Blue Pencil

Ciao!

2011-04-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

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 http://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/ 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.

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.

Thanks for supporting Blue Pencil in its original incarnation. And I hope to see all of you at Blue Pencil on Shaw*.

Blue Pencil no. 14—Salon Manicure

2011-04-14T12:52:00.000-07:00

Claire Lambrecht of Salon 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.

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 Salon 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.

Since Salon 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 Salon interview. I have also touched up a few of Ms. Lambrecht’s questions to make them clearer.

This is not meant as an attack on Ms. Lambrecht or Salon, only as a tiny corrective. I fully appreciate her efforts. You can read the original interview at:

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/04/11/helvetica_interview

Claire Lambrecht, Salon

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.

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, "Helvetica and the New York City Subway System," 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.

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.

Where did Helvetica come from and why was it developed?

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.]

So how did a relatively unpopular typeface become the iconic "Helvetica" that we know today?

[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.

How did Helvetica become so dominant?

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.]

Why the 1960s?

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.

What was it about “sans serif” typefaces (those without the tiny strokes at the end of strokes) that was so attractive then?

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.]

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 Mad Men era.]

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 Mad Men] would have seen.

What happened in the postwar period that inspired [the] reform [of the New York City subway signage]?

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 does stink or that it is 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.

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?

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.

How did Helvetica reflect the ideology of its day?

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.

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.

How does that manifest itself in the New York subway system?

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.

What does the story of this typeface tell us about New York City?

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.

Note: When I have done interviews for Print 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.

Blue Pencil no. 13—Standard Deviations (exhibition)

2011-04-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design

Museum of Modern Art

Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator and Kate Carmody, Curatorial Assistant

2011

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.

Bitmap typeface 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.

Cathode ray tube (CRT) Similar to an early television, a CRT monitor renders images in large pixels on a grid.

[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.]

Character An individual letter, also called a glyph or letterform.

[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.]

Descender The part of a letter that reaches down below the baseline of the font, in g, p, and q, for example.

[This definition is slack. It not only leaves out j and y but it could include the tail of Q which descends but is not considered to be a descender. Furthermore, ascender, descender’s more signiﬁcant counterpart, is not included.

Font 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.

[This is a very confusing and inaccurate deﬁnition. The word has shifted meaning over time. Theodore Low De Vinne, in Plain Printing Types (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.

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).

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.]

Glyph See character.

[See comment above about the deﬁnition of Character.]

Joining stroke A line that connects two letters, as in cursive handwriting.

[In calligraphy usually called a join. Joins can exist in non-cursive hands as well as non-script typefaces. See quaint ct and st ligatures as well as the unusual characters in Matthew Carter’s Walker typeface.]

Leg The part of the character that extends outward from the stem. For example, a leg is what distinguishes R from P.

Letterform See character.

[See comment above about the deﬁnition of Character.]

Ligature A single character that represents the connection of two letters.

[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 ct and st ligatures (and their ilk) are characterized as “quaint”. They are only ligatures by virtue of an extraneous stroke.]

Point size The size of a font, based on its x-height. There are 72 points per inch.

[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.)]

Serif A short line that extends from the top or bottom of a stroke in a letter. It is a symbolic leftover from handwriting.

[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.]

Stem The part of a character that is a vertical line, as in F or h.

[The stem of a letter is also called a spine.]

Strokes The lines from which a letter is formed; a lowercase h, for example, is composed of two strokes: a stem and a leg.

[Why is this plural? Depending on the nature of the lowercase h, it can be composed of one, two or even three strokes. A cursive h such as that found in roundhand is a single continuous stroke, complete with loop. A constructivist h composed entirely of straight lines (so that it resembles a chair in proﬁle) has three strokes. See The Stroke: Theory of writing 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]

Swash An exaggerated serif that embellishes a letterform.

[A swash is not an exaggerated serif. It is an extended stroke that embellishes or decorates a letterform.]

Titling face A typeface designed to be used in large sizes for titles or headlines.

[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 Qs and non-descending Js. 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.]

Typeface 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.

[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.]

Vector typeface 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.

x-height The height of the lowercase x in a typeface, upon which the heights of all other characters are based.

[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.]

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 par excellence (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).

"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.

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.

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. [I tend to use “letterform” in this manner as well.]

"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.

I flatly decline to get involved in defining a "serif". [Too bad as this is a very contentious term and it could use some standardization.]

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). [On this latter point see Mosley’s blog.]

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) [Harry and Matthew Carter respectively] can improve one’s own technical language.

From the Archives no. 18—Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938

2011-04-02T12:15:00.000-07:00

Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938

Vorlagenheft für Setzer, Drucker, Werbefachleute, Graphiker und Reproduktionstechniker

Berlin: Verlag der Graphischen Monatsschrift “Deutscher Drucker”, 1938

Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938, 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!

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. Finally, there are articles in the annual showcase printing and design schools.

Genzmer is best known for Das Buch des Setzers, a basic guide to German typefaces. The ﬁrst edition was published in 1936. The one displayed on the Luc Devroye’s website is from the sixth edition (1948) and Helvetica Forever refers to an edition from 1967 in footnote 80. See http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/Genzmer1948/. 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 http://www.sanskritweb.net/fontdocs/genzmer.pdf.

Genzmer’s articles are “Buchtitel in Fraktur und Antiqua”, “Behördliche Drucksachen”, “Normdrucksachen in zeitgemäßer Gestaltung”, “Asymmetrie oder Mittelachse?” and “Der Gebrauchstypograph Thannhaeuser”. “Buchtitel in Fraktur und Antiqua” (Book Titles in Blackletter and Roman) 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, a casual script, with the title in a “sans serif” script named Knock-out [not to be confused with Knockout from Hoefler & Frere-Jones]. 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 Schaftstiefelgrotesk [“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 Print LII:III (July/August 1998) and reprinted in Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography edited by Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs (New York: Allworth Press, 2001).

*hereafter, I will use the German word as an import into English and not capitalize it or italicize it.

ROMAN
Knock-out
Walbaum-Kursiv (twice)
Normande
Plastica (similar to Umbra)
Berthold-Grotesk-Kursiv
City halbfett and fett
Bayer-Kursiv halbfett
Royal-Grotesk

BLACKLETTER
Walbaum-Fraktur
Bismark-Fraktur
Trump-Deutsch (twice)
Deutschland-Kursiv (a Schrägschrift or inclined textura)

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 no schaftstiefelgrotesks.

