty years, Pick developed for London Transport….”]
[This locution is as common in Typography and Graphic Design as the “would” locution; eg. footnote 85, p. 241.]
fig. 440, p. 234 “Edward Johnston. Underground Railway Sans….”
[The image chosen is of the complete font with its bold version. To understand Johnston’s thinking in developing the typeface it would have been better to show the two plates he made with alphabets (one for capitals and one for lowercase) supplemented by alternative and trial letters.]
p. 233 “Henry Beck’s design [London Underground map] proved a pioneering effort in terms of information, cartography, and signing.”
[More should be said about why Beck’s map was and continues to be so influential in graphic design.]
p. 236 “Olivier Simon” should be “Oliver Simon”
fig. 447, p. 237 “Times New Roman typeface… (Version presented by J. Müller-Brockmann in Grid systems.)”
[Why rely on a Swiss book about grid systems for a sample of a metal typeface designed and made in another country?—especially since Grid Systems was published in 1981 and thus is likely to have used a phototype version of Times New Roman (perhaps even Times Roman from Linotype) as its source. A better source would have been a Monotype publication or type specimen.]
footnote 15, p. 240 “Alexei Krutchunykh” should be “Alexei Kruchenykh”
p. 244 “The Germany Communist Party was disbanded….” should be “The German Communist Party was disbanded….”
fig. 450, p. 245 the full text of the poster has not been translated. It is “Que hes tu para evitar esto? Ayuda a Madrid.” (“What are you doing to prevent this? Help Madrid.”)
p. 246 “…from 1933 Paul Renner was suspended (and would be permanently dismissed in 1934) from his post of director of Munich’s Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker (School of German Master Printers)….”
[This is another instance of the use of the subjunctivel “would” when the action occurred in the past and a past tense should be used: “(and was permanently dismissed in 1934)”.]
p. 246 “In Germany itself, John Heartfield elaborated a darkly biting oeuvre and contributed to the illustrations in Kurt Tucholsky’s book, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles (1929), in which Tucholsky delivered a sweeping social criticism of nationalism and militarism.”
[This statement appears in a series of paragraphs devoted to the effects of the Nazi ascension to power in 1933 on artists and graphic designers. However, Tucholsky’s book appeared four years earlier and is not aimed at Nazism or Hitler. Heartfield’s covers for AIZ would have been a better example of his response to Nazism.]
p. 248 “Quitting a totalitarian state, exiled designers did not seem particularly inclined to pursue a politicized oeuvre denouncing the regime in the country they had just abandoned.… As far as typographers went, however, Jan Tschichold (who emigrated to Switzerland after being imprisoned for several weeks and losing his teaching job) openly railed against National-Socialism. ‘The creators of the New Typography an related trends were, like myself, firm enemies of Nazism… as such, I and my wife were long placed in ‘preventive detention,’ that is to say, in prison, at the start of the so-called Third Reich.’”
[This is not railing against National Socialism but explaining its effects on him. The quotation may be open but it is from 1946 when it would have been safe to do so.]
fig. 460, p. 249 “Poster for the 1937 exhibition of Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) in Munich. Text set in Wallau, a typeface designed by Rudolf Koch in the late 1920s.”
[The text is not entirely in Wallau; the central paragraph is in a fraktur.]
fig. 461, p. 249 “View of one room of the 1937 Entartete Kunst show wth works by Klee and Nolde.”
[The lettering on the wall is roman script rather than blackletter.]
fig. 462, p. 250 “Ludwig Hohlwein, poster, L’Allemagne (Germany), Munich, 1935.”
[Mote should be made of why the title of this poster is in French rather than German. One clue is the fact that the lettering is in sans serif capitals rather than blackletter.]
fig. 463, p. 250 “M. Ludwig, Deutscher, für Dich!, 1932–33.”
[A translation of the German would be useful.]
fig. 464, p. 250 “National-Socialist poster, Deutsche! gebt dem System die Antwort! wählt[:] Hitler!, 1932 (?)”
[A translation of the German would be useful. Also, there should be a colon after wählt. The text is lettered in an expressionistic textura with the exception of “Hitler!” which is in upper- and lowercase sans serif.]
