tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19077011344268498282024-03-13T14:04:03.994-07:00Blue PencilPaul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-78459076297809136952011-04-22T07:47:00.000-07:002011-04-22T07:52:41.945-07:00Ciao!<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yr8D9m0idIk/TbGVxupIDQI/AAAAAAAAAPk/NhE5JvqDjf8/s1600/Ciao.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 211px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yr8D9m0idIk/TbGVxupIDQI/AAAAAAAAAPk/NhE5JvqDjf8/s400/Ciao.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5598420493364890882" /></a><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Frutiger"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ciao means both goodbye and hello in Italian. This is goodbye for Blue Pencil as a standalone blog, but it is hello to Blue Pencil as part of my new website. Click here </span></span><a href="http://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> The website [nicknamed Shaw*] gathers together all of my myriad activities under a single umbrella in a manner that makes clear how they all stem from my deep and abiding love of letters in all of their variegated forms and uses. It is about making letters, designing with them, studying their history, investigating their habitats, and writing about their multitudinous manifestations.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Frutiger; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Frutiger"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I want to thank Greg D’Onofrio and Patricia Belen of Kind Company for their hard work and patience in designing the site and getting it up and running. There is still much more to do. In the coming year the site will deepen in material and broaden in content. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Frutiger; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Frutiger"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Thanks for supporting Blue Pencil in its original incarnation. And I hope to see all of you at Blue Pencil on Shaw*.</span></span></p><div><br /></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-30559483338806791242011-04-14T12:52:00.000-07:002011-04-22T21:50:11.959-07:00Blue Pencil no. 14—Salon Manicure<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Tahoma; color:#0050b1;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:Georgia;">Claire Lambrecht of <i>Salon</i> interviewed me on April 5 about my book Helvetica and the New York City Subway System. It was a very cordial interview. She asked me several questions and then let me ramble, uninterrupted before her next question. The whole interview, which took about an hour, was tape recorded, with my permission, on her end. The published interview appeared online on April 11. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Tahoma; min-height: 16.0pxcolor:#0050b1;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">I have no major complaint about the interview, just a tiny one. My side of the interview as published appears to be accurate. It sounds like what I said. However, her side of the interview is not exactly as I recall it. (I did not tape record the interview on my end.) Ms. Lambrecht and <i>Salon</i> have apparently edited her questions to make them crisper, clearer, more incisive. That is their right and it was what they should do. But I wish I had been accorded the same opportunity. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">Since <i>Salon</i> did not offer me a chance to see the interview before it was published, I am using the bully pulpit of Blue Pencil to give my answers a manicure. I am not changing the gist of what I said or removing any gaffes. I am simply editing my answers to make them smoother and less discursive. I am adding some parenthetical comments to explain comments I made which may be opaque to non-type designers as well as some that are in reference to questions that were asked but do not appear in the <i>Salo</i>n interview. I have also touched up a few of Ms. Lambrecht’s questions to make them clearer.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">This is not meant as an attack on Ms. Lambrecht or <i>Salon</i>, only as a tiny corrective. I fully appreciate her efforts. You can read the original interview at:</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 80, 177); font-family:Tahoma;"><span style="text-decoration: underline; ">http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/04/11/helvetica_interview</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">Claire Lambrecht, <i>Salon</i></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">Loud, complicated, sprawling: The New York City subway is a national landmark as much as it is a transit system. From its 1904 inception, the New York City subway has grown into the largest unified transportation system in the Western Hemisphere -- one that includes more than 423 stations and 660 miles of track. But its breathtaking, and frequently overlooked, collection of signage -- from colorful mosaics to colored circles -- also offers fascinating insight into the popular conception of public transportation and the world in which we live. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">Today, the modern subway is dominated by the Helvetica typeface: A clean, simple, unfussy font became a favorite of municipal planners and corporations in the postwar period. Prior to this redesign, however, the New York subway was a chaotic collection of signs and placards in various typefaces that more closely resembled the world of Dr. Seuss than the modern system we know today. In his new book, <a href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Helvetica-and-the-New-York-City-Subway-System/Paul-Shaw/e/9780262015486/?itm=1&USRI=paul+shaw+helvetica&afsrc=1&lkid=J30387533&pubid=K238614&byo=1"><span style="color:#d20000;">"Helvetica and the New York City Subway System,"</span></a> New School adjunct professor Paul Shaw explains how the efforts of designers -- including iconic graphic designers (and co-founders of the influential Unimark design firm) Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda -- as well as politicians and the public helped engineer that change, and what that overhaul says about urban infrastructure and ourselves.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">Salon spoke with Shaw over the phone to find out Helvetica's revolutionary message, its effect on public transportation and what it tells us about New York City.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>Where did Helvetica come from and why was it developed?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">The typeface was created in a small town outside of Basel [Münchenstein] by one of the oldest typeface companies, Haas, which went back centuries [Haas’che Giesserei, established 1740]. They were not happy that one of the most popular typefaces among Swiss designers [in the 1950s] was a German typeface, Akzidenz Grotesk [from Berthold GmbH]. They wanted a typeface that was going to compete with it. They took Akzidenz Grotesk, studied it, and changed tiny aspects of it; which, when you add it up, created a new design. They didn't have much imagination when it came to the name. They called it Neue Haas Grotesk, which means the “new sans serif from the Haas company.” It wasn't exactly a barnburner in convincing people to get it—it didn’t really catch on among the Swiss designers. [Designers such as Armin Hofmann, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Max Huber and Karl Gerstner continued to use Akzidenz Grotesk while Emil Ruder and his students pledged their allegiance to Univers (Deberny & Peignot, 1957) designed by Adrian Frutiger.]</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>So how did a relatively unpopular typeface become the iconic "Helvetica" that we know today?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">[Neue Haas Grotesk was not unpopular. It simply was not the sensation among Swiss designers that Haas expected.] It The Haas company was partially owned by a German company [D. Stempel AG]. They said, “We like this new design; we want to sell it in Germany and elsewhere.’ Stempel was brilliant and realized that Neue Haas Grotesk was not a good name. They wanted to call it “Helvetia,” the Latin name for Switzerland, but the people at Haas balked at this on the grounds that you can’t name a typeface after a country; that somehow it was insulting to Switzerland. But someone at Stempel had the brains to think, “Let's just add a ‘c.’” Helvetica is not only not a country, but it is easier to say. It was a brilliant solution.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>How did Helvetica become so dominant?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">It’s weird; it was almost an accident. Helvetica became dominant for basically two quirks of fate. It coincided with an interest in Swiss design worldwide in the 1960s. And it happened to get picked up by the right companies—and by the right technology. [Stempel owned German Linotype and thus was able to translate Helvetica to hot metal before its rival, Univers, was. And not only that, but being available in Linotype was better than being available in Monotype (as Univers eventually was) because Linotype dominated the newspaper and advertising markets. And Linotype had affiliated companies in the United States (Mergenthaler Linotype) and the United Kingdom (English Linotype) that could spread it widely.] </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>Why the 1960s?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">The ’60s was the heyday of the idea that corporations needed an identity that could cut across all of their activities: their products, their materials, their services, their delivery systems, and their offices. It was part of the postwar international spread of corporations—especially American ones. They wanted to have a unified appearance.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>What was it about “sans serif” typefaces (those without the tiny strokes at the end of strokes) that was so attractive then?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">Designers were looking for typefaces that appeared objective or neutral; typefaces that didn’t suggest the past or have cultural meaning. There were a number of typefaces that fit the bill at the time, but Helvetica was the one that was available in the widest range of technologies. It was part of the Swiss zeitgeist. And so companies, as soon as it was available, began to make Helvetica their default face. People used to joke that you couldn’t tell one corporation from another because they all had Helvetica for their logos. [This was especially true by the early 1970s of American companies that were Unimark clients. But it was also true of German companies in the early 1980s as Erik Spiekermann has often pointed out.]</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>A lot of people are familiar with the New York City subway system of today. What did the subway look like 50 or 60 years ago? [This question was originally about what the subway system was like during the <i>Mad Men</i> era.]</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">There wasn’t a unified system of signs. You had ceiling signs, institutional signs, mosaic signs, column signs, and then, of course, you had billions of other signs: no smoking, no spitting and so on. All of this piled up. That’s what Don Draper [the protagonist of <i>Mad Men</i>] would have seen. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>What happened in the postwar period that inspired [the] reform [of the New York City subway signage]?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">People began to realize that if New York was going to be a world-class city—the heart of finance, art, publishing, and so on—something had to be done about this embarrassing transportation system. As we all know, it is incredibility effective, but it’s not very pleasant. The system is far better today than when I arrived in New York in the late ’70s; and yet there are days when I go down into it and I just start cringing. All of a sudden you realize that it <i>does</i> stink or that it <i>is</i> dirty—even if it’s far cleaner than it used to be. It’s an old system, one that’s been cobbled together system, which is really the one thing that separates it from every other system in the world.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>Helvetica was developed in 1957 and was first available in New York in 1963 [as matrices from German Linotype which could only be used on American Linotype machines after being modified]. When did it make its way into the subway system?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">It didn’t take over until decades after everybody thought it had. It didn’t become the official typeface until December 1989. Given that the first signage attempt was 1966, and the first manual was 1970, that’s a long time—but it crept in. It showed up before it officially “showed up.” You can tell that MTA still doesn’t fully know what it’s doing. Just last December they renamed ”Jay Street–Borough Hall” as “Jay Street–MetroTech.” I finally went over to see what everything looked like. I was stunned. They used the wrong Helvetica. It’s Helvetica, but it’s not the right one. [It is the wrong weight. This is also true for the new signs at Chambers Street on the IRT line.] It’s the same mistake that they made in the ’80s. They got confused. I can’t believe that that has happened again for an entire new station redesign because they take great pride in maintaining Helvetica as the identity of the system.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>How did Helvetica reflect the ideology of its day?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">Sans serif as a dominant typeface really goes back to the ’20s: to the Bauhaus and other modernist designers who were contemporaries of, but not members of, the Bauhaus. Sans serif was seen by all of these designers as a style of type that didn’t have historical roots. It seemed to be free of the past; to be a type that was contemporary. To them, it was something that was free of past associations and therefore was perfect for what they thought was a new world happening.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">A lot of these designers were left leaning if not all-out communist, and they thought there were going to be revolutions in other countries [following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia]. They saw designers as the new visual people, as “visual engineers”. They wanted type that seemed modern; that fit in with cars, skyscrapers and things like cinema and photography. And thus sans serifs became part of modernism. These designers also saw sans serifs as free from decoration. They wanted letters that were as simple as possible. Sans serifs were stripped-down—it was part of the machine aesthetic of the time. The letters aren’t obscured by unnecessary parts. Sans serifs have been associated with modernism ever since. Even today there’s still a sense that if you want to indicate that you are modern, you use a sans serif letter form. Tech companies love them. Architects love them.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>How does that manifest itself in the New York subway system?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">If this is the typeface of the modern world, especially modern corporations, then it’s also the typeface of modern transportation. It’s amazing how a subway station with a Helvetica sign looks newer than the same station with just mosaics. If you doctored photographs, you could quickly modernize the New York City subway system just by changing the signs.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>What does the story of this typeface tell us about New York City?</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia">What was most surprising about this whole thing was that I thought I was just writing a short article about “Is it Helvetica or is it Standard and why?” [meaning the signage that Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda of Unimark specified in 1966 and again in 1970] and instead I found myself writing about “What happened and why?” and “Why did things go downhill but somehow they’re still working?” “How have things changed and yet they haven’t changed?” And that’s what began to fascinate me: how what Vignelli and Noorda did in ’66 is still with us today, even though neither of them hasn’t been involved since 1970. What we have today is not what they did. We have a different typeface, we have different colors, we have a different system of signs [referring to the abandonment of Noorda’s concept of modularity]. We have all of these things that are different, and yet, when you look at it, there is an essence that is there that they established. It’s survived how many mayors? how many heads of the subway? how many budget crises? It’s even survived graffiti. If you’re asking what symbolizes New York, it’s not Helvetica. It’s how what Vignelli and Noorda did has survived. That’s very New York. It doesn’t matter that everything around them has fallen apart; their system is still here.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia"><b>Note</b>: When I have done interviews for <i>Print </i>and other publications they have been conducted by email rather than telephone. Thus, there has been no need to interpret what someone said. However, I have taken the opportunity to smooth out grammatically and syntactically responses from interviewees. The intent is to achieve an interview that, although not verbatim, is true to the intent of both parties and is as clear as possible to the average reader. This has been done with consent of the interviewee as I always send him/her an advance copy of the edited text for approval before being published or posted. However, interviewees are not allowed to change or delete things which they said have subsequently regretted, only to verify that my edits have not materially changed their answers.</p>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-66469740372044427472011-04-12T23:04:00.000-07:002011-04-22T21:49:56.005-07:00Blue Pencil no. 13—Standard Deviations (exhibition)<div><div><i>Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design</i></div><div>Museum of Modern Art</div><div>Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator and Kate Carmody, Curatorial Assistant</div><div>2011</div><div><br /></div><div>The Museum of Modern Art exhibition showcasing its new digital font acquisitions contains a short glossary of type terms. It is not only inadequate but it is inept. Here are all of the definitions and my comments on some of them.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Bitmap typeface</b> A typeface in which the letterforms are composed of pixels, or “bits,” unlike a vector typeface, in which each letterform is rendered as a single outline.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Cathode ray tube (CRT) </b>Similar to an early television, a CRT monitor renders images in large pixels on a grid.</div><div>[This not entirely true as early CRT machines used scan lines to render images. Cathode ray tubes in typesetting are the same as those found in television sets. The CRT emits a beam of light that is etched on a surface.]</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Character </b>An individual letter, also called a glyph or letterform.</div><div>[This collapses the critical distinction between a letter (or letterform), a character and a glyph. A character can be a letter, but it can also be a figure (numeral), a punctuation mark or a symbol. Glyphs, in typography, are graphical units and as such they encompass and go beyond characters to include writing marks in non-Latin languages.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Descender </b>The part of a letter that reaches down below the baseline of the font, in g, p, and q, for example.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;">[</span>This definition is slack. It not only leaves out <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>j</b></span> and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>y</b></span> but it could include the tail of<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Q</span></b> which descends but is not considered to be a descender. Furthermore, ascender, descender’s more significant counterpart, is not included. </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Font</b> A specific size and style of type within a typeface, for example, Helvetica 10-point italic is a different font than Helvetica 9-point bold. Since the digital revolution, “font” has been used colloquially to mean type family or typeface.</div><div>[This is a very confusing and inaccurate definition. The word has shifted meaning over time. Theodore Low De Vinne, in <i>Plain Printing Types</i> (New York: The Century Co., 1899) defines a font of type as “a complete collection, with a proper apportionment to each character, of the mated types required for an ordinary text.” (p. 165) This is a reminder that in metal type you need more than one of each character to compose a text. A font is thus like a Scrabble set with a differing frequencies of characters depending on language (see p. 167). As De Vinne says, “The type-founder tries to supply each character in proportion to its frequency of use, so that the printer shall have enough of every and not too much of any character.” (p. 165) A scheme or bill of type varies not only from country to country but also between metal and wood. But it does not normally vary by point size. </div><div><br /></div><div>De Vinne shows (p. 166) one scheme of type in which there are 226 characters: A and a (5 each), B and b (3 each), C and c (4 each), D and d (4 each), E and e (6 each), F and f (3 each), G and g (3 each), H and h (4 each), I and i (5 each), J (3) and j (2), K and k (2 each), L (6) and l (5), M and m (4 each), N and n (5 each), O and o (5 each), P and p (3 each), Q and q (2 each), R and r (5 each), S (6) and s (5), T and t (5 each), U and u (4 each), V and v (3 each), W and w (3 each), X and x (2 each), Y and y (3 each), Z and z (2 each), period (4), comma (4), semicolon (2), colon (2), hyphen (1), apostrophe (2), exclamation point (3), dipthongs (1 each but lowercase only), f-ligatures (1 of each: ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl). A font refers not only to the frequency of characters but also the complete set of characters. De Vinne outlines a “so-called complete font” for roman and italic type of 253 characters (p. 169). Along with letters, figures and punctuation there are fractions, money signs, reference marks (e.g. pilcrows or fists), braces, dashes, leaders, space and quadrats, and miscellaneous marks (e.g. @ or the degree mark). </div><div><br /></div><div>In the digital era font does indeed refer to the design of a typeface—but not to a family of typefaces. Instead a family is a collection of related fonts. And font still has nothing to do with point size since digital type is largely size-independent unlike metal type.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Glyph</b> See <i>character</i>.</div><div>[See comment above about the definition of Character.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Joining stroke </b>A line that connects two letters, as in cursive handwriting.</div><div>[In calligraphy usually called a join. Joins can exist in non-cursive hands as well as non-script typefaces. See quaint <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>ct</b></span> and<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b> st</b></span> ligatures as well as the unusual characters in Matthew Carter’s Walker typeface.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Leg</b> The part of the character that extends outward from the stem. For example, a leg is what distinguishes <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>R</b></span> from <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>P</b></span>. </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Letterform</b> See <i>character</i>.</div><div>[See comment above about the definition of Character.]</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Ligature </b>A single character that represents the connection of two letters.</div><div>[Ligatures can consist of more than two letters. This is especially true in textura. Gutenberg’s fount had a number of three-letter ligatures. True ligatures involve overlapping strokes that subliminate the identity of the original letters. This is why <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>ct</b></span> and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>st</b></span> ligatures (and their ilk) are characterized as “quaint”. They are only ligatures by virtue of an extraneous stroke.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Point size </b>The size of a font, based on its x-height. There are 72 points per inch.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;">[</span>Point size is not the “size of a font, based on its x-height” but, in metal type, of the metal body bearing the character. This height was larger than the distance from the bottom of a descender to the top of an ascender. In digital type the measurement is similar, except that now there is no physical object, just a bounding box. Typefaes with the same nominal point size can have wildly divergent visual sizes. This concept should have been illustrated in the glossary. (Furthermore, it is only with Postscript that 72 points equal exactly one inch. In the Didot system, 72 points equals 1.186 inches and in the Anglo-American system—the one that dominated in this country until the advent of the Macintosh computer—it equals .9936 inches.)]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Serif </b>A short line that extends from the top or bottom of a stroke in a letter. It is a symbolic leftover from handwriting.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;">[</span>A short line that extends from the top or bottom of a stroke in a letter,” the first part of the definition of serif, is merely incomplete. But the second part—“It is a symbolic leftover from handwriting.”—is laughable. A serif is a tiny stroke (not necessarily a line) that terminates a principal stroke of a character. Serifs are not confined to letters and they may be found on horizontal and curved strokes as well as on vertical ones. They derive from formal lettering, not handwriting; and, although their functional value has been a matter of debate, they are certainly not symbolic holdovers.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Stem</b> The part of a character that is a vertical line, as in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>F</b></span> or <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>h</b></span>.</div><div>[The stem of a letter is also called a spine.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Strokes</b> The lines from which a letter is formed; a lowercase <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>h</b></span>, for example, is composed of two strokes: a stem and a leg.</div><div>[Why is this plural? Depending on the nature of the lowercase <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>h</b></span>, it can be composed of one, two or even three strokes. A cursive <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>h</b></span> such as that found in roundhand is a single continuous stroke, complete with loop. A constructivist <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>h</b></span> composed entirely of straight lines (so that it resembles a chair in profile) has three strokes. See <i>The Stroke: Theory of writing</i> by Gerrit Noordzij for an extended and influential discussion of the concept of stroke in writing and calligraphy and its relevance to type design. http://www.hyphenpress.co.uk/books/978-0-907259-30-5]</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Swash</b> An exaggerated serif that embellishes a letterform.</div><div>[A swash is not an exaggerated serif. It is an extended stroke that embellishes or decorates a letterform.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Titling face </b>A typeface designed to be used in large sizes for titles or headlines.</div><div>[The traditional definition of a titling face is a typeface consisting solely of capitals, lining figures and punctuation. Its letters are larger than usual because the absence of lowercase letters (specifically descenders) allows the full area of the typeface (literally the face of the metal type body) to be used. Titling typefaces tend to have stunted <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>Q</b></span>s and non-descending <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>J</b></span>s. The name comes from the common use of such large letters on the title pages of books. The concept of a titling face is of little relevance in digital type where size is no longer controlled by the typefounder. The only instance where it still has a bearing is to describe typefaces that do not have full character sets, but instead are limited—such as my Kolo, Donatello and Bermuda—to capitals, lining figures and punctuation. Such typefaces are no longer limited to titles or headlines.]</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Typeface </b>A set of letters in different sizes and styles, united in form and look, that are designed to be used together. Also called a type family or face.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;">[</span>Originally, typeface referred literally to the design of the character on the face of a piece of type metal. From there the term has come to mean the design of a group of related characters (not only letters) “united in form and look” but not comprising “different sizes and styles”. A typeface is not the same as a type family. The latter is a set of related typefaces, most often various weights and widths of a roman and its companion italic. Increasingly, the definition of family has been stretched to include serif, sans serif and mixed serif variants. Getting this term wrong undermines the whole notion that Standard Deviations is about types and families.]</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>Vector typeface</b> A typeface in which each letterform is rendered as a single outline, unlike a bitmap typeface, in which each letterform is composed of a collection of pixels.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span><b>x-height </b>The height of the lowercase x in a typeface, upon which the heights of all other characters are based.</div><div>[This is overly literal and it puts the cart before the horse. The x-height (the z-height in older American books on type) describes the height of the body of a lowercase letter and is only meaningful as a guide to the proportion of the body to the ascender height first, the capital height second and the descender depth third. The height of the x (or the z) is merely a convenience and not what the type designer is really concerned about.]</div></div><div><br /></div><div>I sent the Museum of Modern Art glossary and my comments to James Mosley, former librarian at St. Bride’s Printing Library in London and type historian<i> par excellence</i> (typefoundry.blogspot.com) to get his feedback. Here are some of his views on the terms under consideration here. Note that they do not always agree with mine, indicating how difficult some of these terms are to define, both across specialties such as calligraphy and type design but as well across languages (including British and American English).</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;">"Font" is a curiosity. I instinctively insist that in historical terms it is equivalent to a "casting" of type at one time from one set of matrices, so that another quantity, cast on another occasion, even from the same mats (as we typefounders know them), would be strictly a different "font", to be kept in different cases—and quite wisely, since it might have come from a different mould, and might have a different alignment and set and even a slightly different body.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;">But I keep coming across historical instances, quite old ones, where “font” or “fount” is clearly a synonym for "design", as in our rather loose present-day usage. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;">I am not nearly consistent in my own use of this kind of term. I do find "letterform" a quite useful global term for designs that are common to "type and calligraphy", attempting to make "letterform" an equivalent to the universal German term "Schrift"—but I am not sure if many people understand what I am trying to do. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[I tend to use “letterform” in this manner as well.]</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;">"Ligature" is another fossilized survival from writing and also from metal type, and it can be made from three letters (ffi) as well as two. When the original letters cannot be made out (which is generally true of the roman form of &) I do not think it should be called a ligature—perhaps having become a "glyph", for want of a better term.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;">I flatly decline to get involved in defining a "serif". </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Too bad as this is a very contentious term and it could use some standardization.]</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;">Discussing the "point" is pretty pointless, but after that odd period in the 1960s (or when ever it was) when zealous typographic theorists were wanting to insist on a metric scale, we seem to have gone back to them, because they are easy to grasp as a system that gives a pretty universal visual picture. Doesn't matter if we are using a seventy-second of an inch (which is a sop to the anti-metric US population) or the older point of 0.0138 inch or 0.351 mm (or is it 0.3515 mm?). If I say ten points, or fourteen, you will know pretty well what I mean. The world seems to be accepting that Fournier didn't invent the point, but stole it (from Truchet). </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[On this latter point see Mosley’s blog.]</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;">The entry for "x-height"—something "upon which the heights of all other characters are based"—is essentially wrong. Reading something as confused as that makes me want to throw the whole thing away, a long way away. Pity, since a good vocabulary of this kind, well-informed and handled by someone with a grasp of clear, simple language, like Carter père (and indeed Carter fils too) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Harry and Matthew Carter respectively]</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"> can improve one’s own technical language.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-65603990869909934432011-04-02T12:15:00.000-07:002011-04-04T16:30:11.657-07:00From the Archives no. 18—Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938<div style="text-align: center;"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 301px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eqCqOZ6xMRY/TZlRaTm3i5I/AAAAAAAAANc/9eHtGtTalCY/s400/SDMH1938%2Bfrontcover.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591589924738927506" /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Vorlagenheft für Setzer, Drucker, Werbefachleute, Graphiker und Reproduktionstechniker</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Berlin: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Verlag der Graphischen Monatsschrift “Deutscher Drucker”, 1938</span></span></p></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, a printing trades periodical, is another instance where I wish I was able to read more than a few words and phrases in German. (The translations here were done with the kind help of Indra Kupferschmid who also helped with proofreading the German.) It is a compendium of articles about printing, typography and design coupled with numerous advertisements for type foundries, printing press manufacturers, ink and chemical manufacturers, and paper companies. As such it presents an intriguing snap-shot of graphic design and typography in Nazi Germany. Other than flags and uniforms in a single photograph of Nazi party members marching, there are only two swastikas in the entire publication!</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Most of the articles are written by Fritz Genzmer (1888–?), a longtime author of articles and books on the printing industry who was still active into the late 1970s. Others appear to be reprinted from other printing magazines since they bear dates from 1936 and 1937. Several of them are written by Willy (or Willi) Mengel who also had a long career writing about printing and type.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Finally, there are </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">articles in the annual showcase printing and design schools. </span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Genzmer is best known for</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Das Buch des Setzers</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, a basic guide to German typefaces. The first edition was published in 1936. The one displayed on the Luc Devroye’s</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">website is from the sixth edition (1948) and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Helvetica Forever</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> refers to an edition from 1967 in footnote 80. See </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/Genzmer1948/. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The 1948 edition covers the typefaces of twelve German foundries (Bauersche Giesserei, Ludwig & Mayer, D. Stempel, H. Berthold, Norddeutsche Schriftgiesserei, Genzsch & Heyse, Gebr. Klingspor, J.G. Schelter & Geisecke, Ludwig Wagner, Schriftguss AG [formerly Brüder Butter], J.D. Trennert und Sohn, and C.E. Weber), dividing them into either blackletter or antiqua. See the downloadable PDF at </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://www.sanskritweb.net/fontdocs/genzmer.pdf.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Genzmer’s articles are “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Buchtitel in Fraktur und Antiqua”, “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Behördliche Drucksachen”, “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Normdrucksachen in zeitgemäßer Gestaltung”, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Asymmetrie oder Mittelachse?” and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Der Gebrauchstypograph Thannhaeuser”. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Buchtitel in Fraktur und Antiqua” (Book Titles in Blackletter and Roman)</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> is one of several items in the periodical devoted to this persistent German question: blackletter or roman type? The text is set in Jiu-Jitsu, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">a casual script, with the title in a “sans serif” script named Knock-out [not to be confused with Knockout from Hoefler & Frere-Jones]. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The nine samples accompanying the article, designed by Arthur Murawski, employ a mix of blackletter and roman types. For the purposes of this article roman includes serif and sans serif types as well as scripts; while blackletter includes textura, rotunda, schwabacher and fraktur as well as </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">S</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">chaftstiefelgrotesk</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> [“jackboot gothic”] types*. The latter are modernized texturas that have often been associated with the rise of Nazism, hence the perjorative nickname. Actually, they are better seen as blackletter counterparts to the new geometric sans serifs emerging at the end of the 1920s. See my article “Lead Soldiers” in</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Prin</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">t LII:III (</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">July/August 1998) and reprinted in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography </span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">edited by Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs (New York: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Allworth Press, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">2001).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">*hereafter, I will use the German word as an import into English and not capitalize it or italicize it.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"></span></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">ROMAN</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Knock-out</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Walbaum-Kursiv (twice)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Normande</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Plastica (similar to Umbra)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Berthold-Grotesk-Kursiv</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">City halbfett and fett</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bayer-Kursiv halbfett</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Royal-Grotesk</span></span></div></blockquote><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">BLACKLETTER</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Walbaum-Fraktur</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bismark-Fraktur</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Trump-Deutsch (twice)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Deutschland-Kursiv (a S</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">chrägschrift </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">or inclined textura) </span></span></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Four designs combine a blackletter and a roman; two use two blackletter faces; and the remaining three match two roman faces (one of which combines two sans serifs). There are </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">no </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">schaftstiefelgrotesks.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Genzmer’s</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Behördliche Drucksachen” (</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Official Printed Matter) </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">article is set in an unidentified Venetian Oldstyle (or, as the Germans would call it, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Venezianische Renaissance-Antiqu</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">a</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">) with the title in Manuskript-Gotisch. The accompanying samples are entirely in blackletter typefaces, yet the layouts are often asymmetrical in the manner of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">die neue typographie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">! The typefaces are: Psalterium, Leibniz-Fraktur, Schmale halbfett National (a schaftstiefelgrotesk), Alemannia-Fraktur, Krimhilde mager and halbfett (a monoline script with fraktur structure), and Wallau.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7Zc1T4k3Be8/TZlYTz1WP9I/AAAAAAAAAOc/EWysB42VlSA/s400/Typographische%2BWerkstatten%2B1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591597509711904722" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 302px; " /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h7a4HhoPJeo/TZlYZt4vKFI/AAAAAAAAAOk/AoZt6Zm6UoQ/s400/Typographische%2BWerkstatten%2B2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591597611194722386" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 265px; " /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Normdrucksachen in zeitgemäßer Gestaltung” (Contemporary </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Standardized Printed Material)</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">is set entirely in Walbaum-Antiqua. The seven samples, once again by Murawski, are a wild mix of blackletter and roman types. The designs are stationery and many are laid out in a modernist asymmetrical manner. Four use both blackletter and roman and three are set entirely in roman types. None are entirely in blackletter types. The only schaftstiefelgrotesk is a schrägschrift.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"></span></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">ROMAN</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bodoni-Kursiv (5)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">City</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Berthold-Grotesk (4)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Normande</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ariston</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Walbaum-Antiqua</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Walbaum-Kursiv</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">BLACKLETTER</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Trump-Deutsch (3)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bismarck-Fraktur (3)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Deutschland-Kursiv</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mainzer-Fraktur</span></span></div></blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Genzmer’s article “Der Gebrauchstypograph Thannhaeuser” (The Commercial Typographer Thannhaeuser) is a profile of Herbert Thannhaeuser (1898–1963), graphic designer and type designer. It is appropriately set in his Parcival-Antiqua (Schelter & Giesecke, 1926), a neoclassical typeface. The examples of his work utilize a number of faces, only a few of which I can identify: Baskerville, Memphis and Mundus Antiqua. The only blackletter is Deutschschrift and it appears once. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Crn7_UPkI-g/TZlXL8wXLCI/AAAAAAAAAOU/LFFOvIxKd-s/s400/Asymmetrie%2Boder%2BMittelsachse%253F.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591596275156331554" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 293px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Asymmetrie oder Mittelachse?” (Asymmetry or Middle-Axis [Symmetry]?) by Genzmer is as much a burning question of the time as fraktur vs. roman, though it is surprising to see it out in the open in Nazi Germany, especially as late as 1938. Jeremy Aynsley, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Graphic Design in Germany 1890–1945</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, writes, “A final gauge of the impact of the new typography [which advocated asymmetrical layout] can be taken from the adverse reaction it prompted…..” (p. 185) He then goes on to quote</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(pp. 185–188) </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">from a 1937 </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Penrose Annual</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> article by Gustav Stresow </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">complaining that modernist typography was too radical a break with the past, that it failed to take into account “the power of tradition”. Stresow defended the return to fraktur (meaning all blackletter) as an essential aspect of the German language. Aynsley does not mention </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> in his text nor is it (or Fritz Genzmer) in his bibliography. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The article is set entirely in Gotenburg (D. Stempel, 1935), Friedrich Heinrich, a textura that is simplified but not mechanical like a schaftstiefelgrotesk. The ten accompanying pairs of illustrations show texts set both symmetrically and asymmetrically for an objective comparison of their merits. Both roman and blackletter typefaces are used: Stempel Garamond, Bodoni, Stempel Sans (also known as Neuzeit Grotesk), Memphis, Mundus Antiqua; Magere Gotenburg and Schmale Tannenberg, a schaftstiefelgrotesk. Genzmer says, “Asymmetrie also ist Leben, Bewegung, Schwung; Symmetrie Ruhe und Beharrung.” (“Asymmetry is thus life, motion, verve; symmetry is rest and equilibrium.”) He describes the debate over which is more appropriate to modern times, thusly,</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Asymmetrie gegen Mittelachse, Bewegung gegen Ruhe, eines aus der Zeit geboren, das andere verwurzelt in beschaulichen Bezirken ruhigerer Zeitläufe. Was steht dem Sinn und den Wünschen unserer Generation näher? Sind die Argumente, die für die asymmetrische Satzgestaltung sprechen, stark genug, um ihre form zu rechtfertigen? Ist uns Modernen auch die Mittelachse noch erträglich, vielleicht, weil unser Sehnen aus der Zeit der Unruhe wieder zur Ruhe drängt? </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Wenn nämlich nicht alles trägt, haben wir schon den ersten Schritt auf dem Wege zurück zu ihr getan.</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Oder ist der Odem unserer Zeit so stark, daß unser Aderschlag in allen Außerungen den gleichen Rhythmus hat? Die objektive Gegenüberstellung unsere Beispiele kann vielleicht die Antwort darauf geben.</span></blockquote></span><p></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Asymmetry versus symmetry, motion versus rest; one born out of its time, the other rooted in the placid districts of the calmer courses of time. What is closer to the mind and wishes of our generation? Are the arguments advocating asymmetrical design strong enough to justify its form? Is symmetry still tolerable for us as modern people, perhaps because a time of unrest has made us crave tranquility again? Because, if all of this does not give way, we have already made the first step on the way back to it. Or is the spirit of our time so strong that our pulse, in all of its expressions, has the same rhythm? The objective comparison of our examples might be able to provide an answer to this.</span></blockquote></span><p></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Genzmer concludes by asking the readers of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> to weigh in with their opinions on the subject. Perhaps their responses appear in the 1939 issue. </span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Willi Mengel wrote articles </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">for </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gebrauchsgraphik</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Archiv für Druck und Papier</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Druck</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Papier und Druck</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Typographische Monatsblätter</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and other publications well into the 1970s. He was also the author of</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Ottmar Mergenthaler and the Printing Revolution</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Brooklyn: Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1954) and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Druckschriften der Gegenwart: Klassifiziert nach DIN 16518</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Stuttgart: Blersch, 1966). In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> he contributed three articles. The first is </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Die Eigenwerbung des Buchdruckers” (The Self-Promotion of the Printer). Its text is set in Bodoni with title in Wallau. The examples are set in a mix of faces, many of them scripts. The combinations are: Allegro and Candida; National and Erbar-Grotesk; Skizze and Tempo; Allegro and Welt-Antiqua (a square serif face like Memphis); Altenburger-Gotisch and Erbar-Grotesk; Welt-Antiqua and Skizze; and, by themselves, National and National Schräg. National is a schaftstiefelgrotesk and its pairing with Erbar, a geometric sans serif, reinforces my view that such faces were seen by their designers as modernized blackletters, suitable for those who wanted to maintain “Germanness” while working in the new typographic style of the time.