Genzmer’s “Behördliche Drucksachen” (Official Printed Matter) article is set in an unidentiﬁed Venetian Oldstyle (or, as the Germans would call it, Venezianische Renaissance-Antiqua) with the title in Manuskript-Gotisch. The accompanying samples are entirely in blackletter typefaces, yet the layouts are often asymmetrical in the manner of die neue typographie! 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.

“Normdrucksachen in zeitgemäßer Gestaltung” (Contemporary Standardized Printed Material) 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.

ROMAN
Bodoni-Kursiv (5)
City
Berthold-Grotesk (4)
Normande
Ariston
Walbaum-Antiqua
Walbaum-Kursiv

BLACKLETTER
Trump-Deutsch (3)
Bismarck-Fraktur (3)
Deutschland-Kursiv
Mainzer-Fraktur

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.

“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 Graphic Design in Germany 1890–1945, 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 (pp. 185–188) from a 1937 Penrose Annual article by Gustav Stresow 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 Satz- und Druck-Musterheft in his text nor is it (or Fritz Genzmer) in his bibliography.

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,

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? Wenn nämlich nicht alles trägt, haben wir schon den ersten Schritt auf dem Wege zurück zu ihr getan. 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.

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.

Genzmer concludes by asking the readers of Satz- und Druck-Musterheft to weigh in with their opinions on the subject. Perhaps their responses appear in the 1939 issue.

Willi Mengel wrote articles for Gebrauchsgraphik, Archiv für Druck und Papier, Druck, Papier und Druck, Typographische Monatsblätter and other publications well into the 1970s. He was also the author of Ottmar Mergenthaler and the Printing Revolution (Brooklyn: Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1954) and Druckschriften der Gegenwart: Klassiﬁziert nach DIN 16518 (Stuttgart: Blersch, 1966). In Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938 he contributed three articles. The ﬁrst is “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.

“Der Bilder-Umbruch in der Zeitung” (Picture Composition in Newspapers) by Mengel is reprinted from the March 1937 issue of Deutscher Drucker. 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 Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938, 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.

Mengel’s third article is “April… der macht, was er will!” (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.

The anonymous J.W. is the author of “Der Zeitschriftenumschlag als Werbefaktor” (Magazine Covers as an Advertising Vehicle). It is set in Baskerville with Wallau for the title. (This must have been the default style of Satz- und Druck- Musterheft, 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.

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.

Karl Franke (1894–1952), a proponent of the New Typography (See http://wiedler.ch/felix/books/story/387 which traces the history of Typographische Mitteilungen 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.

One of the most important articles in Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938, from a design history perspective, is “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.

(See http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/olympics/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Metcalfe.)

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 Olympiaheft 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.

The schools that are proﬁled in Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938 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 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.)

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. Georg Trump, designer of Trump-Deutsch, was a student of Schneidler’s. He was the director of the Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker after Renner was dismissed by the Nazis. His tenure lasted from 1934 to 1953.

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.)

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). 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, “After the Nazi takeover of power in 1933 the Nazi Party validated the NSLB as the sole organization of teachers in the German Reich. In July 1935 the NSLB was merged with the existing organization of lecturers to form the

Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB) (National Socialist German University Lecturers League).”

It should be remembered that the typefaces in Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 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.

This rest of this post is a census of the typefaces used in the advertisements in Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938. Many of them are identiﬁed in captions, but most are not. I have relied on the Encyclopedia of Typefaces 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.

Among the companies that advertised in Satz- und Druck-Musterheft 1938 are a number of typefoundries. They are Baeursche Giesserei, Gebr. Klingspor, D. Stempel AG, Schleter & Giesecke AG, Schriftguss KG (formerly Brüder Butter) and Mergenthaler Setzmaschinen-Fabrik GmbH. 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 Stammbaum der Schrift (Family Tree of Type), a famous poster created as part of the company’s centennial in 1937. And they provided the type (Schneidler-Initialen, Schneidler-Medieval and Legende) for the front cover. The advertisement on the back cover combines 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)

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)

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”:

Leitgedanke bei Schaffung de Gotenburg war: Deutscher Wertarbeit zu leisten.
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.
Gotenburg die echt deutsche Schrift.

The main idea behind the design of Gotenburg was to achieve high-class German workmanship.
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.
It is based on tradition and, at the same time, a modern expression of the blackletter style. Gotenburg, the genuine German typeface.

Gotenburg is a simpliﬁed textura, but it is not a schaftstiefelgrotesk.

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.

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 most fascinating—and also the most elaborate—of the type specimens, “Fraktur oder Antiqua” 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 Die Schriftgiesserei im Schattenbild (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.

The last page of the insert states, “Nicht Fraktur oder Antiqua sondern Fraktur und Antiqua. Beide werden in der täglichen Praxis benötigt—beide bieten wir Ihnen in neuzeitlichen Schnitten.” (“Not Fraktur or Roman but Fraktur and 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.

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; 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); paper manufacturers 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:

Futura (11)
Kabel (1)
Venus (1)
sans serif handlettering (2)
Weiss-Antiqua with Kursiv
DeVinne (1)
Ratio-Latein (1)
Bodoni (3)
Beton (1)
Memphis (1)
an unidentiﬁed egyptian (1)
an unidentiﬁed egyptian italic (1)
an unidentiﬁed condensed egyptian (1)
an unidentiﬁed Englische Schreibschrift (1)
Legende (1)
Signal (1)
an unidentiﬁed script (1)
Weiss-Gotisch (1)

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.

From the Archives no. 17—More on Helvetica in the United States

2011-03-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

This evening at the Type Directors Club I came across a type specimen entitled helvetica (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 Print magazine. Was Empire the ﬁrst type house in New York (and maybe the United States) to import Helvetica?

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.

The names of the Helvetica family members mentioned are a bit odd. The translations from the German are literal: Kursiv has become Cursive (instead of Italic) and halbfett has become Demi-bold (instead of Medium).

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).

By kupfers on From the Archives no. 17—More on Helvetica in the ... on 4/1/11

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.