[“National-Socialist” and “National-Socialism” are consistently hyphenated in the text even though that is not English style.]
fig. 465, p. 250 “National-Socialist poster, Arbeit und Brot durch den Nationalsozialismus, 1932.”
[A translation of the German would be useful. This poster is lettered in a modernized textura for “Arbeit und Brot” with a condensed sans serif for the remainder of the text.]
fig. 466, p. 250 “National-Socialist poster, Das Volk wählt Liste 1, Nationalsozialisten, 1932.”
[A translation of the German would be useful. This poster is lettered entirely in sans serif capitals.]
fig. 467, p. 250 “Slogans on early Third-Reich [sic] stickers (‘Feel German, Think German, Speak German, Be German even in your choice of script’).”
[There are two images that constitute fig. 467. This is a translation of the second one. The first, which reads, “Deutsche Schrift ist für die Auslandsdeutschen eine unentbehrliche Schutzwehr gegen die drohende Etdeutschung”, should also be noted and translated. Both are set in fraktur.]
p. 252 “…Rudolf Koch’s Deutsche Schrifte…” should be “…Rudolf Koch’s Deutsche Schrift…”
[The typeface is also known as Kochschrift.]
p. 252 “Typefaces were also frequently named after their inventor, such as Herbert Post’s Post Fraktur (1937) and Johannes Schulz’s Johannes Type (1933).”
[This statement is out of place in a paragraph about nationalist influence in type. Typefaces have been named after their progenitors since the late 1800s when foundries began basing new types on the work of artists and designers (e.g. Bradley Text, Eckmannschrift, Auriol and Goudy Oldstyle).]
p. 253 “…Rudolf Koch, also a typographer, calligrapher, and typeface designer associated with 1920s modernism (he designed Kabel and Zeppelin, two sans serif faces with a geometric feel, dating from 1927 and 1929, respectively…”
[Koch was not a modernist despite the fact that he designed Kabel and its variants (which included not only Zeppelin but Prisma). Kabel was a response by his employer, the Klingspor foundry, to the popularity of Futura and Erbar. Its design appears geometric but has many calligraphic elements (the sheared terminals on many letters, the forms of a, e and g, etc.)]
p. 253 “A certain number of new blackletter typefaces were developed simultaneously with the rise of Nazism. Several of them—Wallau (1925–1934) and Peter-Jessen-Schrift (1931), designed by Rudolf Koch—were used to typeset printed documents that conformed to Nazi directives. However, neither [Fritz Hellmut] Ehmcke nor Koch were party members.”
[The implications of these statements is unfair. Wallau and Jessenschrift (1925–1930) were developed in the 1920s and had no connection to the rise of Nazism. Koch had specialized in blackletter typefaces from the moment he began work as a type designer at Klingspor in 1906. Wallau and Jessenschrift were part of that trend, though they actually deviated significantly in that both had roman capitals rather than blackletter ones. Gothic capitals were added to Wallau at the end of Koch’s life (he died in 1934) as it became clear that blackletter faces were being favored by the Nazi regime. It was a marketing decision rather than an aesthetic one. (They were never added to Jessenschrift.) It is true that both faces appear in many Nazi documents but they were not the only blackletter faces used. The Nazis also used Unger Fraktur as well as many anonymous frakturs in the Baroque style. And roman types continued to be used in Germany throughout the 1930s, including Futura (despite the fact that its creator was denied employment).]
p. 253 “forbad” should be “forbade”
p. 253 “In Germany, all creative graphic design dried up, apart from Nazi output in the early 1930s.”
[This is a gross overstatement unless “creative” is defned to mean “avant-garde”. Herbert Bayer continued to work until 1938 and his designs for Nazi exhibition catalogues continued many aspects of 1920s practice as well as the covers of Die neue linie which he art-directed (and which maintained his Universal alphabet-based masthead until its demise). The pages of Gebrauchsgraphik (which continued to be set in Futura) showed designs that were influenced by Art Deco and other non-New Typography forms of modernism and which were set in roman or sans serif lettering.]
p. 254 “Futurism was not only a movement often associated with the start of the (typo)graphic revolution, but it thrived nto the 1920s and 1930s through a number of activities and publications—manifestos, reviews, artworks, exhibitions, and so on—not wholly unrelated to fascism.”