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Der Bilder-Umbruch in der Zeitung” (</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Picture Composition in Newspapers) by </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mengel is reprinted from the March 1937 issue of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Deutscher Drucker. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It is in this article that a photograph of Nazi party members marching with flags appears. The layout is by Walter Zahn. The text is set in Baskerville with title in Wallau. (Wallau appears over and over again in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, but never in the later “German” version with revised capitals.) The newspaper examples, not surprisingly, are all set in various frakturs. However, some of the article titles are in Futura and Fanfare (1927), a heavy, expressionistic display face by Louis Oppenheim (1879–1936) which inhabits the middle ground between textura and sans serif.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mengel’s third article is </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“April… der macht, was er will!” (</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">April … Does its Worst!). Once again it is set in Baskerville with Wallau for the title. An unidentified italic is used for the subtitle. The sample designs are all in either various blackletters or typewriter fonts with the exception of some in Futura.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The anonymous J.W. is the author of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> “Der Zeitschriftenumschlag als Werbefaktor” (Magazine</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Covers as an Advertising Vehicle). It is set in Baskerville with Wallau for the title. (This must have been the default style of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck- Musterheft</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, a blend of blackletter and roman.) The sample designs are in Bodoni, blackletter (some handlettering, but also National) as well as various sans serifs (some handlettering alongside Futura). The captions to the illustrations are set in Futura.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Rudolf Franke (brother of Karl Franke? see below), wrote “Das Photo in der Akzidenz” (Photos in Jobbing Work). The title and text are set in a Venetian Oldstyle. The samples are set in the same Venetian Oldstyle, Super-Grotesk (a Futura clone), Splendor (a script), and Fette Fraktur. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Karl Franke (1894–1952), a proponent of the New Typography (See </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://wiedler.ch/felix/books/story/387 which traces the history of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Typographische Mitteilungen</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> from 1930 to 1933), contributed “Typographische Korrektheit und Deutscher Stil” (Typographical Correctness and German Style). It is set entirely in Wallau. The typography, by Franke, is beautifully done using a light weight of the typeface with generous leading. The samples are set in a mixture of blackletter and roman: Claudius, Kleist Fraktur, Wilhelm Klingsporschrift, Offenbach, Wallau, and Kurrentschrift; and Orpheus and Tiemann-Antiqua. The typefaces are all from Gebr. Klingspor.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dp_zmf2m8NA/TZlT3q-kyiI/AAAAAAAAANs/8B1HVlJA01k/s400/1936%2BOlympics%2BProgram.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591592628251839010" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 369px; height: 400px; " /></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">One of the most important articles in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, from a design history perspective, is </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“XI. Olympiade Berlin 1936” by Georg Wagner. This is a survey of the graphic and visual design associated with the famous 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Olympic games in which Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe ruined Hitler’s dream of showcasing Aryan athletic supremacy.</span></span></span></div></span><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(See </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/olympics/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Metcalfe.) </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The title is set in Stempel Garamond with the subtitle in a baroque fraktur (Breitkopf Fraktur?). The text is set entirely in the same fraktur. The captions are set in Linotype Garamond Italic (based on Stempel Garamond). However, the images rarely include any blackletter. The posters, including several by Ludwig Hohlwein, are handlettered in classical roman capitals, fat faces or sans serifs. The brochures and other publications are set almost entirely in Futura (an unidentified seriffed roman is used for one written in Polish) with one exception. The covers of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Olympiahef</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">t</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> are all handlettered (?) in the schaftstiefelgrotesk style. (Also see covers at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vintage_album/433898885/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/vintage_album/433898883/) Programs for the Games are entirely in Futura. Stationery is in both an Old English (perhaps Manuskript-Gotisch or Caslon-Gotisch) and an unidentified seriffed roman. Finally, the mastheads of the different language versions of the Olympic Games News Service vary with most in an Old English, some in italic, and some in a roman. It is clear that the posters and publications intended for a non-German audience are in roman while those for Germans are in blackletter. However, the signage lettering that is shown is all Futura or a Futura clone.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p1S8-UXeloQ/TZlUmgS2jDI/AAAAAAAAAN0/tNrGcBFKdYY/s400/Mercedes-Benz.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591593432837950514" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 292px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VIOuAOKlROk/TZlWIrOUcfI/AAAAAAAAAOE/OCN2-9QM-_k/s400/Daimler-Benz.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591595119398908402" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 275px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The schools that are profiled in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> are the Berufschule für das graphische Gewerbe Berlin, Die Städt. Handwerkerschule Breslau, the Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker in München (where Paul Renner and Jan Tschichold previously taught), the Gewerbeschule Zwickau (SA), Arno Schmeisser Gewerbeschule Zwickau (SA), and the Buchdrucke-Lehranstalt in Leipzig. The article on the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Berufschule für das graphische Gewerbe Berlin focuses on layout and typography (Entwurf und Satzgestaltung / Layout and Typography) from the 1935/1936 winter semester. The article is set in Renata (a fraktur) for the text with Fette Fraktur for the title and Bodoni-Kursiv for some of the subheads. The initial capital is in Quick, a script typeface similar to Trafton Script. The samples of student work employ both blackletter and roman typefaces: Manuskript-Gotisch with Bodoni-Antiqua and Bodoni-Kursiv; Fette Antiqua with Quick; Weiss-Gotisch with Bodoni-Antiqua and Beton (a square serif); Manuskript-Gotisch with Corvinus-Antiqua and Corvinus-Kursiv; Futura with Quick and Flott (a heavy monoline script); and Manuskript-Gotisch with Quick. (Corvinus, designed by Imre Reiner, is an Art Deco-inflected neoclassical face issued in 1934 by Bauer.)</span></span></span></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The contribution from the Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker in München is from February 1937. It focuses on “Deutsche Druckschrift”—the introductory text (set in Walbaum-Antiqua with Trump-Deutsch for the title) ends with “Heil Hitler!” The work uses Walbaum-Fraktur, Manuskript-Gotisch, Trump-Deutsch, Ganz Grobe Gotisch (a chunky textura by F.H.E. Schneidler), Janson, an unidentified fat face and Futura. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Georg Trump, designer of Trump-Deutsch, was a student of Schneidler’s. He was the director of the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">after Renner was dismissed by the Nazis. His tenure lasted from 1934 to 1953.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The article on the Buchdrucke-Lehranstalt in Leipzig, in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, touts the school’s history. The text, set in Zentenar (as is the title and the captions), concludes with the exhortation, “Heil Hitler!” The work is set in a limited mix of blackletter and roman from Bauersche Giesserei: Weiss-Gotisch, Weiss-Antiqua, Weiss Initials and Futura. The Weiss faces are by E.R. Weiss (1875–1943), one of the leading German book and type designers of the pre-World War II era. (See http://www.klingspor-museum.de/KlingsporKuenstler/Schriftdesigner/Weiss/ERWeiss.pdf and the forthcoming book by Gerald Cinamon.)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The examples of book design from Die Buchgewerbliche Abteilung der Gewerbeschule Zwickau (SA) show Akzidenz-Grotesk, Stempel Sans, Wilhelm-Klingsporschrift and Metropolis. The latter is an Art Deco face designed by W. Schwerdtner (D. Stempel, 1928). </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The page about Die Städt. Handwerkerschule Breslau does not include any samples. The text is set in Zentenar with subtitles in a fat face (possibly Fette Antiqua). Neither does the page for the Arno Schmeisser Gewerbeschule Zwickau (SA). Its text is set in Wilhelm-Klingsporschrift combined with handlettered roman. A swastika hovers behind the heading, “Saar-Wettbewerb 1934” and the acronym N.S.L.B. (Nationalsozialistische Lehrerbund / National Socialist Teachers League) is emphasized. (Wikipedia says, “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">After the </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machtergreifung" title="Machtergreifung" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Nazi takeover of power</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> in 1933 the Nazi Party validated the NSLB as the sole organization of teachers in the </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany" title="Nazi Germany" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">German Reich</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. In July 1935 the NSLB was merged with the existing organization of lecturers to form the </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB)</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (</span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Socialist_German_University_Lecturers_League&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="National Socialist German University Lecturers League (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">National Socialist German University Lecturers League</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">).”</span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It should be remembered that the typefaces in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> are all metal, either foundry or Linotype. Those that are shown in the school sections represent those that each school’s print shop had in stock.</span></span></p><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This rest of this post is a census of the typefaces used in the advertisements in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Many of them are identified in captions, but most are not. I have relied on the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Encyclopedia of Typefaces</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> by W. Pincus Jaspert, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson (London: Cassell, 2008) and other English-language sources, but they are remarkably deficient when it comes to German typefaces. Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of Genzmer’s book from the 1930s. That would be the perfect source for this project.</span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></p></div></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Among the companies that advertised in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> are a number of typefoundries. They are Baeursche Giesserei, Gebr. Klingspor, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">D. Stempel AG, Schleter & Giesecke AG, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Schriftguss KG (formerly Brüder Butter) and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mergenthaler Setzmaschinen-Fabrik GmbH</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Bauer appears in several places in the annual. They have an advertisement on the back cover, several pages of type samples inside and a page devoted to their famous poster (in black-and-white), the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Stammbaum der Schrift</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Family Tree of Type), a famous poster created as part of the company’s centennial in 1937. And they provided the type (</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Schneidler-Initialen, Schneidler-Medieval and Legende) for the front cover. The advertisement on the back cover combines</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Legende and Futura. The sample pages are for Gotika (a stylized textura designed 1933 by Imre Reiner [1900–1987]), Renata with Weiss Initials, Weiss-Fraktur with Weiss-Schmuck (ornaments), Corvinus combined with Flott, and Element (the first schaftstiefelgrotesk, designed in 1933 by Max Bittrof [1890–1972]). Reiner was another student of Schneidler’s. (See http://www.klingspor-museum.de/KlingsporKuenstler/Schriftdesigner/Reiner/ImreReiner.pdf and http://www.klingspor-museum.de/KlingsporKuenstler/Schriftdesigner/Bittrof/MaxBittrof.pdf)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gebr. Klingspor contributed type specimens for typefaces designed by Walter Tiemann (1876–1951). They are both roman (Orpheus and Orpheus-Kursiv, Tiemann-Antiqua, Tiemann-Medieval) and blackletter (Kleist-Fraktur, Fichte-Fraktur and Tiemann-Gotisch). Other faces by Tiemann (Peter Schlemihl, Narziss and Daphne) are simply listed. Surprisingly, Klingspor’s preeminent type designer, Rudolf Koch, is not promoted. (For more on Tiemann see http://www.klingspor-museum.de/KlingsporKuenstler/Schriftdesigner/Tiemann/WTiemann.pdf)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fh2VltIGJyA/TZlVhVgj-5I/AAAAAAAAAN8/8V_bE0Y0KBE/s400/Die%2Bsch%25C3%25B6ne%2Bdeutsche%2BSchrift.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591594443554945938" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 295px; " /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">D. Stempel AG contributed specimen pages for Deutsche Werkschrift (a fraktur by Koch), Tannenberg (a schaftstiefelgrotesk by Erich Meyer) and Memphis (by Rudolf Wolf); and separate four-page sections for Gotenburg and Schmale Tannenberg. The latter, titled “Die schöne deutsche Schrift”, paired Schmale Tannenberg variously with Breitkopf-Fraktur, Bodoni, an unidentified egyptian (perhaps Schelter-Egyptienne), and Venus-Grotesk. The insert for Gotenburg, designed by Friedrich Heinrichsen (like Meyer, a Koch student), promotes it as the “truest German typeface”:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Leitgedanke bei Schaffung de Gotenburg war: Deutscher Wertarbeit zu leisten.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Wir sind der Überzeugung, in der Gotenburg eine neue gotische Schrift geschaffen zu haben, die nicht nur heute als gegenwartsnah empfunden wird, sondern auch für die Zukunft eine hohe Leistung deutscher Schriftkunst darstellt und bleibenden Wert hat. Sie steht auf dem Grunde der Überlieferung und ist zugleich ein neuzeitlicher Ausdruck des gotischen Schriftstils.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gotenburg die echt deutsche Schrift.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The main idea behind the design of Gotenburg was to achieve high-class German workmanship.<br />We believe that we have created a new blackletter with Gotenburg which we perceive as timely for today. It also demonstrates the great achievement of German typeface design for the future and will be a typeface of permanent value.<br />It is based on tradition and, at the same time, a modern expression of the blackletter style. Gotenburg, the genuine German typeface.</span></span></p></blockquote></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gotenburg is a simplified textura, but it is not a schaftstiefelgrotesk.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mergenthaler Setzmaschinen-Fabrik GmbH, commonly known as German Linotype, provides the largest showing of typefaces with a page each for the following blackletters: Linotype Deutsche Werkschrift, Linotype-Unger-Fraktur, Linotype-Breitkopf-Fraktur, Linotype-Luthersche-Fraktur, Linotype-Tannenberg, Linotype-Heinz-König-Schmalschrift (a schwabacher), Linotype-Koch-Fraktur, Linotype-Ehmcke-Schwabacher; and a page each for the following romans: Linotype-Original-Baskerville, Linotype-Garamond (Stempel Garamond not Garamond no. 3), Linotype-Bodoni, Linotype-Ratio-Lateina [sic], Linotype-Neue-Romanisch (Times Roman), Linotype-Excelsior and Linotype-Memphis. The text introducing the showings is set in Linotype-Unger-Fraktur.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9hwtbRnXseI/TZldSt0DryI/AAAAAAAAAPU/phMkrVBP6hc/s400/Standarte.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591602988474150690" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 293px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7ZxruYH4Z_8/TZlcuQP4d7I/AAAAAAAAAO0/lXko2tXUHtE/s400/Fraktur%2B%2528pine%2Btree%2529%2Boder%2BAntiqua%2B%2528columns%2529.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591602362062501810" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px; " /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H3H_VfDjdd0/TZlc0iY9EUI/AAAAAAAAAO8/zP3ZJrE5wmU/s400/Fraktur%2Boder%2BAntiqua%2Bfully%2Bopened.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591602470011605314" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 205px; " /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wGyLi4veMe8/TZlc-AzV7GI/AAAAAAAAAPE/8Abih4DgSXo/s400/Fraktur%2Boder%2BAntiqua%2BSchriftguss%2BK.G..jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591602632794172514" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 350px; " /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Schelter & Giesecke AG of Leipzig provided a small insert (“Deutsch das Land, Deutsch die Schrift”—German the Country, German the Type) dedicated to Standarte (a schaftstiefelgrotesk), shown alongside Parcival, Saskia (by Jan Tschichold) and Super-Grotesk. It precedes the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">most fascinating—and also the most elaborate—of the type specimens, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Fraktur oder Antiqua” </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">from Schriftguss K.-G. (Brüder Butter) of Dresden. This is a double gatefold with the inside left side dedicated to Fraktur (symbolized by a pine tree) and the inside right side to Antiqua (symbolized by classical columns). This is the same dichotomy which Koch had illustrated in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Die Schriftgiesserei im Schattenbild</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Typefoundry in Silhouette) (Offenbach am Main: Klingspor, 1918). The front pairs blackletter and roman typefaces in a chronological order, thus matching Bodoni with Unger-Fraktur and National, a schaftstiefelgrotesk, with Super-Grotesk, a geometric sans serif. Inside the fonts displayed are blackletters National (“die neue deutsche Schrift!”), National schräg, Unger-Fraktur, Wieynck-Gotisch, Thannhaeuser-Schrift; romans Bodoni, Härtel-Antiqua, Divina, Lido, Appell, Energos, Diamant, Luxor and Super-Grotesk; and scripts Splendor and Originell.</span></span></span></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-obV_lyP-TB0/TZldHwoRg1I/AAAAAAAAAPM/Nm5vujv5T_k/s400/Fraktur%2Boder%2BAntiqua%253F.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591602800251470674" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 285px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The last page of the insert states,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> “Nicht Fraktur </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">oder</span></i></span><span style="text-decoration: underline"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Antiqua sondern Fraktur </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">und</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Antiqua. Beide werden in der täglichen Praxis benötigt—beide bieten wir Ihnen in neuzeitlichen Schnitten.” (“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Not Fraktur </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">or</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Roman but Fraktur </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">and</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Roman. Both are necessary in day-to-day practice—we offer both to you in modern styles.” The last part refers to National and Super-Grotesk, a Futura copy.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C5Pt3xArzVw/TZlZYciINjI/AAAAAAAAAOs/ByEEJG6O8OE/s400/Adler-Dienst.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591598688868251186" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 284px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZQJPu1cdEg/TZlWtTPimNI/AAAAAAAAAOM/rsjvi_gaqlQ/s400/Kodak%2BAG.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591595748616739026" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 281px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The non-foundry advertisers are: color manufacturers (dyes, paints, inks, etc.) I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft-Agfa, Springer & Möller AG (sponsor of the Berufschule für das graphische Gewerbe Berlin pages), Berger & Wirth Farbenfabriken, Chr. Hostmann-Steinberg’sche Farbenfabriken, Gebr. Schmidt GmbH (with three advertisements, one designed by Goovaerts), Beit & Co. Chemische- und Farbenfabriken (2 advertisements), E.T. Gleitsmann, Schramm AG Druckfarben-Fabrik, Jänecke-Schneemann KG Druckfabriken, Deutsche Druckfarbenfabrik Zulch & Dr. Sckerl, and Kast & Ehinger GmbH Druckfarbenfabriken; </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">printing press manufacturers Schnellpressenfabrik Koenig & Bauer AG, Chn. Mansfeld Maschinenfabrik, Koebau-Sturmvogel RE, and Karl Krause Maschinenfabrik, Planeta (manufacturer of offset printing presses celebrating its 40th anniversary); </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">paper manufacturers </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Dresdner Chromo-und Kunstdruckpapierfabrik, Krause & Baumann A.G., Heidenau Bez. Dresden, Gebr. Ebart G.m.b.H., and Freiberger Papierfabrik zu Weißenborn; and printers Druckerei-Gesellschaft Hartung & Co., Deutscher Buchgewerbe-Verein of Leipzig, and Richard Petersen Grossbuchdruckerei. There are also advertisements by Beckmann-Verfahren D.R.P. and Kodak AG. The breakdown of typefaces used is:</span></span></span></div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Futura (11)</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Kabel (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Venus (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">sans serif handlettering (2)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Weiss-Antiqua with Kursiv</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">DeVinne (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ratio-Latein (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bodoni (3)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beton (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Memphis (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">an unidentified egyptian (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">an unidentified egyptian italic (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">an unidentified condensed egyptian (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">an unidentified Englische Schreibschrift (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Legende (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Signal (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">an unidentified script (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Weiss-Gotisch (1)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It is quite evident that blackletter and roman typefaces not only co-existed in German graphic design in 1938, but that they were consciously paired. Schaftstiefelgrotesks, although promoted heavily by the typefoundries, took a backseat to more traditional frakturs and texturas, both older designs and new ones such as Kleist-Fraktur and Zentenar. And when schaftstiefelgrotesks were used, they were often joined to geometric sans serifs in an attempt to project an air of modernity. Geometric sans serifs, especially Futura, continued to thrive. Among seriffed faces, the most popular were Bodoni and Baskerville.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-22F5KUzbH2M/TZldaY68plI/AAAAAAAAAPc/ZjdaosK_SBI/s400/Odin.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591603120304858706" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 282px; " /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ibE5Ukxgrzo/TZlShftAStI/AAAAAAAAANk/99NcTmFW1Nc/s400/Aero-Echtgr%25C3%25BCn.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591591147756604114" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 278px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></span></div></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-88512959520721387182011-03-30T23:25:00.000-07:002011-04-02T12:14:08.427-07:00From the Archives no. 17—More on Helvetica in the United StatesThis evening at the Type Directors Club I came across a type specimen entitled <i>helvetica</i> (all lowercase) issued by Empire Typographers, Inc., a type house in New York City, in February 1963. It was designed by Martin Friedman, a name that is unfamiliar to me. More importantly, it stated on the inside of the front cover, “Helvetica is now being cut in display sizes. The following will be available at Empire Typographers in the Spring, 1963.” The dating of this specimen is significant since Stempel did not publicly announce Helvetica’s availability in the United States until the November/December issue of <i>Print</i> magazine. Was Empire the first type house in New York (and maybe the United States) to import Helvetica?<div><br /></div><div>The Empire list consists of: Helvetica (Roman) 14 pt.–48 pt, Helvetica Cursive 12 pt.–24 pt, Helvetica Demi-bold (Roman) 14 pt.–72 pt and Helvetica Bold-Face (Roman) 12 pt.–72 pt. The sizes listed suggest that foundry type is being discussed, but the note on the opposite page only mentions composition type. “First imported to the United States thru [sic] Mergenthaler Linotype Company by Bernard Blatt, a well-known typographer and President of Empire Typographers of New York, Helvetica has enjoyed widespread attention. It has become an immediate favorite on the continent [sic] since its introduction by Linotype Gmbh [sic] of Germany,” it says. This seems to support the information in my book Helvetica and the New York City Subway System that Helvetica was first made available in the United States as matrices from German Linotype, two years before Mergenthaler Linotype made matrices itself and Continental Amsterdam imported foundry Helvetica from Stempel. The large sizes of the type must have been APL or All-Purpose Linotype mats designed for headline usage and available in sizes up to 144 pt.<div><br /></div><div>The names of the Helvetica family members mentioned are a bit odd. The translations from the German are literal: <i>Kursiv</i> has become Cursive (instead of Italic) and <i>halbfet</i>t has become Demi-bold (instead of Medium).</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Dear Paul, the literal translation of »halbfett« would be medium or semi-bold, but in terms of weight and design it rather equates a bold style (comp. NHG/Helvetica).</span></span><div class="commentFooter" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">By </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/05849601060609742673" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 102, 204); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">kupfers</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> on </span><a href="http://paulshawletterdesign.blogspot.com/2011/03/from-archives-no-17more-on-helvetica-in.html" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 102, 204); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">From the Archives no. 17—More on Helvetica in the ...</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> on 4/1/11</span></div></span></div><div><br /></div><div>I am looking forward to further research at the TDC library to see if there are any other dated type specimens of Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk or Standard.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:130%;color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br /></span></span></div></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-12638419122646442392011-03-26T07:42:00.001-07:002011-03-26T09:16:27.194-07:00Opinion redux—Deviations from Standard Deviations<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I am gratified that the first out-and-out Blue Pencil opinion piece has received a warm welcome. However, several people have posted comments or emailed me privately with corrections or comments that need to be addressed.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">1. David Lemon of Adobe has written to point out that, “</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Stone was the first original alphabetic typeface designed at Adobe, but was preceded by Carta, Sonata & the now-ubiquitous Symbol. (I agree the “originality” of Symbol could be disputed, since it’s stylistically an extension to Times.)” </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">2. David Ikus wrote, “The initiative is great, but why are there so many American fonts & barely anything European, not to mention the lack of non-Latin type design?” Good point. One private email implied that the choices were New York-centric, but that is clearly not the case with the inclusion of fonts from Emigre (California), Carter & Cone (Massachusetts) and FontShop (Berlin). Among MoMA’s 23 fonts are six by seven Europeans (Wim Crouwel, Erik Spiekermann, Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum, Albert-Jan Pool, Neville Brody and Jonathan Barnbrook.)</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">MoMA’s selection is a reminder that all such initiatives are governed by the perspective and unconscious bias of the selectors which is shaped by their experience and knowledge. (That also applies to my counter-list.) This is why among graphic design history books Philip Meggs differs substantially from Patrick Cramsie or Roxane Jubert when the story reaches the 20th century. However, in the area of digital type design, it was the United States that was</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> in the forefront of digital type design from c.1980 to c.1995, both technically and aesthetically, principally due to the rise of Silicon Valley. Surely this is what governed MoMA’s thinking. My own list</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> included more Europeans (Adrian Frutiger, Hermann Zapf, Gudrun Zapf von Hesse, Gerard Unger, Martin Majoor, Luc(as) de Groot, Otl Aicher, Jovica Veljovic, and Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell—the founder of the company that bore his name). </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 15.0px Trebuchet MS; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></p></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The comments from both Davids are a reminder that the world of typefaces (fonts) is larger than than that of Latin fonts. I am not an expert in non-Latin fonts so I do not know where to begin in listing which ones (and which designers) were pioneers in the area of digital type design between 1960 and 2000. If anyone (hello, Fiona Ross and Gerry Leonidas?) would like to suggest another list I would be glad to post it.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">3. Craig Eliason asks for more information on Silica and the claim that it was “the first typeface designed entirely on-screen.” I used the weasel word “ostensibly” because the only support I have for this statement is what Sumner Stone said at the time about it. No one back then or since has disputed his claim, but he was making it based on his own experience and knowledge. There well may have been a predecessor. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">4. That brings up the point that our knowledge of history is only as good as the facts we have, and the facts we have are always subject to being superseded. My claim that TF Forever was the first original typeface designed using Fontographer came from Joe Treacy several years ago who supported my AIGA Voice article on the history of digital type design with several documents. However, the first original Fontographer typeface may have been the anonymous one used in the Altsys 1.0 manual for the software program. “The manual was full of screen grabs of the font being produced,” I have been told by an anonymous informant. (We need a picture of this!) </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This counterclaim is similar to David Lemon’s comment about Carta and Sonata. We tend to overlook the ordinary in favor of the extraordinary, the anonymous in favor of the named. Thus, Stone and Treacy promoted their efforts while the designers of Carta, Sonata and the unnamed Altsys font did not—unlike Susan Kare who eventually came forth to promote her role in Chicago.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I was eager to include Joe Treacy because he (along with Gunnlaugur SE Briem, Peter Fraterdeus and Garrett Boge) was one of the early adopters of Fontographer (pre-1987) who has been overlooked in the history of digital type design. The reason is easy to fathom: the faces that he, Fraterdeus and Boge all issued were similar to those already available from phototype companies. They did not have the look of the “new” that those from Emigre did. (By the way, let’s not forget that Fontographer was preceded by Font Studio as a font design tool.)</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">5. My claim that Adobe Jenson MM was the first digital typeface with optical scaling appears to be wrong. HTF Didot (1991) had that feature as well, which I knew but I did not realize it was a Multiple Master font. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">All of this goes to show that we badly need a history of digital type design (and one for the filmsetting era as well). A graphic design student in Lausanne is currently working on a thesis about “Computed Type Design” that might be a step in that direction. For now, the best we have is a few chapters in Richard Southall’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Printer’s Type in the Twentieth Century</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> (New Castle, Delaware and London: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2005). </span></span></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-69126123983473378962011-03-23T21:25:00.000-07:002011-04-09T23:06:22.863-07:00Opinion—Standard Deviations<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">On January 24 of this year the Museum of Modern Art announced that they were adding 23 fonts to their Architecture and Design Collection. I paid little attention at the time to the news, other than to nod approvingly at their choice of typefaces by Matthew Carter, Jonathan Hoefler and Zuzana Licko. But last week I visited MoMA to see the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Counter Space</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> exhibition and afterwards I stumbled upon </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, an exhibition of the newly acquired fonts. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It was exhilarating to see typefaces covering several walls of the central third floor gallery. But upon closer inspection the fonts chosen raised questions about MoMA’s thinking. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The 23 fonts chosen are: </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">OCR-A</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (American Type Founders, 1966)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">New Alphabet </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(Wim Crouwel, 1967)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bell Centennial</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, Mergenthaler Linotype, 1976–1978)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">ITC Galliard</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, International Typeface Corporation, 1978)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">FF Meta</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Erik Spiekermann, FontShop, 1984–1991)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Oakland</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1985)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">FF Beowolf</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum, FontShop, 1990)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Template Gothic</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Barry Deck, Emigre, 1990)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Dead History</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (P. Scott Makela and Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1990)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Keedy Sans</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Jeffery Keedy, Emigre, 1991)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">HTF Didot</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Jonathan Hoefler, Hoefler Type Foundry, 1991)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">FF Blur</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Neville Brody, FontShop, 1992)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mason</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (nèe Manson) (Jonathan Barnbrook, Emigre, 1992)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mantinia</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, Carter & Cone Type, 1993)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Interstate</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Tobias Frere-Jones, Font Bureau, 1993–1995)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Big Caslon</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, Carter & Cone Type, 1994)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">FF DIN</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Albert-Jan Pool, FontShop, 1995)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Walker</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, Walker Art Center, 1995)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Verdana</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, Microsoft, 1996)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mercury</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, 1996)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Miller</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, Font Bureau, 1997)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Retina</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Hoefler Type Foundry, 1999)</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gotham</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Hoefler Type Foundry, 2000)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">*I have added the foundries who issued the faces or the clients who commissioned them to the list provided by MoMA. The names are those in existence at the time the relevant typeface was released. (For instance, the Hoefler Type Foundry did not become Hoefler & Frere-Jones until 2004.) I also added Zuzana Licko’s name to Dead History since she is usually credited as a co-creator, the person responsible for turning P. Scott Makela’s design into a workable font. Some of the dates MoMA has provided seem iffy to me, most notably that of Mercury which the Hoefler & Frere-Jones website describes as “the product of nine years’ research and development”. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“We chose some of these typefaces because they are sublimely elegant responses to the issues of specific media,” says the MoMA press release. On these grounds they defend their choices of Retina, Bell Centennial, Mercury and Miller. “We have tried to form a comprehensive collection of the most elegant solutions to typography design in the midst of the digital revolution…,” is the explanation for including OCR-A, Oakland, New Alphabet, Verdana and Beowolf. Revivals and parodies of historical typefaces are included because “typography has a special relationship with its own past”. Those that “most inventively distill the essence of historical examples to give it new, contemporary life” are HTF Didot, Galliard (sic), Big Caslon, Mantinia and DIN. Dead History is seen as a reinterpretation of the past. And lastly, as the press release says, some fonts were selected simply because they “visually reflect the time and place in which they were made.” Thus, Interstate, Gotham, Walker, Meta (sic), Blur, Keedy Sans, Mason and Template Gothic. These faces are described as having cultural importance and notable for their aesthetic experimentation.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">These rationales are a grab bag, essentially </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">post hoc</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> excuses for choosing whatever seems to have caught the curators’ fancy rather than part of a coherent argument about the changes in type over the past few decades. The overarching argument that these fonts represent the “evolution of digital typefaces” since the early 1960s is highly suspect as well. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The typefaces chosen by MoMA are, by and large, reasonable choices—just not the most important ones in every instance. More significantly, the faces left out reveal the true flaws in their claim to have assembled fonts that represent the history of type in the digital era. From this perspective, here is my list of what is not in the collection but should be:</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:Georgia, serif;"></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 17px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">OCR-B</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Adrian Frutiger, European Computer Manufacturers Association, 1968)</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 17px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The “human” response to OCR-A and the winner in the long-term in the debate over whether letters should be designed for computers and other machines to read or whether machines should be designed to read letters familiar to humans.</span></span><p></p></span><p></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Digi-Grotesk S</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell, 1968)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first digital typeface</span></span><p></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Marconi</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Hermann Zapf, Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell, 1975)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first original typeface to be produced with the Ikarus computer-aided design anddigitization system.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Computer Modern</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Donald Knuth, 1980)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first family of fonts developed using Metafont.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Chicago</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Susan Kare, Apple, 1983)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A bitmapped screen font used for the operating system of the first Apple Macintosh.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">AMS Euler</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Hermann Zapf and Donald Knuth, American Mathematical Society, 1983)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Designed using METAFONT, a font manipulation program developed by Knuth.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lucida Serif</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lucida Sans</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow, Imagen, 1985)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first original type family intended for laser printing. And the first type family to successfully unite serif and sans serif designs.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Matrix</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1985)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first Emigre font intended to be widely used by other graphic designers.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">TF Forever</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Joseph Treacy, Treacyfaces, 1986)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first original PostScript Type 3 font made using Fontographer.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">ITC Stone</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Sumner Stone, International Typeface Corporation, 1987)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The though licensed to ITC, this was the first Adobe original typeface. It also further </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">expanded the notion of the superfamily as it contained ITC Stone Serif, ITC Stone Sans and</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">ITC Stone Informal.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Charter</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter), </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Amerigo</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Gerard Unger) and </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Carmina</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse)—all Bitstream, 1987</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first original typefaces issued by Bitstream which, along with Adobe, was one of the two pioneering digital typefoundries in 1981. Charter was licensed to ITC in 1993 and</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">became ITC Charter.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Adobe Garamond </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1989)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first important historical revival in the digital type era. And one of the best-selling fonts of all time. Of much greater importance than Big Caslon.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lithos</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Trajan</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Charlemagne</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Carol Twombly, Adobe, 1989)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A trio of types based on key moments in the evolution of Western lettering (not type) that have been far more influential than Mantinia.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Rotis</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Otl Aicher, Agfa Compugraphic, 1989)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A font family that went beyond both Lucida and ITC Stone to embrace sans, semi-sans, semi-serif and serif variants. A dated font, but no more so than Keedy Sans or Dead </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">History and certainly much more popular then as well as today.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Scala</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Martin Majoor, Vredenburg Centre, 1988)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Issued by FontShop in 1990 as FF Scala, this has been one of the most successful and</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">influential type designs of the past twenty years, especially once it was joined by FF Scala </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Sans. It is far more important than either Interstate or FF DIN.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Poetica</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1992)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first italic type family.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Myriad MM</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly, Adobe, 1992) and </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Minion MM</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1992)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first two Multiple Master fonts from Adobe. Minion MM was the first optically scalable font. Myriad has gone on to be the default face for many of Adobe’s and Apple’s products, packaging and advertising.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:Georgia, serif;"></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 17px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Silica</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Sumner Stone, Stone Typefoundry, 1993)</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 17px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ostensibly the first typeface designed entirely on-screen.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 17px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 17px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Hoefler Text</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Jonathan Hoefler, Hoefler Type Foundry, 1994)</span></span></p></span><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The most successful GX font, Hoefler Text was part of System 7.5 for the Macintosh. It is </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">the typeface that brought Jonathan Hoefler widespread recognition. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Adobe Jenson</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1994)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first type revival with optical scaling. But not a widely used typeface.