Opinion redux—Deviations from Standard Deviations

2011-03-26T07:42:00.001-07:00

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.

1. David Lemon of Adobe has written to point out that, “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.)”

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.)

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 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 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).

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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.)

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.

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 Printer’s Type in the Twentieth Century (New Castle, Delaware and London: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2005).

Opinion—Standard Deviations

2011-03-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

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 Counter Space exhibition and afterwards I stumbled upon Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design, an exhibition of the newly acquired fonts.

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.

The 23 fonts chosen are:

OCR-A (American Type Founders, 1966)

New Alphabet (Wim Crouwel, 1967)

Bell Centennial (Matthew Carter, Mergenthaler Linotype, 1976–1978)

ITC Galliard (Matthew Carter, International Typeface Corporation, 1978)

FF Meta (Erik Spiekermann, FontShop, 1984–1991)

Oakland (Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1985)

FF Beowolf (Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum, FontShop, 1990)

Template Gothic (Barry Deck, Emigre, 1990)

Dead History (P. Scott Makela and Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1990)

Keedy Sans (Jeffery Keedy, Emigre, 1991)

HTF Didot (Jonathan Hoefler, Hoefler Type Foundry, 1991)

FF Blur (Neville Brody, FontShop, 1992)

Mason (nèe Manson) (Jonathan Barnbrook, Emigre, 1992)

Mantinia (Matthew Carter, Carter & Cone Type, 1993)

Interstate (Tobias Frere-Jones, Font Bureau, 1993–1995)

Big Caslon (Matthew Carter, Carter & Cone Type, 1994)

FF DIN (Albert-Jan Pool, FontShop, 1995)

Walker (Matthew Carter, Walker Art Center, 1995)

Verdana (Matthew Carter, Microsoft, 1996)

Mercury (Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, 1996)

Miller (Matthew Carter, Font Bureau, 1997)

Retina (Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Hoefler Type Foundry, 1999)

Gotham (Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Hoefler Type Foundry, 2000)

*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”.

“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.

These rationales are a grab bag, essentially post hoc 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.

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:

OCR-B (Adrian Frutiger, European Computer Manufacturers Association, 1968)

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.

Digi-Grotesk S (Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell, 1968)

The ﬁrst digital typeface

Marconi (Hermann Zapf, Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell, 1975)

The ﬁrst original typeface to be produced with the Ikarus computer-aided design anddigitization system.

Computer Modern (Donald Knuth, 1980)

The ﬁrst family of fonts developed using Metafont.

Chicago (Susan Kare, Apple, 1983)

A bitmapped screen font used for the operating system of the ﬁrst Apple Macintosh.

AMS Euler (Hermann Zapf and Donald Knuth, American Mathematical Society, 1983)

Designed using METAFONT, a font manipulation program developed by Knuth.

Lucida Serif and Lucida Sans (Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow, Imagen, 1985)

The ﬁrst original type family intended for laser printing. And the ﬁrst type family to successfully unite serif and sans serif designs.

Matrix (Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1985)

The ﬁrst Emigre font intended to be widely used by other graphic designers.

TF Forever (Joseph Treacy, Treacyfaces, 1986)

The ﬁrst original PostScript Type 3 font made using Fontographer.

ITC Stone (Sumner Stone, International Typeface Corporation, 1987)

The though licensed to ITC, this was the ﬁrst Adobe original typeface. It also further expanded the notion of the superfamily as it contained ITC Stone Serif, ITC Stone Sans and ITC Stone Informal.

Charter (Matthew Carter), Amerigo (Gerard Unger) and Carmina (Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse)—all Bitstream, 1987

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 became ITC Charter.

Adobe Garamond (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1989)

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.

Lithos, Trajan and Charlemagne (Carol Twombly, Adobe, 1989)

A trio of types based on key moments in the evolution of Western lettering (not type) that have been far more influential than Mantinia.

Rotis (Otl Aicher, Agfa Compugraphic, 1989)

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 History and certainly much more popular then as well as today.

Scala (Martin Majoor, Vredenburg Centre, 1988)

Issued by FontShop in 1990 as FF Scala, this has been one of the most successful and influential type designs of the past twenty years, especially once it was joined by FF Scala Sans. It is far more important than either Interstate or FF DIN.

Poetica (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1992)

The ﬁrst italic type family.

Myriad MM (Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly, Adobe, 1992) and Minion MM (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1992)

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.

Silica (Sumner Stone, Stone Typefoundry, 1993)

Ostensibly the ﬁrst typeface designed entirely on-screen.

Hoefler Text (Jonathan Hoefler, Hoefler Type Foundry, 1994)

The most successful GX font, Hoefler Text was part of System 7.5 for the Macintosh. It is the typeface that brought Jonathan Hoefler widespread recognition.

Adobe Jenson (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 1994)

The ﬁrst type revival with optical scaling. But not a widely used typeface.

Thesis (Luc(as) de Groot, FontShop, 1995)

The beginning of the biggest superfamily which includes sans, serif, square serif, monoline, semi-serif and other variants. TheSans has been especially popular. It is a much more signiﬁcant face than Keedy Sans.

Georgia (Matthew Carter, Microsoft, 1995)

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.

Warnock Pro (Robert Slimbach, Adobe, 2000) and Silentium Pro (Jovica Veljovic, Adobe, 2000)

The ﬁrst two original type designs in the OpenType format.

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.

From the Archives no. 16—Choosing a Typeface

2011-03-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

Among 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. Time 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

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885001,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,756618,00.html

Gilbert P. Farrar wrote The Typography of Advertisements that Pay: How to Choose and Combine Type Faces, Engravings and All the Other Mechanical Elements of Modern Advertisement Construction (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1920) which is available for PDF download from Google Books.

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

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 Fred Farrar’s Type Book (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1927).

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 Fred Farrar’s Type Book 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.

Caslon Oldstyle 471: “This type is unquestionably the best to use in speaking English.” p. 6

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

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

ATF Garamond: “A graceful letter of some distinction, rather feminine in its graceful qualities.” p. 9

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

Cheltenham: “This type suffers terribly from overcrowding, and when set in a mass, seems to be pinched to the point of suffocation.” p. 10

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

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

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

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

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

Fred Farrar’s Type Book was published a year before Layout in Advertising by W.A. Dwiggins and Die neue Typographie 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.