[This is a coy statement. Futurism thrived during these years because its leading figures supported Fascism and carried out works for the regime (see the mosaics at various sites in Rome such as EUR, Foro Italico and the projects designed by Fortunato Depero).]
[p. 256 discusses Futurism and Fascism in a clearer way, though no relevant images are shown by either Marinetti or Depero.]
p. 255 “Over time, Italy’s Fascist imagery lost its specificity, becoming tamer; as World War II approached, it increasingly resembled Nazi design.”
[Where is the proof of this? There are no supporting images or relevant texts in the bibliography. My research into Fascist graphics has not revealed any such change.]
figs. 481 (and 482 the montage for 481), p. 255 “Xanti Schawinsky, Si (Year of XII [1934] of the Fascist Era), poster, 1934. Photomontage.”
[Jubert does not mention the fact that Xanti Schawinsky was trained at the Bauhaus until p. 258.]
fig. 483, p. 255 “L’Italia fascista, a gathering of Italian fascist youth in Verona, 1937.”
[The title should be “VV [Vive] l’Italia fascista” and fascist should be capitalized.]
fig. 484, p. 256 “Poster for a national convention of Fascist students, Rome, May 1929.”
[The title of the poster should be included: “Adunata Nazionale Gruppi Universtari Fascisti” as well as the designer (the signature is A. Marzi).]
p. 257 “Like Olivetti, other Italian firms displayed a desire to exploit the skill of graphic artists, starting in the 1930s…. Also worth mentioning are the Einaudi publishing house, La Rinascente department stores (Albe Steiner, Max Huber), Agfa, Fiat, Pirelli (Erberto Carboni, Ezio Bonini, Pino Tovaglia, Bob Noorda), plus several pharmaceutical companies. These industrial commissions for graphic art were boosted by Italy’s economic recovery of the early 1930s, which relaunched industrial mass production.”
This paragraph is sloppy history and highly misleading. All of the businesses and designers mentioned in the second sentence worked in the 1950s and after, NOT in the 1930s (the Fascist years). This paragraph is sandwiched between a discussion of Fascist graphic design and the 1930s work of Studio Boggeri. (Many of the names associated with the studio that she lists worked for it in the post-World War II years! Saul Steinberg is missing from her list.]
p. 258 “…the publisher Alfieri & Lacroix…”
[The company did printing and typesetting as well (see the posters by Franco Grignani) which appear later in the book.]
[left out of the discussion of Studio Boggeri and Campo Grafico, and Olivetti et al is the fact that they were in industrial/commercial Milano and not in Rome, Venice or Florence or Naples—closer to Switzerland and Germany and France, also farther from Fascist power; avant-garde architects also there]
p. 260 “Among the dozens of graphic artists active in Italy in the 1930s and the following decade, some of whom came from abroad, it is worth mentioning Marcello Nizzoli (born in 1887), Erberto Carboni (1889), Fortunato Depero (1892), Edoardo Persico (1900), Xanti Schawinsky (1904), Bruno Munari (1907), Carlo Dradi (1908), Franco Grignani (1908), Attilio Rossi (1909), Giovanni Pintori (1912), Remo Muratore (1912), and Albe Steiner (1913).”
[Presumably the dates are those of birth, but why not include dates of death since none of these designers is still living? Also, which ones came from abroad? They are not identified. Here is the complete birth and death information on these designers: Giovanni Pintori (1912–1999), Remo Muratore (1912–1983), Albe Steiner (1913–1974), Edoardo Persico (1900–1936), Xanti Schawinsky (1904–1979 [born in Switzerland]), Carlo Dradi (1908–1982), Attilio Rossi (1909–1994), Franco Grignani (1908–1999), Erberto Carboni (1899–1984), Marcello Nizzoli (1887–1969), Fortunato Depero (1892–1960), and Bruno Munari (1907–1998).]