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Thesis</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Luc(as) de Groot, FontShop, 1995)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The beginning of the biggest superfamily which includes sans, serif, square serif, monoline,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">semi-serif and other variants. TheSans has been especially popular. It is a much</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">more</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">significant face than Keedy Sans.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Georgia</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Matthew Carter, Microsoft, 1995)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">How can MoMA include Verdana without including Georgia? They were designed together to be used as sans serif and serif options for screen fonts. Georgia (used here) has been extremely popular as the default font for blogs.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Warnock Pro</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 2000) and </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Silentium Pro</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Jovica Veljovic, Adobe, 2000)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first two original type designs in the OpenType format.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica Neue; color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">MoMA stopped at 2000 so too does my list, though there are a number of notable fonts that have been created in the past decade. The biggest lacunæ in MoMA’s list are the omissions of any font from either Adobe (the company that invented PostScript!) or Bitstream. Their account of digital type history is the equivalent of writing about American politics in the 1960s and including Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy, and Eugene McCarthy but somehow leaving out John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Accurate but woefully incomplete.</span></span></p></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-16128652947325667692011-03-20T20:36:00.000-07:002011-03-20T22:23:34.792-07:00From the Archives no. 16—Choosing a TypefaceAmong the items that interested me in the former library of the High School of Graphic Communications Art have been books, pamphlets and articles that promise to shed light on an often overlooked aspect of 20th c. graphic design: the origins and development of the type director and the type house. Two of the names that often pop up as early figures in this area are Frederick M. Farrar and Gilbert P. Farrar. I assume that they were brothers, but I have been unable to find out much about either man beyond what is in the books they wrote. <i>Time</i> magazine wrote two short profiles of Gilbert, one in 1936 and the other in 1943, that focus primarily on his career after 1936 as a magazine and newspaper design consultant. See <div>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885001,00.html<div>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,756618,00.html<br /><div><br /></div><div>Gilbert P. Farrar wrote <i>The Typography of Advertisements that Pay: How to Choose and Combine Type Faces, Engravings and All the Other Mechanical Elements of Modern Advertisement Construction</i> (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1920) which is available for PDF download from Google Books. </div><div><br /></div><div>http://books.google.com/books?id=83xMAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Gilbert+Farrar&source=bl&ots=wDDEcZ6Gqe&sig=gxBnx8oaZleU7MIQ6pf6cTSoDUI&hl=en&ei=MMqGTZflEqiy0QGokNXaCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false<br /><div><br /></div><div>Fred Farrar worked as an art director at Calkins & Holden, Inc., the famous New York advertising agency co-founded by Earnest Elmo Calkins. In 1919 he left to become Vice President and Art Director of The Typographic Service Company in New York where he still was eight years later when he wrote <i>Fred Farrar’s Type Book</i> (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1927).</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the fascinating aspects of these two books is their discussion of which typefaces to use and why. The options are extremely narrow compared to the current world of digital type. Here are some excerpts from <i>Fred Farrar’s Type Book</i> about each of the eleven of the twelve typefaces he deems worthy of being used in advertising. (The missing face is Caslon 540 which he discusses only in terms of how it differs from Caslon Oldstyle 471.) Note that none of them are sans serifs. </div><div><br /></div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Caslon Oldstyle 471: “This type is unquestionably the best to use in speaking English.” p. 6</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Scotch Roman: “This is a splendid type of modern design with the peculiar characteristic that the capital letters are much heavier in face than the lower-case… but despite this apparent defect it composes beautifully….” p. 8</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Bookman: “A vigorous heavy-face type of even tone, strong and convincing.… This type may not have anything to recommend it in the way of design, but it would be greatly missed if it were not in the equipment of the modern printing plant.” p. 8</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">ATF Garamond: “A graceful letter of some distinction, rather feminine in its graceful qualities.” p. 9</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Goudy Oldstyle: “It is a nice round letter, well designed, but somewhat lacking in vitality. It is gracefully drawn in its individual characters, and when composed in a mass is good in color but not particularly easy to read. The capital letters are excellent and in themselves are sufficient reason for this being a popular type.” p. 9</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Cheltenham: “This type suffers terribly from overcrowding, and when set in a mass, seems to be pinched to the point of suffocation.” p. 10</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">ATF Bodoni: “It is a modern letter, quite formal in design, but of great strength and dignity…. The proportions of the letter make generous leading essential.” p. 10</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Century Expanded: “A newspaper type of simple design, utterly without charm, but of sufficient mechanical quality to recommend it for some uses. It is especially readable in the small sizes….” p. 11</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Kennerley: “It has a rather pleasant freedom in its individual characters which, when set in a mass and properly leaded, is quite reminiscent of the old scribes, which is rather charming in thee machine-made days.… It is also a face of great utility in advertising, being of medium tone and of some decorative quality. It is rather classic in feeling and suggests most anything but motor trucks.” p. 11</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Le Cochin: “It is a full-faced type—easy to read—but its marked individuality confines it to certain uses, such as advertisements for French products.… The roman capitals look quite large, owing to the shortness of the letters and the height of the ascenders; but they are so beautiful in design that they seem to decorate rather than mar the page.” p. 12</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Cloister Oldstyle: “Cloister is a type of great utility, with a splendid decorative italic. The roman takes on so much color as it increases in size that it makes its own display lines without resorting to the bold face, which is a desirable quality in type for advertising use.” p. 13</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i>Fred Farrar’s Type Book</i> was published a year before <i>Layout in Advertising</i> by W.A. Dwiggins and <i>Die neue Typographie</i> by Jan Tschichold. Dwiggins acknowledged the existence of sans serifs in advertising but complained about their quality, remarks that led to his being commissioned by Mergenthaler Linotype in 1929 to design a good sans serif for them. The face that resulted was Metro and it launched his career as a type designer. The views of Farrar and Dwiggins were in stark contrast to those of Tschichold, who advocated the use of sans serif as the preferred typeface of modern times.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gilbert P. Farrar lists thirty-three typefaces in <i>The Typography of Advertisements</i> yet none of them are sans serifs. He classifies typefaces not in the stylistic manner we are accustomed to, but by how they can be used in advertisements. Thus, there is “The Forceful Educational Style” which includes Cheltenham Bold, Cheltenham Oldstyle</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">, Cheltenham Old Style Italic, Cheltenham Wide, Caslon Old Style, Caslon Bold, Caslon Bold Italic, and Old Style No. 15 (and Italic). “The Passive Educational Style” is best achieved by using Bookman Old Style, Cheltenham Medium, Scotch Roman, Scotch Roman Italic, Bodoni, Bodoni Bold, Bodoni Italic, and Bodoni Bold Italic for advertisements that appeal to men. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Both the Bookman and the Scotch Roman have a sturdy dignity that is very pleasing to men.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“When Bookman is unobtainable use Cheltenham Wide, which is very similar. When Scotch Roman is unobtainable use Bodoni; Scotch Roman is so similar to Bodoni that I have often used it with Bodoni Bold for display because of the lack of another suitable bold letter to work with the Scotch Roman.” p. 59</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">For advertisements directed at women, Farrar recommends types that are “fancier”: Kennerley Oldstyle, Kennerley Italic, Cloister Old Style, Cloister Old Style Italic, and Della Robbia. And then there is always that reliable standby, Caslon Old Style which “</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">knows no gender in its usefulness, and is a delicate, modest type in which to dress an appeal to women.” p. 73</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">“The Character or Comic Style” of advertising is best served by the same typefaces as in “The Forceful Educational Style” along with Foster (an ugly but surprisingly popular typeface prior to the 1920s). Slab serifs Foster and John Hancock are recommended in place of “Gothic” (meaning sans serif) for display in the “The Mail Order Style”. They are joined by Winchell (a type that is partway between Bodoni and a slab serif) and Webb (an outline slab serif) for “The Department Store Style”. All of these styles build upon</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "> “The Forceful Educational Style”. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">Farrar also includes some condensed typefaces to be used in “high narrow spaces.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">Fred Farrar rails against the use of handlettering in advertisements—“the present-day avalanche of garbage”—unless it is done by one of the handful of masters of the genre such as T.M. Cleland, W.A. Dwiggins or Fred G. Cooper. Otherwise, he says, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It would seem that where hand-lettering is being considered, and in the absence of a good designer, we might let Mr. Caslon or Bodoni substitute.” pp. 36–37. In contrast, Gilbert P. Farrar </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">accepts the use of handlettering in advertisements, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">an indication of the aesthetic changes that took place in the 1920s. He even suggests typefaces that can mimic or substitute for handlettering such as Packard, Pabst and Tabard. However, he </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">warns his readers not to use such types “unless there is a good reason why you should imitate handlettering.” (p. 101). </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">Gilbert P. Farrar concludes his survey of typefaces for advertising with this bit of advice,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">“Do not try to memorize a mass of type faces. If your code of principles on which you choose type faces is correct you will immediately see that you only need to know a few type faces. We have been trying to remember and use too many type faces. Let’s forget a few of them.” His final words anticipate Massimo Vignelli’s famous statement in the 1990s that we need to only use five typefaces and trash all the rest. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></p></div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><br /></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-68854317324638430582011-03-20T16:24:00.000-07:002011-03-20T16:35:31.200-07:00What’s Online no. 5: Inland Printer 1901Here is another interesting tiny article from the 1901 <i>Inland Printer </i>which, like the 1899 one, is also available through Google Books. This time the article is related to printing. It is an early indication of interest in trying to use the new technology of photography to make typesetting easier, faster and more flexible. It is another reminder that we do not have an adequate history of phototypesetting, a technology that enjoyed a brief heyday that is increasingly forgotten. <div> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Typesetting by Photo Process—For a long time rumors have been current in New York that a company was secretly preparing to undertake the production of type printing-plates by photography. Now the secret has leaked out sufficiently to warrant paragraphs in trade papers of the “revolution” it is going to bring about in the printing business. The type is printed on cards which are arranged in lines, photographed and etched on zinc, an advantage being that by camera reduction and enlargement any sized type can be had from the same copy. [written by Stephen Horgan]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; "></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><i>The Inland Printer 1901 July, p. 541</i></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><br /></p><p></p></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-13078167027086845512011-03-20T15:54:00.001-07:002011-03-20T16:11:38.243-07:00What’s Online no. 4: Inland Printer<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Several months ago I stumbled across the complete 1899 issues of the <i>Inland Printer</i> on Google Books. I downloaded the bound set and in skimming the pages this item caught my attention. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">It is not creditable to the American people that they have to be “lawed” into respecting the flag of their country and the uniforms of the service. New York has found it necessary to pass a law making it a misdemeanor to publicly mutilate or deface the American flag. When the leaven of Americanism gets worked into the fibers of our mixed population there will, let us hope, be a deeper and purer patriotism and less hysterics.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><i>p. 187, Inland Printer May 1899 vol. XXIII, No. 2</i></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Two things surprised me about this tiny article: 1. That it had nothing to do with printing or any of its allied trades, and 2. that the topic was one that had recently (during the first administration of George W. Bush) been hotly debated. I am a firm supporter of the First Amendment and believe that acts of mutilation and desecration of the American flag are not inherently signs of unpatriotic behavior. I think that the <i>Inland Printer</i>’s view that patriotism cannot be “lawed” into existence is a sound one.</span></span></p>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-17150053879702190152011-03-20T15:36:00.000-07:002011-03-20T15:56:48.915-07:00A Case Study no. 1—Chocolate & Zucchini—AddendumThe typeface used for “Chocolate” in the title of <i>Chocolate & Zucchini</i> is ITC Eclat (1984) by Doyald Young (1926–2011) who unfortunately passed away recently. You can see some of his sketches for the font at: http://www.doyaldyoung.com/DC04.html<div><br /></div><div>There are a number of tributes to Doyald online. Here are a few:</div><div>http://www.idsgn.org/posts/remembering-doyald-young/</div><div>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/arts/design/07young.html</div><div>http://fontfeed.com/archives/doyald-young-passes-away-at-age-84/</div><div>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doyald_Young</div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-68373885582223808042011-03-20T15:15:00.000-07:002011-03-20T15:33:34.454-07:00Update: Helvetica and the New York City Subway SystemThe original, limited edition version of <i>Helvetica and the New York City Subway System</i> (Blue Pencil Editions, 2009) has been sold out since the end of February 2010. Neither I nor my colleague Abby Goldstein, the co-designer of the book, have any copies for sale. Those who are looking for the book should either try eBay or the various online used book sources. The other option is to buy the newly published revised edition of the book now available from The MIT Press at the significantly lower price of $39.95. <div><br /></div><div>The MIT Press edition is the same format and page count as the Blue Pencil version. The former contains a number of minor revisions to the text, correcting facts and adding newly discovered information, along with roughly twenty new photographs. Among the new photographs are several that show white Unimark signs in usage in the early 1970s. (I am still looking for photographs of such signs from the period 1966–1969.) The new edition also has a jacket, but the distinctive binding design of the Blue Pencil Editions book has been retained. </div><div><br /></div><div>Keen-eyed observers will note that the colors and letters of the various subway lines on the jacket do not match those of today. That is because they are the colors and letters that were in use in 1970 when Unimark International produced the <i>New York City Transit Authority Graphics Manual</i>. The jacket design is based on p. 45 of the manual which reproduces the discs only in black and white accompanied by notes on the proper PMS colors to be used. </div><div><br /></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-65501629906224099102011-03-20T15:12:00.001-07:002011-03-20T15:12:32.783-07:00Comments on Tutorial no. 2—Addendum no. 2 Castle William and AJohnny (Alex Morgan), Demo and ecs,<div>I don’t usually post comments on Blue Pencil without filtering or editing them first, but I think these testaments about Faust and Sure are deserving of being put up as is. Thanks to all of you for clearing up my misidentification of the star as an A and for explaining that SURE and FAUST are two different graffiti writers. I am sorry to hear that Sure was killed in Afghanistan. </div><div>Thank you for reading Blue Pencil and I apologize for not looking at these comments earlier.</div><div>Paul</div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-12484371512381607192011-03-17T22:12:00.001-07:002011-03-17T22:45:46.286-07:00From the Archives no. 15—Helvetica and Standard<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Something else that I came across at the High School for Graphic Communication Arts were two issues of a former local trade magazine called </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Graphics: New Yor</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">k. Both were from 1965 and they help to pin down the moment when Helvetica arrived in New York and began to muscle out Standard (aka Akzidenz Grotesk).</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The first issue is volume 2, number 1 from January 1965. On its back cover is an advertisement from Amsterdam Continental Types, the firm that imported European metal typefaces to the United States, for Standard. It was bragging that “crisp, steadfast Standard has become a new classic in creative typography” because it now had sixteen members in its family. The featured weight was Standard Medium. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The other issue was volume 2, number 8 from August 1965. The Amsterdam Continental Types advertisement on its back cover was no longer for Standard but was instead for Helvetica. “How do you increase legibility without increasing type size? Solve for x.” was the headline. The body text went on to explain,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">“Increase the volume </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">of the letter’s body. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">“That is, increase it’s x-height.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">That’s what the Swiss did with Helvetica.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">“They designed each character to take up a greater volume of space on the type body.”</span></span></div><div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It concluded: “HELVETICA: Swiss precision, classic simplicity.”; and “HELVETICA </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">MEDIUM: Strongly authoritative; declarative.” The magazine itself did not pay </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium; ">attention to these claims for Helvetica or those for Standard. It was set in Trade Gothic. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium; ">However, the inside back cover of the January issue contained an advertisement by Container </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium; ">Corporation of America (CCA), based in Chicago, set in Helvetica Medium.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 302px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dxeMqTFE940/TYLupMF3nGI/AAAAAAAAAMo/vopomI9SkD0/s400/Graphics%2BNew%2BYork%2BStandard.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585288879280725090" /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xgy9Xb3NAj8/TYLvbdLhHDI/AAAAAAAAAMw/31GiJzEjMpk/s400/Graphics%2BNew%2BYork%2BHelvetica%2Bad.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585289742861278258" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 292px; height: 400px; " /></span><p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Although Helvetica Medium had arrived in New York City by August 1965, Unimark International did not spec </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">it for the subway signage it was working on. Bob Noorda and Massimo Vignelli chose Standard instead.</span></span></p><p></p></div></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-84085623141071294422011-03-17T21:15:00.001-07:002011-03-17T22:11:17.547-07:00From the Archives no. 14—Linoskala<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 359px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KUVFJs5ExYQ/TYLo9fuAJwI/AAAAAAAAAMY/iAgfbqlaziU/s400/Linoskala%2Bside%2Bone.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585282631076947714" /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2W4ZbavTboI/TYLpLluhhrI/AAAAAAAAAMg/_o1ymMc-HeA/s1600/Linoskala%2Bside%2Btwo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 366px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2W4ZbavTboI/TYLpLluhhrI/AAAAAAAAAMg/_o1ymMc-HeA/s400/Linoskala%2Bside%2Btwo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585282873207916210" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>The High School of Graphic Communication Arts in New York City, originally founded in 1925 as the New York School of Printing, is changing with the times and one casualty is its extensive library of books, periodicals and ephemera about the printing industries (papermaking, binding, type design and manufacture, typography, editing and proofreading, graphic design, photography, illustration and more). Fortunately, thanks to Abby Goldstein, the material is being saved from the dumpster and will be finding a home at Fordham University. I have been helping Abby sort through everything to see what is valuable and what is not. In the course of doing so some fun and fascinating items have surfaced. </div><div><br /></div><div>One such item is the Linoskala from Linotype GmbH, a two-sided volvelle (wheel chart) used to find out characters per cicero for 25 Linotype typefaces (presumably hot metal rather than Linofilm) at a series of [Didot] point sizes. The sizes vary from typeface to typeface with most being available in 6 pt, 7 pt, 8 pt, 9 pt, 10 pt and 12 pt while a few stop at 10 pt and Excelsior additionally offers 7.5 pt and 8.5 pt. Oddly there is no 11 pt. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are two parts to the volvelle. One is a bright orange wheel with a handle and a viewing slot that has the list of typefaces and the cicero increments (in black) as well as Linotype’s logo. The other is a larger light gray wheel with the typeface names and point sizes in black arranged around its edge. </div><div><br /></div><div>The volvelle is not dated but it is most likely from the early 1960s since Optima (1958) is among the typefaces. The other sans serifs are Futura Book, Neuzeit Grotesk Normal and Light, Erbar Grotesk Light and Black and Akzidenz Grotesk. Missing is Helvetica! Neuzeit Grotesk Normal has been used to set everything but the name of each typeface in the index on each side. They remain eponymous.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-74171059987767887692011-01-26T07:10:00.000-08:002011-01-27T11:56:20.552-08:00Blue Pencil no. 12—Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig<i>Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig</i><div>Steven Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen</div><div>San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 20010</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Book design by Tamar Cohen</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is not the usual Blue Pencil post. The book examined here has very few errors, whether typographical or factual. Most of the commentary is about its lack of context. Although most of Lustig’s career took place during the Great Depression and World War II these momentous events are ignored. I was unaware of this lacuna until I came to p. 151 and the photograph of the Roteron helicopter designed by Lustig in 1945. Suddenly, I wondered if the war was behind the impetus to design the helicopter. And then I realized how fortunate Lustig was throughout his career in his patrons and clients. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">[Regarding the Roteron helicopter other sources say that William H. Thomas, engineer and owner of the company, was its designer. Thomas studied helicopter aerodynamics at the University of Southern California at the beginning of World War II and founded his company in 1943. See the March 1946 issue of <i>Popular Mechanics</i> (available on Google Books), the obituary for Thomas in the Los Angeles Times (12 March 1995) and these websites</div><div style="text-align: left;">http://www.heli-archive.ch/index.php?id=21&L=1</div><div style="text-align: left;">http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/roteron_xm-1.php </div><div style="text-align: left;">The information on the latter website comes from <i>Helicopters and Autogyros of the World</i> by P. Lambermont (1958). To appreciate the Roteron look at the other helicopters from the 1940s on the same website.]</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The other missing context in the book is the narrower one of American graphic design during the period 1930–1955. Throughout the book the shadow of Paul Rand, the most famous American designer of the 1940s and 1950s, hovers over the story. Lustig is constantly being measured against him (pp. 11, 16, 34, 87, 92, 191) but there is never any in-depth comparison of the two men’s work or design philosophy. Here are the most detailed references:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">p. 16 “By the late ’40s… he [Lustig] was certainly on par with Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Herbert Matter, Will Burtin and others in the design pantheon of American Modernism.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">p. 34 “Other contemporary American designers from the late ’30s and into the early ’60s were similarly inspired [by the twentieth century European avant-garde]—E. McKnight Kauffer, Paul Rand, George Giusti, and Leo Lionni established models for modern book jacket and cover design.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">p. 87 “Although not as prominent as Paul Rand in the advertising universe, Lustig was an inventive advertising designer.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">p. 92 “Lustig’s ads are reminiscent of those designed by Paul Rand, Lester Beall, Leo Lionni, Alexey Brodovitch, and Erik Nitsche, but they are not imitations. They were often more spare or playful in a painterly way.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">p. 191 re: Lustig’s articles on graphic design “On the graphic design side, fewer designers were publishing. Paul Rand was an exception with <i>Thoughts on Design</i>, published by Wittenborn in 1947….”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Although Lustig is described as being influenced by European avant-garde design there are no detailed discussions of exactly which designers, design movements or design works.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Verdana, Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">p</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">. 22 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Where did he [Lustig] acquire this aptitude, talent, and expertise?” re: May 1933 cover of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Touring Topics</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, the magazine of the Automobile Club of Southern California (see illustration on p. 23).</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[This is a question that really applies to Lustig’s work in general, especially his early works. The authors make no attempt to find work that might have influenced Lustig. This is true not only of his early career but of his entire career. Lustig is treated as a genius </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">sui generis</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 25 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“In 1933, he also enrolled in a printing class with Richard Hoffmann, a fine-press printer….”</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Richard Hoffmann, a Los Angeles (Van Nuys) private press printer, published </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A Decorative Divertissement</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> in 1980. It is a showing of the decorative material from Linotype and Monotype (metal) that he had accumulated over many decades. Along with the classical ornaments by Robert Granjon and the modern ones by W.A. Dwiggins are Art Deco or moderne elements (see especially p. 76). Could Hoffmann have played a role in sparking Lustig’s interest in designing with type case material?</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">pp. 29–30 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“These signature type case constructions [see pp. 26, 2</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">8 and 29; and pp. 34–49], while reminiscent of earlier Russian Constructivist compositions, were decidedly novel in the arena of ornamental designs being done in the United States.”</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[This is not entirely true. See the work that Albert Schiller of Advertising Agencies’ Service Co., Inc. in New York City was doing from 1924 on. (See “Typographic Pictures: How an insert was composed, and something about silhouette ornaments as a basis for lettering and design” by Albert Schiller in The American Printer (December 1927) which comments on an AAS insert in the September 1927 issue, “Typosignets: The Work of Albert Schiller” by Harold B. Waite in the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gutenberg-Jahrbuch</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> for 1952 and</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://typocurious.com/typosignets-the-work-of-albert-schiller/</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">) Admittedly, Schiller’s “pictorial” images using type material are kitschy in comparison with Lustig’s abstract designs, but they show the possibilities inherent in the material. In Germany Georg Goedecker, Ernst Aufseeser and Wilhelm Wörner were using geometric type ornaments to create stylized figures and other designs that are closer in spirit to Lustig’s. Their work was reproduced in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gebrauchsgraphik</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> where it is possible that Lustig may have seen it since the magazine was sold in the United </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">States. Some of this work is reproduced in </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Advertising Art in the Art Deco Style</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> selected by Theodore Menten (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1975): figs. 201–212 and 220-221 for Goedecker (profiled in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gebrauchsgraphik</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> June 1929); figs. 213–219,242-243 for Aufseeser (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gebrauchsgraphik</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> December 1932); and fig. 235 for Wörner (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gebrauchsgraphik</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> September 1930).]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 310px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TUBGn65PwGI/AAAAAAAAAME/ZqexrvPW-DU/s400/Bauer%2BInterchangeable%2BType%2BBorders.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566526791068139618" /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[This image is of Interchangeable Type Borders from the Bauer Type Foundry of Frankfurt. Bauer had a New York office and alongside selling Futura and Bauer Bodoni they sold type material like this. Could Lustig have been using their geometric elements? Perhaps he discovered them when he went to order Futura type? Futura seemed to be his favorite typeface, showing up in his work from the beginning to the end. The author’s never comment on this. Yet, Lustig was not alone among American modernists to have a fondness for Futura (e.g. see the work of Paul Rand and Bradbury Thompson). This is one thing that separates them from their European counterparts who prefer Akzidenz Grotesk and other industrial sans serifs.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 31 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Since his studio was not large enough to allow him to pull proofs, he worked out a deal with the printing instructor at Beverly Hills High School to use its letterpress in return for designing commencement programs using his metal type ornamental method—these programs were doubtless unmatched by any other high school in the United States.”</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[This is untrue. Many American high schools had letterpress print shops in the decades before 1960. They provided essential vocational training for one of the leading industries in the country. An advertisement in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Industrial-Arts Magazine</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (vols. 3–4, 1915), p. viii by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, the Chicago typefoundry, says, “The number of school printing outfits is rapidly growing. Everyone recognizes the educational effect of a printing outfit in a school.” It then goes on to list printshops in schools in Indiana (Terre Haute, Mishiwaka, South Bend, Indianapolis), Illinois (Oak Park, Winnetka), Washington (Bellingham, Monroe, Ellisburg), Iowa (Goldfield, Sioux City), Wisconsin (Racine), Kansas (Salina), New York (Niagara Falls, New York City, Westchester County, Brooklyn), Missouri (St. Louis), Nebraska (Omaha, Genna, Lincoln), South Dakota (Pine Ridge), Texas (El Paso, Austin), and New Jersey (Skillman, Newark, Park Ridge, Trenton, Asbury Park, Jersey City, Montclair). In 1915 printing was offered at Washington High School in Manhattan. In 1925, the New York School of Printing was established as a special high school for the industry. It is now</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> the High School of Graphic Communication Arts.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 34 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“When he began designing book jackets in the late 1930s, Alvin Lustig retained as much overall control as possible, which was not at all the standard operating procedure in the publishing industry. Jacket designers were not usually afforded much freedom; their role was often an afterthought.…</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“The designer of the text pages and binding was rarely the designer of the jacket—purists celebrated the former as a craftsman, while the latter was disparaged as a ‘commercial artist,’ or advertising hack.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Lustig was not unique in this. W.A. Dwiggins, George Salter and Ernst Reichl retained near complete control over the jackets they did. And all three designed interiors as well.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 35 “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Euclid A New Type</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, late 1930s.”</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[There should be a green dot between this caption and the one above.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[These two images are not discussed in the text and the caption only describes them as “type experiments”. In fact they are experiments along the lines of the Kombinationsschrift aus Glas alphabet that Josef Albers designed in 1931. See pp. 184–185 in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Das A und O des Bauhauses</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> edited by Ute Brüning (Berlin: Bauhaus Archiv and Edition Leipzig, 1995.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Did Lustig use this “alphabet” for the masthead of <i>Arts & Architecture</i> magazine in 1948? See the two covers on p. 80.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 37 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“His [Lustig’s] inspirations were the rule-breaking typographers who literally turned pieces of lead upside down to make intaglio impressions. The upstart Dadaists used stock printers’ ‘cuts’ in their ad hoc compositions, and the revolutionary Russian Constructivists made the most of limited typographic availability by building letters and geometric ornament out of type case ‘furniture.’… The Dutch typographer H.N. Werkman, who published a small typographic journal called </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Next Cal</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">l,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> made what he called ‘drucksels,’ which combined with wood and metal letterforms with metal typesetting furniture.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[This is the usual litany of avant garde typographic figures, but none of them seems relevant to Lustig. His work, despite Heller’s reluctance to use the term, is more Art Deco and perhaps that is where we should search for examples that may have inspired him in his early years. It is likely that he was reading </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The American Printer</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Studio</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gebrauchsgraphik</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and perhaps even </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Arts et Metiers Graphiques. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">He may have been aware of the publicity material that Douglas McMurtrie designed for Ludlow Typograph’s range of Art Deco fonts (Ultra Modern, Stygian Black, Stellar). </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Either Ward Ritchie or Jake Zeitlin may have introduced him to the work of W.A. Dwiggins, though his decorative designs were created using stencils rather than type case material. Even</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> the Art Deco architecture of 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles (e.g. the Eastern Columbia Building, 1930, or Bullocks Wilshire, 1929) may have provided inspiration.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 39 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Robinson’s 58</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, late 1930s. / Cover, purpose unknown.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[This was probably designed for J.W. Robinson’s, a “carriage trade” Los Angeles department store. What the 58 stands for I have no idea.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.com/2010/05/jw-robinson-co-los-angeles.html</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Note the Futura Black/Display-like </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">r</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> made of type material.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 40 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“To announce and pay for the book [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ghost in the Underblows</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">], Lustig designed an elaborate twelve-page prospectus containing testimonials and a ‘plea’ for sponsors to contribute funds. The responses, including this from the poet William Everson, were triumphant: ‘You get the conception of an infinitely sensitive and intelligent man laying his ear to the earth and writing verbatim every delicate response and flux that twitches his being.’”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Heller’s implication is that Everson is complimenting Lustig on his design when in fact it is more likely that his praise is for Alfred Young Fisher, the poet who wrote the book.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 41 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Typographic experiment, late 1930s. / A progressive sequence of letterpress impressions.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[These are not shown in the sequence in which they were likely made. The large image at top (the book eschews numbers for the images) is the final print while the two smaller ones below are stages leading to it. The one at the left with black was probably the first of them. Unfortunately, all three are reproduced at different scales so that matching them up properly is difficult.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">pp. 42–49 images</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Heller makes no mention of the fact that many of Lustig’s typecase experiments/works seem indicative of the Art Moderne or machine age art that characterized the 1930s in America. For instance, the double-page title of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ghost in the Underblows</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> suggests a streamlined locomotive such as the 1931 Locomotive no. 1 designed by Norman Bel Geddes; and two of the Beverly Hills High School commencement covers suggest carburetors, pistons, cam shafts and—in one instance—electrical wiring. Lustig’s double-page design is also evocative of contemporary modern architecture such as Richard Neutra’s Lovell House, 1929.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 43 “Lustig used geometric typecase shapes to create the abstract designs [re: interior of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ghost in the Underblows</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">]. The process was arduous, but the results were unique in American book design.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[The abstract designs are truly amazing, but how did they relate to the poem—“a means of padding out the text” p. 40 does not fully tell the story—and what was the reaction in the printing and design world? I</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">t would have been nice if Heller and Tamar Cohen would have provided a detailed analysis of one of Lustig’s typecase designs. An explanation of exactly what went into their making—as these must be very foreign to contemporary readers and designers—with diagrams showing the different elements and print runs would have been illuminating. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ghost in the Underblows</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> was called </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“another pretension to the great American poem” by John Hay in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Poetry</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (vol. 57, no. 6 March 1941 pp. 391). The online snippet of the review does not mention Lustig’s contribution. Kevin Starr, author of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 379, says that Fisher worked on the “massive poem” throughout the 1930s and that </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Ghost in the Underblows</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> was only a fragment that Ritchie convinced him to publish. The book, subsidized by Dr. Elmer Belt, “fizzled”. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Despite advance testimonials from Robinson Jeffers and William Everson,” writes Starr, “and a lengthy, somewhat overwrought introduction by [Lawrence] Powell… </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Ghost in the Underblows </span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">earned one regional review, then receded from sight.” And, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“…his poem rumbled and roared sonorously—but with an obscurity that even academic commentators found impassable.” See </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://inbetweennoise.blogspot.com/2006/12/words-in-underblows.html </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">for some context of the images on pp. 44–45 (that is, the verso side of the spreads the designs come from, e.g. The Dying Phoenix or Through a Glass Darkly). They are set in Futura naturally.)</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p.47 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Printed on a yellow background, the blue-gray decorative slugs, the bold red arrow, and the sans serif typography offer no clue whatsoever to the content of the book [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Wisdom of the Heart</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> by Henry Miller].”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[But see the image on p. 49 and it is clear that the cover suggests two breasts and that the arrow can be interpreted as a penis or as Cupid’s, thus giving the design an erotic element. Perhaps Lustig did not read the book and assumed the book, in keeping with Miller’s reputation, was erotic in content instead of being a collection of essays. As a sidenote, it is </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">worth mentioning that Ivan Chermayeff, who worked with Lustig, did a jacket for this book for New Directions in 1960. His design replaces the head of a man with a heart. See</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://books.google.com/books?id=LGbUHaZMGK0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+wisdom+of+the+heart+Henry+Miller&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=zSVBTa_YJcOclgfvpokR&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 47 “</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Media, A Design and Production Center</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, early 1940s.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[In the image the text says, “Alvin Lustig and Allison McNay announce the formation of MEDIA, a design and production center.…” Who is Allison McNay? She appears nowhere in the biography, not even in the caption to the image. A little bit of online sleuthing revealed that Allison McNay was a member of the Curriculum Division, Los Angeles City Schools in in 1948 and that she was the co-author with Ruth Quinn of Classroom Radio Production (1948). See the article (only partially available on Google Books) by Franklin Fearing in </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Hollywood Quarterly</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> vol. 3, no. 4 1948 summer, pp. 456–459. The McNay and Quinn book is not viewable on Google Books. Perhaps Lustig met McNay while at Beverly Hills High School and later joined with her because she had media expertise he lacked. Whatever happened to the partnership?]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 49 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Rounce and Coffin Club</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, 1940. / Invitation for the 500th anniversary of the invention of printing.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[The caption is wrong. The invitation is actually for a meeting to discuss plans to display the exhibition on the 500th anniversary of printing—which was prepared by AIGA members on the East Coast in collaboration with the New York Public Library (with a logo designed by W.A. Dwiggins)—not an invitation to the exhibition itself.] </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 50 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“Lustig seldom relied on literal solutions [for his New Directions jackets]. HIs method was to read a manuscript to get the feel of the ‘author’s creative drive,’ then restate it in his own graphic terms.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[This was the same method used by several other jacket designers such as George Salter, though the results were very different. Lustig’s jackets fit into Salter’s no. 6 category (as written in 1939): “Pictorial design that elicits the atmosphere of the book while not necessarily depicting concrete or realistic scenes. This category is the most suggestive and stylistically abstract, and often includes symbolic or psychological imagery.” Quoted from </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Classic Book Jackets: The Design Legacy of George Salter</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> by Thomas S. Hansen (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), p. 12. Lustig’s work may also fit into category no. 5: “Pictorial design that suggests the atmosphere of a book by depicting specific details of its contents. Here the lettering supplements or explains the imagery.” For some of Salter’s work that is in these two categories see </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Schacht, Hitler’s Magician</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (1939), no. 120 in Hansen; </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Tower of Babel</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (1947), no. 142, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Dr. Faustus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (1948), no. 143, and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">See How They Run</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (1951), no. 158. It should be noted that Salter liked Lustig’s work and included it in his teaching at Cooper Union (along with the work of Paul Rand and Ladislav Sutnar.)