Gilbert P. Farrar lists thirty-three typefaces in The Typography of Advertisements 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, 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.

“Both the Bookman and the Scotch Roman have a sturdy dignity that is very pleasing to men.

“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

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 “knows no gender in its usefulness, and is a delicate, modest type in which to dress an appeal to women.” p. 73

“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 “The Forceful Educational Style”.

Farrar also includes some condensed typefaces to be used in “high narrow spaces.”

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, “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 accepts the use of handlettering in advertisements, 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 warns his readers not to use such types “unless there is a good reason why you should imitate handlettering.” (p. 101).

Gilbert P. Farrar concludes his survey of typefaces for advertising with this bit of advice, “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.

What’s Online no. 5: Inland Printer 1901

2011-03-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

Here is another interesting tiny article from the 1901 Inland Printer 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.

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]

The Inland Printer 1901 July, p. 541

What’s Online no. 4: Inland Printer

2011-03-20T15:54:00.001-07:00

Several months ago I stumbled across the complete 1899 issues of the Inland Printer on Google Books. I downloaded the bound set and in skimming the pages this item caught my attention.

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.

p. 187, Inland Printer May 1899 vol. XXIII, No. 2

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 Inland Printer’s view that patriotism cannot be “lawed” into existence is a sound one.

A Case Study no. 1—Chocolate & Zucchini—Addendum

2011-03-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

The typeface used for “Chocolate” in the title of Chocolate & Zucchini 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

There are a number of tributes to Doyald online. Here are a few:

http://www.idsgn.org/posts/remembering-doyald-young/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/arts/design/07young.html

http://fontfeed.com/archives/doyald-young-passes-away-at-age-84/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doyald_Young

Update: Helvetica and the New York City Subway System

2011-03-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

The original, limited edition version of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System (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.

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.

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 New York City Transit Authority Graphics Manual. 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.

Comments on Tutorial no. 2—Addendum no. 2 Castle William and A

2011-03-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

Johnny (Alex Morgan), Demo and ecs,

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.

Thank you for reading Blue Pencil and I apologize for not looking at these comments earlier.

Paul

From the Archives no. 15—Helvetica and Standard

2011-03-17T22:12:00.001-07:00

Something else that I came across at the High School for Graphic Communication Arts were two issues of a former local trade magazine called Graphics: New York. 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).

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.

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,

“Increase the volume of the letter’s body.

“That is, increase it’s x-height.That’s what the Swiss did with Helvetica.

“They designed each character to take up a greater volume of space on the type body.”

It concluded: “HELVETICA: Swiss precision, classic simplicity.”; and “HELVETICA MEDIUM: Strongly authoritative; declarative.” The magazine itself did not pay attention to these claims for Helvetica or those for Standard. It was set in Trade Gothic. However, the inside back cover of the January issue contained an advertisement by Container Corporation of America (CCA), based in Chicago, set in Helvetica Medium.

Although Helvetica Medium had arrived in New York City by August 1965, Unimark International did not spec it for the subway signage it was working on. Bob Noorda and Massimo Vignelli chose Standard instead.

From the Archives no. 14—Linoskala

2011-03-17T21:15:00.001-07:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

Blue Pencil no. 12—Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig

2011-01-26T07:10:00.000-08:00

Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig

Steven Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen

San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 20010

Book design by Tamar Cohen

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.

[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 Popular Mechanics (available on Google Books), the obituary for Thomas in the Los Angeles Times (12 March 1995) and these websites

http://www.heli-archive.ch/index.php?id=21&L=1

http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/roteron_xm-1.php

The information on the latter website comes from Helicopters and Autogyros of the World by P. Lambermont (1958). To appreciate the Roteron look at the other helicopters from the 1940s on the same website.]

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:

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.”

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.”

p. 87 “Although not as prominent as Paul Rand in the advertising universe, Lustig was an inventive advertising designer.”

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.”

p. 191 re: Lustig’s articles on graphic design “On the graphic design side, fewer designers were publishing. Paul Rand was an exception with Thoughts on Design, published by Wittenborn in 1947….”

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.

p. 22 “Where did he [Lustig] acquire this aptitude, talent, and expertise?” re: May 1933 cover of Touring Topics, the magazine of the Automobile Club of Southern California (see illustration on p. 23).

[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 sui generis.]

p. 25 “In 1933, he also enrolled in a printing class with Richard Hoffmann, a ﬁne-press printer….”

[Richard Hoffmann, a Los Angeles (Van Nuys) private press printer, published A Decorative Divertissement 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?

pp. 29–30 “These signature type case constructions [see pp. 26, 2

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.”

[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 Gutenberg-Jahrbuch for 1952 and

http://typocurious.com/typosignets-the-work-of-albert-schiller/) 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 Gebrauchsgraphik where it is possible that Lustig may have seen it since the magazine was sold in the United

States. Some of this work is reproduced in Advertising Art in the Art Deco Style selected by Theodore Menten (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1975): ﬁgs. 201–212 and 220-221 for Goedecker (proﬁled in Gebrauchsgraphik June 1929); ﬁgs. 213–219,242-243 for Aufseeser (Gebrauchsgraphik December 1932); and ﬁg. 235 for Wörner (Gebrauchsgraphik September 1930).]

[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.]

p. 31 “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.”

[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 Industrial-Arts Magazine (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 the High School of Graphic Communication Arts.]

p. 34 “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.…

“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.”

[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.]

p. 35 “Euclid A New Type, late 1930s.”

[There should be a green dot between this caption and the one above.]

[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 Das A und O des Bauhauses edited by Ute Brüning (Berlin: Bauhaus Archiv and Edition Leipzig, 1995.]

[Did Lustig use this “alphabet” for the masthead of Arts & Architecture magazine in 1948? See the two covers on p. 80.]

p. 37 “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 The Next Call, made what he called ‘drucksels,’ which combined with wood and metal letterforms with metal typesetting furniture.”

[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 The American Printer, The Studio, Gebrauchsgraphik and perhaps even Arts et Metiers Graphiques. 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). 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 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.]

p. 39 “Robinson’s 58, late 1930s. / Cover, purpose unknown.”