[The section on Italian graphic design ignores the groundbreaking 1932 La Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista (The exhibition of the Fascist Revolution) which celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Fascist revolution. Information on it and other important Fascist exhibitions can be found in Il Fascismo in Mostra by Antonella Russo (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1999). The 1932 exhibition took many visual ideas from exhibitions organized by El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko and applied them to a political movement that was 180° removed from Communism.]
fig. 489, p. 259 “Bruno Munari, Essential tyeface, 1935.” and fig. 490, p. 260 “Guido da Milano, Razionale typeface, Nebiolo foundry, 1935.”
[These two experimental type designs are not discussed in the text nor elaborated upon in the captions. Then, why show them? The Munari design is a startling precursor to Stop by Aldo Novarese (1971) and a continuation of the reductionist thinking behind Bayer’s Universal alphabet et al; while the da Milano design is a continuation of the interest in seeing letters as a kit of parts (eg. Josef Albers). (The da Milano design also bears some resemblance to Alvin Lustig’s 1930s experiments with type material to form ornaments and letters.)]
fig. 494, p. 262 “Anonymous poster supporting five-year plans, 1930. Color lithograph.”
[The image is too small to properly see the text. This poster and the one in fig. 492 show elements of Art Deco mixed in with Socialist Realism (or heroic realism). This is not mentioned in the text. Such a combination also appears in posters in Fascist Italy and among those promoting the Loyalists (defending the Republic and opposing Fascism).]
p. 302 note 10 “Antoine Augerau” should be “Antoine Augereau”
p. 302 note 20 “Some sources vary the name of Hans Schweitzer, one author spelling it Schweitze, another giving him the first name of Franz.”
[The sources should be identified. “Schweitze” is clearly a typographic mistake.]
p. 302 note 23 “Friz Helmut Ehmcke” should be “Fritz Hellmut Ehmcke”
p. 302 note 24 “H.P. Williberg” should be “H.P. Willberg”
p. 302 note 42 “Investment in the printing industry continued throughout the twentieth century, ranging from photocomposition to computer technology.”
[This is an unecessary footnote.]
p. 302 note 49 “In the final decades of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, typographic posters still represented a major part of the oeuvre of Swiss poster artist Niklaus Troxler, some of whose work has been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.”
[This is an irrelevant footnote for a chapter devoted to the 1930s; Troxler was not born until 1947.]
p. 302 note 50 “Bellmer’s” should be “Ballmer’s”
p. 306 “The aftermath of World War II spawned a renaissance in graphic design free from the demands of wartime propaganda….”
[But after the war many were subjected to the demands of Cold War propaganda.]
p. 309 “It was ATypI, for that matter, that official[ly] adopted in 1962 the typeface classification system [now] known as Vox-ATypI….”
[The system when adopted was the Vox system which afterwards became known as the ATypI system.]
fig. 566, p. 310 “Franco Grignani, poster for Alfieri & Lacroix (publisher of art books, based in Milan), 1967–1968.”
[Alfieri & Lacroix also offered printing services as indicated by the title of this poster: “Alfieri & Lacroix tipolitozincografia in Milano” (typesetting, lithography and zinc platemaking services).]
fig. 572, p. 313 “Paul Rand, press release for Westinghouse.”
[This image (of the deconstructed Westinghouse logo) needs some explanation as a “press release”. A date, if known, should be provided.]
p. 313 “Starting in the 1940s, and becoming more pronounced in the 1950s and 1960s, New York grew into a major center of graphic design. It was home to the Art Directors Club of New York, founded in 1920, as well as Raymond Loewy’s design agency. Some of the largest advertising agencie also had their headquarters there….”