</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 55 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“New Classics succeeded in the marketplace and also in the history of design for its ingenuity where other popular literary series, such as the Modern Library and Everyman’s Library, failed, because of inconsistent art direction or dreary design.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Heller is right about the quality of jacket design for the Modern Library, but not about its popularity. Despite its jackets it remained a standard into the 1960s. For images that support his judgement of the quality of Modern Library jackets see </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://makingmaps.owu.edu/modernlibrary/mlfind.html and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://www.modernlib.com/Identifiers/titleIndexPBs.html </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In 1955 Modern Library began issuing its books in paperback as well as hardcover.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Where did Lustig’s love of scripts come from and why did he use them in his designs? They are a signature—no pun intended—part of his aesthetic. See:</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">in The New Classics series from New Directions:</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 50 </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A Room with a View</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> by E.M. Forster (1944) and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Three Tales</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> by Gustave Flaubert (1945) p. 54 <i>The Day of the Locust</i> by Nathanael West (1949)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 55 <i>The Wanderer</i> by Alain Fournier (1948)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 56 <i>Amerika</i> by Franz Kafka (1945)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 60 <i>The Spoils of Poynton</i> by Henry James (1944)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[The captions provide book title and date but not author. These have to be deduced from looking at the images.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 72 <i>Three Tragedies</i> by Gabriel Garcia Lorca (1948)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 89 <i>Anatomy for Interior Designers</i> (1946)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 92 advertisement for New Directions (1945)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 95 advertisement for H.G. Knoll (1944–1945)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 96 <i>Ninth Graphic Arts Production Yearbook</i> (1950)</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Lustig’s use of script was not unique. Paul Rand and Alex Steinweiss were also turning to it in many of their designs during the same period. For Rand see <i>Paul Rand</i> by Steven Heller (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1999), pp. 26–30, 58, 66, 73, 75, 81, 98, 99, 101, 103, 106–107, 109–110, 115–116, 123, 173 and 187—but, oddly enough, never for any of his childrens books. For Steinweiss see <i>For the Record: The Life and Work of Alex Steinweiss</i> by Jennifer McKnight-Tronitz and Alex Steinweiss (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), pp. 35, 64–65 (Steinweiss Scrawl alphabet), 73, 99, 100, 106–108, 114–116, 118–120, 123–124, 126–129, 136 and 144. Heller has written about the Steinweiss Scrawl in <i>Eye</i> 76 http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=181&fid=809</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I suspect script—meaning handwriting or casual writing not the scripts of a lettering professional—were a means of making modern designs more accessible to the average person, of making them friendlier. This, like the ubiquitous use of Futura by these designers (Rand and Steinweiss and Bradbury Thompson as well as Lustig), is another visual trait that distinguishes American modernism from its European counterpart. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">It should be noted that Lustig seems to have deliberately avoided Futura in his Meridian book covers 1954–1955 (pp. 116–119) done at the end of his life.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">]</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Lustig’s use of Futura is distinguished by a preference for setting text in lowercase only in many of his designs (see pp. 50–53, 56–57, 60, 64–65, 77–79 and 93–95. Was Lustig influenced by the arguments and work of Herbert Bayer?]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 61 “…the English critic C.F.O. Clarke…focused entirely on Lustig’s book work. ‘[They] were originally his private symbols, fruits of his own esoteric vision,’ he wrote. ‘The task, as he [Lustig] conceived it, was to find a series of symbols that could rapidly summarize the spirit of each book and give it an appropriate visual form.’”</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Lustig’s covers for New Directions remain fascinating and cryptic because of his use of private symbols—though several are fairly transparent such as the dollar sign for <i>The Great Gatsby</i> (p. 60), the labyrinth for <i>The Longest Journey</i> (p. 53) or the barbed wire for <i>Poems</i> by Wilfred Owen, the British poet who died in World War I. But what neither Clarke nor Heller investigates is where Lustig may have gotten his symbols, what influences there may have been on him. Freudian psychology? Jungian? Anthroposophy? African art? One common trait is the use of pictograms (see <i>Nausea</i> by Jean-Paul Sartre p. 53, <i>A Handful of Dust</i> by Evelyn Waugh p. 56, <i>The Man Who Died</i> by D.H. Lawrence p. 59 or Exiles by James Joyce p. 60). The one cover that Heller does discuss in detail is the famous <i>Three Tragedies</i> by Lorca (see p. 62).]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">p. 70 “On the whole, Laughlin was duly respectful of Lustig’s choices.”</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[Heller details Laughlin’s (and his staff’s) reactions to Lustig’s often enigmatic cover designs for the New Directions books, but says nothing about contemporary reaction—if there is any to be found. Did book reviewers mention the covers? Did the authors themselves say anything? Dwiggins and Salter both got feedback—usually positive but not always—from authors about their covers. See correspondence in the Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. archives at the University of Texas.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">pp. 62 and 63 “<b>The Makers of Modern Literature and Directions Serie</b>s, 1940s.”</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">[The bold type in the caption on p. 63 referring to p. 62 is misleading since there are two distinct series being shown: 1. The Makers of Modern Literature; and 2. Directions. Two of the covers share the same image, a stylized hand holding a pen with a pointed nib. This image is reminiscent of the work of Karl Schulpig (1884–1948) for the BDG (Bund Deutscher Gebrauchsgraphiker) c. 1924: a stylized hand in a circle holding a pencil. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">See<i> A Treasury of German Trademarks vol. 1: 1850–1925</i> by Leslie Cabarga (New York: Art Direction Book Company, 1982), opposite title page and on front cover.]</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 69 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“He worked hand-in-glove with photographers, who executed his vision for the first time (paying them $25 a photograph, and cosigning the work with them).” </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This refers to Lustig’s covers for the Modern Reader series of books from New Directions. The photographers—George Barrows (see <i>The Confessions of Zeno</i>, p. 68), J. Connor (only an initial) (see <i>Death on the Installment Plan</i>, p. 74) and Quigley (no first name given) (see <i>Journey to the End of the Night</i>, p. 70)—are not discussed. They were important enough to Lustig that he signed their names with his on the covers. But who were they? How did they meet up with Lustig? Were they just carrying out his vision or were they collaborating on the design? Barrows is mentioned in <i>Art in Our Time: A Chronicle of the</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; "></span></p><h1 class="title" dir="ltr" style="display: inline; margin-left: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Museum of Modern Art</span></i></span></span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="addmd" style="margin-left: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">by Harriet Schoenholz Bee and Michelle Elligott (New York: </span></span></span><p></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; "><span class="addmd" style="margin-left: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Museum of Modern, 2004) in the footnote to p. 120. MoMA apparently has some of his photos. </span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; "><span class="addmd" style="margin-left: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">There is also a lead online that suggests Barrow was associated with Frank Lloyd Wright at one</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; "><span class="addmd" style="margin-left: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">time. Perhaps Lustig met him during his brief stay at Taliesen East.]</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Lustig’s 1946 Ski Alta catalogue cover (p. 78) is reminiscent of the early 1930s work of Herbert Matter such as the cover of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><i>TM foto</i> 5 (1933) p. 92, the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">cover of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><i>SVZ Revue</i> no. 1 (1934) p. 55 </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">or the brochure for Gebr. Fretz AG (1934) p. 58. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">See <i>Herbert Matter: Foto-Graphiker: Sehformen der Zeit: Das Werk der zwanziger und dreissiger Jahre</i> by Markus Britschgi and Adrian Bättig (Baden: Verlag Lars Müller, 1995.]</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Lustig’s Paramount chair (1949, Paramount Furniture) (p. 152) is reminiscent of the 1941 plywood armchair by Eeron Saarinen and Charles Eames for Haskelite Corp. and Heywood Wakefield Co. See </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i>Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century</i> by Pat Kirkham (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1998), </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">pp. 207–210 and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; "><i>Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future</i> by Eero Saarinen, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Donald Albrecht (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006). Its metal rod frame, though, is like those on the Eames dining and lounging chairs (initially made in 1946 with wooden legs).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">http://www.wright20.com/auctions/view/G6NU/G6NV/248/LA/none/TOP/0</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">http://www.hermanmiller.com/Products/Eames-Molded-Plywood-Chairs</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">There is a reference to Lustig’s admiration for the chairs of Eames and Harry Bertoia on p. 160.]</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><i><br /></i></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Lustig’s floating furniture (desks, bookcases, cabinets) (pp. 128–139) are reminiscent of the architecture of Richard Neutra (the Lovell House, 1927–1929) and Frank Lloyd Wright (Fallingwater 1935–1936); and the desks by </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">Donald Deskey (1929) (fig. 8.11, p. 282), Gilbert Rohde (8.61, p. 312) and Frank Lloyd Wright (Steelcase 1935–1939) (fig. 8.58, p. 311)</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">http://www.flickr.com/photos/mooflyfoof/4458446881/</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; ">The references above are to pages and images in <i>The Machine Age in America 1918–1941</i> by Richard Guy Wilson, Dianne H. Pilgrim and Dickran Tashjian (New York: Harry Abrams and the Brooklyn Museum, 1986).]</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:100%;color:#777777;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-81979594620474061672011-01-23T10:11:00.000-08:002011-01-23T10:37:27.895-08:00From the Archives no. 13—Frederic Goudy<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">Recently I was looking through back issues of <i>The New Yorker</i> online in order to “Glorifier of the Alphabet”, a profile of Frederic W. Goudy written by Milton MacKaye and published in the January 14, 1933 issue. I thought it might contain some information on the famous but vexatious quotation about stealing sheep attributed to Goudy. There is much dispute online over the exact wording of the quotation and what, specifically, Goudy was complaining about: spacing lowercase type, spacing italic type, spacing blackletter or spacing lowercase blackletter. Was he likening such activity to stealing sheep, shagging sheep or fucking sheep. The profile said nothing about this topic. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">“At thirty years of age he was an obscure bookkeeper fresh out of a job…. Today, at sixty-seven, he is the greatest type-designer in the world….,” wrote MacKaye in the 1933 profile. If this were </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">not proof enough of Goudy’s fame beyond the narrow confines of the worlds of design, printing and type, then two other brief references to Goudy in</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;"> <i>The New Yorker </i>certainly are.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">In The Talk of the Town for September 22, 1934 (p. 15) it says: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">“Typographical Note: Mr. Frederic Goudy has designed a special type for Saks Fifth Avenue, to be called Saks Goudy. Macy ads will hereafter be set in Cheltenham Bold—neat but not Goudy.” Typographic humor. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">In The Talk of the Town for </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">October 6, 1934 (p. 15) it says: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">“Courage-of-Convictions Note: In Pirie MacDonald’s window on Fifth Avenue there is a picture of Mr. Goudy and a sign telling of his marvellous [sic] achievements in type design. The text is set in Cooper Black.” Someone at <i>The New Yorker</i> knew their type. Pirie MacDonald (1867–1942) was a portrait photographer who focused on portraits of men of achievement. Among his sitters were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Antoine Lumiére. Goudy was in good company. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirie_MacDonald</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Grande'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p></span><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Lucida Grande; min-height: 17.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">J</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Lucida Grande"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; min-height: 15.0pxcolor:#006eac;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande"><br /></p>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-87534241722895668262011-01-19T22:40:00.000-08:002011-01-23T10:11:31.662-08:00Blue Pencil no. 11 addendumR. Roger Remington and Robert S.R. Fripp, the authors of <i>Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin</i>, expend a lot of effort to prove that Will Burtin was responsible for the popularity of Helvetica in the United States. In Blue Pencil no. 11 I challenged the evidence they presented in support of this claim. Here I want to put forth a counter-claim: that Massimo Vignelli is the individual who deserves credit (or blame)—if anyone does—for the spread of Helvetica in this country. This is a claim that Vignelli himself has made himself and one that deserves to be taken seriously.<div><br /></div><div>Helvetica was not available in the United States in the early 1960s because of technical differences between American and European type. In 1963 German Linotype began shipping Helvetica matrices to the United States but they could only be used on American machines with special adjustments. That problem was solved in early 1965 when Mergenthaler Linotype in Brooklyn began manufacturing Helvetica matrices for the domestic market. (The 10 pt size was ready as early as February 1964.) At the same time D. Stempel AG exported foundry type Helvetica that was milled to American height*. </div><div><br /></div><div>Massimo Vignelli moved to the United States from Milano, Italy at the end of 1965 to take control of the New York office of Unimark International. One of the things he brought with him was a passion for Helvetica which was quickly adopted by the other Unimark principals. Jan Conradi, author of <i>Unimark: The Design of Business and the Business of Design</i>, writes, “Unimark’s work on identity, signage and wayfinding systems relied heavily on Helvetica.” (p. 146). The typeface was an essential element of its philosophy. As Conradi quotes Ralph Eckerstrom, the firm’s CEO, “So we decided we were going to clean up U.S. communications. We were going to simplify the message by simplifying the type.” (p. 146)</div><div><br /></div><div>“Less experienced designers [than Harri Boller who preferred Univers] soon learned that their company’s leaders were serious about the clarity and serviceability of Helvetica. Any decision to explore other options was not taken lightly. ‘It was a tougher fight within the company than it was with the clients,’ said Ron Coates. ‘At the time I didn’t understand, but I understand now that to people like Jay [Doblin], that was what set the mark of the company. To change it had to be absolutely like we were attacking a religion.’ Steve Eckerstrom agreed. ‘To Massimo Vignelli, and to Jay Doblin, Helvetica was really the platonic ideal.’” (<i>Unimark: The Design of Business and the Business of Design</i>, p. 149).</div><div><br /></div><div>Unimark subsequently specified Helvetica as the corporate typeface for the following companies and institutions between 1966 and 1979, the year that the firm (excluding its Milano office) closed down: American Airlines (p. 160), Knoll International (p. 173, Ford Motor Company (pp. 158–159), Varian Medical Systems, J.C. Penney (pp. 119-120, 186–188), Dayton Corporation (Target), Panasonic (pp. 83), Memorex (pp. 167-168, 227), Gillette (p. 145), educational publisher Scott Foresman, Alcoa (p. 84), Teledyne, Great Western United (a sugar producer) (p. 105), the Denver Public Library (p. 107), Denver General Hospital, Standard Oil of Indiana, Trans Union (p. 176), Frontier Airlines (p. 162), Colorado’s Regional Transportation District (p. 161), Xerox (p. 174), Central National Bank (p. 181), office equipment manufacturer Corry Jamestown (p. 182), New Orleans department store Maison Blanche (p. 190), Mercy Medical Center in Chicago (p. 193), furniture manufacturer Wickes (p. 205), and Ecodyne (pp. 206–207). This is only a partial list. The page numbers in parentheses indicate images in <i>Unimark: The Design of Business and the Business of Design</i> that show Helvetica in use for these companies. <i>Dot Zero</i>, the design magazine published by Unimark and sponsored by paper manufacturer Finch Pruyn & Co., Inc. from 1966 to 1968, was edited and designed by Vignelli. It was set in Helvetica.</div><div><br /></div><div>Vignelli himself was directly responsible for the use of Helvetica by American Airlines (1981: p. 6; 1990: pp. 33, 82), Knoll International (1981: pp. 9, 38-39; 1990: pp. 36-38, 160), Heller (the housewares company) (1981: p. 13), the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (for the 1972 subway map, but not for the signage) (1981: p. 20, 1990: p. 95), the Washington Metro signage (1981: p. 22; 1990: p. 97), the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts (1981: pp. 48–49; 1990: pp. 184–185), the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (1990: pp. 40-41), and the United States National Park Service (1990: pp. 44–45) in the 1960s and 1970s. (The page references are to <i>design: Vignelli</i> (1981) and <i>design: Vignelli</i> (1990).) Many of these companies and institutions were clients he acquired after he left Unimark to set up Vignelli Associates with his wife Lella in 1971. </div><div><br /></div><div>Vignelli was one of the five members of the committee that oversaw the creation of <i>Symbol Signs: The System of Passenger/Pedestrian Oriented Symbols Developed for the U.S. Department of Transportation </i>by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (New York: Visual Communication Books, Hastings House, Publishers, 1981). The book was set entirely in Helvetica.</div><div><br /></div><div>Between 1966 and 1981 Massimo Vignelli was clearly the most influential figure behind the popularity of Helvetica in the United States. He was not the only major designer who used the face as soon as it became available in 1965—Arnold Saks and Muriel Cooper were early adopters—but his work and that of his colleagues at Unimark affected a wider swath of American business, culture and government. </div><div><br /></div><div>*Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) began marketing a Helvetica-clone (called TH-2) for typositor use early in 1965. By 1973 they were selling an official film version of Helvetica. Mergenthaler Linotype issued its first Linofilm Helvetica fonts in 1967. Monotype did not make Helvetica available for Monotype and Monophoto machines until late 1971. The history of Helvetica in transfer type is less clear. In 1968 Artype offered a version but so far I have no information as to when Letraset, Presstype or Mecanorma did.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-73273731430565291182011-01-17T22:59:00.000-08:002011-03-20T15:50:05.735-07:00Blue Pencil no. 11—Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin<i>Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin</i><div>R. Roger Remington and Robert S.P. Fripp</div><div>Aldershot, Hampshire: Lund Humphries, 2007</div><div><br /></div><div>Designed by Chrissie Charlton & Company</div><div><br /></div><div>[fi ligatures not used; Monotype Bulmer, the typeface used, has them]</div><div><br /></div><div>fig. 1, p. 12 “<i>Kristallspiegelglas</i>” not translated</div><div><br /></div><div>[paragraphs not indented but set apart by line spaces; makes reading the text very choppy]</div><div><br /></div><div>p. 13 repetitious phrase: “dismal years” (2nd paragraph) and “dismal decades” (5th paragraph)</div><div><br /></div><div>p. 14 “At the age of 14 he [Burtin] enrolled in a grueling four-year apprenticeship in typography—<i>Schriftsetzer Handwerk</i>—at the Handwerkskammer Köln.” The apprenticeship was most likely in typesetting (composing) rather than typography. </div><div><br /></div><div>p. 14 “In 1926, Dusseldorf’s <i>GeSoLei</i> exhibition, dedicated to healthcare, social welfare and physical exercise, was ‘the event of the year’ that ‘brought every man, woman and childin Dusseldorf to their feet.’ Preparations for <i>GeSoLei</i> kept apprentice typesetter Burtin busy.”</div><div>[what does <i>GeSoLei</i> stand for?—“The Gesolei exhibition held in Düsseldorf during the summer of 1926 was a major shop window for social hygiene and, potentially, for eugenics. The name GE-SO-LEI stood for <i>Gesundheitspflege, soziale Fürsorge und Leibesübungen</i> (health, welfare and exercise) which were popular catch-words.” See <i>Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1945 </i>by Paul Weindling (Cambridge and New York: University of Cambridge, 1989), p. 414. books.google.com/books?id=TLmAYqTcIfAC&pg=PA414&lpg=PA414&dq=GeSoLei&source=bl&ots=J4IoB1FQri&sig=me5A_rUAcjT_zowhyVWXpMoWXnA&hl=en&ei=5D41TbbEIcH_lger24WrCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CEoQ6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q=GeSoLei&f=false</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">fig. 2, p. 15 “Burtin designed this <i>Fanal Flamme</i>-type specimen brochure for Schelter and Geisecke AG, announcing a new font.”</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[the image shows two weights of a typeface being displayed not a single face; no date is provided though the text implies it was 1927.]</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">fig. 3, p. 15 “This 30cm x 22cm catalog from the early 1930s shows Burtin’s interest in experimental printing materials and techniques. Die-cut windows in a metallic paper cover let readers preview contents.”</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[the catalogue is from 1932; see the document reproduced on the recto page; the 1929 type specimen for Cassandre’s Bifur sported a metallic cover with a circular die-cut window. ]</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">fig. 4, p. 16 [no date given; design is post-1927 since it uses Futura; the title is hand-lettered]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">p. 16 “Burtin’s 1931 brochure for the German Association of Glass and Mirror Manufacturers (<i>Spiegelglas</i>) conveys an instant sense of transparency.” </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[this is the work shown in fig. 1, p. 12 which is described there as being from the “late 1920s”.]</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">fig. 5, p. 17 “…like other Burtin catalogs of the late 1920s, if [<i>Kristall-speigelglas</i> (crystal mirror glass)] it features tabbed sections for fast reference.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">[here the German is translated; but in the text on p. 17 the catalogue is described as “<i>Glass in Building: Technical Potentials</i> (Figure 5)” and dated as from “the 1930s”. The title in the image itself says <i>kristall-spiegelglas</i>. It is handlettered in a unicase style reminiscent of the experiments of Bayer and Tschichold.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">[There is no general discussion of design in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s other than a passing reference to the Bauhaus on p. 18. (<i>Graphic Design in Germany 1890–1945</i> by Jeremy Aynsley (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000) is absent from the bibliography.) Burtin was born in Cologne and worked there but there is no mention of the state of graphic design in that city during his formative years—not even of the famous 1928 Pressa exhibition. Hans Arp founded the Cologne DaDa group in 1919 but was it still active a decade later and did it have any influence on Burtin? How did Burtin come to the attention of Nazi officials, including Hitler and Goebbels, as a graphic designer? The authors only say, “Designs and brochures emerging from the Burtins’ studio were light-years ahead of the old gothic (<i>fraktur</i>) fonts and humorless ‘worker realism’ style. Nazi officials began asking Burtin to work for the cause, while trying to persuade him to divorce his Jewish wife.” p. 20 No year is given here, though 1937 is cited as the year that Goebbels “made an official request for Burtin to become the [Propaganda] Ministry’s director of design.” p. 20 The footnote does not cite a source but only tells us what assignments Burtin would have been involved with if he had accepted Goebbels’ offer. Also in 1937 “…Burtin was summoned again to Berlin, this time to meet Adolf Hitler. Pressed again to lead the design term at the propaganda ministry, Burtin mentioned that his wife was Jewish, an excuse that seemed certain to disqualify him from holding a senior position in the Third Reich. Hitler replied that posed no obstacle: Göring’s wife was Jewish, too.” p. 21 The footnote cites an interview given by Burtin in 1971 as the source for this story. This episode in Burtin’s career is one of the most fascinating in the book and cries out for more information. The notion that Burtin came to the attention of the Nazis because of his “advanced” design seems odd given the general view that the Nazis were against such work. But, then again, Burtin’s experiences—like those of Herbert Bayer—show us how much we need serious research into the status of graphic design during the Nazi years.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">p. 22 “Burtin’s reputation had preceded him to the U.S. in the widely read pages of <i>Gebrauchsgraphik</i>.” </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">p. 24 “After Germany’s <i>Gebrauchsgraphik</i> stopped publishing in 1934, The Composing Room created <i>A/D</i> (‘Art Director’) magazine to fill the gap.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">p. 27 “The Burtins had had to abandon much of their German portfolio in Cologne: fortunately, <i>Gebrauchsgraphik</i>, which was widely known by New York designers, had published examples of that work.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">[there is no other mention in the text, footnotes or bibliography of <i>Gebrauchsgraphik</i> articles about Burtin. How many were there, when were they published, and what were they about? <i>Gebrauchsgraphik</i> did not stop publishing in 1934 but continued until 1944.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">fig. 16, p. 29 “Burtin’s choice of Bodoni for his <i>Vesaliu</i>s title complements stark, stylized muscle fibers.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">[the typeface is a Didot not Bodoni.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">[There is no background on The Upjohn Company, the pharmaceutical manufacturer, even though Burtin’s career was entwined with the company from 1941 to 1971. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">Upjohn’s location in Kalamazoo, Michigan is not even mentioned until p. 79. In not looking at Upjohn in more detail the authors also fail to compare Burtin’s work for the company with graphics at either J.R. Geigy or CIBA, two Swiss pharmaceutical companies noted for their work. See<i> Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising 1940–1970</i> by Andres Janser and Barbara Junod </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">(Baden: Lars Müller, 2009) for J.R. Geigy and <i>Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography</i> by Christopher Burke (London: Hyphen Press, 2008) for CIBA.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 20px;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">p. 24 “Before long, the Levys introduced the Burtins to Cipe Pineles, then an artist at Vogue, and her future husband, William Golden, who had moved from Condé Nast to CBS. This nucleus of friends was destined to last until death did them part.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">p. 30 “Upjohn’s Dr. Garrard Macleod thought highly of the test-tube baby graphic; so highly that he preserved the original. More than six decades later, his sons still treasure the dummy of Burtin’s graphic.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;">[These paragraphs are examples of the poor writing that often plagues this book.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">fig. 20, p. 32 “Burtin designed this Christmas card for <i>Fortune</i> in December 1941, just after the outbreak of war. Searchlights stab the sky to form a Christmas star, merging symbols of peace and war.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[T</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">he symbol formed by the searchlights looks like a Jewish six-pointed star. Could Burtin have been making a subtle reference to the situation in Europe?]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[In looking at Burtin close-up the authors fail to place him in context with other designers of his time such as Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, Saul Bass and William Golden. It would have been instructive to pair this Christmas card of Burtin’s with Rand’s covers for <i>Directions</i> magazine referencing the European conflict.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 40 “…The Composing Room and other typographic leaders had been raising the bar on standards in type since 1927, pulling the industry forward.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[What exactly had The Composing Room been doing in terms of typography? The firm is famous for holding exhibitions of the work of designers and publishing <i>A/D</i> and <i>PM</i> magazines, but nothing has been written about its work and its clients.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">p. 40 “Somebody had to manage these burgeoning standards of excellence. Exit the layout man; step forward the newly-important art director! The 1930s saw the art director rise through the hierarchy to emerge near the top.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[The Art Directors Club was founded in 1920, implying that there was already a recognition of the need for art directors in advertising and magazines and that a nucleus of such individuals existed over a decade before the 1930s.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[The discussion of Burtin’s contributions to <i>Fortun</i>e magazine after being made art director in 1945 (pp. 40–52) ignores the work of contemporary magazine art directors such as Alexey Brodovitch at <i>Harper’s Bazaar</i> and Paul Rand at <i>Directions</i>. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">Also there are no examples of what <i>Fortun</i>e looked like prior to Burtin’s tenure nor mention of any of the designers who did notable work for the magazine such as Thomas Maitland Cleland, Walter Buehr or Paolo Garretto. See <i>Fortune: The Art of Covering Business </i>by Daniel Okrent (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1999) for a wide selection of Fortune’s covers—but not interiors—prior to 1945. Showing a sample or two of this work would make it abundantly clear how revolutionary Burtin’s work was.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">p. 42 Burtin imposed what he would later call his ‘new discipline’ on design (Figure 26).… Simplicity, of course, was the whole point, as when he changed the font for the magazine’s title to Firmin Didot.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[None of the issues of <i>Fortune</i> shown in the book have Firmin Didot for its title. Those from 1946 and 1947 have a hand-lettered title—which predated Burtin’s hiring—and the one from 1949 (fig. 34) is set in Times Roman. <i>Fortune: The Art of Covering Busines</i>s, which stops at the end of 1950, does not have any issues with mastheads in Firmin Didot. The authors do not say when Burtin’s tenure at <i>Fortune</i> came to an end, only that he was still working for the magazine in 1949 (see figs. 34 and 35, p. 48) and being allowed to work for other clients. However, the AIGA website says that Leo Lionni became art director at <i>Fortune</i> in 1948.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 45 “In fact he [Burtin] drove his colleagues as hard as he drove himself.… Designers measure space in picas and points. [George] Klauber remembers designers at <i>Fortune</i> inventing a term to cover almost indiscernible adjustments on a page. They spoke <i>sotto voce</i> of ‘picas, points and Burtins’ as in ‘Move that headline just a Burtin to the right.’.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[This is similar to the stories told about Hans Schmoller (1916-1985), art director at Penguin books following Jan Tschichold’s return to Switzerland in 1949, who was so fastidious about typographic details that he was nicknamed “Half-Point” Schmoller. “The only man who could distinguish between a Bembo full point [period] and a Garamond full point at 200 paces,” says Phil Baines in <i>Penguin by Design: A Cover Story, 1935–2005</i> (London: Penguin, 2005).]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 50 “[Lester] Beall has been called the father of branding; Burtin, of ‘corporate identity.’”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[There is no footnote for this claim. Many sources cite Peter Behrens as the first corporate designer for his work with AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft) from 1907 to 1914. O.H.W. Hadank’s work for Haus Neuerburg, a tobacco company, from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s also predated Burtin’s.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">p. 53 “Burtin, as far as I [George Klauber] can see, discovered plastics [as a design medium.]”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[Laszlo Moholy-Nagy experimented with plastics in his painting and photography as early as 1923. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=A%20II&page=&f=Title&object=43.900]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[The discussion of Burtin as an exhibition designer—the bulk of this book—makes no mention of any predecessors or contemporaries in the field: e.g. El Lissitsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Herbert Bayer, or Charles Eames.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 59 “Will Burtin, Inc. prospered in the years after mid-century. Burtin worked as a designer and consultant in advertising with George Nelson’s studio, Parker Knoll Furniture, Herman Miller Furniture and Charles Eames; on book designs for McGraw-Hill, Random House and others; and on industrial and editorial projects for such clients as Eastman Kodak, IBM, the Smithsonian Institution, Mead Paper, Union Carbide, and the U.S. Information Agency.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[The book describes one project for Eastman Kodak (pp. 107–110, 113-114) and two for IBM (pp. 79, 135–136) but none for any of these other clients.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">fig. 44, p. 61 “The Art Directors’ Club awarded Burtin the ADC Gold Medal for his <i>Scope</i> cover featuring <i>gyotaku</i>, Summer 1954.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[<i>gyotaku</i>–the art of fish printing—is not explained. See www.gyotaku.com/]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[The book is often marred by the inclusion of trivial family information. For instance, see p. 62 “Carol Burtin [Will Burtin’s daughter and the wife of co-author Robert S.P. Fripp] celebrated her twelfth birthday in Cologne.” or p. 100 “In 1951, when the Goldens returned to their apartment with their infant son, Thomas, the Burtins were waiting to greet them: Carol recalls holding a large, white teddy bear.”]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 65 “In 1957, Switzerland produced the Helvetica family of fonts.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[Haas, a Swiss typefoundry, produced Neue Haas Grotesk in 1957 in only one weight (bold). Other variants came out over the next fifteen years: 1958, regular; 1959, black and black expanded; 1961, italic and bold expanded; 1963, expanded, condensed, bold condensed and black condensed; 1965, compact, poster bold, poster bold condensed and poster compact; 1965–1967, black italic; 1966–1967, light; 1967–1968, light italic; 1969, bold italic; and 1972, light extra expanded. The face was not renamed Helvetica until 1960 when German Linotype and D. Stempel AG began making the typeface available for machine composition. See <i>Helvetica Forever: The Story of a Typeface</i> by Victor Malsy et al (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2009).]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 53, p. 72 “Here [Burtin’s walk-through <i>Cell</i> exhibition for Upjohn] was design innovation on par with the Isotype team interpreting public health standards in 1920s’ Vienna, and Herbert Bayer’s stylistic breakthrough in 1930s Germany.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[Some explanation is needed for “Herbert Bayer’s stylistic breakthrough in 1930s Germany”. What is being referred to?]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 54, p. 73 “Will Burtin, Inc. was Upjohn’s design department before outsourcing became popular.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[There were designers who had long-running associations with clients without being on staff prior to Burtin and Upjohn. For example, W.A. Dwiggins did design work for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.—that was not limited to book designs—from 1926 to 1956; and for the Limited Editions Club—also not limited to book designs—from 1929 to 1947.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 61, p. 83 “Max Miedinger and Edouard [sic] Hoffmann based Helvetica [Neue Haas Grotesk] on Akzidenz Grotesque, popular at the turn of the twentieth century.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[“Akzidenz Grotesque” should be “Akzidenz Grotesk”]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[This image is a specimen for Helvetica. The caption does not indicate who designed it or when but there is the implication it is the work of Burtin: “Will Burtin was among a select group of American graphic designers who championed Helvetica, the new sans-serif font, in the early 1960s.” A very similar design—credited to the Haas Typefoundry Ltd., 1968—is shown in <i>Helvetica Forever</i> on p. 56. ]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 84 “Haas-Grotesk” should be “Neue Haas Grotesk”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 84 “Edouard Hofmann” should be “Eduard Hoffmann”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 84 “When the Burtins returned to New York in the fall of 1958, they imported Helvetica with them.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[How did Burtin do this? Did he carry Neue Haas Grotesk—available only as foundry type—with him on the airplane from Switzerland to the United States?]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 88 “As Roger Remington points out….”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 89 “Remington, who has made a fine study of the Upjohn <i>Brain</i>’s physiology….”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 91 “Remington notes that….”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 81, p. 115 “Remington comments that this….”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[This phrasing is a bit odd since one of the authors is Roger Remington.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 100 “…one of the last things the Burtins stuffed into a small suitcase when they fled Germany was a specimen sheet of the type Firmin Didot. When Bill Golden was developing his new identity for CBS he asked Burtin if he would suggest a typeface. Burtin loaned him that specimen sheet—and the logotype ‘CBS’ is still written in Firmin Didot.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[Freeman Craw, designer of Craw Clarendon and Craw Modern, told me over twenty years ago that he designed both CBS Didot and CBS Sans typefaces. Several websites say Craw’s design dates from 1966—though there is an example of it dating from 1965 online for “CBS Presents This Program in Color”. www.flickr.com/photos/35692102@N08/3787386419/ and theinvisibleagent.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/cbs-didot-font-lou-dorfsman-early-1960s/ and www.ratedesi.com/video/v/R6C-R0lxHZA/CBS-Presents-This-Program-In-Color The CBS logo from 1959—the year of Golden’s death—located online (from the promo for <i>Peck’s Bad Girl</i>) looks more like a Bodoni than a Didot. www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OMeupOANrT4/0.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ratedesi.com/video/v/R6C-R0lxHZA/CBS-Presents-This-Program-In-Color&usg=__H3icL3upyEwLFZ9rYhKoc2Zvcxc=&h=360&w=480&sz=6&hl=en&start=106&zoom=1&tbnid=5tvHE3OSsbfi7M:&tbnh=146&tbnw=243&ei=X302TefpK4OCgAeftaWGBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3DCBS%2B1959%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D962%26bih%3D973%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C4732&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=300&oei=SX02Tb_GPMOclgezvsTlAg&esq=6&page=6&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:20,s:106&tx=51&ty=80&biw=962&bih=973It]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">Perhaps Golden used Burtin’s Firmin Didot (probably the Ludwig & Mayer foundry version of 1930) and then Craw redesigned the letters and made an entire typeface several years later.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 102 Howard Mont is quoted: “…Will [Burtin] was such a fine designer, so creative and so precise, with his German Bauhaus training and everything else.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[The authors should correct this mistaken statement since they indicate that Burtin’s education had nothing to do with the Bauhaus.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 77, p. 105 The image from the 1963 <i>Metabolism, the Process of Life</i> exhibition shows a Trade Gothic-style sans serif. If Burtin was such an ardent adherent of Helvetica, then why was it not used here?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 84, p. 120 The image for <i>Vision 65: World Congress on New Challenges to Human Communications</i> [book cover? poster?] is set in Trade Gothic. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">also fig. 80, p. 112 The title on the cover of <i>Will Burtin Visual aspects of science</i> (1963) is set in Akzidenz Grotesk (or Standard).</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 113 “Why was the brochure for this traveling exhibition [Will Burtin Visual aspects of science] printed in Germany?… For this very personal project Burtin went back to his roots in German precision—with Helvetica [sic] throughout.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">fig. 88, p. 126 <i>Story of Mathematics for young people</i> by James T. Rogers (1966) is the first image that unequivocally shows Helvetica. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">See library.rit.edu/depts/archives/willburtin/other07.html for clearer images than in the book.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">p. 127 Mont: “This was one of the major books that Will did. There was Standard [Akzidenz Grotesk] font size and there was Helvetica. And Will didn’t want to know from Standard, and Standard was on the machine [Linotype] and Helvetica wasn’t. So Standard had to go!”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[By January 1965 Helvetica was available in New York as a machine face from Mergenthaler Linotype.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 127 “James Marston Fitch had a contract from the City of New York to improve urban esthetics, a task that included restoring city streetscapes and parks, including Central Park. Fitch, a pioneer and the leading practitioner of restoration architecture, asked Burtin to design new signage. Before long, new signs in Helvetica began to appear all over the city. (The fact that ‘Curb your dog’ was the first to require the Burtin touch caused the maestro some chagrin!) Other cities followed New York’s example. Arguably, urban signage did more to promote Helvetica in North America than good book design.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[This story is not documented and I have been unable to verify a single aspect of it. The Fitch archives at Avery Library, Columbia University have no information on such a project and there is no mention of it in the back issues of the <i>New York Times</i>. New York City street signs have never been set in Helvetica. The footnote to the paragraph says, in its entirety: “Burtin was impressed by the work of Masaru Katzumie, some of whose iconic symbols for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were later adopted into Japan’s modern urban and traffic signage. Katzumie, or one of thirty young volunteer designers working with him on the Olympics, created the universal wheelchair symbol, among others. Katsumie [sic] made a visual presentation at <i>Vision 65</i>.” What this has to do with Fitch, the restoration of New York City streetscapes and the use of Helvetica in the urban environment is unclear. The “Curb your dog” sign set in Helvetica was designed not by Burtin but by Walter Kacik, a former member of Unimark International. It was unveiled in August 1967 as part of Kacik’s groundbreaking work for the New York City Department of Sanitation. Kacik used Helvetica (all lowercase!) for the typography on the Sanitation trucks. See “The Cities: New York Is New York—Alas” by John Lahr in <i>Print</i> XXII:II (March/April 1968), pp.55–56, <i>New York Times</i> August 8, 1967 and <i>Communication Arts</i> vol. 13, no. 4 (1971), pp. 24-31. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">What is odd about this discussion of Burtin’s role in disseminating Helvetica is that it overlooks a project of his involving Helvetica that <i>is</i> documented: signage for a Cleveland neighborhood c.1968. See Burtin’s contribution to “Transportation Graphics” in <i>Dot Zer</i>o 5 (Fall 1968), pp. 18–22. Furthermore, the Will Burtin archives at Rochester Institute of Technology include boxes 19.1–19.3, 19.4, 239.1+, 241.1+, 262+, 227.1–227.2+, 239.2–240.2+, 243.1–245.2+ and drawer 53.2–53.3 related to the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">University Circle, Cleveland signage project—yet it is not mentioned in this book. See library.rit.edu/depts/archives/willburtin/WillBurtinFindingAid.pdf]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 128 “…the structure was neither simple not [sic] cheap to disassemble, transport and reassemble.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 128 “Its [the model for <i>Genes in Action</i>] ‘informal preview’ Midtown before being trucked to Chicago marked the importance that several stakeholders attached to the impact of this latest large model.” </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[Something is missing in this sentence.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 130 “<i>Genes in Action</i> [1966] shows Burtin’s fine command of typography, and of Helvetica.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[The authors are obsessive about Burtin’s relationship to Helvetica. Here the image in fig. 91 supports their claim.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 97, p. 137 “His [Burtin’s] plays on ‘two’ [the age of his grandson Eric] include Cologne’s dialectic [sic], <i>zwo</i>.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 141 “The Sixties drew to a close with Burtin in high esteem. Harvard University appointed him Research Fellow in Visual and Environmental Studies at its Carpenter Center….”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[No specific date is provided for this award. The RIT Will Burtin website says, “In 1971, Burtin received the highest honor of the graphic design world, the Medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), in recognition of his many contributions to American graphic design as an influential innovator, a gifted visual problem solver, and notable communicator.… Shortly after receiving this award, Will Burtin was appointed as </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">esearch Fellow in Visual and Environmental Studies at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University.”]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">fig. 104, p. 144 [Burtin’s visualization of a quotation from John Milton about education is shown but not dated.