[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.]

http://departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.com/2010/05/jw-robinson-co-los-angeles.html

[Note the Futura Black/Display-like r made of type material.]

p. 40 “To announce and pay for the book [Ghost in the Underblows], 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.’”

[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.]

p. 41 “Typographic experiment, late 1930s. / A progressive sequence of letterpress impressions.”

[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.]

pp. 42–49 images

[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 Ghost in the Underblows 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.]

p. 43 “Lustig used geometric typecase shapes to create the abstract designs [re: interior of Ghost in the Underblows]. The process was arduous, but the results were unique in American book design.”

[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? It 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. Ghost in the Underblows was called “another pretension to the great American poem” by John Hay in Poetry (vol. 57, no. 6 March 1941 pp. 391). The online snippet of the review does not mention Lustig’s contribution. Kevin Starr, author of Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 379, says that Fisher worked on the “massive poem” throughout the 1930s and that The Ghost in the Underblows was only a fragment that Ritchie convinced him to publish. The book, subsidized by Dr. Elmer Belt, “ﬁzzled”. “Despite advance testimonials from Robinson Jeffers and William Everson,” writes Starr, “and a lengthy, somewhat overwrought introduction by [Lawrence] Powell… The Ghost in the Underblows earned one regional review, then receded from sight.” And, “…his poem rumbled and roared sonorously—but with an obscurity that even academic commentators found impassable.” See http://inbetweennoise.blogspot.com/2006/12/words-in-underblows.html 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.)

p.47 “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 [The Wisdom of the Heart by Henry Miller].”

[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 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

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

p. 47 “Media, A Design and Production Center, early 1940s.”

[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 Hollywood Quarterly 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?]

p. 49 “Rounce and Cofﬁn Club, 1940. / Invitation for the 500th anniversary of the invention of printing.”

[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.]

p. 50 “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.”

[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 Classic Book Jackets: The Design Legacy of George Salter 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 Schacht, Hitler’s Magician (1939), no. 120 in Hansen; The Tower of Babel (1947), no. 142, Dr. Faustus (1948), no. 143, and See How They Run (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.)]

p. 55 “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.”

[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

http://makingmaps.owu.edu/modernlibrary/mlfind.html and http://www.modernlib.com/Identifiers/titleIndexPBs.html

In 1955 Modern Library began issuing its books in paperback as well as hardcover.]

[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:

in The New Classics series from New Directions:

p. 50 A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (1944) and Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert (1945) p. 54 The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1949)

p. 55 The Wanderer by Alain Fournier (1948)

p. 56 Amerika by Franz Kafka (1945)

p. 60 The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James (1944)

[The captions provide book title and date but not author. These have to be deduced from looking at the images.]

p. 72 Three Tragedies by Gabriel Garcia Lorca (1948)

p. 89 Anatomy for Interior Designers (1946)

p. 92 advertisement for New Directions (1945)

p. 95 advertisement for H.G. Knoll (1944–1945)

p. 96 Ninth Graphic Arts Production Yearbook (1950)

[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 Paul Rand 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 For the Record: The Life and Work of Alex Steinweiss 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 Eye 76 http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=181&fid=809

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. 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.]

[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?]

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.’”

[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 The Great Gatsby (p. 60), the labyrinth for The Longest Journey (p. 53) or the barbed wire for Poems 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 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre p. 53, A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh p. 56, The Man Who Died 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 Three Tragedies by Lorca (see p. 62).]

p. 70 “On the whole, Laughlin was duly respectful of Lustig’s choices.”

[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.]

pp. 62 and 63 “The Makers of Modern Literature and Directions Series, 1940s.”

[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. See A Treasury of German Trademarks vol. 1: 1850–1925 by Leslie Cabarga (New York: Art Direction Book Company, 1982), opposite title page and on front cover.]

p. 69 “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).”

[This refers to Lustig’s covers for the Modern Reader series of books from New Directions. The photographers—George Barrows (see The Confessions of Zeno, p. 68), J. Connor (only an initial) (see Death on the Installment Plan, p. 74) and Quigley (no ﬁrst name given) (see Journey to the End of the Night, 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 Art in Our Time: A Chronicle of the

Museum of Modern Art

by Harriet Schoenholz Bee and Michelle Elligott (New York:

Museum of Modern, 2004) in the footnote to p. 120. MoMA apparently has some of his photos.

There is also a lead online that suggests Barrow was associated with Frank Lloyd Wright at one

time. Perhaps Lustig met him during his brief stay at Taliesen East.]

[Lustig’s 1946 Ski Alta catalogue cover (p. 78) is reminiscent of the early 1930s work of Herbert Matter such as the cover of TM foto 5 (1933) p. 92, the cover of SVZ Revue no. 1 (1934) p. 55 or the brochure for Gebr. Fretz AG (1934) p. 58. See Herbert Matter: Foto-Graphiker: Sehformen der Zeit: Das Werk der zwanziger und dreissiger Jahre by Markus Britschgi and Adrian Bättig (Baden: Verlag Lars Müller, 1995.]

[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 Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century by Pat Kirkham (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1998), pp. 207–210 and Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future 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).

http://www.wright20.com/auctions/view/G6NU/G6NV/248/LA/none/TOP/0

http://www.hermanmiller.com/Products/Eames-Molded-Plywood-Chairs

There is a reference to Lustig’s admiration for the chairs of Eames and Harry Bertoia on p. 160.]

[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 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)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mooflyfoof/4458446881/

The references above are to pages and images in The Machine Age in America 1918–1941 by Richard Guy Wilson, Dianne H. Pilgrim and Dickran Tashjian (New York: Harry Abrams and the Brooklyn Museum, 1986).]

From the Archives no. 13—Frederic Goudy

2011-01-23T10:11:00.000-08:00

Recently I was looking through back issues of The New Yorker 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.

“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 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 The New Yorker certainly are.

In The Talk of the Town for September 22, 1934 (p. 15) it says: “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.

In The Talk of the Town for October 6, 1934 (p. 15) it says: “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 The New Yorker 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirie_MacDonald

Blue Pencil no. 11 addendum

2011-01-19T22:40:00.000-08:00

R. Roger Remington and Robert S.R. Fripp, the authors of Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin, 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.