[From am American standpoint, New York had surpassed Boston as the leading center of design by the end of World War I; from an international perspective, it had already begun to achieve that role in the 1920s. What made New York so important was not only the presence of the Art Directors Club and the advertising agencies, but also the presence of publishers, record companies, television networks, Wall Street, top corporations, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Type Directors Club, museums (MoMA, the Met, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Frick) and so on. The presence of Raymond Loewy’s agency was not especially important as New York and the metropolitan area was also home to Paul Rand, Bradbury Thompson, Lester Beall, William Golden, Herb Lubalin, Lou Dorfsman, Push Pin, and other leading design figures. The major challenger to New York was Chicago. Despite Jubert’s emphasis on Loewy’s importance, he is not discussed in the text nor is any of his work shown.]
p. 314 “They [magazines] hired distinguished art directors from all generations, namely Alexey Brodovitch, Cipe Pineless [sic], Bradbury Thompson, Lester Beall, Paul Rand, Leo Lionni, Will Burtin, Henry Wolf, George Lois, Allen Hurlburt, Art Kane, George Giusti, Herb Lubalin, Sam Antupit and Otto Storch. Some art directors theorized about the fundamental question of the role of graphics within overall advertising design. Many designers, for that matter, actively worked in the field of advertising and made various types of contributions to it; worth mentioning are Paul Rand, Henry Wolf, Herbert Matter, Herb Lubalin, Saul Bass, Gene Federico, Leo Lionni, Helmut Krone, Robert Brownjohn, and Bob Gage.”
[This is one of the worst examples of Jubert’s mania for lists.]
fig. 579, p. 316 “Saul Bass, That’s Entertainment, Part II.”
[The caption does not explain what the image is (it’s a title sequence) nor does it provide a date for the movie (it was released in 1976). (The image appears to have been taken from a Japanese source since part of the secondary text is visible.)]
fig. 582, p. 318 “Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser, letterforms.”
[The image comprises details of three headline photo-typefaces: the first, Artone, was derived from Chwast’s logo for Artone inks; the second, by Chwast, was called Filmsense; and the fhird, by Glaser, was called Babyfat.]
fig. 583, p. 318 “Frank Zachery” should be “Frank Zachary”
p. 318 [see reference above to p. 316] “A considerable number of art directors emerged in [the 1950s and 1960s] the spheres of advertising and magazines (such a Otto Storch, Henry Wolf, Will Burtin, George Lois, etc.).”
[Will Burtin had already emerged in the 1940s as an art director.]
p. 318 “Reynold Ruffins” should be “Reynolds Ruffin”
p. 320 “…the psychedelic movement of the 1960s with its stunning posters, perhaps most developed on the west coast around San Francisco but equally present in New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Dallas.”
[“west coast” should be “West Coast”]
[Dallas was not a center of psychedelic posters—but Detroit was. In her list of the the leading desgners of such posters Jubert leaves out Bonnie MacLean, even though one of her posters is illustrated as fig. 586. She also ignores Alton Kelley, Stanley Mouse’s partner.]
p. 320 “Upper and Lower Case magazine” should be rendered as “Upper and lower case magazine”
p. 328 “…while Ruder was a student of both Alfred Willimann and Walter Käch.”
p. 331 “Having studied under Ruder and Hofmann, Gerstner was part of the second wave of Swiss typography.”
[Is there a conflict of information here or did Ruder study under all four men?]
p. 331 “At the same time, Hans Eduard Meier got down to designing Syntax—begun in 1955 (and finally completed in 2000)….”
[Meier began work on Syntax in 1955 and it was issued in metal by Stempel in 1968. He redesigned the face as a digital font for Linotype called LT Syntax in 1999. The complete story is detailed in my essay on Syntax in the forthcoming book on the Linotype Platinum Collection.]
p. 331 the paragraphs on “Typographic choices and the design of typefaces” within the discussion of Swiss design of the 1950s and 1960s is deficient. Akzidenz Grotesk is presented as the favorite face of Josef Müller-Brockmann and Univers of Ruder. In fact, Akzidenz Grotesk was the favorite of most of the leading Swiss designers with the notable exception of Ruder and his followers following the introduction of Univers.. However, Gerstner tried to improve it, and created Gerstner Program in the 1960s. In the late 1960s Müller-Brockmann switched to Helvetica as his preferred face. Throughout, Hofmann often used handlettering for the display parts of his posters.
p. 333 “Some of these [Polish] designers worked for the state agency, WAG, which was headed by Josef Mroszczak.”
p. 335 “…Josef Mroszczak—who was art director at the state agency, WAG…”
[This an example of the unecessary repetition that occurs in the book’s chapters on 20th century graphic design.]
fig. 620, p. 336 “Franco Grignani, poster for Alfieri & Lacroix (publisher of art books, based in Milan), Milan, 1962–63….”