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 148 “Burtin influences live on (Figure 108). Not surprisingly, they have evolved. Corporate identity blossomed; so has branding, the simplest definition of which is ‘giving products meaning’’ [sic] His early and sustained advocacy of Helvetica in North America has been repaid, if the success of that font is any measure. Indeed, once it took root, Helvetica gained converts and impetus so fast that the many variants threw its specifications into disarray until Linotype acquired it, redrew it, renamed it Neue Helvetica and added a numbering system. Helvetica was among the first fonts to migrate to desktop publishing and personal computing, trends that even Burtin, a man ‘way ahead of his time,’ according to Aubrey Singer, could not have anticipated.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">[This is a desperate attempt to polish Burtin’s legacy—which is sufficiently strong based on his work for <i>Fortune</i> and Upjohn alone—by yoking it to Helvetica’s popularity.]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;">p. 149 “Their joint headstone declares, in superb calligraphy: In memory of / Hilde [sic] Munk Burtin / 1910–1960 / wife of Will Burtin / 1908–1972 / who married Cipe Pineles / 1910–1991 / widow of William Golden / 1911–1959.”</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">[Although the stone was carved by the John Stevens Shop there is no photograph of it.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-47752673777313563852011-01-16T23:23:00.000-08:002011-01-17T08:24:10.203-08:00From the Bookcase no. 1—French Renaissance Printing Types<i><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">This is the first in a new series of posts. These are not Blue Pencil autopsies of books nor are they conventional book reviews. Instead, these are reports on what I have learned from reading books. These notes will either encourage followers of Blue Pencil to buy and read a book or save them the trouble and expense of doing so. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></div></i></span></div>French Renaissance Printing Types: A Conspectus </i><div>Hendrik D.L. Vervliet</div><div>New Castle, Delaware: The Bibliographical Society, The Printing Historical Society and Oak Knoll Press, 2010</div><div><br /></div><div>“A majority of today’s text types, either Roman, Italic, Greek or Hebrew, derive directly or indirectly from type designs conceived or perfected in sixteenth-century France. They became a kind of European standard in the 1540s, towards the end of the reign of François I. From the second half of the sixteenth century onwards they were available world-wide as is shown by the Plantin (Antwerp, 1567) or Berner (Frankfurt, 1592) type-specimens and the many French faces occurring in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English, German, Spanish and Italian printing.” p. 15</div><div><br /></div><div>“The status of their design, often going by the prestigious name of Garamont, remained unchallenged for two centuries…. While their influence as type designs faded during the following two centuries, the pleasing serenity and excellent readability of the so-called ‘Garamonds’ caused a revival from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. It persists to this day. Moreover, when demand was low, as it was for very small sizes or for Hebrew types, they enjoyed a remarkable longevity. Cast upon original matrices, some of them remained available for sale into the first quarter of the twentieth century.” p. 15</div><div><br /></div><div>“Except for Estienne’s Hebrew specimen of <i>c</i>. 1543 (Vervliet, 2004, 166), no French sixteenth-century printer’s specimens have been preserved to my knowledge, though a royal ordannance of 1586 required the presses to register an ‘essay et epreuve de tous les sortes et especes de characteres’. Intended as a measure of censorship, it was apparently not enforced (Pallier, 1975, 39, n. 142).” p. 20</div><div><br /></div><div>…facts deserve respect….” p. 20</div><div>[this could be the motto of Blue Pencil]</div><div><br /></div><div>“In the fifteenth century, so it is assumed, the technical printing crafts, such as letter-engraving, type-casting, composing, presswork, and correcting, were concentrated in a single pair of hands or under one roof and master. Except for papermaking and binding, the whole work was done in house. This view means that each printer had his own individual typefaces.… In fact for the late-fifteenth or the early-sixteenth centuries some typefaces start appearing concurrently from different presses (Proctor, 1898, 14; Consentius, 1929; Johnson, 1943; Carter, 1969, 105), implying that some craftsmen had settled down as independent type-casters, owning their own shops, however small, and earning their living from the orders of different customers.” pp. 23–24</div><div><br /></div><div>16th c. several models of type procurement:</div><div>early 16th century:</div><div>1. punches normally belonged to a single owner</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>occasionally sold or bequeathed</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>hiring or lending them was exceptional</div><div>2. proprietary matrices could be outsourced for casting by an independent type-caster on a piece-work basis</div><div><br /></div><div>mid-16th century:</div><div>3. regular trade in matrices and strikes by both printers and booksellers</div><div><br /></div><div>late 16th century:</div><div>4. casting type replaced selling matrices or strikes</div><div><br /></div><div>In-house type casting gradually disappeared during the 16th century, surviving only in large houses such as that of the Estiennes or the Imprimerie Royale. p. 25</div><div><br /></div><div>“Domestic type-casting dwindled as typefounders ostensibly managed to hoard most punches or matrices floating around on the market.… One of the fatal consequences was the petrifying of French type design and punchcutting in the century [17th] that followed.” p. 25</div><div><br /></div><div>French court pushed the Romanization of vernacular printing in the 1520s p. 27</div><div><br /></div><div>competition among punchcutters so fierce in the 1540s that it forced some of them to emigrate (e.g. François Guyot who moved to Antwerp and then London) p. 27</div><div><br /></div><div>France flooded with Gothic Texturas, Rotundas and Bastardas at end of 15th c. p. 27</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>glut produced a decrease of professional punchcutters and “consequentially a catastrophic plunge in printing standards”</div><div><br /></div><div>Claude Garamont had a typefoundry, probably operated with the printer and caster Pierre Gaultier p. 28</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>he provided matrices, strikes and moulds to customers</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>he did not sell punches except when they were part of a contract such as the situation with the <i>Grecs du Roy</i></div><div><br /></div><div>in the 1570s Hendrik van den Keere was a typefounder pp. 28–29</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>his foundry was headed by Thomas de Vechter who later set up the earliest Dutch typefoundry in Leyden</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>he supplied founts to printers throughout the Low Countries (including Christophe Plantin)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>he also struck or engraved matrices upon demand “for customers willing to bear the costs” such as Plantin</div><div><br /></div><div>Peter II Schoeffer (<i>c</i>. 1466–1547) one of the earliest known independent punchcutters p. 29</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>active from 1497 on</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>operated a small typefoundry but earned most of his income from selling matrices</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>designs available throughout German-speaking regions, Paris, Lyons, Venice, London, Cambridge, Salamanca, Coimbra and the Low Countries</div><div><br /></div><div>Robert Granjon never owned a typefoundry p. 29</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>itinerant punchcutter working alone or with an apprentice</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>worked in Lyons, Paris, Geneva, Antwerp, Frankfurt and Rome</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>earned living from engraving punches and selling matrices or strikes</div><div><br /></div><div>mid-16th century printers rarely owned proprietary typefaces p. 29</div><div><br /></div><div>p. 30</div><div>division of labor in type making was:</div><div>designing</div><div>punchcutting</div><div>striking matrices</div><div>justifying matrices</div><div>mould-making</div><div>type-casting</div><div>dressing type</div><div>usually performed by one person in 16th century with possible aid of an apprentice</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>gradually division of labor emerged during the century</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>basic split between the punchcutter and the typefounder</div><div><br /></div><div>1539 Villers-Cotterets decree the first document to distinguish typefounders from printers, though it says nothing about punchcutters p. 30</div><div><br /></div><div>“Punchcutting also demanded a longer investment in time [than typecasting]: to cut a new size and provide a set of strikes, say for Roman or Italic, required four to six months’ full-time work; it may have been a bit less for the thirty or so sorts of Hebrew, but substantially more when the several hundreds of sorts of a new Greek type were needed (Vervliet, 1968, 334–7).” p. 31</div><div><br /></div><div>it can be assumed that most punchcutters were trained in a printing house or a type foundry p. 31</div><div><br /></div><div>409 new type designs (Roman, Italic, Greek and Hebrew) introduced in France in the 16th century (excluding music and Gothic types) p. 32</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>1500–1519 1.2 new faces per year</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>1520–1559 6.5 new faces per year</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>1560–1600 2 new faces per year</div><div><br /></div><div>punchcutting was affected by religious wars and political unrest p. 32</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>also by the glut of excellent, new faces in the middle of the century</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>and by the practice of hoarding strikes and matrices by printers</div><div><br /></div><div>typecasters who were not also engravers cast type from matrices supplied by printers p. 33</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>often did job printing as well</div><div>first Parisian typecaster was probably Jean I Larcher<i> dit</i> Dupré (period 1481–1504)</div><div><br /></div><div>PUNCHCUTTERS</div><div>Jean Vatel (<i>fl</i>. 1513–1522)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>printer and punchcutter in Paris</div><div><br /></div><div>Simon de Colines (<i>c</i>. 1490–1546) pp. 35–36</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>introduced coherent roman and italic types equal to or better than those of Italian printers</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>first to do so outside of Italy</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>earliest types c.1518</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>leading letter specialist of his time </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>may have coached both Antoine Augereau and Claude Garamont</div><div><br /></div><div>Maitre Constantin (<i>c</i>. 1500–<i>c</i>. 1533) p. 36</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>helped initiate the new Aldine style in Paris</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>hypothesis that he was responsible for Robert I Estienne’s faces 1530–1533</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>modeled on Francesco Griffo’s Great Primer Roman in <i>De Aetna</i> (1495)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>led to 5 sizes—first coherent roman type family </div><div><br /></div><div>Antoine Augereau (<i>c</i>. 1500–1534) p.p. 37–38</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>may have been instructed by de Colines and may have been Garamont’s teacher in punchcutting</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>imitated the lighter Estienne romans instead of the darker ones by de Colines</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>co-printed some books with de Colines</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>was strangled and burned on Christmas Day 1534 for heresy</div><div><br /></div><div>François Gryphius (<i>fl</i>. 1531–1545) pp. 38–39</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>also a printer and possibly a graphic artist</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>used unique types and thus assumed to have done punchcutting as well</div><div><br /></div><div>Claude Garamont (<i>c</i>. 1510–1561) pp. 39–40</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>born c. 1510 not earlier as previously surmised</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>entered type trade c. 1535</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>apprentice c. 1525–34</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>journeyman c. 1535–38</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>master c. 1538–1561 with apprentices as typecasters</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>first romans, early italics and hebrews cut 1536–1548</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><i>Grecs du Roy</i> contract 1540</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>involved briefly in publishing 1545–1546</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>second romans and late italics 1548–1561</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>died 1561</div><div><br /></div><div>Michel Du Boys (<i>c</i>. 1510–1561) pp. 40–41</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">J</span>ean Arnoul<i> dit</i> Picard (<i>fl</i>. 1539–1545) pp. 41–42</div><div><br /></div><div>Pierre Haultin (<i>c</i>. 1510–1578) pp. 42–43</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>one of the best type designers of the 16th c.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>best known for high legibility typefaces with large x-height at small sizes (especially his Nonpareils)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>peak of his career was spent in Geneva and Lyons 1550–1565</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>cut types for Paulus Manutius and for Protestant Bibles</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>ran a type foundry 1571–1587 in La Rochelle</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>provided founts to England</div><div><br /></div><div>Robert Granjon (<i>c</i>. 1513–1590) pp. 43–44</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>bookseller from 1539 on; and punchcutter from 1543 to 1590</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>worked for Christopher Plantin in mid-1560s</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>his italics the best of all the 16th c. French punchcutters; his romans the equal of Garamont’s</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>types used throughout Europe</div><div><br /></div><div>Guillaume I Le Bé (1523/1524–1598) pp. 44–45</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>trained in punchcutting at the Estienne press in the early 1540s</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>specialized in Hebrew and music types</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>also worked in the papermaking trade</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>founder of the main Paris typefoundry</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>critical inventory of matrices by Garamont, Haultin and others</div><div><br /></div><div>Charles Chiffin (<i>fl</i>. 1545–1549) p. 45</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>goldsmith from Tours</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>copied Aldine italics</div><div><br /></div><div>Nicolas II de Villiers (<i>c</i>. 1550–1613) pp. 45–46</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>little known printer and lettercutter</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>probably worked on contract</div><div><br /></div><div>Philippe I Danfrie (<i>c</i>. 1531–<i>c</i>. 1610) p. 46</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>engraver, globe maker, metal worker</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>punchcutter in 1560s</div><div><br /></div><div>Julien Du Clos (<i>fl</i>. 1564–1584) pp. 46–47</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>substandard faces used by this printer; new and thus assumed to have been cut by him</div><div><br /></div><div>Jacques I de Sanlecque (<i>c</i>. 1570–1648) p. 47</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>birth date revised from c. 1558</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>types attributed to him are highly hypothetical</div><div><br /></div><div>Guillaume II Le Bé (<i>c</i>. 1570–1645) p. 47</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>succeeded his father in the foundry</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>expert in oriental typography</div><div><br /></div><div>Johannes Trechsel (<i>fl</i>. 1489–1498) p. 47</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>work not identified</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>claims to have cut a rotunda</div><div><br /></div><div>unclear if Robert I Estienne (<i>c</i>. 1503–1559) cut types p. 48</div><div><br /></div><div>no types cut by Sebastian Gryphius (1493–1556), Pierre Attaignant (<i>c</i>. 1490–1551), Nicolas Du Chemin (<i>fl</i>. 1540–1576)</div><div><br /></div><div>Matthieu Poigret (<i>fl</i>. 1540–1571) and Guillaume Thiboust (<i>fl</i>. 1544–1558) probably cut cast types; both music printers</div><div><br /></div><div>Guy Ogereau cited as a punchcutter 1557–1558</div><div><br /></div><div>Charles II Estienne (1537–<i>c</i>. 1571) may have engraved a few punches p. 49</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>not included in this book</div><div><br /></div><div>Jean Micart (<i>fl</i>. 1541–1545) type caster with punchcutting skills</div><div><br /></div><div>P. Ricard probably the same individual as Jean Arnoul (see above)</div><div><br /></div><div>Jean Le Fevre (<i>fl</i>. 1573–1590) probably a wood cutter</div><div><br /></div><div>Jacques Sabon (d. 1581) supposedly a punchcutter for Christian Egenolff in 1560s p. 49</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>undocumented work as a punchcutter</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>recut some unfinished Garamonts for Plantin</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>specialized in typefounding</div><div><br /></div><div>names of typefaces first appeared in the 1520s p. 51</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>standardization happened in the mid-16th c.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>due to the ascendancy of regional typefoundries</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>[see charts on text types and titling types pp. 52–53]</div><div><br /></div><div>[pp. 81–426 reproduce facsimiles at real size of 409 typefaces cut in France during the 16th c. There are 216 romans, 78 italics, 60 Greeks, 40 Hebrews and 3 Arabics. Simon de Colines is credited with 20 romans, 4 italics, 2 Greeks and 1 Hebrew. Claude Garamont is credited with 19 romans, 8 italics, 9 Greeks and 3 Hebrews. Robert Granjon is credited with 19 romans, 30 italics, 9 Greeks and 1 Hebrew. (His civilités are not included in this book.) Pierre Haultin is credited with 20 romans, 8 italics, 4 Greeks and 2 Hebrews.]</div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-12523842293944935112011-01-04T09:40:00.000-08:002011-01-04T09:43:25.973-08:00Comments June–December 2010<div>This is the only comment received since June 2010. Although Tholenaar died before the book was published, I believe he was alive and responsible for the captions as well as some of the introductory texts.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'trebuchet ms', verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><table id="posts" class="posts comments" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); width: 1044px; border-collapse: collapse; clear: both; background-color: white; "><tbody><tr class=" unhighlighted hover"><td class="title" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; padding-top: 9px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 9px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: top; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: rgb(249, 244, 238); width: 1022px; cursor: pointer; "><div class="relativeWrapper" style="position: relative; zoom: 1; "><span>I completely agree with Paul's comments. The book is visually excellent (in spite of reproducing many type specimens in gold (!) ink. But the captions are generally useless, obvious comments without any real knowledge of the specimens. I understand that Jan Tholenaar died before the book was published; that might be the cause of the lack of intelligent, pertinent captions. -Stephen Saxe</span><div class="commentFooter" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-size: 12px; ">By <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/12711118672573542213" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 102, 204); ">Steve Saxe</a> on <a href="http://paulshawletterdesign.blogspot.com/2009/10/blue-pencil-no-6type-visual-history-of.html?showComment=1281988313061#c3052977140063368458" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 102, 204); ">Blue Pencil no. 6—Type: A Visual History of Typefa...</a> on 8/16/10</div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-75289951197602783752011-01-04T09:26:00.000-08:002011-01-04T09:37:34.920-08:00From the Archives no. 12: The Formation of American Type Founders<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TSNa2s-pI9I/AAAAAAAAAL8/cawd7pUiY0g/s1600/Allison%2B%2526%2BSmith%2B4%2Blores.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 399px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TSNa2s-pI9I/AAAAAAAAAL8/cawd7pUiY0g/s400/Allison%2B%2526%2BSmith%2B4%2Blores.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558386260938662866" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TSNaWHeCsiI/AAAAAAAAAL0/MHqh_GLXZig/s1600/Allison%2B%2526%2BSmith%2B1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 248px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TSNaWHeCsiI/AAAAAAAAAL0/MHqh_GLXZig/s400/Allison%2B%2526%2BSmith%2B1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558385701113999906" /></a><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><b>The Formation of ATF</b></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The new year is a good time to air out mistakes and acknowledge errors. In several past Blue Pencil posts I have taken others to task for stating that American Type Founders was formed in 1892 from the merger of 23 foundries. I based my argument on several things: the genealogies of foundries in Alastair Johnston, Maurice Annenberg and other sources did not add up; the fact that several major foundries did not join the conglomerate until years later; and the listing of only twelve foundries on the title page of the 1896 ATF catalogue. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But history is only as good as its facts and new documents often change things. In this case I accidentally stumbled across a document recently that makes it crystal clear that ATF <i>was</i> initially formed from 23 foundries. I found the document while looking for information on a “vertical script” in the American Type Founders Collection at Columbia University. In ATF Box 7, Folder F there is a Confidential Preliminary Prospectus relating to the purchase of the Allison & Smith Type Foundry of Cincinnati by The New York Guaranty & Indemnity Company dated September 15, 1891. The bankers were creating the American Type Founders’ [sic] Company. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What is significant about the stock transfer document is that on one page it says, “This Company [ATF] is formed to acquire and carry on the business of the following firms and companies”: A.W. Lindsay (New York), P.H. Heinrich (New York), James Conner’s Sons (New York), Mackellar, Smiths & Jordan (Philadelphia), Collins & McLeester (Philadelphia), Pelouse & Co. (Philadelphia), Carey & Co. (Baltimore), John Ryan & Co. (Baltimore), J.G. Mengel & Co. (Baltimore), Hooper, Wilson & Co. (Baltimore), Boston Type Foundry (Boston), Phelps, Dalton & Co. (Boston), Lyman & Son (Buffalo), Allison & Smith (Cincinnati), Cincinnati Type Foundry (Cincinnati), Cleveland Type Foundry (Cleveland), Marder, Luse & Co. (Chicago), Union Type Foundry (Chicago), Benton, Waldo & Co. (Milwaukee), Central Type Foundry (St. Louis), St. Louis Type Foundry (St. Louis), Kansas City Type Foundry (Kansas City) and Palmer & Rey (San Francisco). There are indeed 23 foundries in this list. However, in pencil someone has placed an <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">x</span> next to eleven of the foundries and then added the notation “<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">x</span> closed” and the equation for 23 minus 11 equals 12. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Although 23 foundries were acquired by ATF, eleven of them were shuttered before the new company began business—even a year before the “merger” was officially announced. This explains why the list of foundries on the title page of the company’s first catalogue totals only twelve. The eleven liquidated foundries were: A.W. Lindsay, P.H. Heinrich, Collins & McLeester, Pelouse & Co., Carey & Co., J.G. Mengel & Co., Hooper, Wilson & Co., Lyman & Son, Cleveland Type Foundry, Union Type Foundry and Kansas City Type Foundry. Most of these were closed because they were in oversaturated markets. Although this document is from 1891 elsewhere in the folder there is an indication that the purchase of Allison & Smith was not consummated until November 1892. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-54242690129931559532011-01-02T16:50:00.000-08:002011-01-04T09:25:32.464-08:00Patrick Cramsie response to Blue Pencil no. 10<div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Since Blue Pencil does not post comments without moderation (and I am a very slow overseer of the blog) I was not aware of Patrick Cramsie’s attempt to respond to my dissection of The Story of Graphic Design until he contacted me directly. At the time I promised to post his lengthy response but not until I had a chance to read through them. Unfortunately, the press of teaching and work prevented me from doing anything related to Blue Pencil the past few months. Only now am I posting his comments—and reading them for the first time. I have made only a few comments in return as I do not want this post to become a back-and-forth snipe contest. Instead, I would rather let Blue Pencil readers make up their own minds on subjects Mr. Cramsie and I disagree on. I have edited out of his response his explanation of how events in his personal life affected the quality of the book. I believe that 1. the book should be judged on its own account, and 2. that his personal life is not something that belongs on Blue Pencil. The images are from Mr. Cramsie.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">—Paul Shaw</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><br /></b></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><i>The Story of Graphic Design: from the Invention of Writing to the Birth of Digital Design</i></span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Patrick Cramsie</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">New York: Abrams and London: The British Library, 2010</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 23 “graphe” should have an grave accent on the final</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> e</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response below.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 23 “constantcy” [is this a Britishism or misspelling?]</span> </b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A misspelling. Galling to admit it but this mistake and the others identified in Blue Pencil’s comments immediately above and below are among a dozen or so similar errors that appear in the book. Nearly all were picked up before the book was printed, but the corrections were not incorporated into the final text. The responsibility for the appearance of these mistakes in print is mine alone.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 25 “distiction” should be “distinction”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 2.6 Scribal palette and brushes[,] c.15,500–14,500BC the image should be larger; as it is, the objects are not clear</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The main reason for including the images of palettes and brushes was to show the inkwells and colours commonly used by Egyptian scribes (as described in the text). Though the images are relatively small, the inkwells and colours are still clearly visible. The images also help to explain the description of the small “hieroglyphic badge of two inkwells” (p. 33) inscribed on the statue’s left shoulder.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; ">Two other considerations guided the size of these images. By making them this size an appropriate hierarchy was established between them and the other images on the spread. The implements (palettes and brushes) have a lower status than the artworks shown (in particular, the papyrus and the statue). If the former were to be larger then the latter would have to be larger too, so that the hierarchy could be preserved. Enlarging both, though, would have made it hard to follow another important consideration: that readers benefit greatly from having the illustrations appear as close to the relevant pieces of text as possible. This second consideration is a central feature of the book (see the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘fig. 2.16’ below, and others). The final size chosen for the palettes allows both of the above considerations to be followed while also making what was most important about the palettes – the inkwells and colours – visible.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 33 “A red quartzite statue made in Egypt between 750 and 712BC (fig. 2.7) shows the classic pose of an Egyptian scribe….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The statue in fig. 2.7 is green, not red.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The particular image from the British Museum does, indeed, have a slightly greenish hue rather than a red one. But in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding from Blue Pencil’s comment that “the statue … IS [my emphasis] green”, it should be made clear that the statue is, as stated in the book, made of red quartzite.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 2.16 Trajan’s Column, Rome, c.AD113 this photograph of the Trajan Column should be next to the detail of the inscription on the column in fig. 2.19 rather than on separate pages (pp. 40 and 42).</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times">T<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">he importance of placing images next to relevant pieces of text has been stated above (see response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘fig. 2.6’). The first mention of the inscription, on p. 40, describes it as part of a monument. It was useful, therefore, to show this monument. This mention was part of a general description of where Roman lettering appeared. The next mention of the inscription is at the very end of p. 41 and then more fully on p. 42. Here the text focuses on some of the features of the inscribed letters. If the detailed image that accompanied this second mention had appeared on the preceding spread, next to the image of the monument, then the reader would have to flit back and forth, turning a page every time they did so, in order to see what the second inscriptional text was talking about. Of course, there would be a benefit from placing the two pictures next to each other (the reader could then place the detail in its context immediately). So it could be argued that the text should have been written in a different order, with both mentions of the inscription appearing together. However, in the context of the chapter more broadly, it was necessary to give an explanation of square capitals (and show examples of them) before focusing on the capitals in Trajan’s Column in detail.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 2.18 Rustic capitals, c.AD730 the example of rustic shown is a Carolingian version (8th c.) which is quite different from the original Roman rustic of the 1st c. and after that is the subject of the text on p. 41.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is one of a number of comments that will be responded to in a later submission. Those comments and others to which no response needs to be made have been removed from the remainder of this submission.]</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 43 “Some historians have linked the invention of the Roman serif to the carver’s chisel…. Another more recent theory has linked it to the invention of a square-cut writing implement; not a reed or quill, but a flat brush….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Father E.M. Catich should be identified as the author of the second theory which is now the preferred one.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Any book that aims to describe the broad sweep of a subject has to confront the difficulty of deciding how much detail to include. The danger for such books is that readers (many of whom are likely to be new to the subject) will feel bombarded by a barrage of names. Decisions had to be made, therefore, as to which of those individuals who weren’t designers or inventors of technical processes should be mentioned. This discriminating approach to names was emphasized in the introduction: “No attempt has been made to include each of the most significant individuals in the field” (p. 12). This was not a case of ‘dumbing down’ or wanting to be evasive. It was the result of a genuine effort to try and communicate to a specific audience in the most effective way.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Supporting this approach was the fact that this book is not meant to be a complete history. The introduction describes the aim of the book thus: “As the title [of the book] indicates, this is not meant to be a straightforward history of graphic design, with all the completeness that such a history would be expected to provide” (p. 12), and then also: “The aim behind the ‘story’ being told here is to sketch out the main styles of Western graphic design” (p. 12). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">(An aside on the use of the word ‘story’: in one review of the book the reviewer questioned whether an attempt was being made to “fool” the reader by using the word ‘story’ in the title rather than ‘history’. But not only does the word ‘story’ help to emphasize the narrative approach of the book – a feature that distinguishes the book from many other graphic design histories of a similar scope – also it is doubtful whether anyone would feel fooled. Using ‘The Story of …’ in the title of narrative histories of art (as well as other subjects) has become well established. It is likely that most of these books have been encouraged to use this sort of title by the success of E. H. Gombrich’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Story of Art</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, which has become perhaps the world’s best-selling art book. It has remained in print for over half a century and sold many millions of copies.)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It is a moot point whether the proponent of a theory, in this instance Father E. M. Catich, should be included in the main text, especially when, as here, there is no further discussion of the theory in the text, e.g. claims for and against. Ideally, Father Catich (and others like him, who are relevant but not as central as the designers and inventors) would have been included in more comprehensive endnotes. For reasons of cost and time it was not possible to provide notes for much more than the sources of quotes in the text. It is hoped that this lack can be addressed in a subsequent edition or else, perhaps, in a ‘Story of Graphic Design’ website.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">(There is an interesting passage in the ‘Editor’s Preface’, written by W. R. Lethaby, at the start of Edward Johnston’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (1906): “The Roman characters, which are our letters to-day, although their earlier forms have only come down to us cut in stone, must have been formed by incessant practice with a flat, stiff brush, or some such tool. The disposition of the thicks and thins, and the exact shape of the curves, must have been settled by an instrument used rapidly; I suppose, indeed, that most of the great monumental inscriptions were designed in situ by a master writer, and only cut in by the mason, the cutting being merely a fixing, as it were, of the writing, and the cut inscriptions must always have been intended to be completed by painting.” (pp. ix–x, 18th impression; London: Sir Isaac Pitman, 1939).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In Father Catich’s most thorough assessment of the origin of the serif, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Origin of the Serif: Brush Writing and Roman Letters</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (Davenport, IA: St Ambrose University, 1968), no mention is made of Lethaby’s apposite text (perhaps because it contains no direct reference to serifs), yet there is a quote from another part of Johnston’s book (and there are many other quotes (many of which don’t mention serifs) from other sources).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[James Mosley has privately made the same point to me that Mr. Cramsie does about Father Catich not properly acknowledging Lethaby’s earlier suggestion that a brush was the key agent in making the Trajanic capitals. Catich was egotistical and he may have deliberately done this or he may have felt that his theory was different because he was writing about a </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">flexible</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> flat-edged brush rather than a </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">stiff</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> one. I am in the process of trying to gain access to Father Catich’s notebooks regarding the writing of<i> The Origin of the Serif</i> to see if there are any references to Lethaby.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"> </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 51 “This Lindisfarne scribe did not write with the standard Roman uncial script….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne was the scribe and his name should be mentioned]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The degree of uncertainty that surrounds the identity of the scribe led to his name being omitted. “Some scholars have argued that Eadfrith and Ethelwald did not themselves make the manuscript …” p. 13, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Lindisfarne Gospels</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Janet Backhouse, paperback edition (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1987) – though Backhouse does then go on to talk of Eadfrith as the scribe. Perhaps I was too conservative and Eadfrith should have been mentioned (though it is thought likely that he was not a bishop at the time that he wrote out the text, despite being named with that title in a colophon added some 250 years after the manuscript was written).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 52 “The compass and divider marks on the back of the pages show how an ordered symmetry of repeated rectangular units underpins the [Lindisfarne Gospels’ carpet] page’s apparently free-form design.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[why not diagram the underlying grid of the design in fig. 3.6?]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… because a separate diagram would have meant three images being given to the Lindisfarne Gospels. This would have placed an undue (pictorial) emphasis on this single work (the other two images already being large ones, and, in combination, larger than those of any other work). Few other works in the whole book receive this special treatment, and all except four works in the first three chapters of ‘pre-history’ have a single image (the four others have two images). A diagram could have been placed on top of the detail of the carpet page, but this would have disturbed the reader’s appreciation of the mesmeric intensity and intricacy of the page (described in the text). As it is, an effort was made to give some pictorial emphasis to the underlying grid. I chose to illustrate the carpet page that gave over the greatest sense of the grid through its design (in fig. 3.6 each of the bordered sections of decoration can be seen clearly to derive their shape and position from a more-or-less square unit).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 54–55 [in the discussion of the Caroline or Carolingian minuscule and the writing reforms initiated under Charlemagne there is no mention of Alcuin of York who was responsible for them; there is also no full image of a page from a Carolingian manuscript, such as the Grandval Bible, to show the full effect of Alcuin’s reforms and why Carolingian manuscripts are so visually different from their medieval successors.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Alcuin of York was responsible for many of the writing reforms initiated under Charlemagne, but not always in the sense of actually creating or introducing them (Blue Pencil’s comment might lead some readers to think that he did). While Alcuin was closely involved in the standardization of spelling, punctuation and pronunciation, and other things besides (see pp. 30–35, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Pause and Effect</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by M. B. Parkes (Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1992), he was not involved in the creation of the Carolingian minuscule, which is the principal focus of the text. This script was introduced during the first of three distinct phases of biblical reform carried out under Charlemagne. It was Maurdramnus, the abbot of Corbie from 772–781, who introduced this influential script (see </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Book. The History of the Bible</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Christopher De Hamel (London: Phaidon Press, 2001) and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Michelle P. Brown (London: The British Library, 1990)). This is not to say that Alcuin’s period as abbot of St Martin’s Abbey in Tours (from c. 796–804) was not important in helping the script spread (though other factors were also important). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Grandval Bible’s most noted feature is its illustrations. But because these are so clearly illustrative, as opposed to decorative and schematic, as the carpet pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels are, they were not included. But then neither were the Grandval’s text pages. In them a busy hierarchy of historical scripts – square capitals, rustic capitals and uncials – sits alongside a Carolingian minuscule. These historical scripts had already been shown elsewhere in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Story of Graphic Design</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. Furthermore, there was a benefit in showing a more settled page, one that had absorbed the full force of Carolingian influences but then settled down into something closer to what we have today. Hence the illustration of a page from a similarly large Bible from the early twelfth century (fig. 3.10).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[I disagree with the assessment that the pages of the Grandval Bible are marked by a “busy hierarchy of historical scripts”. The careful mixing of older scripts in combination with the new Caroline minuscule is one of the reasons that the manuscript is worth illustrating. It is unfortunate that the British Library does not show pages from the manuscript (Add. Ms. 10546) on its website. See p. 50 in <i>Historical Scripts</i> by Stan Knight (New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 1998) for folio 411v. http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/TourBib2.asp<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">]</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 3.12 Glossed Bible, France, thirteenth century</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[the single image is not sufficient to show the complex layouts that characterize Parisian glossed Bibles; a second page with a different columnar arrangement would show how the gloss and the main text changed in tandem. Although the image is small, fig. 3.13 (on the following page) provides a welcome detail.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The purpose of showing a Parisian glossed Bible was not to characterize these particular kinds of Bibles. It was to illustrate the variety and ordered complexity of layouts achieved prior to the introduction of printing. This chapter is one of three that sets out graphic design’s ‘pre-history’. It covers a broad timespan (over a thousand years) and therefore it was important that the chapter did not dwell for too long on a particular kind of work. As the introduction states: “It is the main broadest branches [of graphic style] that concern this book. By setting them out clearly, it is hoped that anyone coming to the subject for the first time will be able to see its basic structure …” (p. 12). And, I hope, readers will go on to explore aspects of that structure (such as Parisian glossed Bibles) in greater depth. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 63 “texturalis rotunda” should be “textualis rotunda”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 23’ (‘constantcy’) above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 4.1 Forme of type for Mainz Psalter, 1463 [this forme of type for the Mainz Psalter must be a re-creation or recasting and not the actual type that Fust and Schoeffer used. There is no mention of it on the website of the Gutenberg Museum which is where Cramsie indicates he obtained his image.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">This type is a recreation made by the Museum, possibly in 1962 when the Museum’s new exhibition hall was opened (the Museum’s curator was unsure exactly when the recreation was made). The caption should have described it as a recreation. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 69 “The quotation here [below the image of St. Christopher] is followed by the date 1423, which may be when the woodcut was made, rather than when it was printed.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 4.5 Buxheim St Christopher, Italy, after 1423</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[based on the discussion in the text (see above), this date should be “1423 or after”; Drucker & McVarish (2008), p. 65 accept the date of 1423.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It should be “1423 or after”.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">figs. 4.6, 4.8, 4.9 and others should be larger so that details (especially of lettering or type) may be more easily seen.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The context in which these illustration appear is a general discussion of printing leading up to and including Gutenberg. Most of the kinds of lettering in the illustrations have been discussed in the previous chapter. The text that describes a block-book page (shown in fig. 4.6) explains its overall features, not its style of lettering; this is why the whole page was shown, rather than an enlargement or detail. Furthermore, the block-book was not, of itself, important enough to be given its own full page. The lettering on the gold coins (fig. 4.8) has clearly been made by a punched or impressed design, which was the purpose of including this picture. Gutenberg’s indulgence (fig. 4.9) needed to be seen in its totality, to make clear that it was a piece of ephemera, in contrast to Gutenberg’s Bible, which appears on the opposite page as a whole book. Had the indulgence been enlarged so that only a detail could be shown this contrast couldn’t have been made as effectively. Also, if it had been any larger it would have somewhat overpowered the Bible shown opposite. The two images needed to work together on a spread.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 72 “Gutenberg was not the only person from this time to be heralded as the inventor of printing. A few have argued that he stole the idea and the tools to execute it from a Dutch printer.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Why not identify Laurens Janszoon Coster here rather than relegating him to a note on p. 330?]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 43’ above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 4.13 Mainz Psalter, Peter Schoeffer, 1457 is dark; compare it to the reproduction in Meggs (2006), p. 75 (which might be too bright).</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The source of this image is a copy of the Psalter held by the British Library. When looking at the actual page with the naked eye it does appear quite dark. Whether it is darker than the same page from the source used in Meggs (2006) I don’t know. (Not owning this edition of Meggs, I’m not yet able to check if the sources are the same.) If they are from different sources, it is likely that the different conditions in which the two copies have been kept over the last 553 years will have caused them to age differently.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[Surely a copy of Meggs 2006 is available somewhere in London, either at a bookstore or library.]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 77 “What was even more unique [about the Mainz Psalter by Fust and Schoeffer] was the inclusion of a third color, blue, or in some instances, grey [in the large woodcut initial B].”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">What is the source for the assertion that some copies have gray as the third color? None of the books I have nor online sources mentions a color other than blue.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“… [the Mainz Psalter was] the first book to carry out the printing of not only rubrics, but also elaborate initials in one and two colors—red and blue or gray” p. 82, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Art & History of Books</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Norma Levarie (London: The British Library and New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1995). An online image search soon shows the following from the Gutenberg Museum’s website:</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://2C912440-B9A7-41E0-8741-44E1F3BA6729/p.077.jpg" alt="p.077.jpg" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The decoration around the initial 'B' looks light (bluish/greenish) grey (which the Museum judges to be close to the colour it was printed rather than a faded colour). The image is taken from the Museum’s own copy of the Psalter. This copy, though, is one of the four known copies of the second, slightly larger and longer version of the Psalter, which Fust and Schoeffer printed in 1459; not one of the six known copies of the 1457 version (the version illustrated in the book). The text should, perhaps, have been more precise, though it is difficult to offer much more precision. Grey appears to have been printed in another copy of the later, 1459 version (held by the Morgan Library and Museum, New York), though grey does not appear on the equivalent page (or any page perhaps?) in three of the 1457 versions held in the UK (the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Royal Collection, Windsor). It appears likely then that this grey is confined to the second version. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 4.14 Papal bull, title page, Peter Schoeffer, Mainz, 1463</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The subject of the bull by Pius II, a rejection of conciliarism in favor of papalism, would be worth mentioning since it helped pave the way for Martin Luther and the Reformation.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The chapter begins with a general description (in which Martin Luther is mentioned) of the conflict between the Church and reformers. The description, on p. 73, of an indulgence printed by Gutenberg includes an outline of the same conflict (also mentioning Martin Luther). Another reference of this kind, though apposite to the Papal bull, would have been too much.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 78 “The small rounded Gothic type [in Johan Zainer’s 1473 edition of “De mulieribus claris” by Giovanni Boccaccio] is less compact than the more angular and tighter Gothic of earlier incunabula. It gives the text area a lightness and an airiness, which is added to by the wider interlinear spacing….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[online sources (except Wikipedia) give the title of the Boccaccio work as “De claris mulieribus”]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Many online sources use the seemingly more modern form of title “De mulieribus claris” (perhaps because it conforms to standard Latin grammar – adjective following noun); and the most recent and authoritative English translation of Boccaccio’s text uses the same word order (see </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Famous Women</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by Virginia Brown (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This aesthetic description/discussion of what is a rotunda type used by a German printer might be explained by the subject: was Zainer choosing an “Italian” type to go with an Italian author (and a vernacular text) or was this the only typeface he had? This book influenced William Morris and his Kelmscott Press books (and Troy typeface) and some foreshadowing of that would be welcome.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color:#0050b1;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1893/ulm.htm"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1893/ulm.htm</span></b></a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">As a rule, there is no foreshadowing. It would thrust the reader forward into a previously unseen image or unread piece of text when the same end could be achieved by referencing back, from the later image (or text) to the earlier influence. (This corresponds to the way influence is usually exerted, through a discovery of something from the past). Thus, p. 144 includes a mention of the influence that a Bible printed by Peter Schoeffer had on one of Morris’s types and this mention is followed by a reference back to Schoeffer on p. 77.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 4.17 ‘The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy’, printed by William Caxton, Bruges, c.1473/4</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The missing initial should be noted.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… as an interesting aside perhaps (though the flow of the text is on the kind of type used rather than the peculiarities of that particular page).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 79 “Caxton had translated it [The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy] himself from French before printing it in Bruges around 1473/4. The text was printed with type that had been specially made for the book. Its design was based on the Gothic bâtarde script, which had been popular in manuscripts produced for the Burgundian court.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[It should be pointed out that bâtarde was the type used by Colard Mansion, Caxton’s Bruges master, and that it was a type associated with the vernacular.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">For an earlier mention of the link between Gothic bâtarde and vernacular texts see pp. 61–62 (though it refers to the script rather than type): “During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the script rose in status to become the standard script for luxurious editions of romances and histories …”, etc. The link between Gothic bâtarde type and vernacular texts is mentioned on p. 73: “[the indulgence’s] status as an essentially utilitarian, clerical document was reflected in its type and layout. Most of the type in this example is based on a semi-formal Gothic letter, bâtarde …” (followed by a back-reference to p. 62).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 5.2 Printed and illuminated book, Milan, 1490 is murky; why is there no credit for the printer or an identification of the text? p. 340 identifies the book as “Sforziada di Giovanni Simoneta”. It is the Sforziada, or life of Francesco Sforza, written by Giovanni Simoneta and illuminated by Giovan Pietro Birago.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color:#0050b1;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><a href="http://www.aparences.net/milan/milan2.html"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.aparences.net/milan/milan2.html</span></b></a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“Sforziada di Giovanni Simoneta” is how the manuscript is described in the British Library’s catalogue. But yes, the image should have been identified by its more common name, along with the name of the illuminator and the printer, Antonius Zarotus.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 85 “Italy was the first country to receive the German invention of printing (two German printers set up a press in the town of Subiaco, outside Rome….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Why not identify Conrad Swenheym and Arnold Pannartz?]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">As indicated by the brackets, this is an aside. See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 43’ above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 85 the discussion of littera antiqua does not mention Poggio Bracciolini, the most important figure in its development, nor is there an image of the script. The emphasis on Felice Feliciano in the revival of the Imperial Roman capital neglects far more important figures such as Mantegna, Bartolomeo Sanvito and Andrea Bregno.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Poggio Bracciolini may have been the first to make a close study of classical inscriptions during this period, but he and the others mentioned above, including Felice Feliciano, were attempting to revive these letters in architecture. According to Harry Carter, it was Feliciano’s drawings that led to an interest in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">littera antiqua</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> from outside architecture: “[these drawings] led to a series of attempts to construct the letters by rigid geometry beginning with a booklet by Damiano Moylle …” p. 46, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A View of Early Typography Up to About 1600</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Harry Carter, paperback reprint (London: Hyphen Press, 2002), and “it was Felice Feliciano who was responsible for the special excellence of Italian types and for making Italy the fountain-head of the main stream in typography” p. 71, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">ibid</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[I believe that Feliciano’s influence and that of other treatises on constructed letters in the 15th c. has been grossly overrated. I have written on this vis a vis late Quattrocento inscriptional letters in “Towards a New Understanding of the Revival of Roman Capitals and the Achievement of Andrea Bregno” in Andrea Bregno: Il Senso della Forma nella Cultura Artistica del Rinascimento (2008). See my post of 24 February 2009. Carter does not directly connect Feliciano to Jenson et al.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 85–86 “He [Nicolaus Jenson] sought out the best examples of incised capitals and littera antiqua and then adapted them so expertly that, despite his type being one of the earliest roman types, it is still regarded as one of the finest (fig. 5.4).”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[It should be noted that Jenson’s types bear little resemblance in their capitals to Roman incised capitals and that despite many authors claiming a kinship between his minuscules and the littera antiqua (or humanist bookhand) no one has yet identified an example that is similar other than in the most general way. Gerrit Noordzij has suggested that Jenson’s roman is actually influenced more by textura. See in “Gothic” by Noordzij in Alphabet (vol. 26, no. 3 Spring 2001), pp. 21–26.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Harry Carter again: “However, Jenson to a large extent and Aldus completely laid down a pattern of a consortium preserving the purity of the antique capitals and making the lower-case conform with them …” p. 47, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A View of Early Typography Up to About 1600</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Harry Carter, paperback reprint (London: Hyphen Press, 2002), and “[a punchcutter] could cease to copy penmanship and go back to the model [incised letters]. With the Roman types of Italy from that of Nicholas Jenson of 1470 onwards we come to a closer and more accomplished reproduction of the antique” p. 54, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">ibid</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[The problem with this common view is that the capitals of Jenson do not look very much like the incised capitals of either Ancient Rome or those of contemporary Italy (such as the ones found in the inscriptions associated with the bottega of Andrea Bregno). Note his distinctive M and N as well as his overly wide H and E. And these are not geometrically proportioned a la Feliciano. The capitals of Griffo (Aldus’ punchcutter) are closer in proportion to those of the late Quattrocento, especially those found on the facade of the Cancelleria in Rome which is dated 1495. My quarrel here is not with Mr. Cramsie, but more with Harry Carter.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 87 “Griffo’s first ‘Aldine’ type was a roman based on Jenson’s type, but with some of the calligraphic qualities removed.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is contrary to the standard view of the relationship between Griffo’s type and Jenson’s in which the former is considered to represent a decisive break from the latter. For instance, A.F. Johnson (following Stanley Morison), says, “It may be noted that the Aldine capitals are inscriptional, like the lettering of classical Rome as found, for instance on the Arch of Trajan [this is in Ancona and is not to be confused with the Column of Trajan in Rome]. The slab serifs of Jenson’s M and of the A and N of other early romans are now discarded.” See<i> Type Designs: Their History and Development </i>(2nd ed.) by A.F. Johnson (London: Grafton & Co., 1959), p. 41. The differences between the two designs are summarized in <i>A View of Early Typography Up to About 1600</i> by Harry Carter (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 72. “…he [Griffo] drew on pre-Caroline scripts as the inspiration for a more authentic roman type that soon displaced the Jenson version.” </span></b><a href="http://www.britannica.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.britannica.com</span></b></span></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… but on the previous page Carter says: “There was little left for the makers of Roman type in Italy in the way of designing but to copy Jenson. This they did …” p. 71. Though there are significant differences between Jenson’s and Griffo’s roman types (and these differences are mentioned in my text), is there no sense in which the earlier success of Jenson’s roman provided a framework from which Griffo could make his changes? (Both men worked in Venice.) Admittedly, without a certain knowledge that Griffo took Jenson’s roman as a starting point, the word “based” is too strong, but is there no extent to which Griffo can be thought of as being influenced by Jenson? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 5.8 Writing manual, Ludovico Arrighi, Rome, 1522</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The title <i>La Operina</i> should be included in the caption; the date of publication, although printed as 1522, is now believed to have been 1524. See <i>Scribes and Sources</i> by A.S. Osley (London: Faber & Faber, 1980) and <i>The Practice of Letters</i> by David P. Becker (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard College Library, 1997). The image is cropped at both left and right.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The image was cropped so that a more detailed view of the letters could be given.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 5.9 Writing manual, Giovanni Palatino, Rome[,] 1561</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The title of the manual should be included: <i>Libro nuovo d’imparare a scrivere</i>; and the author’s name should be given in full: either Giovanni Battista (or Giovambattista) Palatino. Palatino’s book was first published in 1540 (which is not mentioned in the text on pp. 90–91), reprinted in 1543 and 1544, enlarged in 1545, reprinted in 1561, revised yet again in 1566 and then reprinted additional times. The date of 1561 is misleading even if it is accurate to the copy that Cramsie consulted.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The title, the author’s name in full and the date first published should have been included.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 101 “Grandjean” should be “Granjon”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 23’ (‘constantcy’) above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 107 “The style of type [of the title] mixes roman and italic… while Gothic is used for the rest of the text. A similar disregard for typographic purity and formal elegance was displayed in the way the text was positioned on the paper.” re: fig. 6.7 Broadside ballad, England, 1634</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Although the imposition is inept, the typography still appears to be “pure”. Roman, italic and gothic are all used in the King James Bible of 1611 (the italic sparingly, see Thessalonians 4:18 to 5:28 or Psalms 19…3 to 21:10). The roman and italic are matched and separated by an image from the gothic (textura). Roman is used in the latter to separate the chorus (“with a hey, etc.”) from the main text of the ballad.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The word “purity” here is used in its most common and general sense, that of “being unmixed” (Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition). What the word referred to was the unusually frequent mixing of roman, italic and gothic in the broadside’s text. What it did not mean was that the typography was in some way ‘inauthentic’ or thoughtlessly executed. Indeed, the description that followed made note of “the very deliberate and consistent mixing of styles” (of type, i.e. roman, italic and gothic). The sense of mixing is heightened by the frequency of the changes (roughly once every two or three (shortish) lines). The changes in the King James Bible of 1611 are far less frequent. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 111–112 the discussion of the romain du roi makes no mention of the role of Louis Simonneau (1654–1727) in engraving the master alphabets (shown in figs. 7.1 and 7.2) that Philippe Grandjean used as the basis for cutting the typeface. He is also left out of the captions of the two figures.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Louis Simonneau was not mentioned because I wasn’t sure to what extent he was just a skilled engraver rather than a ‘designer’ of letters. Did he ‘design’ the letter shapes he engraved? Or did he transpose a set of detailed drawings/instructions that had been provided by members of ‘the little academy’ (Jaugeon, Des Billettes and Truchet) first into his own drawings and then into engravings. I was also unsure to what extent his engravings were used by Grandjean as “master alphabets”. James Mosley has suggested that some contemporary French calligraphy (by Jean-Baptiste Allais) had an influence and describes other influences too (see </span><a href="http://typophile.com/node/70542"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://typophile.com/node/70542</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">). In spite of what has just been said though, I was too tentative here and I should have mentioned Simonneau in some way.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 7.2 Engraved roman and italic capitals, Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1716 is too small</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">They are small, but the grid is visible (an aspect of the letters that is explored in the text) and a strong sense of their character is give by the full-page detail on the previous verso page.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 117 Caslon types are discussed here but neither here nor earlier is there any discussion of Dutch types in Holland (e.g. by Christoffel van Dijck, Willem Blaeu, Dirk Voskens or Miklos Kis)</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The previous chapter begins with the Dutch Renaissance, placing a particular emphasis on Plantin and some of the types he used. But, it is true, none of the types by those named above are mentioned.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 118 “The influence of European typography on British printing… began to be reversed with the publication in 1775 of the first book [The Works of Virgil] to be issued from the press of the British printer John Baskerville (1706–1775).</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 7.10 ‘The Works of Virgil’, printed by John Baskerville, Birmingham, 1751</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[the date of <i>The Works of Virgil</i> should be 1757]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 23’ (‘constantcy’) above. (“1751” is a mistake carried over from a previous publication. “1775” is a typing error (the last two numerals are transposed).)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 119–120 the discussion of the influences on Baskerville’s type is in the right direction in looking to his experiences as a writing master and the effect of writing with a pointed quill and engraving letters in copper; however it fails to follow out this trail to the “Roman Print” in Bickham’s <i>Universal Penman</i> or to the “roman” in Alphabets in All Hands by George Shelley (1710).</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It was necessary to show in a single image the kind of flourishing available to the engraver, and then also something of the wide range of letterforms in Bickham’s book (one of which I wanted to hint at the simple flourish that Baskerville incorporated into some of the letters in his italic type, as shown in fig. 7.10). No page showing “Roman Print” did these things as well as the book’s title page, which, as a title page, also carries a certain conceptual weight and recognizability.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 120 “The medium of copper engraving allowed the engraver to produce a greater range of thicknesses… and to make more elaborately curled lines since, unlike the penman, the engraver didn’t have to think about running out of dipped ink.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This statement underestimates the ability of writing masters to create elaborate flourishing despite the need to periodically re-dip their pens in ink. See the original work of Felix van Sambix (1553–1642) in the Special Collections of the Library of the University of Amsterdam or the work of Jean Larcher (b. 1947).]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The statement referred to is a relative one: “… a greater range … more elaborately curled …”. It compares the extent of flourishing that can be achieved by engraving with that achieved by writing. By saying that engraved forms could be more elaborate than written ones is not to imply that written ones could not be elaborate. Indeed, the ability of writing masters to create elaborate flourishing has been shown very emphatically earlier in the book, on p. 91. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 8.2 Astley’s playbill, 1877</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[the date is a mistake since Andrew Ducrow (1793–1842) was deceased before 1877 (and the type styles would have been unfashionable. There is a pencilled note to the left of “ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE” indicating a date of 1827.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It appears that the incorrect date was given to us by the holder of the image (but we should have spotted the mistake).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[After the Tyndale Bible of 1526 Cramsie ignores the history of blackletter, including the Luther Bible of 1534 and the radical typefaces of Johan Friedrich Unger]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Choosing to tell a comprehensive history through a broad grouping of styles meant that it was not always possible to follow the ripples of those styles as they flowed out across the centuries (though the merits of describing the first splash of a new style still remain.) Sometimes, however, it is possible to trace some of the ripples. The book mentions and illustrates some of the new gothic types designed by Rudolf Koch and others during the first decades of the twentieth century (pp. 146–147); and then also, in the Bauhaus chapter, the importance and continued use of gothic type in Germany during the 1920s (pp. 197–198). Though Johann (cf.) Friedrich Unger was pioneering in his effort to simplify and, to some extent, ‘romanize’ gothic letters at the end of the eighteenth century, he was eclipsed by the much greater activity in the same direction undertaken by Koch and others during the early twentieth century.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 124 “The cutting of wooden types was simplified during the second quarter of the century with the invention in America of the router, a mechanical cutter that could cut more quickly and precisely than a craftsman with his knives and gouges.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[the discussion of wood types is very cursory and it fails not only to acknowledge Darius Wells as the individual who harnessed the router for the purpose of cutting wood type in 1828 but it leaves out the equally important role of William Leavenworth in joining the router to the pantograph in 1834, an act that allowed wood type letters to not only be made in a wide range of sizes but also to be stretched and condensed.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In order to keep the book focussed on graphic style, explanations of mechanical processes, such as the router, were only given if they helped to explain why a particular design looked the way it did. </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color:#0050b1;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><a href="http://www.woodtype.org/museum_information_about.shtml"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.woodtype.org/museum_information_about.shtml</span></b></a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">and see <i>American Wood Type, 1828–1900: Notes on the Evolution of Decorated and Large Types and Comments on Related Trades of the Period</i> by Rob Roy Kelly (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1969). The latter, one of the most important books on the history of type, is not in Cramsie’s bibliography.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I was aware of the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, and had come across references to the book mentioned (and seen reproductions of some pages). But no, it was not one of the books I consulted while researching and writing my book (that being the criterion for inclusion in the bibliography). Until the publication last March of a second paperback edition, Kelly’s book was quite rare (having been first published in hardback over 40 years ago, in 1969, and then reprinted in paperback in 1977). It is not something I have come across casually (unlike most of the books in the bibliography) during the decades I have spent browsing shelves of design books (admittedly, mainly in the UK).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[Kelly’s book is not that rare, though the original edition does fetch a high price today. I assume that Mr. Cramsie had access to the British Library, the library at St. Bride’s and other institutions in London, Oxford or the vicinity which would have had a copy of this seminal work. This is a book that should have been hunted down rather than stumbled upon casually.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 8.6 Sanserif, British ‘One inch’ Ordnance Survey map, 1801</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[the sans serif lettering in the map (e.g. ROMAN WALL and SEGEDUNUM) is difficult to locate; the caption or the main text (p. 126) should cite one or more words]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Good suggestion.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 126 “Neo classical” [sic] is missing a hyphen [the spelling used elsewhere throughout the book]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 23’ (‘constantcy’) above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 8.8 Ornamented type, Louis John Pouchée, c.1822</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 8.9 Woodblock for letter Q shown opposite, c.1822</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[the reduction of scale should be noted since in the fig. 8.8 there is one large Q and three smaller ones and in fig. 8.9 the lone Q is a third size; it would also help to indicate to the reader the large size of Pouchée’s letters.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Each of the printed letters is similar to the size that Pouchée printed them. The only significant reduction is the picture of the woodblock, which was made smaller in order for the design of the large Q (which the woodblock had printed) to be appreciated better.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 129 “Although Bewick did not invent wood engraving he developed and perfected it to such a degree that printers in Europe and America were also encouraged to exploit its potential.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[If wood engraving was not invented by Bewick, then who deserves the credit? Joseph Cundall says “It is believed that Bewick was the first who used the wood of the box-tree, which is very hard, and who made his drawings on the butt-ends of the blocks, and cut his lines with the graver pushed from him. He brought into practice what is known as the ‘white line’ in wood-engraving; that is, he produced his effects more by means of many white lines wide apart to give an appearance of lightness, and by giving closer lines to produce a grey effect….” See <i>A Brief History of Wood-Engraving from Its Invention</i> (London: Sampson Low, Marston, & Company, Ltd., 1895).]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for reasons of economy wood-engraved blocks were often used in place of expensive and less hard-wearing copper plates … [a historian, Thomas] Balston claims William Howell’s Medulla Historiae Anglicanae (1712) to be the first wood-engraved illustration in England …” p. 21, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">British Wood-Engraved Book Illustration 1904–1940</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Joanna Selborne, paperback edition (London: The British Library and New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2001). And “with the use of the end-grain and the proper graver’s tools, people had begun to talk not of woodcuts but of ‘wood-engravings’. Bewick was not the first to try the new techniques, but he developed and perfected them” p. 49, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Jenny Uglow (London: Faber & Faber, 2006) (he may, though, have been the originator of the ‘white line’ technique). So the method appears to have evolved primarily as a cheap form of engraving, but as far as I am aware, no individual is known to have ‘invented’ the method.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 133–135 the discussion of lithography makes no mention of Rudolph Ackermann, Charles Joseph Hullmandel (responsible for developing methods for reproducing tonal gradations and creating the effects of soft color washes), Godfroy Englemann (who patented chromolithography in 1937) or Currier & Ives.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 43’ above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 9.2 Gothic modular type, V&J Figgins, c.1850</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[These letters are not Gothic but closer in style to 19th c. Tuscans.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“The Tuscan … was, as Mr [Stanley] Morison points out, invented in the fourth century by Pope Damasus I. Its characteristic is that the points of the serifs are extended and curled, probably bifurcating the stem” p. 33, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">XIXth Century Ornamented Types and Title Pages</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Nicolette [sic] Gray (London: Faber & Faber, 1938). Bifurcated stems, which help to define the modular type shown, can be seen in the decorated initials of many early manuscripts; so too the type’s condensed and rounded letter shapes, some of which can be seen (as indicated in the text) on the carpet page of the Lindisfarne Gospels (fig. 3.4).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[The Tuscan letter was not invented by Pope Damasus but by Filocalus who carved inscriptions honoring Christian martyrs at the Pope’s behest.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 141–145 the lengthy (and warranted) discussion of William Morris makes no mention of the influence of his calligraphic manuscripts on his activities with the Kelmscott Press; and the images fail to show any of the more common “plain” pages found in Kelmscott books (e.g. <i>The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems</i> by William Morris (1892) or <i>Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis</i> by Stephen Langton (1896) or even most of the pages of the Kelmscott Chaucer. See </span></b><a href="http://www.lib.umich.edu/pursuit-ideal-life-art-william-morris/kelms.html%5D"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.lib.umich.edu/pursuit-ideal-life-art-william-morris/kelms.html]</span></b></span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The book’s discussion of Morris focused on what the above website describes as “the one [work] revealing the most integration between text, ornament and illustration” and the “litmus test which measures one’s response to Morris’s work as a printer”; i.e. Morris’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. Showing a detail of the ornamented and illustrated text page made it possible to bring the viewer closer to each of these characteristic aspects of Arts and Crafts design, and in a way that would not have been possible with a “plain” page. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A mention should have been made of Morris’s calligraphic and illuminated manuscripts (which he worked on intensively between 1870–1875), but a larger discussion of the revival of calligraphy needed to be saved for the next ‘designer’ mentioned, Edward Johnston (the man credited with having done most to revive this craft during this period).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 146 “One of the designers whose life as a maker of letters was guided by examples in [Edward] Johnston’s book [<i>Writing & Illuminating & Lettering</i>], was the German type designer Rudolf Koch (1876–1934). It is the first time that the word designer, as distinct from punch-cutter, type founder, printer or publisher can be used with real authority.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Frederic W. Goudy and Morris Fuller Benton both preceded Koch as a type designer by nearly a decade.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The text quoted in the comment above was not meant to mean the first time in history, but rather the first time in the book.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 9.11 Kochschrift, 1910; Maximilian, 1914; Wilhelm-Klingsporschrift, 1926; all designed by Rudolf Koch</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[these are all digital versions of Koch’s fonts; they should not be used in this manner as they are not necessarily the same as the metal originals (which is definitely the case for Wilhelm-Klingsporschrift which has been outfitted with a modern </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">k</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">x</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> among other changes). The use of digital fonts as image for historical typefaces is unethical.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response immediately below.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 147 “The first type that Koch designed for the [Klingspor] foundry…—shown here as in all subsequent examples of type or typefaces, in a modern digital version….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Cramsie does not explain why he substitutes modern digital versions of fonts for past metal typefaces. There are only two possible explanations: 1. laziness, 2. cheapness. Certainly images of metal typefaces are readily available—and most are far more visually exciting than the bland digital alphabets he offers instead. If anyone doubts this, look at the two volumes of <i>Type: A Visual History of Typefaces & Visual Styles</i> published by Taschen (and vetted elsewhere on Blue Pencil). And for Koch in particular there are some good examples of his typefaces available on Flickr.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Financial considerations imposed a choice: either use digital fonts or reduce the number of the other images (i.e. other works of design) by the number of metal typefaces that needed to be shown. In order to have a greater number of other images I chose to use digital fonts. Doing so would have been unethical if no mention had been made of the typefaces being digital versions. As the quote in Blue Pencil’s comment makes clear, this I did do, in the main body of text. I also described them as digital fonts in the picture list at the back of the book. Clearly, though, I would have preferred to use images of metal typefaces.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[The cost argument is not a good one. Either the image is the real thing or it is not.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 149 “The poster’s power was most actively demonstrated on the streets of Paris. The city’s boulevards and alleyways became lined with large and vibrantly colourful images.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Did Baron Hausmann’s renovation of Paris between 1852 and 1870 which created these boulevards have an influence on the emergence of the poster?]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I’ve not read that it did. A reduction in the tax imposed on public advertising has been put forward as an influence. But it seems that a, if not the, major factor was the new ability to print large colourful posters, as the text mentions.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 151 “Henri Van der Velde” should be “Henri van de Velde” (or “Henry van de Velde”); See </span></b><a href="http://www.henry-van-de-velde.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">www.henry-van-de-velde.com</span></b></span></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">/</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It should be “Henry van de Velde”, as it is elsewhere in the book.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 155 “Another similar script-based logo is the monogrammatic form used by General Electric (fig. 10.8), whose elaborate initials were encircled and first placed on various electrical appliances in 1907.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[the second logo in fig. 10.8 shows an encircled GE dated 1900]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The sentence is misleading. It should read “encircled in 1900 and first placed on various …”.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 10.14 ‘Scottish Musical Review’ poster designed by Charles Rennie Mackkintosh, 1896</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[there are other images that could better represent Mackintosh than this one, most notably something related to Miss Cranston’s Tea Room </span></b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Cranston%5D"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Cranston]</span></b></span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… though in choosing this one a very direct comparison could be made with Moser’s similar ‘Ver Sacrum’ poster shown on the opposite page. The comparison makes clear the geometric aspect that developed within Art Nouveau. This serves the book’s central aim of outlining styles rather than representing the work of particular individuals.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 161 It is disappointing that the only image representing Peter Behrens and his work for AEG, beyond iterations of the logo, is a detail of the facade of the AEG turbine factory that focuses on the logo (thus cropping out the innovative features of the building). A catalogue page showing his product design as well as his use of proto-grids and his own typeface would have been more effective.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The innovative features of the building were not germane to the discussion of graphic style in this chapter. Showing the logo on the building helped to illustrate what has been described as the first corporate identity programme. It also helped to show how Behrens’s role extended beyond AEG’s graphic design (into the company’s architecture and industrial design). Both points are mentioned in the text.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 12.8 ‘Blast’ magazine cover and inside designed by Wyndham Lewis, 1914</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[who is Boehm? (see the inside page): “BLAST / pasty shadow cast by gigantic Boehm” and what is Putney? “…culminating in/ PURGATORY OF / PUTNEY”]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834–1890) was a sculptor of statues and busts, and was commissioned to produce many large public works (of royalty and other establishment figures) during the last decades of the nineteenth century especially. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Putney is a middle-class suburb of London (on the south side of the river Thames).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[Thanks for the explanations.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 180 there are no images to accompany the discussion of Marcel Duchamp’s work</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The focus on images of graphic design precluded the inclusion of images of fine art. Had it been possible to include the latter I would have shown this image of Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’:</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://01502C1C-6A6B-4AF8-A0DD-80BF0F669807/p.180.jpg" alt="p.180.jpg" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 183 there are no images of De Stijl paintings to accompany the discussion of the work of Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response immediately above. ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’ (1942–1943) would have accompanied the description of Mondrian spending “the remaining 25 years of his life exploring the nuances of rectangular abstraction” (p. 184):</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://01502C1C-6A6B-4AF8-A0DD-80BF0F669807/p.183.jpg" alt="p.183.jpg" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The sequencing of chapter 13 Form and Function: Bauhaus & the New Typography, c.1919–c.1933 [why the circas?] and chapter 14 The Weight of Tradition: Traditional Typography, c.1910–1947 is odd; the initial date of the latter seems arbitrary as there is no single image or event in the text tied to it.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The main period (indicated by the dates) discussed in chapter 13 is weighted slightly earlier than the main period in chapter 14. This determined the order of the two chapters (despite the fact that the starting date of 13 is later than the starting date of 14). It was also fitting that chapter 12, the chapter on Modernism (the first wave of), was followed by a chapter on the Bauhaus, a further development of Modernism, and one in which a number of the individuals from the earlier chapter were involved.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The circas are used because although 1919–1933 is the main period discussed in the chapter, the Bauhaus style does not fit neatly into these dates. Lyonel Feininger’s illustration for the Bauhaus manifesto of 1919 (fig. 13.3), for example, needs to be shown, but it is expressionistic (as many of the school’s early works were) not a Bauhaus work proper. Conversely, Jan Tschichold’s exhibition poster of 1937 (fig. 13.19) falls outside the main period under discussion, yet it says something important about the style (minimalism and asymmetry) and about one of the ways a leading practitioner of New Typography applied the style’s precepts. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Both of the dates defining chapter 14 have circas (one of them has been left off in Blue Pencil’s comment). The first date is guided by the date of the earliest work to be shown in the chapter, Bruce Rogers’s design of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Compleat Angler </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">(fig. 14.2) which was published in 1909.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 189 there is no mention of the two schools —the Academy of Fine Art (Sächsiche Hochschule für Bildende Kunst) and the School of Applied Arts (Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule) in Weimar—that were merged to form the Bauhaus. This is important since it helps explain the tension at the Bauhaus in the early years.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">There were so many sources of tension at the Bauhaus, especially while in Weimar. It is difficult to know to what extent this particular source affected the school’s style of design. Other sources had a more definite effect – e.g. the awkward dominance of Johannes Itten; the need to appease the local government, which funded the school – and so they are discussed.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 192 “The once sacred slogan of ‘art and craft’ had now given way to the more modern mantra of Art and Industry—a New Unity.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[“…the motto in 1919 had been ‘Art and craft—a new unity’.” See <i>Bauhaus, 1919–1933</i> by Magdalena Droste (Cologne: Taschen, 2002), p. 58]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The 1919 phrase “Art and craft – a new unity” seems not to have been used as prominently as the later 1923 phrase “Art and industry [or technology] – a new unity”. The former quote appears in a few publications (as well as Droste’s above, see </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Bauhaus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> edited by Jeannine Fiedler and Peter Feierabend (Cologne: Könemann, 1999), p. 80), but neither book gives the source of the quote. By contrast, the later phrase is quoted in many publications and frequently sourced to Walter Gropius’s opening speech at the Bauhaus exhibition of 1923. It is also a phrase that is linked to an important change in direction at the school, which brought about the style of graphic design we now associate with the Bauhaus.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[My point was that by not including the earlier slogan, no matter how commonly used, the later one loses some of its impact.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 188–201 there is no showing of any of the Bauhaus’ logos; their evolution encapsulates that of the school itself</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Bauhaus logos are not as indicative of the Bauhaus style (of graphic design) as the two logos that are shown on each of the letterheads mentioned below.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[The transformation of the logos shows the school changing from an expressionist and crafts-oriented curriculum to a more rational and industrial one. See pp. 36 (fig. 12—used 1919–1921), 44 (fig. 14—by Oskar Schlemmer, 1922) in <i>Bauhaus</i> by Hans Wingler (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1969) and pp. 68 & 75 (figs. 54, 65–66—by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1923) in<i> Das A und O des Bauhauses</i> (Leipzig: Bauhaus-Archiv, Edition Leipzig, 1995).]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">figs. 13.5 Letterhead designed by László Moholy-Nagy, 1923 and 13.9 Bauhaus letterhead designed by Herbert Bayer, 1927 should be grouped together; also the Moholy-Nagy letterhead should be identified as being for the Bauhaus</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Grouping the letterheads together would break the link between one of the letterheads and its relevant text. (See the latter half of the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘fig. 2.6’ above.) Separating them by only a single spread made it easy enough for the reader to compare the two.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 12 “Within graphic design as a whole, there are several areas with special attributes that set them apart from all others. To include them here would either have amounted to a series of token gestures or else have required the book to be extended dramatically. The items are as follows: information graphics….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Despite this caveat the book does include sporadic examples of information graphics such as fig. 13.17 Human chart from ‘International Picture Language’ by Otto Neurath, 1936 and several maps.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">These few exceptions were judged to be important enough to the styles discussed for the caveat not to be followed. As exceptions they prove the rule set out in the introduction.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 201 “hypocracy” should be “hypocrisy”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 23’ (‘constantcy’) above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 201 “It is telling in its ignorance and hypocracy [sic] that long before the Nazis banned nearly all Modern art for being ‘un-German’, ‘Jewish’ and ‘Bolshevist’… the symbol they chose to represent their nationalist cause was a black geometric shape, the swastika… set on a white circle in a red rectangle. They are a combination of elements that would not have looked out of place on an early Bauhaus letterhead.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This discussion of the swastika ignores the modernist strain in Nazism as exemplified by Albert Speer and Hitler himself; as well as the history of the Nazi appropriation of the venerable symbol and its new design by Wilhelm Deffke. Among many sources, see <i>The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?</i> by Steven Heller (New York: Allworth Communications, Inc., 2000), pp. 67–68 which is not included in the bibliography. Also, the swastika is not pictured in any of its iterations.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">If the above comment is taken to mean “this discussion of the swastika ignores the modernist strain in Nazism” full stop (or ‘period’), it should be made clear that the discussion actually describes an example of “the modernist strain in Nazism”. This ancient symbol, the swastika, could have been rendered by the Nazis in all kinds of different ways. It needn’t have been starkly geometric, or (in its most common iteration) combined with other geometric shapes, or set within the colour combination of black, white and red. The fact that it contained each of these elements is an example of a “modernist strain”. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It is the case, though, that the text did not go on to discuss modernist elements in other kinds of Nazi symbolism, be they graphic, architectural, cinematic, etc. Nor did it discuss the history of the Nazi appropriation of the swastika. The purpose of the chapter was to describe the nature of the style of Bauhaus graphic design and the New Typography. Few other Nazi-related avenues would have helped to do this.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Regarding Wilhelm Deffke, there are rival claims for the origins and design of the various swastikas used by the Nazis. This chapter on the Bauhaus and New Typography was not the place to discuss these claims.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">As mentioned in the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 124’, the sole criterion for inclusion in the bibliography was that a source had been referred to during the process of research and writing. I’m afraid I didn’t refer to Heller’s book (for the reason mentioned in the paragraphs above).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I did not include a picture of the swastika, in any form, because I thought the text could be understood well enough without one. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 201–202 images of the work of Jan Tschichold are limited to the prospectus for Die neue Typographie and the 1937 konstruktivisten exhibition poster; an example of his pre-1925 calligraphic and typographic work would have been instructive</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Two more images of Jan Tschichold’s work are included in the next chapter. Both help to describe his move away from the New Typography, which fits with the larger discussion of the graphic style focused on in that chapter. To include even more images of Tschichold’s work would certainly help the reader get a fuller understanding of Tschichold, but not of the development of the Bauhaus and the New Typography necessarily. It would also place a far greater emphasis on this one designer than on any other in the book.