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*.

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 Unimark: The Design of Business and the Business of Design, 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)

“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.’” (Unimark: The Design of Business and the Business of Design, p. 149).

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 Unimark: The Design of Business and the Business of Design that show Helvetica in use for these companies. Dot Zero, 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.

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 design: Vignelli (1981) and design: Vignelli (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.

Vignelli was one of the ﬁve members of the committee that oversaw the creation of Symbol Signs: The System of Passenger/Pedestrian Oriented Symbols Developed for the U.S. Department of Transportation by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (New York: Visual Communication Books, Hastings House, Publishers, 1981). The book was set entirely in Helvetica.

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.

*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.

Blue Pencil no. 11—Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin

2011-01-17T22:59:00.000-08:00

Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin

R. Roger Remington and Robert S.P. Fripp

Aldershot, Hampshire: Lund Humphries, 2007

[ﬁ ligatures not used; Monotype Bulmer, the typeface used, has them]

ﬁg. 1, p. 12 “Kristallspiegelglas” not translated

[paragraphs not indented but set apart by line spaces; makes reading the text very choppy]

p. 13 repetitious phrase: “dismal years” (2nd paragraph) and “dismal decades” (5th paragraph)

p. 14 “At the age of 14 he [Burtin] enrolled in a grueling four-year apprenticeship in typography—Schriftsetzer Handwerk—at the Handwerkskammer Köln.” The apprenticeship was most likely in typesetting (composing) rather than typography.

p. 14 “In 1926, Dusseldorf’s GeSoLei 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 GeSoLei kept apprentice typesetter Burtin busy.”

[what does GeSoLei 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 Gesundheitspflege, soziale Fürsorge und Leibesübungen (health, welfare and exercise) which were popular catch-words.” See Health, Race, and German Politics between National Uniﬁcation and Nazism 1870–1945 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

ﬁg. 2, p. 15 “Burtin designed this Fanal Flamme-type specimen brochure for Schelter and Geisecke AG, announcing a new font.”

[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.]

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.”

[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. ]

ﬁg. 4, p. 16 [no date given; design is post-1927 since it uses Futura; the title is hand-lettered]

p. 16 “Burtin’s 1931 brochure for the German Association of Glass and Mirror Manufacturers (Spiegelglas) conveys an instant sense of transparency.”

[this is the work shown in ﬁg. 1, p. 12 which is described there as being from the “late 1920s”.]

ﬁg. 5, p. 17 “…like other Burtin catalogs of the late 1920s, if [Kristall-speigelglas (crystal mirror glass)] it features tabbed sections for fast reference.”

[here the German is translated; but in the text on p. 17 the catalogue is described as “Glass in Building: Technical Potentials (Figure 5)” and dated as from “the 1930s”. The title in the image itself says kristall-spiegelglas. It is handlettered in a unicase style reminiscent of the experiments of Bayer and Tschichold.]

[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. (Graphic Design in Germany 1890–1945 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 (fraktur) 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.]

p. 22 “Burtin’s reputation had preceded him to the U.S. in the widely read pages of Gebrauchsgraphik.”

p. 24 “After Germany’s Gebrauchsgraphik stopped publishing in 1934, The Composing Room created A/D (‘Art Director’) magazine to ﬁll the gap.”

p. 27 “The Burtins had had to abandon much of their German portfolio in Cologne: fortunately, Gebrauchsgraphik, which was widely known by New York designers, had published examples of that work.”

[there is no other mention in the text, footnotes or bibliography of Gebrauchsgraphik articles about Burtin. How many were there, when were they published, and what were they about? Gebrauchsgraphik did not stop publishing in 1934 but continued until 1944.]

ﬁg. 16, p. 29 “Burtin’s choice of Bodoni for his Vesalius title complements stark, stylized muscle ﬁbers.”

[the typeface is a Didot not Bodoni.]

[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. 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 Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising 1940–1970 by Andres Janser and Barbara Junod (Baden: Lars Müller, 2009) for J.R. Geigy and Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography by Christopher Burke (London: Hyphen Press, 2008) for CIBA.]

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.”

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.”

[These paragraphs are examples of the poor writing that often plagues this book.]

ﬁg. 20, p. 32 “Burtin designed this Christmas card for Fortune in December 1941, just after the outbreak of war. Searchlights stab the sky to form a Christmas star, merging symbols of peace and war.”

[The 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?]

[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 Directions magazine referencing the European conflict.]

p. 40 “…The Composing Room and other typographic leaders had been raising the bar on standards in type since 1927, pulling the industry forward.”

[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 A/D and PM magazines, but nothing has been written about its work and its clients.]

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.”

[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.]

[The discussion of Burtin’s contributions to Fortune magazine after being made art director in 1945 (pp. 40–52) ignores the work of contemporary magazine art directors such as Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar and Paul Rand at Directions. Also there are no examples of what Fortune 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 Fortune: The Art of Covering Business 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.]

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.”

[None of the issues of Fortune 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. Fortune: The Art of Covering Business, 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 Fortune 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 Fortune in 1948.]

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 Fortune inventing a term to cover almost indiscernible adjustments on a page. They spoke sotto voce of ‘picas, points and Burtins’ as in ‘Move that headline just a Burtin to the right.’.”

[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 Penguin by Design: A Cover Story, 1935–2005 (London: Penguin, 2005).]

p. 50 “[Lester] Beall has been called the father of branding; Burtin, of ‘corporate identity.’”

[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.]

p. 53 “Burtin, as far as I [George Klauber] can see, discovered plastics [as a design medium.]”

[Laszlo Moholy-Nagy experimented with plastics in his painting and photography as early as 1923. www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=A%20II&page=&f=Title&object=43.900]

[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.]

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.”

[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.]

ﬁg. 44, p. 61 “The Art Directors’ Club awarded Burtin the ADC Gold Medal for his Scope cover featuring gyotaku, Summer 1954.”

[gyotaku–the art of ﬁsh printing—is not explained. See www.gyotaku.com/]

[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.”]

p. 65 “In 1957, Switzerland produced the Helvetica family of fonts.”

[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 Helvetica Forever: The Story of a Typeface by Victor Malsy et al (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2009).]