[There is no reference to the text of the poster which says, “Alfieri & Lacroix: possente attrezzatura meccanica, estesi reparti di tipografia, litografia, legatoria: nuove ottiche per la riproduzione zincografia: maestranze di grande esperienza, guidate da una direzione moderna e sensibile ai nuovi problemi.”—this is a summary of printing and typesetting capabilities, not of publishing activities. Jubert finally acknowledges this on p. 337.]
p. 336 “Given this context, many designers emerged in Italy in the period extending from the 1940s to the 1960s….”
[Included in the laundry list is Carlo Dradi who was working on Campo Grafico in the 1930s, Giovanni Pintori who began his career with Olivetti (as Jubert mentions several times) in the 1930s; and Erberto Carboni, Grignani (see p. 337!) and Bruno Munari who also began their careers in the 1930s (Jubert shows a Munari design from 1935 in an earlier chapter).]
fig. 631, p. 342 “Raymond Savignac, poster for Het laatste Nieuws, 1948–52… Initially designed for a French evening newspaper that was never published.”
[What was the newspaper that finally did publish the poster? Was it Dutch?]
pp. 344 and 345 “A machine that promised the first industrial use of photosetting ws finalized in 1944 by two French engineers, René Higonnet and Louis Moyroud.… Turning to American industrialists, Higonnet and Moyroud managed to produce a prototype of the machine, called Photon, in 1946. But it was not until 1954, six years after it was invented, that the first photosetting machine…was imported into France….”
[Six years? The time frame should be either 10 years or 8 based on the dates in the paragraph.]
fig. 657, p. 352 “Colin Brignall, Countdown typeface, perhaps the first original drawing for Letraset (adhesive transfer letters), c. 1965.…”
[Frederick Lambert’s Compacta (1963) is usually considered to be the first original Letraset typeface.]
fig. 658, p. 353 “Westwaco Inspirations” should be “Westvaco Inspirations”; also in the text p. 353
p. 353 “Folio, designed by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum, was realized in 1954….”
[Folio was released by Bauer in 1957, the same year that Helvetica and Univers were released.]
p. 354 “Univers would nevertheless be a huge hit, notably in the realm of advertising in both Europe and America.”
[Univers was never a huge hit in American advertising. Initially it was passed over in favor of Franklin Gothic, News Gothic and Trade Gothic and later for Helvetica.]
p. 354 “…several type designers spent much of their careers working with the same typeface publisher [sic]. That was notably the case with Hermann Zapf (who worked with the German firm Linotype)….”
[This is untrue. Zapf worked for Stempel for decades before working for Mergenthaler Linotype in the 1970s. Stempel owned German Linotype so his early designs appeared in Linotype first in that country and then in England and the USA, but the work was done for Stempel prior to its acquisition by Mergenthaler Linotype. In the 1970s Zapf also designed typefaces for Hell, URW and ITC.]
p. 354 “˙He [Zapf] was also the designer of the notorious Zapf Dingbats (1978)….”
[Notorious? I think this is the wrong word. Perhaps Jubert meant “famous”?]
p. 354 “Some of his [Aldo Novarese’s] best known work, Microgramma (1952)….”
[Microgramma was not designed solely by Aldo Novarese but done in collaboration with Alessandro Butti, the senior designer at Nebiolo.]
p. 354 “…Hans Eduard Meier’s Syntax (first sketched in 1955, first released in 1968, and finally definitively completed in 2000)….”
[See my note above on the correct dates of Syntax.]
fig. 664, p. 355 is mislabeled as student work by Adrian Frutiger from 1950–51. The caption refers to fig. 663 (which is correctly labeled but not as detailed). Fig. 664 is a diagram of the original Univers family.]
fig. 667, p. 355 “Max Miedinger, Helvetica typeface designed for Haas, Basel, 1957 (originally called Neue Haas-Grotesk).”