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 202 “…[the prospectus for Die neue Typographie, fig. 13.18] is laid out asymmetrically in neat columns. And yet the short, thick vertical bar and the bottom column of text both sit outside the two-column grid established by the main text above. By subtly breaking out of a clear vertical alignment, Tschichold breathed life into an otherwise entirely formulaic design.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[this analysis of the prospectus betrays a limited understanding of the subtleties at work in Jan Tschichold’s designs. In the prospectus there is only one column (justified) for the main text in the design. The right column (flush left, rag right) is a list of the book’s contents and the bottom column (justified) provides edition and production information about the book along with price. The latter is positioned to balance the other two columns (note that its width is determined by the length of the last line of the main text column). The short vertical bar is positioned between the first two columns and placed to call attention to the final paragraph of the main text which describes the intended audience for the book (the bar also signals that this is the end of the text and that it does not continue in the block of text below). The bar is echoed visually by Tschichold’s signature running vertically up the right side. The flush left/rag right contents column is “justified” by this signature, the block of production text, and the heading ‘Vozugs-Angebot’ with a thick rule at the upper right. All together, this prospectus is an incredibly subtle and sophisticated design that does not use a grid of any kind other than the inevitable one associated with a block or column of text.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It is not practical to describe all of the formal aspects of each design that appears in this book. Had such descriptions been given, the book would have been vast (and very repetitive). Moreover, many of the designs appear in the book because they allow a specific point to be made about a particular style of graphic design. This was the case with Tschichold’s prospectus. Rather than explain the design in detail (including the subtleties set out in Blue Pencil’s comment above), I wanted to make a point about the inventiveness that could be brought to even quite a rigid Bauhausian scheme, and then also a point about how well Tschichold had executed this example of inventiveness. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Most designers, I contend, would be inclined to fit the three main kinds of text that make up the prospectus within two columns (which are only described loosely as a grid). They would do this either by having the edition and production information placed in the thin right-hand column (and then adjust the position, size and leading of the text in the left-hand column so that it balanced the whole design), or they would have placed the text at the bottom of the left-hand column, underneath the main text. That Tschichold did neither, and that his alternative solution of a third column was so well crafted, are worth pointing out. And by pointing this out without any other explanations of the design, the reader is better able to take on board both of the points mentioned above.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 203 “It is a study in contrasting pairs: the pair of rectangles, large and small, created by a thin bisecting horizontal line; the pair of circles, large grey [sic] and tiny black above; the pair of arrangements of small, light text, a single line above and a thin column below; and, lastly, the pair of lines of bold text in contrasting sizes. None of them derived their character from any overarching rationale, there is no apparent formula guiding their placement, and yet the tension generated between them and, also, between them and the edges of the poster, creates a dynamic harmony that reverberates throughout.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is another inadequate analysis, one that is focused too much on what is on the surface. The description of pairs is fine (though the larger circle is yellow and not gray), but there are complex reasons why each item is placed where it is. There is no master grid (though Kimberly Elam has diagrammed the poster in Geometry of Design (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), p. 66. The yellow circle’s left edge aligns with the center line of the poster; the distance from the black dot to the bottom of the poster is the same as the distance from the top of the poster to the thin horizontal line; the black dot is aligned with the center of the yellow circle; the text following it provides the basis for the alignment and position of the column of names (which Tschichold makes sure does not extend beyond the word ‘konstruktivisten’; the distance between the ‘kunsthalle basel’ text is the basis for the other distances: twice as much for the date information following the black dot between it and the edge of the yellow circle and three times as much for the distance between the thin horizontal line and the column of names below it; the line length of the venue is half that of the title as well as the distance it is placed from the yellow circle; the title is located at the midpoint of the yellow circle (sitting on it as a baseline); the distance from the x-height of the title to the line matches the distance from the line to the x-height of the venue; and so on…. There is no system, only a careful calibration of ratios (and of weights of type and line) that make this poster so mesmerizing.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">As with the prospectus (see the response to comment ‘p. 202’ above), the purpose of the description of Tschichold’s poster was to highlight one particular facet of the design (because doing so served the central aim of the book: the description of graphic styles). This facet was not the series of alignments and spatial equivalences found in various parts of the poster. As Blue Pencil’s comment mentions, these have already been pointed out by others (though often incorrectly, as some are in the comment also – see the end of this response). This kind of analysis – pointing out alignments and spatial equivalences – has also featured elsewhere in the book (e.g. for fig. 5.14 on p. 96; for fig. 9.9 on pp. 144–145; for fig. 19.6 on p. 303). Because this analysis has been done by others, and because a similar kind of analysis appears elsewhere in the book, a different kind of analysis was undertaken: a descriptive overview of the elements that made up the poster. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Blue Pencil’s comment describes this overview of elements as focusing “too much on what is on the surface”, a description that might imply this analysis was superficial (in the derogatory sense of the word, not the literal one). However, in Willi Kunz’s book </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Typography: Macro- and Microaesthetics</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (Sulgen, Switzerland: Verlag Niggli AG, 1998) an even-handed distinction is made between this kind of large-scale analysis and the more detailed, small-scale analysis of such things as alignments and equivalences. Kunz distinguishes the “macroaesthetic” (in this instance, the overview of elements), from the “microaesthetic” (alignments and equivalences), but in doing so he doesn’t privilege one over the other. Neither is considered to be more superficial than the other. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">With that said, in some ways the macroaesthetic overview of elements in Tschichold’s poster could be considered to be more valuable than the microaesthetic description of the alignments and equivalences. Never before (as far as I know) has the poster been described as a series of contrasting pairs, despite its having been reproduced as often as any other work in graphic design histories (Tschichold being among the most written about of all graphic designers). So this description has particular value because it is original. It came from looking closely at the poster and thinking about how its design could be explained in a simple way, but also in a way that planted a definite concept (the series of contrasting pairs) in the mind of the reader. Not only does this help readers see the poster in a new way, it also provides them with an approach that could be applied elsewhere. Teachers could use the description as a simple exercise to give to students (‘create a design out of a series of contrasting pairs’), and designers could take it as a starting point for a job they were working on. This description is just one of many ‘original’ descriptions that distinguish this book from other histories.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">An outline of the mistaken alignments and equivalences contained in Blue Pencil’s comment (as well as in Kimberly Elam’s book, Richard Hollis’s book </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Swiss Graphic Design</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (London: Laurence King, 2006) p. 115, and others): </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“the black dot is aligned with the centre of the yellow circle”</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">: as the diagram below shows, the black dot is placed to the right of the centre of the circle; its position is perhaps a result of the adjacent text and the list of names below aligning with the right vertical edge of the first letter ‘i’ in “konstruktivisten”.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://DEF72FCC-F06F-4E66-B0EE-5E0918942A6B/p.203.a.jpg" alt="p.203.a.jpg" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“the distance between the ‘kunsthalle basel’ text … and the column of names below it”</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">: unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what the description within this text was referring to.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“the line length of the venue is half that of … the distance it is placed from the yellow circle”</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">: the line length is greater than half this distance.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://DEF72FCC-F06F-4E66-B0EE-5E0918942A6B/p.203b.jpg" alt="p.203b.jpg" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“the title is located at the midpoint of the yellow circle (sitting on it as a baseline)”</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">: the baseline is lower than the midpoint of the yellow circle; the title is centred visually, not mathematically.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://DEF72FCC-F06F-4E66-B0EE-5E0918942A6B/p.203c.jpg" alt="p.203c.jpg" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 13.20 Futura roman and italic, Paul Renner, 1927–30 the examples are digital; Futura came out in 1927 and the oblique was issued in 1930</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">And described as such in the main text, and then later in the picture list towards the back of the book. See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 147’ above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">chapter 14 The Weight of Tradition: Traditional Typography c.1910–1947</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[why begin with 1910 and end with 1947? 1910 can be justified as the date that ATF Bodoni was released, but Cramsie makes no mention of the typeface or Morris Fuller Benton, its designer, in his text. 1947 is clearly the year that Tschichold went to work for Penguin Books but 1949, the date of his departure, would make more sense as an end date. However, there are other end dates that might make more sense: 1951, the year of the Books for Our Time exhibition and catalogue or 1955, the year of the publication of Libor Librorum, a collection of page designs from the leading printers and book designers of the day in Europe and America.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">For the explanation of the beginning date see the end of the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘chapter 13’ above.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[It seems odd to base the dates in the title of a chapter on the material illustrated in the chapter rather than on the key aspects of the content covered. Thus, should a chapter on World War II bear the dates c.1938–1945 if a photograph of the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria, is shown?]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 205 “…the infamous Armory Show… which toured three eastern states in 1913, is remembered as much for the reaction it provoked as for the art it displayed. On the final night in Chicago….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Chicago is not in an eastern state]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">This description (by inference, of Illinois being an eastern state) fits the criterion for defining which states make up the Eastern United States, i.e. those states that lie east of the Mississippi (as Illinois does).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[This is certainly not what an “eastern state” means to an American. Illinois is considered part of the Midwest which begins with the Ohio River that demarcates Pennsylvania and Ohio.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 206 “The first composing machine to be developed sufficiently for commercial use was invented in the United States by a young German émigré, Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854–99), during the 1890s.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“1890s” should have been 1880s. See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 23’ (‘constantcy’) above.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 206 “Mergenthaler’s descriptively named Linotype (line-of-type) machine was patented in 1884 and first used commercially in 1886 by the New York Tribune….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[these dates are confusing]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response immediately above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 206 “Both kinds of composing machine [Linotype and Monotype] provided the revival of traditional typography, which the Arts and Crafts [movement] had started, with a new impetus.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is not true. Although each composing machine company needed new types, for decades their designs were mired in mediocrity and the machines were shunned by those in book publishing. It was not until 1913 that Monotype issued Imprint and Plantin, the company’s first revival; and not until 1915 that Mergenthaler Linotype produced Benedictine, its first historical design. Meanwhile Frederic W. Goudy was already doing new historical typefaces (Kennerley Old Style 1911 and Goudy Lanston 1912) and ATF had issued Bodoni in 1910 and Cloister (based on Jenson’s type) in 1913. ATF followed those with Baskerville in 1915 (roman matrices from Stephenson Blake and an original italic) and Garamond (really Jannon) in 1919. Stanley Morison’s ballyhooed “program” of revivals did not begin until 1922 with Garamond (Jannon again) in 1922 and Poliphilus in 1923. English Linotype belatedly joined the revival trend with Granjon (really Garamond) in 1929 and Estienne in 1930.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The text quoted above describes “a new impetus”, but not an immediate one. The Monotype and Linotype companies did not start to issue new historical revivals straightaway, but the combined range of historical types they produced from 1913 (and made available to many international markets) was wider than that of any other company, ATF included. (The Monotype Corporation’s output included Plantin (1915), Bodoni (1922), Garamond (1922), Baskerville (1923), Blado (1923), Poliphilus (1923), Fournier (1925), Bembo (1929), Bell (1932), Walbaum (1933) and Ehrhardt (1937); and the company could boast offices in France, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Russia, Australia and India.) In Robin Kinross’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Modern Typography</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (London: Hyphen Press, 1992) the effect of these new design revivals is described in terms of a revolution: “The revolution brought to the trade by the typographers [here meaning producers of type generally] was to be a historical (or historicist) one: the best old typefaces, machine composed, and used in a historically-conscious manner” (p. 57). These designs were linked to a technology – machine composition – that came to dominate newspaper, periodical and book printing (this last, if not straightaway, then soon enough to do so decisively). Even Bruce Rogers, ever punctilious in matters relating to fine book printing, admitted in 1917 that “recent developments in the machines themselves now permit the possibility of doing quite as good work as by the older and slower method” (p. 209, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A History of Cambridge University Press. Vol. 3</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by David McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)); and from the same publication: “The success of Monotype in book printing during the 1920s …” and then “… Monotype seized, and kept, most of the major book printing in Britain. In America … Linotype was much more successful in this business” (p. 245).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Though Goudy started to make historical types a few years before Monotype, at that time he was still guided, to some degree, by the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement. (In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Letters of Credit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (London: Gordon Fraser, 1986) Walter Tracy confirms a link, albeit a weak one, between the design of Kennerley and some of Nicholas Jenson’s type, which earlier had influenced the design of William Morris’s ‘Golden’ type.) Therefore, Goudy’s early historical type can be thought of as a continuation of the Arts and Crafts revival. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">ATF was formed in 1892 by 23 US type foundries to counter the threat posed by the new Linotype and Monotype machines. In this way, the historical type that ATF produced before 1913 – Bodoni – was not unrelated to (and, some would argue, was part of) the impetus provided by the new composing machines. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[British writers tend to downplay or ignore the contributions of American typefoundries and type designers in favor of the accomplishments of the Monotype Corporation. Goudy’s typefaces (Kennerley, Forum, Hadrian, Goudy Oldstyle) are much more than Arts & Crafts revivals, though there is no doubt that Goudy was a product of that movement. They are much more subtle in design than the Jenson copies done by Morris, Ricketts et al. Although ATF did not issue as many historical revivals as did the Monotype Corporation, those it did do preceded those by the English company. ATF was responsible for Bodoni (1910), Cloister (Jenson) (1913), Garamond (1917), Baskerville (1915—roman imported from Stephenson Blake, italic by Morris Fuller Benton), and Bulmer (1928).]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 207–208 the discussion of the work of Bruce Rogers makes no mention of the concept of allusive book design</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Admittedly, I am unaware of this concept.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[This concept, that book design should reflect the period in which a book was originally written, was commonly discussed during Rogers’ lifetime. It was a subject of much debate, especially as it was baldly interpreted by others as “period typography”. See pp. 22 and 176 of <i>Paragraphs on Printing</i> (Mount Vernon, New York: William E. Rudge’s Sons, 1943), where Rogers is somewhat embarrassed by the concept as applied to his early work, and pp. 29–30 of <i>Bruce Rogers: A Life in Letters, 1870–1957</i> by Joseph Blumenthal (Austin: W. Thomas Taylor, 1989) who says that Rogers’ “original and subtle manipulation of type always raised his books beyond the imitative.” Rogers wrote that “Making an ‘allusive’ format for a book—that is, casting it in the style of the period of the original text—is in a small way something like planning the stage setting for a play.” p. 22 of <i>Paragraphs on Printing</i>. For the crude concept of period typography see <i>Fashions in American Typography, 1780 to 1930 with brief illustrated stories of the life and environment of the American people in seven periods, and demonstrations of E.G.G.’s fresh note American period typography</i> by Edmund E. Gress (New York: Harper Brothers, 1931).]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 208 “…Goudy came to learn the subtleties of type design through the hand-craft traditions of the private press.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is not true. Goudy learned type design through his long experience as a commercial artist specializing in lettering which preceded his involvement with private presses.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In the aforementioned </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Letters of Credit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (London: Gordon Fraser, 1986), Walter Tracy identifies Goudy’s first notable type design as being Pabst roman, made in 1902, the year before Goudy set up the Village Press. Tracy then goes on to say “It is not a distinguished type, but it is a pleasant one” and “that as a text type in advertising the face made a good effect, so long as only a few capitals were present” (p. 129). Many of the types Goudy made subsequently, especially after starting the Village Letter Foundery in 1911, progressively receive less qualified praise from Tracy: Monotype 38-E (1908) “an undistinguished design, but … He now understood the essential difference between a piece of lettering drawn for a specific context and an alphabet whose twenty-six components would be used in an infinity of combinations” (p. 134); Kennerley Old Style (1911) “not one of Goudy’s greatest; but it was a remarkable achievement for its time” (p. 136); Goudy Lanston (1912, initially named Goudy Old Style) “positive evidence of Goudy’s ability as a type designer … better than the types being produced in Europe at that time” (p. 138); and Goudy Text (1928) “wholly admirable” (p. 133). Not all people would agree with Tracy’s every assessment of the types he discusses; nevertheless, he, like others, identifies a general improvement that coincides with Goudy having his own press and foundry. It appears that there is a distinction between what Goudy learnt as a commercial artist specializing in lettering on the one hand, and the subtleties of type design (not just how to design metal type but, in particular, the subtleties within this process) he learnt by having his own press and foundry on the other. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[The Village Press was not the first private press set up by Goudy. He established the Booklet Press in 1894, renaming it the Camelot Press later that year. See pp. 127–128 in </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">American Book Design and William Morris</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> by Susan Otis Thompson (New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press and London: The British Library, 1996 expanded edition). Goudy designed his first typeface, named Camelot after the press, in 1897. As to the assessment of Goudy’s maturation as a type designer, I would attribute it more to his increased contact with incunabula and to his visit to Italy in 1910 more than to his experience running a private press.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 208 Cramsie (like many others) does not fully understand the impact and importance of Goudy during his lifetime. Through his personality and work he spread the Morrisian gospel throughout the United States and his typefaces, especially Goudy Old Style (ATF, 1915), were used not only in books but in magazines and advertising. It may have been the first original design of the 20th c. to be so widely dispersed, preceding Futura, Times New Roman and Helvetica.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I am aware that Goudy was a very prominent figure in US printing and type design (the text states: “[Bruce] Rogers may well have been the most accomplished book designer, but as a designer of type he was much less broadly influential than … Goudy”, p. 208), but perhaps I do not appreciate the full extent of his importance there.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The last three typefaces mentioned in Blue Pencil’s comment above may have been preceded by Goudy Old Style; nevertheless their large international appeal, which Goudy Old Style never had to the same extent, marks them out.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[Goudy Oldstyle was not only exceedingly popular in the United States (ATF issued an elaborate 124-page special specimen book in 1927) but also in England. It was available in hot metal from Lanston Monotype and later Intertype. That it was not equally popular in Europe was due to the discrepancy of Anglo-American and Continental body sizes. Futura overcame this problem because Bauer, with an office in New York, manufactured the face for both markets. The large international appeal of both Times Roman (Times New Roman for Monotype Corporation) and Helvetica did not occur immediately for either. As I have written elsewhere, Helvetica was not widely popular in the United States until 1968. The key to the widespread popularity of it and Times Roman was the advent of photocomposition in the 1960s that solved the problem of competing body sizes for foundry type as well as the problem of shifting from composing machines for text type to foundry type for display.] </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 14.4 Examples of typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy: Kennerley [Old Style], 1911; Goudy Old Style, 1915; Deepdene, 1927 these are all digital versions</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">And described as such in the main text, and then later in the picture list. See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 147’.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 14.7 Perpetua roman and titling these are digital renditions; Perpetua is notoriously “thin” in its digital incarnation</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See response above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 14.9 New Johnston, 1979 why a digital rendition of New Johnston (a film typeface) rather than the original? Eiichi Kono of Banks & Miles was the designer. See </span></b><a href="http://www.ejf.org.uk/Resources/ekono.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">www.ejf.org.uk/Resources/ekono.pdf</span></b></span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">This was made from scans of Eiichi Kono’s designs. (I was fortunate enough to be taught by Eiichi and work with him for almost a decade.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 210 “Thus, the series of typefaces released by the Monotype Corporation during the 1920s and 1930s pay tribute to some of the greatest names in Western printing: Plantin, Caslon, Baskerville and Bodoni.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[These dates are wrong. Plantin was released 1913 by the Monotype Corporation; Sol Hess had designed a Caslon as early as 1903 for Lanston Monotype (and presumably used by the English company) and the company released its famous Caslon 337 (subsequently taken up by the Monotype Corporation) in 1915; Lanston Monotype did Bodoni 175 in 1911 and Monotype Corporation adapted Benton’s ATF Bodoni in 1930; and the Monotype Corporation, following ATF’s lead, issued a Baskerville in 1923. The famous series of typefaces done by the Monotype Corporation in the 1920s and 1930s were based on the work of Jannon (Garamond), Baskerville, Griffo (Poliphilus and Bembo), Fournier, Jenson (but using Rogers’ Centaur), Bell, Bulmer (but following the lead of ATF), and Van Dijck.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">One of the dates is wrong. The period mentioned in the text, “the 1920s and 1930s”, relates to typefaces released by “the Monotype Corporation”, the British arm of “Lanston Monotype” (the US company). (The application of these well-established but shortened names is made clear in the text.) The Monotype Corporation first released Caslon (at least, a typeface with that name), Baskerville and Bodoni in 1920, 1923, and 1921/1922 respectively. (See ‘One Hundred Years of Type Making’, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Monotype Recorder</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, centenary issue, no. 10, 1997 (Redhill, Surrey: Monotype Typography, 1997). However, Plantin (series 110) was released in 1913, so it should not have been included. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Both companies, Lanston Monotype and the Monotype Corporation, issued the first adaptation of Caslon in 1903, but they called it Old Face (series 20). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In the edition of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Monotype Recorder</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> cited above “Monotype Bodoni” is listed as having been issued in 1922. An earlier edition of the same magazine, titled ‘Fifty Years of Type-cutting 1900-1950’ (vol. 39, no. 2, Autumn 1950) says Bodoni No. 3 (series 135) was issued in 1921. Perhaps the discrepancy lies in the difference between the ‘releasing’ of a typeface (i.e. putting on sale) and the ‘cutting’ of a typeface (i.e. when it was made)?</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 210 “A similar genesis lay behind Gill’s next and most popular typeface, the eponymous Gill Sans (fig. 14.11) which, though begun sometime after Perpetua, was released several years before it in 1929.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is a confusing sentence. There is no date given for Perpetua here (or in fig. 14.7) though it is pointed out that the commission was given to Gill in 1924. Perpetua was begun in 1925 and released in 1929. Gill Sans was released in 1928. (No date is given in fig. 14.11.)]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The illustration of Gill Sans, fig. 14.11, shows a digital version of the capitals and lowercase in a regular weight. The metal equivalents were issued in 1929 (series 262). An earlier titling face (not illustrated), which was the first Gill Sans design, had been issued in 1928.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The illustration of Perpetua, fig. 14.7, shows a digital version of the capitals, lowercase and a titling face. The metal equivalents of the capitals and lowercase were issued in 1929 (series 239) and the titling in 1928 (series 258). But the capitals and lowercase were only issued in a single size (13 pt). Other sizes were added over the next two or three years. This certainly should have been made clearer.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><b><br /></b></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 14.11 Gill Sans another digital version</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 147’ above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 211 “Following the addition of new weights and widths, it [Johnston Railway Sans] quickly became the most comprehensive lettering of its kind, and was later looked on as a model not only for other subway systems but for transport lettering in general.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[what other subway systems?]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">This was meant in the general sense of adopting an exclusive, custom made sanserif designed for a particular use (or uses), e.g. signage. Many large subway systems – Amsterdam, Berlin, Hong Kong, Paris and others – have taken the same approach. Likewise several airports and the road signage in a number of countries.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 214 “It has been suggested that a printed sample of a type designed decades earlier, in 1904, by a young American polymath, Starling Burgess (1878–1947), was the source of Monotype’s design [of Times New Roman]…. The Burgess theory has created enough doubt for The Times newspaper itself to describe its earlier type as being designed by Stanley Morison, Victor Lardent and ‘possibly Starling Burgess’.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[There is no mention of Mike Parker, the originator of the Burgess theory, here or in the notes or the bibliography. The source of the theory is “W. Starling Burgess, Type Designer?” by Mike Parker in Printing History 31/32 (1994), pp. 52-108.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 43’ above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 216 as usual the images of Tschichold’s work for Penguin that are shown are title pages rather than interiors which was where his impact was greatest</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Ruari McLean (who worked at Penguin with Tschichold and did more than any other person to bring Tschichold’s work and writing to an English-speaking audience) includes an outline of Tschichold’s Penguin work in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Jan Tschichold: Typographer</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (Boston, MA: David R. Godine, 1975). He describes Tschichold’s main impact on the “interiors” (Blue Pencil’s word) as being an overall increase in the standard of composition. This was achieved partly through Tschichold’s formulation of the Penguin Composition Rules (condensed into only four pages), which, alongside a set of precise specifications and corrections for a certain number of books (around 500), “disturbed (but generally failed to wake up) nearly every major printing firm in Britain” (p. 89). As well as insisting on such details as the spacing of capitals, Tschichold also changed the typeface in many books (though he allowed Times, which had been standard on his arrival, to remain prominent). These changes combined with what Tschichold himself described as “a carefully considered overall re-styling” so that together his changes (again, in his words) “completely altered the appearance of Penguins” (p. 146, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">ibid</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">.). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Tschichold’s time at Penguin was characterized by great industriousness (in getting through a punishing work load) and tenacity (in pushing through his changes), but few people who compare the standard setting of Penguin books immediately before and after his two-year tenure would describe the appearance of the interiors as being “completely altered”. At least, not with regard to their basic graphic style. As Christopher Burke has written “Only rarely did asymmetric layout or sanserif letterforms resurface in Tschichold’s Penguin work” p. 296, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Christopher Burke (London: Hyphen Press, 2007). The continued classicism of his changes (predominantly historical seriffed faces, symmetrical layouts and justified text) constituted a thorough refinement of the design rather than a clear change of graphic style. In the opinion of Phil Bains, who has looked back at 70 years of Penguin paperbacks, some of the “covers and the many title pages Tschichold designed are where his absolute mastery of spatial arrangement shows through most clearly” p. 51, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Penguin by Design</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Phil Baines (London: Penguin Books, 2005). It is for this reason that so many writers have focused on them.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The cover of the prospectus for </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Pelican History of Art</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (fig. 14.20) – while it is graphically similar to a title page (as Blue Pencil’s comment describes it), it is not one – is an example of one of these more graphically clear expressions of mastery. It also shows a kind of design that is sometimes called ‘New Traditionalism’, in which ‘traditional’ elements are arranged with a modern sense of space. In doing so it serves the main aim of the book (to outline graphic styles) more effectively than one of Tschichold’s typical text pages.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[I still contend that Tschichold’s impact on book design was due more to his interiors than to his covers. McLean’s comment says as much as well as the continued popularity of the Penguin Composition Rules. The problem is that showing text pages is not sexy.] </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 216 why include the work of Reynolds Stone and yet leave out the book designs of W.A. Dwiggins for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.?</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Because the subject (the revival of the woodcut) could be highlighted with the mention of a single individual, and also, but to a lesser extent, because Dwiggins is one of those designers whose work rarely sits four-square within a single style (though he does receive a mention in the introduction).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The added advantage of choosing Stone was that a link could be made to things other than books included elsewhere in the book (specifically the masthead of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Times</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> newspaper, fig. 14.16). Furthermore, Stone’s designs were at one time uniquely prominent (appearing on British money, stamps as well as one of its best selling newspapers), yet his name, like that of all graphic designers, was unknown to most people, a point that could then be made in the text.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[My comment about Stone vs. Dwiggins was part of my intention to point out the British-centric aspect of <i>The Story of Graphic Design</i>. (This is not a bad thing, just something that potential readers need to be aware of.) Stone’s visibility in the United States and on the Continent was minimal. Dwiggins has had the far wider impact. He does not fit into any easy styles or themes, but that is not sufficient reason to skip lightly over him as many—not just Mr. Cramsie—have done.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 15.4 Dutch Cable Factory catalogue designed by Piet Zwart, 1928</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is not the familiar image from the Nederlandsche Kabelfabriek (NKF) in Delft but a comparative one from its English subsidiary, N.C.W. Cable. The text is in English and the correct date is 1929. (The Dutch version is from 1928.) See artnet.fr and Bloomsbury Auctions.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">At a late stage, we were provided with this image rather than the original Dutch version we expected. The description and date should have been changed.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 231 why is Piet Zwart included in this chapter rather than the one on the Bauhaus and the new typography?</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… because, as the Dutch Cable Factory catalogue shows, he was exemplary in his application of the New Typography within a commercial context. Though Zwart was an important figure in the early application of Modernist principles of design, he was not central to the activities at the Bauhaus (though for a while he was a guest lecturer there not long before the school closed). Furthermore, he was not as important in communicating the theory behind the New Typography as someone like Tschichold, nor did he make a typeface associated with the style, as Renner did.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 221–222 “The stimulus for it [Zwart’s use of photography in the NKF catalogue] was chiefly technological: the advance of a printing process that could convert the smooth, greyish tones of a photographic negative into an array of black dots of varying sizes.… This dotted or ‘half-tone’ image could be made for printing in relief and thus could be placed alongside the type in letterpress (also in relief) and printed together….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is a strange place to first mention halftone screens. The first printed photo using a halftone screen occurred in 1873 and the use of such screens was common by the 1890s.] </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The photographic halftone grew in popularity during the 1890s, but at this time it was still a bastard image. Those half-tone images that were derived from photographs (the half-tone was also used to reproduce drawings) tended to be worked on by engravers (it was still a photorelief process) or extensively retouched before being printed. The engravers attempted to extend the range of tones in the image (which the half-tone process had flattened) or, as was common in the US, give the image a woodcut finish, (see </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Mass Image</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Gerry Beegan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">What we think of as a half-tone image, i.e. a photograph printed in a magazine or newspaper, which has no obvious trace of a human hand or any other non-photographic aesthetic imposed on it, only became the norm after the First World War. Its dominance as the main form of illustration was helped by the invention of the small-format point-and-press camera during the 1920s.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 223 “Formerly an ailing humour magazine, Life was reinvented as a picture magazine and its design and content were altered accordingly.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Life, the picture magazine, bought the rights to the name Life from Life, the humor magazine. Other than that, there is no connection between the two. See </span></b><a href="http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/humor/life"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/humor/life</span></b></span></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> and /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(magazine)]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… which is why it was appropriate to describe the magazine as being “reinvented”.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 223 “the oddly goggled yet handsome head” [in the 1936 Pontresina poster by Herbert Matter]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The goggles are protection against the sun and glare off the snow. By including them in the image, Matter suggests to the viewer that Pontresina will be sunny and warm even while skiing. Similar hints about skiing not being cold can be found in other Matter posters.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The goggles were only described as odd because they look so different to the kind of ski-goggles worn today.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 226 “Brodovitch was employed by Harper’s within the newly defined role of ‘art director’….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The role of the art director was not that new as the Art Directors Club of New York was organized in 1920, implying that there were already a number of art directors plying their trade in the city in the previous decade. When did the term and the position begin and what was it? Art directors came from magazines and advertising in the early years and, as their name implies, they were responsible for directing (choosing and overseeing) the art used in a publication or an advertisement. Art meant paintings, illustrations or decoration that were commissioned, but eventually it also included photography (as in Brodovitch’s day). Look at the early annuals of the ADC and you will find pages showing off border decorations among other winning items.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The words “newly defined” refer to what was new for the magazine, Harper’s, and not for graphic design in general.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 227 the list of émigrés has Depero, Grosz, Gabo, Duchamp, Mondrian, Gropius, Bayer, Moholy-Nagy, Breuer and Mies van der Rohe but leaves out those more relevant to graphic design such as Carlu, Matter, Salter, Agha, Brodovitch, Lionni, Tscherny, Burtin, Steinberg. Furthermore, Depero was not truly an émigré as he worked in New York City from 1928 to 1930 but then returned to Italy before briefly (1947–1949) living in the United States again. See /it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortunato_Depero and Graphic Design History (New York: Allworth Communications, Inc., 2001) by Steven Heller and Georgette Ballance pp. 157–158.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Brodovitch was included (it was his initial mention that prompted the list of others). The aim of the list was to show just how influential émigrés had been across the visual arts; that their influence had not been confined to graphic design. By opening the list out in this way, it was possible to include many of the individuals already mentioned in the text, and conversely, by not focusing on graphic design, it was possible to avoid mentioning names that didn’t appear anywhere else (because they didn’t fit into this outline of graphic styles).</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">True enough, Depero ought not to have been included here (I did not double check his dates).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 226 “The form he [Brodovitch] gave to the text was unbounded by any ‘house-style’. No single grid guided its placement.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[A house style does not require the use of a grid. The idea that it does is essentially a post-1960 phenomenon. Much design of the</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">past did not rely on such structures but was more intuitive within the constraints of metal type. There is a house style (or Brodovitch style) to Harper’s which relies not on grids but on an approach to layout that seeks to surprise. Brodovitch’s use of photography and on Bodoni type were two elements of that style.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The two sentences were emphasizing two slightly different things. In my mind at least, “house style” here referred primarily to the style and size of type; the “grid” to the position of the text. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Though many pre-1960 publications may not have had their layout thought about in terms of grids, for the ease of production if nothing else, the text and much of the illustration tended to appear in a uniform manner. So, though a house style did not require the use of grids, the default position was to use at least a simple form of them.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">chapter 15 Good Design Is Good Business: Commercial Modernism, c.1920–c.1960 is a hodge podge, ranging both geographically and stylistically (odd for a book dedicated to style as an organizing principle) all over the map: Cassandre, Zwart, Matter, Life magazine, Norman Rockwell, Brodovitch, Mickey Mouse, Lester Beall for the Rural Electrification Administration (this is commercial?), Pintori for Olivetti, IBM and Paul Rand, Lubalin against war (commercial?), Dorfsman on the space program (commercial?) and more. There needs to be some distinction between businesses such as NKF, IBM and Olivetti and magazines (whether newsweeklies or pulps). The only thing that holds this chapter together is the date range from c.1920 to c.1960 (though the CBS advertisement in fig. 15.26 is from 1962).</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">This chapter takes as its starting point the stylistic variety contained in an earlier chapter, chapter 12, which explored the first wave of Modernism. The series of Modernist styles described in the earlier chapter provided later designers with an array of forms, which they then combined to produce a mix of novel designs. These later designers thought of themselves, and were seen from the outside, as continuing the ‘tradition’ of Modernism (aesthetically if not ideologically). Their approach and attitude are what unites most of the examples in the chapter. And because the examples chosen are based on a mixing of Modernist elements they are necessarily varied. (A few other images show how existing styles of design were influenced by some of the new media associated with Modernism.)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">For the most part, this mixing took place within a commercial rather than a political/ideological context. (As the lead-in to chapter 15 describes it: “Designers took it [Modernism] out of its initial ideological context and applied it to more straightforwardly commercial ends” (p. 217)). Though the word “commercial” does not apply in every instance – e.g. the posters by Beall and Lubalin (Dorfsman’s image is an advert; it is ‘selling’ a TV programme for CBS) – it does describe the dominant force behind the evolution of this mid-century form of Modernism. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 229 “What they [early American modernists] created was a more flexible and less narrowly focused style of design—Brodovitch for example mixed a version of the eighteenth-century typeface Bodoni with his Modernist photographs….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This misses the fact that it was not only Brodovitch among the Modernists who used Bodoni. Jan Tschichold used it on his cover of Typographische Gestaltung (1935) and it subsequently became a staple for Paul Rand, Gene Federico, Reid Miles, Massimo Vignelli and others. Could it have been because Bodoni was a “modern” style typeface or simply that it had the cool, crispness associated with 20th c. modern design?]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The aim of the text was not to focus on the use of Bodoni per se. The important point was to show the flexibility of Brodovitch’s approach (a characteristic that was shared by other mid-century Modernists, some of whom are listed in the comment above). Such an approach led Brodovitch to combine graphic forms from different eras (late-eighteenth century Bodoni (or a twentieth-century interpretation of it) with mid-nineteenth century/early twentieth century photography), though it was an approach that many early Modernists would have condemned. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In addition, if names of individuals that hadn’t yet been brought into the story, e.g. Rand and Vignelli, had been included here the narrative approach of the text would have been disturbed (and there is already a lot of information for the reader to contend with.)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A desire to make contrasts between the style of graphic elements and/or the associations of these elements was the cause of the Bodoni typeface’s popularity. Bodoni’s refined “crispness” and its relative geometry meant it often fitted with the orderly nature of an overall (Modernist) design or the orderly aspect of the Modernist aesthetic. And yet, at the same time, its historical associations contrasted with this twentieth century style. (A similar kind of contrast was made by the stencil lettering that Paul Rand also often used.)