ﬁg. 53, p. 72 “Here [Burtin’s walk-through Cell 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.”

[Some explanation is needed for “Herbert Bayer’s stylistic breakthrough in 1930s Germany”. What is being referred to?]

ﬁg. 54, p. 73 “Will Burtin, Inc. was Upjohn’s design department before outsourcing became popular.”

[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.]

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.”

[“Akzidenz Grotesque” should be “Akzidenz Grotesk”]

[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 Helvetica Forever on p. 56. ]

p. 84 “Haas-Grotesk” should be “Neue Haas Grotesk”

p. 84 “Edouard Hofmann” should be “Eduard Hoffmann”

p. 84 “When the Burtins returned to New York in the fall of 1958, they imported Helvetica with them.”

[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?]

p. 88 “As Roger Remington points out….”

p. 89 “Remington, who has made a ﬁne study of the Upjohn Brain’s physiology….”

p. 91 “Remington notes that….”

ﬁg. 81, p. 115 “Remington comments that this….”

[This phrasing is a bit odd since one of the authors is Roger Remington.]

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.”

[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 Peck’s Bad Girl) 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]

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.]

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.”

[The authors should correct this mistaken statement since they indicate that Burtin’s education had nothing to do with the Bauhaus.]

ﬁg. 77, p. 105 The image from the 1963 Metabolism, the Process of Life exhibition shows a Trade Gothic-style sans serif. If Burtin was such an ardent adherent of Helvetica, then why was it not used here?

ﬁg. 84, p. 120 The image for Vision 65: World Congress on New Challenges to Human Communications [book cover? poster?] is set in Trade Gothic.

also ﬁg. 80, p. 112 The title on the cover of Will Burtin Visual aspects of science (1963) is set in Akzidenz Grotesk (or Standard).

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.”

ﬁg. 88, p. 126 Story of Mathematics for young people by James T. Rogers (1966) is the ﬁrst image that unequivocally shows Helvetica.

See library.rit.edu/depts/archives/willburtin/other07.html for clearer images than in the book.

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!”

[By January 1965 Helvetica was available in New York as a machine face from Mergenthaler Linotype.]

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.”

[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 New York Times. 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 Vision 65.” 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 Print XXII:II (March/April 1968), pp.55–56, New York Times August 8, 1967 and Communication Arts vol. 13, no. 4 (1971), pp. 24-31. What is odd about this discussion of Burtin’s role in disseminating Helvetica is that it overlooks a project of his involving Helvetica that is documented: signage for a Cleveland neighborhood c.1968. See Burtin’s contribution to “Transportation Graphics” in Dot Zero 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 University Circle, Cleveland signage project—yet it is not mentioned in this book. See library.rit.edu/depts/archives/willburtin/WillBurtinFindingAid.pdf]

p. 128 “…the structure was neither simple not [sic] cheap to disassemble, transport and reassemble.”

p. 128 “Its [the model for Genes in Action] ‘informal preview’ Midtown before being trucked to Chicago marked the importance that several stakeholders attached to the impact of this latest large model.”

[Something is missing in this sentence.]

p. 130 “Genes in Action [1966] shows Burtin’s ﬁne command of typography, and of Helvetica.”

[The authors are obsessive about Burtin’s relationship to Helvetica. Here the image in ﬁg. 91 supports their claim.]

ﬁg. 97, p. 137 “His [Burtin’s] plays on ‘two’ [the age of his grandson Eric] include Cologne’s dialectic [sic], zwo.”

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….”

[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 esearch Fellow in Visual and Environmental Studies at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University.”]

ﬁg. 104, p. 144 [Burtin’s visualization of a quotation from John Milton about education is shown but not dated.]

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.”

[This is a desperate attempt to polish Burtin’s legacy—which is sufﬁciently strong based on his work for Fortune and Upjohn alone—by yoking it to Helvetica’s popularity.]

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.”

[Although the stone was carved by the John Stevens Shop there is no photograph of it.]

From the Bookcase no. 1—French Renaissance Printing Types

2011-01-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

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.

French Renaissance Printing Types: A Conspectus

Hendrik D.L. Vervliet

New Castle, Delaware: The Bibliographical Society, The Printing Historical Society and Oak Knoll Press, 2010

“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

“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

“Except for Estienne’s Hebrew specimen of c. 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

…facts deserve respect….” p. 20

[this could be the motto of Blue Pencil]

“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

16th c. several models of type procurement:

early 16th century:

1. punches normally belonged to a single owner

occasionally sold or bequeathed

hiring or lending them was exceptional

2. proprietary matrices could be outsourced for casting by an independent type-caster on a piece-work basis

mid-16th century:

3. regular trade in matrices and strikes by both printers and booksellers

late 16th century:

4. casting type replaced selling matrices or strikes

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

“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

French court pushed the Romanization of vernacular printing in the 1520s p. 27

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

France flooded with Gothic Texturas, Rotundas and Bastardas at end of 15th c. p. 27

glut produced a decrease of professional punchcutters and “consequentially a catastrophic plunge in printing standards”

Claude Garamont had a typefoundry, probably operated with the printer and caster Pierre Gaultier p. 28

he provided matrices, strikes and moulds to customers

he did not sell punches except when they were part of a contract such as the situation with the Grecs du Roy

in the 1570s Hendrik van den Keere was a typefounder pp. 28–29

his foundry was headed by Thomas de Vechter who later set up the earliest Dutch typefoundry in Leyden

he supplied founts to printers throughout the Low Countries (including Christophe Plantin)

he also struck or engraved matrices upon demand “for customers willing to bear the costs” such as Plantin

Peter II Schoeffer (c. 1466–1547) one of the earliest known independent punchcutters p. 29

active from 1497 on

operated a small typefoundry but earned most of his income from selling matrices

designs available throughout German-speaking regions, Paris, Lyons, Venice, London, Cambridge, Salamanca, Coimbra and the Low Countries