[Eduard Hoffmann deserves co-credit for the design as it was his concept and he art directed Miedinger. The original design was Neue Haas Grotesk issued by Haas. It was given the name Helvetica in 1960 by Stempel when they obtained the right to sell it (and convert it for use on German Linotype).]
p. 363 “Shigeo Fukuda (19332)” should be “Shigeo Fukuda (1932)”
p. 364 “Worldwide, authorities were henceforth paying special attention to signage in public spaces, especially airports and other transportation facilities:…the New York subway in the early 1970s (Massimo Vignelli)….”
[Unimark worked on the signage for the New York City subway in 1966 and again between 1968 and 1970. Vignelli and Bob Noorda led the effort.]
p. 366 note 2 the final quotation mark is reversed
p. 366 note 12 “Cal’Arts” should be “CalArts”
p. 366 note 50 “Now becoming an international standard the names of these families [in the Vox classification system] have official names in French and German.”
[But they do not have official names in English and terms such as “Garaldic”, “Didonic”, “Mechanistic” and “Lineal” are not used. Those who do follow the Vox/ATypI system combine terms such as Garalde and Didone (French spellings) with English terms such as Sans Serifs and Transitional. The impetus behind the Vox system led to the German (DIN) and English (British Standards) versions, but all of these have been seriously challenged and questioned since the early 1990s as the digital explosion of fonts has rendered many of the categories moot.]
p. 374 “Cipe Pineless” should be “Cipe Pineles”
p. 374 Why are no dates of birth given for the list of female graphic design figures?
p. 381 “Cal’Arts” should be “CalArts”
figs. 722 and 723, p. 382 “Pentagram Agency” should be “Pentagram”
p. 382 “…(Widmer having immigrated from Switzerland)…” should be “…(Widmer having emigrated from Switzerland)…”
p. 385 “His [Gert Dumbar’s] studio specialized in graphic design work for institutional and government clients, as well as cultural organizations and industry, garnering a range of commissions to which designers such as Zwart, Kiljan, and Schuitema contributed.”
[Piet Zwart died in 1977 (the year Studio Dumbar was founded), Gerald Kiljan died in 1968, and Paul Schuitema died in 1973—how could they have worked with Dumbar on his commissions?]
p. 386 “west coast” should be “West Coast”
p. 387 “Although [Neville] Brody’s career, right from the start, coincided with a pivotal period corresponding to the swift spread of computer technology, his oeuvre must also be situated in the context of the heritage of British (typo)graphic design. That heritage ranges from Tschichold’s presence in England in the late 1940s to the punk movement of the 1970s, incorporating along the way Herbert Spencer’s work (visual, written, and editorial), Jock Kinneir’s redesign of public signage systems, developments on the educational front by Anthony Froshaug and Michael Twyman, publishing activities (e.g. the magazine Typographica and Studio Vista’s books on graphic design), the founding of agencies such as Henrion Design Associates and Pentagram, the business and industrial world’s growing interest in visual image, the launching of magazines such as i-D and The Face (with page layouts designed to appeal to the youth culture of fashion and music), and the rise of individuals and outfits such as 8vo, Why Not Associates, and Brody himself.”
[This paragraph is typical of much of Part Five. Jubert has prepared a long list of unconnected items that ostensibly provide the context for Brody’s work, but she has not explained how they relate to him (Jan Tschichold? Michael Twyman? Pentagram?). At the same time, she has not discussed those designers, design movements and design objects from the past that DID have a signficant and quite obvious affect on him and his work (e.g. Russian Constructivism). This is writing that substitutes for thinking. It should also be noted that the work that propelled Brody to fame, although looking like much early computer work typographically, was all done with analog tools (i.e. pencil, pen, graph paper, scissors, rubber cement and so on).]
p..393 “In 1985, Milton Glaser (who anticipated the post-war transformations), ….”