</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 232 “Rand’s best-known piece of design, the IBM logo, was, paradoxically, one in which his creative input was rather limited.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 232 “The square counters (the negative spaces enclosed in the letters) in the ‘B’ and the pointed trough [?] of the ‘M’ [of City Bold in the 1956 IBM logo] certainly made it look more distinctive [than the 1947 IBM logo] and, in combination with the heavier weight, more assertive, but essentially it was similar.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Cramsie does not realize how subtle changes to a logo can lead to radical results. To call the 1956 IBM logo essentially the same as the 1947 one is to reveal a lack of understanding of graphic design. One could equally say that the differences between the types of Francesco Griffo and John Baskerville are minor and that type designers such as Claude Garamond, William Caslon and Miklos Kis did little that was original.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Georg Trump, the designer of City, is not identified.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The last word in the second quote (‘p. 232’ above), i.e. “similar”, is important for the following explanation. (The phrase “the same” was not used, as is implied in Blue Pencil’s comment.) Most people, and most readers even, would accept the description of the two logos (below) as being “essentially similar”. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://09F03D01-A622-4B08-9B3E-021C8C3AD4A0/p.232.jpg" alt="p.232.jpg" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Of course, the differences between the logos are clear too, especially to designers, who are used to looking at letter shapes more closely than most. The different shapes give the logos a different emotional tone, a different ‘character’ (described in the text, with respect to Rand’s logo, as “more distinctive … more assertive”). But in the wider context of the range of possibilities that exist for the design of a logo – which, potentially, was Rand’s starting point – they are “essentially … similar”. They both appear as a horizontal row of three letters, the letters are capitals, they have large dominating serifs, the letter strokes are thick and imposing, there are no other graphic elements (e.g. lines or boxes), etc., etc. None of these attributes needed to feature in Rand’s new logo, yet each of them did. And the reason they did was because Rand purposefully set out to make a logo that was similar. “IBM was a very conservative organization … I perceived that something that they would accept would be pretty close to what they already had … They had a slab serif, so I used a slightly different slab serif”, and then in a description (by another) of the reaction to the new logo, “Nobody [at IBM] said anything about it. There was no ‘Gee, that’s terrific’, because it wasn’t that different from what everybody was used to seeing” pp. 150–151, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Paul Rand</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Steven Heller (London: Phaidon, 1999).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">(Had IBM been a less conservative organization, the range of possibilities for the design of Rand’s logo – possibilities of shape, tone, texture, colour and the variety of media at his disposal – would have been great. Far greater than the range available to the designers of text type (punched and carved out of metal) mentioned in Blue Pencil’s comment. This difference, in the range of possibilities for each of the two kinds of design, informs the way we look at and judge them. It leads us to judge the ‘difference’ between two text-type designs, say, in a different way to the ‘difference’ between two logos. For example, a subtle change in the serifs of a text type will seem to be much more significant, to constitute a greater ‘difference’, than the same change in the serifs of a three lettered logo. This kind of local, object-specific way of judging things (guided by expectations that are informed by an awareness of the range of possibilities) is a recognized phenomenon in the psychology of perception.)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The main point of comparing the two logos was to show that the common, unequivocal description of Rand as having ‘designed the IBM logo’ is not quite the whole story (at least with respect to the 1956 version). Even in some otherwise very detailed accounts of the logo’s design, the foundational 1947 version of the logo is not shown (e.g. Heller’s monograph and Rand’s own </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Design, Form and Chaos</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">). In order to gauge the importance of the 1947 version it is instructive to ask the question ‘would Rand have come up with the striper logo if the 1947 version had not been his first point of departure?’. I expect that many people would answer ‘probably not’. It is therefore relevant to point out what this point of departure was, and indeed how Rand’s 1956 design was (in the context of a logo) “essentially similar”. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 15.16 IBM logos the middle IBM logo is misdated as 1972 when it should be 1956</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 23’ (‘constantcy’) above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">figs. 15.23 Anti-war poster designed by Herb Lubalin, 1972 and 15.24 Typographic designs, Herb Lubalin, 1962–5 are poor choices to show Herb Lubalin’s influence. Something from his days at Sudler & Hennessey designing pharmaceutical advertising (commercial!) and from his time working for Ralph Ginzburg in the 1960s or with ITC in the 1970s would have been more appropriate. The anti-war poster is beyond the imposed dates for the chapter. The designs in fig. 15.24 (Marriage, Mother & Child and Families) were not solely Lubalin’s work but that of his studio Lubalin, Smith & Carnase.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">These examples were not chosen to show Herb Lubalin’s influence. They were chosen to say something about the nature of the style of design described in the chapter (the specific thing being that a witty interplay between type and image could also be achieved without photographs or illustrations, by making ‘images’ out of letters).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">For the use of the term “commercial” see the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘chapter 15’ above. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">No styles are bounded by neat starting and ending points. The dates used for each chapter therefore are necessarily loose (hence the circas). What the dates mark is the main period discussed in the chapter. There are some instances though, not many but some, when a date within the text or the date of a picture falls outside the main period discussed. See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘chapter 13’ above.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 15.25 Typographic designs, Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, 1962 this example of Chermayeff & Geismar’s work is not representative of the firm.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The title of this work, Watching Words Move, is missing. The image is taken from a reprint of the original since it is set in Helvetica and the original was in Standard (Akzidenz Grotesk). The date should be 1959 since that is when the design was done. It was published as an insert in the December 1962 edition of <i>Typographica. See Robert Brownjohn Sex and Typography: 1925–1970, life and work</i> by Emily King (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), p. 146.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">As with the illustrations mentioned above, this illustration was not meant to be representative of a particular designer or design company (though, as it happens, two illustrations of designs for Mobil, in the next chapter, are representative of Chermayeff & Geismar). The images were chosen to illustrate facets of the style being discussed (specifically how, in contrast to the examples by Lubalin, ‘images’ made with type could be independent of the type’s style or shape, i.e. the ‘image’ created relied on the relative position of letters).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Unfortunately, the source of this illustration was an old, dark and broken up photocopy of pages from <i>Typographica</i> magazine. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 239 “…in 1960, Haas’s new parent company, Stempel….”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is not true. D. Stempel AG bought 45% share of Haas in 1927 and in 1954 it bought more shares (from H. Berthold AG) to become the majority stockholder but most of its shares had earlier been sold to Linotype GmbH. See <i>Helvetica Forever: The Story of a Typeface</i> edited by Victor Malsy and Lars Müller (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2009), p. 25.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Perhaps the lack of a universally accepted definition of the term ‘parent company’ makes it difficult to agree on how the term should be applied. But, in the UK at least, a parent company is a company that owns at least 51% of another, even if the former company is itself owned by a third company. (See </span><a href="http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/ctmanual/ctm18320.htm"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/ctmanual/ctm18320.htm</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">.)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 16.3 Neue Helvetica, 1983 and figs. 16.4, 16.5 Comparison of Akzidenz [sic], Helvetica and Univers both rely on digital font versions</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… which are described as such in the main text, and then later in the picture list. See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 147’.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 248 “While it [Neue Grafik] established the grid as an important tool of design, it did not invent it. Early in the era of manuscript production, long before books were printed, simple grids had been used to mark out where the lines of handwritten text should appear.…”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">he goes on to explain that more complex information led to more complex grids, oriented to the reader more than the producer, in which fields replaced lines as the basic unit. He ignores one of the driving forces behind the shift to fields, the need to incorporate more imagery (primarily photographs) into designs in the mid-20th century compared to medieval manuscripts and early printed books. Further, he downplays the benefits of the field-based grid to the producer—especially in designing series of books. See <i>Designing Programmes</i> by Karl Gerstner (1963).</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The paragraph that follows the passage quoted above shows that “the need to incorporate more imagery” is not ignored: “… as printed pages began to incorporate more varied kinds of information – headings, main text, captions [which accompany “imagery”], illustrations [in its general sense, so including photographs], diagrams [a form of “imagery”?] and the like [which could include other forms of “imagery”] – the grid had to become more complex …” (p. 249). The paragraph also appears under an illustration showing a heavily illustrated spread from Neue Grafik. The illustrations, and text, in this magazine spread are clearly set within a grid.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">While the text does not ignore “imagery”, imagery/photographs are not identified as being a driving force behind the shift to field-based grids. This is because I’m not sure that imagery/photographs were such a driving force. Picture magazines, for example, which began to use large numbers of photographs in the 1920s and 1930s (see fig. 15.9), never developed, or shifted to, field-based grids (today’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">National Enquirer</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">People</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> magazine, etc. don’t use them). In fact, most magazines today incorporate a great deal of imagery, but very few of them use field-based grids. The use of such grids was prompted by a range of factors, one of which was, in some instances, the need for an efficient way of laying out a large amount of imagery/number of photographs. But the more significant factors were the desire to present the reader with an orderly arrangement in an effort to achieve the most effective kind of communication (the belief was that information laid out in this way could be “read more quickly, understood better and therefore remembered more easily” (p. 249); and then there was often a strong aesthetic dimension: a love of order for its own sake, or for its sense of objectivity or, on occasion, for the sake of establishing a uniform corporate identity or, indeed, a uniform design for a series of publications (see p. 13, ‘What is the purpose of the grid?’, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Grid Systems</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Josef Müller-Brockmann, 5th edition (Sulgen, Switzerland: Verlag Niggli AG, 2007).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Actually, field-based grids can create particular difficulties for the designer. They impose a limited set of horizontal positions onto the layout. Text or pictures are forced to fit into these horizontal positions. If the information is varied and complex this can make the task of laying out harder (though, often, the clarity and beauty that fields bring to the page makes the effort worthwhile). When the layout is not restricted by a fixed set of horizontal positions, the text and pictures can be positioned more easily (though, often, less clearly).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 256 “The gridded patterns of their [New Yorkers’] streets had given them a better understanding of the distances within their city [compared to London].”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This is a common misconception. Manhattan is gridded (but not below 14th Street) as are many parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx, but there are large parts of New York City (especially in Queens and Staten Island) that are as vexing as central London. One of the shortcomings of the 1972 Vignelli map was how it distorted lower Manhattan.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Since over three quarters of the map’s subway stations are located in areas Blue Pencil describes as being gridded or having many gridded parts – Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx (though parts of the east Queens area are gridded too, as is Manhattan’s East Village, below 14th Street) – and since most people using the subway would have commuted to and from the first two areas mentioned, is it really not correct, as a general statement, to say of New Yorkers “the gridded pattern of their streets [streets that large numbers of them were commuting to and from almost every day] had given them a better understanding [better than Londoners who have no gridded areas to speak of] of the distances within their city”? Perhaps a less general, more precise statement would have ended with “… within the heart of their city”.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Also, is language not a guide here? The word ‘block’ is used by New Yorkers as a rough description of distance within their city (‘a couple of blocks away’). For those parts that are gridded it is a meaningful term. The fact that New Yorkers can relate so much of the most frequented parts of their city to the simple scheme of a block or grid is likely to have some impact on their general understanding of distance. Londoners on the other hand do not use ‘block’ or any other equivalent.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">chapter 17 Handmade and Homespun: Illustrated Modernism & Psychedelia, c.1950–c.1970 is nearly as jumbled as Chapter 15 as it bundles together Pablo Picasso, Saul Bass (but not Harold Adler), Peter Blake (and Jann Haworth), Wes Wilson, Henri Matisse, Jan Lenica, Lance Wyman, Milton Glaser, the Atélier Populaire, and Oz magazine. There is no realization that there are different kinds of handmade design and that not all of it was a reaction to Swiss design.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The introduction (p. 12) describes the aim of the book as follows: “to sketch out the main styles of Western graphic design”. It is because “there have been far too many styles for them all to be done justice within the pages of a single book” that the book focuses on “the main broadest branches”. This explains why different kinds of handmade design have been grouped together. Indeed, contrary to Blue Pencil’s comment, it is because there was a realization that there are different kinds of handmade design that so many of them were brought together within this chapter. These designs have been grouped into three strands: designs influenced by fine art (pp. 261–272 approx.), designs that are political (pp. 273–284 approx.) and designs from the ‘underground’ press (pp. 285–287 approx.). Within these strands, clearly, there is great stylistic variety, but what holds them together is that almost every piece of work shown is dominated by handmade marks. As such, these works stand in contrast to those in the previous chapter (on Swiss typography, a parallel style), in which no trace of a human hand is evident.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The first page of the chapter gives some of the background behind ‘handmade and homespun’ graphic design during the 1950s and 1960s. Among other things, the importance of individual expression, the growth of mass movements and the rise of a youth-based counterculture are stressed. Swiss design is only mentioned in the last quarter of the page. It is described there (p. 261) as “one of the cultural forms” that designers wanted to counter. The paragraph ends by saying: “hand-rendered illustration in countercultural graphic design, also owed a debt to two other influences: the fine arts and printing technology”. After describing one of the consequences of colour printing, the next ten pages, over a third of the chapter, describes the various ways in which fine art and graphic design interacted. No mention is made of Swiss design; nor is any made in the remainder of the chapter.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 261 “The freedoms fought for by the war generation were defined by questions of nationhood, empire and trade.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[The mention of “empire” is a reminder that this book has been written from a British perspective as opposed to the American perspectives of Meggs, Eskilson and Drucker/McVarish and the French perspective of Jubert. This British perspective becomes more pronounced in this chapter and the following one.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The mention of “empire” here is not indicative of any British perspective. Empire was central to the second world war, both with respect to the origins of the war (Germany set out to establish an empire in Europe) and to the unfolding of what was initially a European conflict into a global or ‘world’ war (in part because the colonial links of many European countries were so widespread, as the text describes). The war put the colonial interests of many European nations – Britain, France, Spain and so forth – in jeopardy. Such colonies had, for the most part, been founded during the establishment of empires, in some instances centuries before. The war also brought other, non-European, colonial interests into play – Japanese and those of the USSR (which, though it did not call itself an empire, bore the hallmarks of one). In many instances, these interests helped nations decide which side to fight on, that of the Allies or the Axis powers, which in turn determined what happened to the colonies after the war.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Though I have not attempted to write a history from a “British perspective”, there is, admittedly, an almost inevitable predominance of British and, indeed, American designs. Part of this has to do with graphic design being a fundamentally mechanical/industrial activity (the book’s introduction describes (mechanical) reproduction as a defining characteristic (p. 11)). Because Britain was the dominant industrial power during most of the nineteenth century, and America similarly during the twentieth, much of what was innovative in graphic design (technologically and artistically) came from these two countries. (And the two centuries they dominated account for two-thirds of the book.) A second factor behind any British/American bias is their shared language, English, which for decades now has been the word’s most popular language. As a result, more graphic design writing appears in English than in any other language. This only reinforces a bias towards cultural objects, such as items of graphic design, that use the English language, which then further entrenches the dominance of British and American graphic design.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Of the 21 images of works of graphic design in this chapter (which Blue Pencil’s comment describes as having a British bias), 8 are by American designers; 4 by British; 4 French; 2 Cuban; 2 Australian; 1 Spanish; 1 Polish – (a total of 22, because one of the works had two designers). Much of the period being discussed in the chapter was when London, in particular, was one of the creative centres of the counterculture. (The text mentions </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Time</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> magazine’s promotion of London as the ‘city of the decade’ in 1965.) The inclusion of four works by British designers (and one American and one Australian working in Britain) reflects the importance of the country and its capital to many aspects of countercultural activity at this time.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Despite the focus on the handmade in this chapter (and on social activism) a number of significant individuals are left out: e.g. Ben Shahn, Paul Peter Piech, Sister Corita Kent, David Stone Martin, Saul Steinberg, and Tomi Ungerer.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">As the introduction describes, this is a history of graphic style. Therefore: “No attempt has been made to include each of the most significant individuals in the field” (p. 12). It is important to emphasize that a central aim of the book is to provide many of its readers with a first orientation in an unfamiliar landscape. It is meant to serve much like a world atlas, outlining the main continents (of style) and some of the prominent places (individuals, techniques and, indeed, places). Yet, because it creates this outline by explaining why some examples from each of the main styles look the way they do (something other histories have not done), it is hoped that those designers who are familiar with the broad outline of graphic design history will also find much that is new and interesting. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">(They may also appreciate a second novel feature. Paying close attention to particular works of design made it natural for the text to highlight some of the more general but, nevertheless, fundamental aspects of graphic design. This derives from one of the paradoxes of introspection: that by looking inward into something it is often possible to see more of what lies outside. By looking into works of graphic design it allowed the text to touch on, for example, the origin and use of the word ‘style’; to seek an explanation for the prominence of the colour red in all forms of graphic communication; to engage with aspects of perceptual psychology when considering the legibility of letters; to consider the nature of superstition when looking at the use of photographs by the news media; and to question the nature of identity in a consumerist society when confronted with relatively recent works of graphic design-related art. These are just some of the important issues that have rarely made their way into other graphic design histories.)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 268 “A similar focus on the expressive quality of monochrome brushstrokes also defined a simple, almost child-like, poster created in 1965, not long after [Franz] Kline’s painting, for Air France (fig. 17.7).”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Why is there no illustration of a Franz Kline painting or at least the mention of a specific one?]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">As mentioned in the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 180’ above, works by designers had to take precedence over works by artists (though the picture to be shown was Kline’s ‘Le Gros’, 1961).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><img src="webkit-fake-url://E2B551C3-C815-4974-8B58-27EEE1846679/p268.jpg" alt="p268.jpg" /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14px; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 269 Op Art is mentioned but not Victor Vasarely, its most famous practitioner in the 1960s. Franco Grignani’s work is not included or noted and there is not even a shout back to fig. 16.20, the Woolmark logo by Francesco Saroglia.</span></b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Unlike the Abstract Expressionist Air France poster mentioned in Blue Pencil’s previous comment, the formal characteristics of the book’s Op-art related graphic design could not be encapsulated convincingly by works of any particular Op artists (the exception perhaps being the Mexico Olympics logos and works by the British artist, Bridget Riley, though the text makes only a cursory mention of the logos). For this reason no individual artists were mentioned.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Grignani suffered, as other important designers did, both from the concision that is required of a book like this and from the book’s emphasis on graphic style rather than individual designers. Having said that, he should have been included in order to describe the experimental photographic techniques he used to manipulate typographic or abstract forms often while staying within the idiom of the Swiss style.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I was not aware how strong the links between Saroglia and Op art were, so, indeed, I should have included a shout back.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 269 “The poster [Alban Berg Wozzeck by Jan Lenica, 1964] takes its basic motif from a painting that has come to define the movement [Expressionism], The Scream, by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, who first painted it in 1893…. The poster’s lettering looks back to an earlier period still, that of Art Nouveau.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[But The Scream was painted at the beginning of the Art Nouveau era.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Art Nouveau began in the early 1880s (see fig. 10.5, Arthur H. Mackmurdo’s title page for </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Wren’s City Churches</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">) and ended around 1905. Although Munch’s ‘The Scream’ came to symbolize Expressionism for many (the 1893 version was the first of several versions that Munch made in different media up to 1910), the style itself did not crystallize into a distinct programme until about 1905. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 272–276 are devoted to images of Che Guevara. This is too many for a book trying to be economical (similarly three pages of Helvetica were too much in an earlier chapter). This book already skimps on images and on individuals. The point about the iconization, dispersion and commodification of Che’s image could have been made much more concisely. And how can such a discussion leave out Paul Davis’ famous image of Che done for Evergreen Review (February 1968) which must surely have been a key moment in the beatification of the guerilla leader. See everything.com/PRN-Whose-Picture-is-it-Anyway/,<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0050B1;"> </span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrillero_Heroico</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">There are four images and three (full) pages of text relating to the Che Guevara portrait. The reason for this special emphasis is threefold: i) the ‘story’ surrounding the images touches on many of the themes that define the period discussed in the chapter (left-wing politics, student rebellion, the growth of a cult of celebrity fed by photography, and the later commercialization of political images); ii) as one of the most well-known portraits in the world it has a special status – it is one of the few works of graphic design that has a currency beyond the world of design and outside of the culture in which it was created (logos excepted); iii) no other history of graphic design has explained this important image in any great detail. (An abridged reading of the Che-related text can be listened to at the bottom of the following web page: </span><a href="http://www.hayfestival.com/bookofthemonth/2010-05-nonfiction.aspx?skinid=15"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.hayfestival.com/bookofthemonth/2010-05-nonfiction.aspx?skinid=15</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Exactly which poster or graphic image caused the portrait to become so popular is not clear. Rather than Paul Davis’s poster, for example, recent writings on the subject have suggested that a photographic poster published by the Italian Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in 1967 was particularly influential. So too the first official commemorative poster, by the Cuban designer Niko, as well as another commemorative poster by Elena Serrano (fig. 17.16), both of which were made in 1968. Other posters, by Roman Cieslewicz, in France, or Jim Fitzpatrick, in Ireland, are known to have been distributed widely. (See </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Che Guevara: Revolutionary & Icon</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> edited by Trisha Ziff (London: V&A Publications, 2006) and then also </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Che Guevara: Icon, Myth and Message</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by David Kunzle (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2002).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Helvetica (and Akzidenz Grotesk – this typeface is discussed alongside Helvetica) was/were so central to the Swiss Typographic style they deserved two (full) pages of text (out of a total of twenty pages, including pictures).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">fig. 17.22 Semaphore alphabet it is not necessary to show the entire semaphore alphabet to make the point about its connection to the ND symbol (fig. 17.21 but on the previous page unfortunately)</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[What is missing is any mention of Rudolf Koch’s <i>Book of Signs</i> (London: First Edition Club, 1930) as an influence (i.e. the symbol for “The man dies” p. 10 is the same as the ND symbol without the surrounding circle).]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Only showing two symbols from the semaphore alphabet, the ‘N’ and ‘D’, would have done little more than the same symbols did, or do, on Gerald Holtom’s sketch (their appearance there makes the position of the alphabet on the next page less of an issue). The sketch’s symbols certainly don’t manage to get across the idea of a system of communication, and though the two black symbols are much clearer than the sketch’s symbols, they were tried on their own but they failed to get the idea over convincingly. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I am unaware of any evidence that suggests Holtom, the designer of the ND symbol, was influenced by the image in Rudolf Koch’s book. Koch’s symbols were examples “… from the earliest times to the Middle Ages by primitive peoples and early Christians”. The text in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Story of Graphic Design</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> does describe the early existence of this unbounded symbol both as a letter in a runic alphabet and as a symbol relating to early Christianity.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 284 there is no image from <i>The Medium Is the Massage</i> by Marshall McLuhan and designed by Quentin Fiore to accompany the discussion of McLuhan’s theories</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">… because the comment by McLuhan on the Vietnam war appears in a chapter about a style that is different to that displayed in the book designed by Fiore.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">chapter 18 Tearing It Up: Punk, c.1975–c.1985 emphasizes British Punk rather with no mention of the American experience</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The first page describes how “a new social movement developed, in the US and Britain in particular” (p. 289), but thereafter, it is true, in the few instances when a nationality or country is mentioned (this chapter being the shortest, only 9 pages), none mention America. There are three images of Punk graphics proper; one is Jamie Reid’s totemic ‘God Save the Queen’ design for the Sex Pistols. The other two are from British fanzines, though one is dominated by a picture of Patti Smith, a prominent figure in early US punk.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 293 “Yet, despite the fact that album covers and other forms of rock-related graphics were making large numbers of people interested in graphic design, often for the very first time, the design industry in general considered this kind of work to be be unimportant.…”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[Apparently, the design history profession also considers it unimportant as everyone from Meggs to Jubert to Eskilson to Drucker/McVarish to Cramsie skims over album cover design. Cramsie does not even include Alex Steinweiss, the father of record cover design nor Reid Miles of Blue Note fame. Among those slighted (before 1977) are David Stone Martin, Jim Flora, Rudolph de Harak, Paul Bacon, Robert Crumb, Heinz Edelman, Klaus Voormann, Mouse & Kelly, S. Neil Fujita, Phil Hays, Paul Davis, Marvin Israel, John Berg, Daniel Pelavin, Gerard Huerta, Milton Glaser, Hipgnosis, Martin Sharp, and John van Hamersveld.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Each of the last four chapters contains an album cover. Accompanying these covers are other music related graphics, such as posters and fanzines (thus music related graphics average roughly one in every four pictures within the last four chapters). Their appearance in these particular chapters, rather than the preceding chapter (on Swiss Typography), is because they were much more broadly representative of, if not essential to, the styles covered (Illustrated Modernism & Psychedelia, Punk, New Wave & Postmodernism, and Digital Expressionism).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">How could the individuals mentioned above be “slighted” when the book aims to give an overview of the main styles of graphic design? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Not an album cover design, but Milton Glaser is included through his design of an insert to an album cover.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">pp. 293–294 “… album cover design was generally regarded as the perfunctory product of an anonymous [emphasis added] layout designer or illustrator. The status of music-related graphics only began to rise once designers such as [Jamie] Reid and the British graphic designer and illustrator Colin Fulcher (1942–1983) had shown its potential for expression and wit.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This completely overlooks the American rock music scene (and before that jazz scene) from the early 1950s on. See my list of names above (which includes a few non-Americans). “The Grammy Awards began presenting awards for Best Album Cover in 1959, recognizing the growing artistry of the ‘face’ of recorded music releases,” according to </span></b><a href="http://www.unifiedmanufacturing.com/blog.%5D"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">www.unifiedmanufacturing.com/blog.]</span></b></span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Though the music industry may have paid some attention to album cover design from the late 1950s, it is still the case that generally, within the music industry as a whole, as well as outside it, music related graphic design was not given much importance. By and large the designers were anonymous. Those who weren’t may have been known to a relatively small band of devotees, but all of these designers were swimming against a tide of anonymity and conformity. As Ruth Lion, wife of the founder of Blue Note Records, described at the time “they [the people working at the label] thought it was very important to put these mens’ photos [photos of the players] as prominently as possible on the covers and they get a lot of flack from distributors across the country who felt a pretty girl would have been better” p.10, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Cover Art of Blue Note Records</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> edited by Graham Marsh, Glyn Callingham and Felix Cromey (London: Collins & Brown, 1991). The relative anonymity of designers before the late-1960s is proved by the fact that so few of them are well known by designers today. By contrast, three of the most well-known practising graphic designers – Neville Brody, David Carson and Stefan Sagmeister – are known by some non-designers as well as many designers, and each of theses three made their names through music-related graphics.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[Record cover designers were no less anonymous than designers in general prior to the 1980s and the advent of the “rock star” designer. And there are quite a number of signed or credited album covers from the 1950s and 1960s. The names may not mean much to us today—Esmond Edwards, Ken Deardoff, William Claxton, Marvin Israel, Philip Hays, Jim Flora—but they are often there.]</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 301 “…perhaps the best known Postmodern architect of the time, the American architect and industrial designer Michael Graves.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[There is no mention of Robert Venturi or of <i>Learning from Las Vegas</i>, the influential book he wrote with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. See <i>Learning from Las Vegas</i> (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1972; rev. ed. 1977). For Muriel Cooper’s controversial design for the first edition see </span></b><a href="http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=2197%5D"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=2197]</span></b></span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Robert Venturi appears in the endnotes as the author of a quote in the text (“less is a bore”) that appeared his first architectural ‘manifesto’, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. This book predated his second manifesto </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Learning from Las Vegas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by six years and has been described as a seminal text for the Postmodern movement.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Michael Graves’s name is included in the main text because the photograph of his Portland Building was an eloquent opening image for the chapter. The image also helped to explain William Longhauser’s 1983 poster for an exhibition of Graves’s work.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 306 “Mike McCoy” should be Michael McCoy as the name of his firm is Michael McCoy Design. See </span></b><a href="http://michaelmccoydesign.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://michaelmccoydesign.com</span></b></span></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">/</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">An attempt was made to send every living designer whose work appears in the book the relevant piece of text in order that they could check it for factual accuracy. (Only a handful couldn’t be contacted or weren’t able/willing to look at the text.) The relevant text was sent to Mike and Katherine McCoy. Neither of them asked for the name to be changed. On the Cranbrook website there are instances when “Mike” is used (</span><a href="http://www.cranbrookdesign.com/index.php/topics/more/design_versus_innovation_the_cranbrook_iit_debate"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.cranbrookdesign.com/index.php/topics/more/design_versus_innovation_the_cranbrook_iit_debate</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">). However, “Michael” is certainly the more common form on the website, as it is elsewhere on the internet. It should have been used.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">figs. 20.2 E13-B, 1958, 20.3 OCR A, 1966 and 20.4 OCR B, 1968 are digital versions of film faces</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">E13-B is made from a scan of the film version.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 318 “Though the letters all appear in the same typeface, their varied sizes and careful positioning, and the positioning of the shoes they advertise, were made possible by the immediacy and control that came from designing with a computer.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This design by Neville Brody for Nike (1992) [fig. 20.11] could have (and was) easily done in the pre-computer era of cut-and-paste mechanicals. See the work of Bradbury Thompson (not in this book) such as “Composition in Space” 1951 in <i>The Art of Graphic Design</i> by Bradbury Thompson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 125 or the William Longhauser poster advertising Michael Graves (see fig. 19.5 in this book). The typeface in the design is not Helvetica as claimed but Franklin Gothic.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I am unable to look at Bradbury Thompson’s designs until later, but the letterforms in the William Longhauser poster are overlapping, not precisely abutting as in Brody’s ad. I’ve not come across any other pre-computer design that precisely abuts and aligns like Brody’s.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A description of Brody’s decision to design with Helvetica at around this time (for the magazine ‘Arena’) led me to describe the type wrongly (see </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by Jon Wozencroft (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994) p. 110).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 322 “The unconventional way in which he [David Carson] combined text and pictures, as well as other kinds of graphic marks, was rooted in his lack of formal training.”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[This repeats the canard that Carson is a self-made designer, ignoring his stint (even if only for a few weeks in summer) in a workshop led by Hans Rudolf Lutz, a Swiss designer who broke from the modernist tradition in the early 1970s. See </span></b><a href="http://www.lutz.to/"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#0050b1;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">www.lutz.to</span></b></span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_designer)]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Few people who had attended a graphic design workshop for a few weeks would describe themselves as having been formally trained in graphic design. Actually, that workshop was the second graphic design workshop that Carson attended. He had also attended a ‘commercial art’ college for six months (though he only describes being taught how to paint). The word “formal” was carefully chosen because though Carson only spent a short period studying graphic design in a college or in workshops he did receive instruction in magazine design while working as an intern.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 337 “Gray, Nicolette” [twice] should be “Gray, Nicolete”</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In the first instance this spelling matches the spelling used throughout the book that is mentioned in the bibliography here (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">XIXth Century Ornamented Types and Title Pages</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, 1951). The second instance wrongly followed the first.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">p. 337 Gray, Nicolette [sic], <i>XIXth Century Ornamented Types and Title Pages</i>, Faber and Faber, London, 1951 is cited in the bibliography but the revised second edition titled <i>Nineteenth Century Ornamented Typefaces</i> (1976) is considered to be a better book</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">See the above response for the spelling of Nicolette.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[There are many books missing from the bibliography but the one that is most surprising is the 4th edition of <i>A History of Graphic Design</i> by Philip B. Meggs and Alston Purvis (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2006). Also <i>No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism</i> by Rick Poynor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003) is absent.]</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Both books are absent because neither were consulted during the process of researching and writing. (I was keen not to be influenced by Meggs.) See the response to Blue Pencil’s comment ‘p. 124’.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[It seems odd to deliberately avoid reading a book on the same subject. Also, my point about the Poynor book and other missing from Mr. Cramsie’s bibliography is that their absence suggests that his reading was not as wide as it should have been. Meggs’ book (and others) would have been worth consulting just for the bibliography alone.]</span></span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-36699305012826043082010-10-31T06:14:00.000-07:002010-10-31T06:26:06.686-07:00Video View: Helvetica and the New York City Subway System SignageLast February—with the assistance of Abby Goldstein and Jan Conradi—I organized Navigating the Labyrinth: Unimark International and the New York City Subway System for AIGA New York. The event was a sequel to my book on the history of Helvetica in the subway system and a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the publication of the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards manual designed by Massimo Vignelli of Unimark. The event, co-moderated by Jan and myself with a panel consisting of Vignelli, Michael Hertz, Peter Joseph, Doris Halle, Lance Wyman and Tom Geismar, was sold out. It was a remarkable evening, culminating in questions from the floor from John Montemarano, the current head of the MTA Graphics Unit, for Vignelli that had the crowd in uproarious laughter. If you missed the event in February and wondered what all the fuss was about on other blogs you now have a chance to catch up. The evening is available for viewing as a video at<div>http://aigany.org/index.php/blog/article/navigating_the_labyrinth_unimark_international_and_the_new_york_subway_syst/</div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907701134426849828.post-8982500428935989982010-10-19T15:46:00.000-07:002010-10-19T16:17:44.527-07:00What’s Online no. 3: The Catich Collection—addendum<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 249px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TL4i7wv3toI/AAAAAAAAALY/ToczOJK6sOk/s400/AquileiaRepublican.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529895802550859394" /><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TL4jPFg1-_I/AAAAAAAAALg/jG2J5CcBwD8/s400/AquileiaImperial.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529896134542490610" /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>The quotation in the previous post about trying to date the shift from the use of the reed as a brush to its use as a broad-edged tool caught my attention when sifting through the Catich Collection website because James Mosley and I had been wondering when (and why) the Romans changed from making monotone letters to letters with contrasting stroke thickness. We often describe the former as Republican and the latter as Imperial because they generally correlate with those eras in Roman history, but there is no evidence that the letters changed simply because the form of government did. <div><br /></div><div>Above are details from two inscriptions at the Museo Nazionale Archeologico in Aquileia, one from the Republican era (1st c. BC) and the other from the Imperial era (105 AD). The former shows some letterforms that anticipate those of the Trajan Column inscription (narrow <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>E</b></span>, splayed<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> <b>M</b></span> and wide<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> <b>N</b></span>) while others are typical of Republican inscriptions (circular <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>O</b></span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>P</b></span> with a partial bowl and wide <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>S</b></span>). The latter shows letters that display some of the features that Father Catich found indicative of the use of a broad-edged brush as the defining tool of Imperial Roman capitals (e.g. the lower left corner of the <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">D</span></b>, the bottom right serif of the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b>I</b></span>, the turned down middle arm serif on the <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">E</span></b>, the sweeping tail on the <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Q</span></b>, and the puncti). I post these two images to show what a difference stroke contrast (or its absence) makes in the overall appearance of letters. The question remains: why did the Romans begin making letters with stroke contrast?</div><div><br /></div><div>The answer may lie in the shift in tools from a reed used as a brush to one used as a broad-edged pen. Then again, Father Catich has shown that it is possible to make sans serif letters with a broad-edged brush. And John Stevens, one of the foremost calligraphers alive today, has demonstrated that it is possible to use such a brush to make both Imperial and Republican capitals (see the top line in the image below)*. So it is possible that the change of tool had no impact on the form of the letters. If so, then what did?</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">*the second line shows Renaissance capitals imitated by a broad-edged brush.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_j8LW8RreQHs/TL4mWwiwISI/AAAAAAAAALo/nbrchbl3r9Q/s400/paul1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529899564887187746" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 269px; " /></div><div><br /></div>Paul Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12589324507447093750noreply@blogger.com0