Robert Granjon never owned a typefoundry p. 29

itinerant punchcutter working alone or with an apprentice

worked in Lyons, Paris, Geneva, Antwerp, Frankfurt and Rome

earned living from engraving punches and selling matrices or strikes

mid-16th century printers rarely owned proprietary typefaces p. 29

p. 30

division of labor in type making was:

designing

punchcutting

striking matrices

justifying matrices

mould-making

type-casting

dressing type

usually performed by one person in 16th century with possible aid of an apprentice

gradually division of labor emerged during the century

basic split between the punchcutter and the typefounder

1539 Villers-Cotterets decree the ﬁrst document to distinguish typefounders from printers, though it says nothing about punchcutters p. 30

“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

it can be assumed that most punchcutters were trained in a printing house or a type foundry p. 31

409 new type designs (Roman, Italic, Greek and Hebrew) introduced in France in the 16th century (excluding music and Gothic types) p. 32

1500–1519 1.2 new faces per year

1520–1559 6.5 new faces per year

1560–1600 2 new faces per year

punchcutting was affected by religious wars and political unrest p. 32

also by the glut of excellent, new faces in the middle of the century

and by the practice of hoarding strikes and matrices by printers

typecasters who were not also engravers cast type from matrices supplied by printers p. 33

often did job printing as well

ﬁrst Parisian typecaster was probably Jean I Larcher dit Dupré (period 1481–1504)

PUNCHCUTTERS

Jean Vatel (fl. 1513–1522)

printer and punchcutter in Paris

Simon de Colines (c. 1490–1546) pp. 35–36

introduced coherent roman and italic types equal to or better than those of Italian printers

ﬁrst to do so outside of Italy

earliest types c.1518

leading letter specialist of his time

may have coached both Antoine Augereau and Claude Garamont

Maitre Constantin (c. 1500–c. 1533) p. 36

helped initiate the new Aldine style in Paris

hypothesis that he was responsible for Robert I Estienne’s faces 1530–1533

modeled on Francesco Griffo’s Great Primer Roman in De Aetna (1495)

led to 5 sizes—ﬁrst coherent roman type family

Antoine Augereau (c. 1500–1534) p.p. 37–38

may have been instructed by de Colines and may have been Garamont’s teacher in punchcutting

imitated the lighter Estienne romans instead of the darker ones by de Colines

co-printed some books with de Colines

was strangled and burned on Christmas Day 1534 for heresy

François Gryphius (fl. 1531–1545) pp. 38–39

also a printer and possibly a graphic artist

used unique types and thus assumed to have done punchcutting as well

Claude Garamont (c. 1510–1561) pp. 39–40

born c. 1510 not earlier as previously surmised

entered type trade c. 1535

apprentice c. 1525–34

journeyman c. 1535–38

master c. 1538–1561 with apprentices as typecasters

ﬁrst romans, early italics and hebrews cut 1536–1548

Grecs du Roy contract 1540

involved briefly in publishing 1545–1546

second romans and late italics 1548–1561

died 1561

Michel Du Boys (c. 1510–1561) pp. 40–41

Jean Arnoul dit Picard (fl. 1539–1545) pp. 41–42

Pierre Haultin (c. 1510–1578) pp. 42–43

one of the best type designers of the 16th c.

best known for high legibility typefaces with large x-height at small sizes (especially his Nonpareils)

peak of his career was spent in Geneva and Lyons 1550–1565

cut types for Paulus Manutius and for Protestant Bibles

ran a type foundry 1571–1587 in La Rochelle

provided founts to England

Robert Granjon (c. 1513–1590) pp. 43–44

bookseller from 1539 on; and punchcutter from 1543 to 1590

worked for Christopher Plantin in mid-1560s

his italics the best of all the 16th c. French punchcutters; his romans the equal of Garamont’s

types used throughout Europe

Guillaume I Le Bé (1523/1524–1598) pp. 44–45

trained in punchcutting at the Estienne press in the early 1540s

specialized in Hebrew and music types

also worked in the papermaking trade

founder of the main Paris typefoundry

critical inventory of matrices by Garamont, Haultin and others

Charles Chifﬁn (fl. 1545–1549) p. 45

goldsmith from Tours

copied Aldine italics

Nicolas II de Villiers (c. 1550–1613) pp. 45–46

little known printer and lettercutter

probably worked on contract

Philippe I Danfrie (c. 1531–c. 1610) p. 46

engraver, globe maker, metal worker

punchcutter in 1560s

Julien Du Clos (fl. 1564–1584) pp. 46–47

substandard faces used by this printer; new and thus assumed to have been cut by him

Jacques I de Sanlecque (c. 1570–1648) p. 47

birth date revised from c. 1558

types attributed to him are highly hypothetical

Guillaume II Le Bé (c. 1570–1645) p. 47

succeeded his father in the foundry

expert in oriental typography

Johannes Trechsel (fl. 1489–1498) p. 47

work not identiﬁed

claims to have cut a rotunda

unclear if Robert I Estienne (c. 1503–1559) cut types p. 48

no types cut by Sebastian Gryphius (1493–1556), Pierre Attaignant (c. 1490–1551), Nicolas Du Chemin (fl. 1540–1576)

Matthieu Poigret (fl. 1540–1571) and Guillaume Thiboust (fl. 1544–1558) probably cut cast types; both music printers

Guy Ogereau cited as a punchcutter 1557–1558

Charles II Estienne (1537–c. 1571) may have engraved a few punches p. 49

not included in this book

Jean Micart (fl. 1541–1545) type caster with punchcutting skills

P. Ricard probably the same individual as Jean Arnoul (see above)

Jean Le Fevre (fl. 1573–1590) probably a wood cutter

Jacques Sabon (d. 1581) supposedly a punchcutter for Christian Egenolff in 1560s p. 49

undocumented work as a punchcutter

recut some unﬁnished Garamonts for Plantin

specialized in typefounding

names of typefaces ﬁrst appeared in the 1520s p. 51

standardization happened in the mid-16th c.

due to the ascendancy of regional typefoundries

[see charts on text types and titling types pp. 52–53]

[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.]

Comments June–December 2010

2011-01-04T09:40:00.000-08:00

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.

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

By Steve Saxe on Blue Pencil no. 6—Type: A Visual History of Typefa... on 8/16/10

From the Archives no. 12: The Formation of American Type Founders

2011-01-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

The Formation of ATF

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.

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 was 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.

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 x next to eleven of the foundries and then added the notation “x closed” and the equation for 23 minus 11 equals 12.

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.