[This is from a section discussing graphic design after World War II and especially in the 1970s. Milton Glaser did not begin his design career until the mid-1950s, nearly a decade after World War II ended.]
[Jubert (or her editorial team) do not use quotation marks when quoting long chunks of text; neither do they indent or otherwise set off those paragraphs. This style runs counter to Anglo-American practice. See the quotation from Robert Venturi on p. 393 for instance as an example of the ambiguity and confusion this causes.]
p. 396 “Often presented as the agent of a revolutionary break with the past, in fact the computer contributed to a renaissance of graphic design right from the outset.”
[This is a misuse of the word “renaissance” unless Jubert believes that graphic design was moribund by 1984, something which is not indicated in her text to this point.]
fig. 771, p. 400 “Max Kisman, Fudoni typeface (a cross between Futura and Bodoni), the Netherlands, 1991. (FontShop).”
[Kisman designed the typeface c.1988/1989, but it was not released until later by FontShop. Since a distinction is made in fig. 772 regarding the dates of Bell Centennial by Matthew Carter. it should be made here as well.]
fig. 777, p. 401 “Example of Roman inscription in stone (second century BCE) that inspired Hans Eduard Meier in his design of Lapidar (1995, see 774).”
[This is not a Roman inscription but Meier’s recreation of one. See my notes re: fig. 23 which is identical to fig. 777.]
fig. 778, p. 401 “Neville Brody, Gothic typeface, six variations, 1992. (FontShop)“
[This image is a rearrangement of fig. 741 “Neville Brody, Gothic typeface, Great Britain, 1992. (FontShop)”.]
p. 400 “Despite all the enthusiasm and current approval for (typo)graphic design, the overall trends and interests of the current period continue to remain aloof from any overt acknowledgement of historical precedents.”
[Jubert seems to be unaware of the historicist trend that has been ongoing since at least the early 1980s in graphic design. Designers such as Louise Fili, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Fabian Baron, House Industries, Matthew Carter, Daniel Pelavin, Joe Duffy, Charles Spencer Anderson, Fred Woodward, and Experimental Jetset have all indicated an awareness of history in their work.]
fig. 802, p. 409 “Phil Baines, poster for the first issue of the typography magazine Fuse, Great Britain, 1991. It used the You Can Read Me font to spell out ‘can you & do you want to read me?’”
[The poster was advertising FF You Can Read Me which is why it used the font. Moreover, the title text actually says, “FF can you [& do you want to] read me?”]
fig. 812, p. 413 “Tania Mouraud, Black Continent: ‘Point‘ (playing on the counterforms of the letters of that word), France, 1991….”
[The piece uses the counterforms of the o and n but not of the p, i or t.]
[Part Five is a very unorganized—except by country—list of designers and their works. There are no overarching ideas and no attempt to really figure out who is or was important. It is not history so much as it is documentation.]
Index
p. 420 “Abro” should be “Albro”
p. 420 separate entries for “Blanchard, 96” and “Smeeton, 96” should be the single entry “Smeeton and Blanchard, 96”
p. 423 “Lönberg-Holm, 272, 273” should be “Lönberg-Holm, Knud, 272, 273”
p. 423 “Low de Vinne, Theodore, 107, 148” should be “De Vinne, Theodore Low, 107, 148”
p. 424 “Ringl + pit studio. See Auerbach and Stern” should either be “ringl + pit” or “Ringl + Pit”
p. 424 “Ruffins, Reynold, 318” should be “Ruffin, Reynolds, 318”
p. 425 “Ver sacrum, 131, 131” should be “Ver Sacrum, 131, 131”
Titles of books and magazines are not rendered in a consistent Anglo-American style with either all words capitalized or with only the first word capitalized.
Bibliography
p. 428 the entry for “Hochuli, Jost, Detail in Typography…” is missing a comma after Typography
p. 429 “Berry, John D., ‘William Caslon,’ in u&lc [sic], vol. 25, no. 3, winter 1998”
[The same problem occurs with the entry under Allan Haley.]
p. 431 “Roh Franz and Jan Tschichold (eds), Foto-Auge….” is missing a comma after Roh
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