Blue Pencil
Blue Pencil is a “slog”: a slow blog. It does not get updated daily or even on a regular schedule. Instead, it gets updated when there is something of value to be posted. Postings often take a long time to prepare and appear at intervals of a few weeks or even months. Sometimes there is a flurry of postings within the span of a few days. Blue Pencil may be unpredictable in its frequency, but not in its purpose. Blue Pencil is fiercely dedicated to the 3Rs: research, reading and writing.
25 June 2014
Here is a neon R from San Francisco. D & M Liquor at 2200 Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights is described online as a family-owned store—the “D & M” stands for “Dad & Mom”—that was established in 1935. This sign may date from the late 1930s, given the Art Deco flavor of its R. It is included in The San Francisco Neon Project blog, but without any information.
Detail of R from D & M Liquors
The lettering on the …
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24 June 2014
These pages are from The Roots of Script, the working title for a book on script typefaces that Abby Goldstein and I have been writing since 2010. They are part of the opening section titled “How to Look at Scripts.” Scripts are not like other typefaces. There is almost no existing terminology to describe their letter parts other than terms used in the world of calligraphy. We adopted many of them, but still ended up inventing others.
The first three sheets …
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23 June 2014
Having criticized most existing letterform terminology diagrams it seems only fair that I show what I use. These sheets were begun a few years ago for my SVA students but I have never found the time to polish them. Since they don’t yet have any arrows, circles or coloration to indicate exactly what is being described I have added some commentary. Please excuse the missing examples and other glitches. Perhaps this post will spur me to finish them.
The first two …
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23 June 2014
The Belgian typographer Fernand Baudin, in How Typography Works (and why it is important) (New York: Design Press, 1988) wrote, “Novices are mistaken when they suppose there should be a ‘technical term” for every product of their enthusiasm & ignorance.” (p. 98)*. Although Baudin wrote this at the beginning of the digital type revolution—his text was originally published in French in 1984—his words are still applicable today. Indeed, they seem especially relevant as the horde of contemporary type geeks seem to …
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16 June 2014
In the course of preparing my posts on AIGA Medalists I kept looking in vain to the AIGA website for information. I especially found the AIGA History Timeline on its website to be deficient. The timeline, which runs backward from 2014 to 1914, is very sketchy for the decades prior to 1980. Out of 33 entries, 24 of them are for the last thirty-four years. Here is a decade-by-decade breakdown:
1914—1919—1 entry
1920–1929—2 entries
1930–1939—1 entry
1940–1949—1 entry
1950–1959—2 entries
1960–1969—1 entry
1970–1979—3 entries
1980–1989—5 entries
1990–1999—7 entries
2000–2009—7 entries
2010–present—5 …
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15 June 2014
E [1920–1929]
E001
Pro Dva Kvadrata | El Lissitzky | book| UNOVIS | 1920
[Deborah Sutherland]
images: 5
text: 4
apparatus: 0
Why isn’t the Russian title translated into English in the heading as well as in the text? This is done with German items. In general, the text is good, though Sutherland does not explain how the book was done despite calling it “highly sophisticated” in execution. The date is misleading. Lissitzky designed the book in 1920 but it was not published until 1922. See Museum of Modern Art, Christie’s and The …
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11 June 2014
Among the material in the George Macy Papers at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University are three documents from the National Board on Printing Type Faces.
The first document is a second edition of “National Board on Printing Type Faces: Its Organization and Work” dated 1935. Although the Board had failed in 1930 in its original attempt to reign in the proliferation of new typefaces, it apparently did not dissolve but continued on with an altered mission. No …
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11 June 2014
In 2007 I wrote an article for Print magazine (LXI:V) titled “Stop Making Type” about an organization called the National Board on Printing Type Faces and its doomed attempt in 1929/1930 to limit the number of new typefaces being produced. Since the article is not available on Imprint I am posting my original text and some images from the issue here. I am doing it because I have come across some additional material about the organization at the Newberry Library in …
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11 June 2014
Proclamation to Craftsmen, Artisans and Friends of the Graphic Arts
Last year I came across a document entitled “Proclamation to Craftsmen, Artisans and Friends of the Graphic Arts” issued by the Graphic Arts Forum in 1939. It announces a boycott of Nazi types as part of the war effort by those in graphic design and publishing. Among the signatories—all from New York—are publishers Bennett Cerf (of Random House), B.W. Huebsch (of the Viking Press), Alfred A. Knopf, and George Macy (of …
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8 June 2014
Alex Jay, an old friend and author of the excellent Tenth Letter of the Alphabet blog, has sent me a detailed addendum to my post on the terminology of graphic design. “I don’t know if you searched Chronicling America [I did not] but it’s a good source for old newspapers,” he writes. Through it Alex found a reference to “graphic design” as early as 1842 in the New-York Daily Tribune where it refers specifically to engraving. Similar references appear …
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8 June 2014
“Parallel Lines” from Two Pages Facing (1916). Design by Tony Sarg.
Two Pages Facing: Some Suggestions for Advertising Display (Philadelphia: The Curtis Publishing Company, 1916) is a remarkable publication. I came across a copy recently while digging into the Arthur S. Allen Collection at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. (It is available digitally from the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware.) The book, using layouts provided by Guy Gaylor Clark, Everett R. Currier, J.T. DeVries, W.M. Gerdine, A.K. Higgins, Ben S. …
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8 June 2014
Monotype: The Journal of Composing Room Efficiency no. 70 (1924) is devoted entirely to Kennerley in celebration of the release of the typeface family—with the addition of bold and bold italic—for machine composition by Lanston Monotype. The issue, designed by George F. Trenholm and Ellsworth Geist, has several articles by and about Frederic W. Goudy to accompany showings of the typeface. In “A Medieval Craftsman and His Types: A Great Advertiser Comments on the Goudy Types”, Earnest Elmo Calkins, co-founder …
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4 June 2014
“Graphic Visualization and Visuality in Lester Beall’s Rural Electrification Postrs, 1937” by Michael Golec in the Journal of Design History (vol. 26, no. 4) 2013, pp. 401–415 is a prime example of what is wrong with design history in academic journals. The article contains no full or full color images of Lester Beall’s iconic posters for the Rural Electrification Administration. They do appear in the background of two REA photographs from 1938 (figs. 4 and 5). But they are obscured …
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4 June 2014
“It was not until 1922, when the outstanding book designer William Addison Dwiggins coined the term ‘graphic designer’ to describe his activities as an individual who brought structural order and visual form to printed communications, that an emerging profession received an appropriate name.” This statement, by Philip B. Meggs in the Foreword to his A History of Graphic Design (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983), has been taken as gospel over the past thirty years. Yet, it is inaccurate.
Dwiggins never …
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8 May 2014
Recently Chris Harrold, Vice President of Business Development/Creative Director at Mohawk, invited me to up to the Albany/Troy area to see the Strathmore Archives that he has been digging into for the past few months. I was lured by the promise of seeing unknown work by W.A. Dwiggins and by the opportunity to do some preparation for my upcoming talk on “W.A. Dwiggins and the Promotion of Paper 1915–1935” at the Type Directors Club on June 3*.
For months both Dan Rhatigan …
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5 May 2014
As I expected the response to my post on gender disparity among AIGA medalists provoked questions about other anomalies. I will try to address the issue of minority representation among medalists in another post. But for now I want to look at the issue of honoring non-Americans.
Greg D’Onofrio, a partner in Kind Company and the website thisisdisplay.com, asked me why so few Europeans had been honored by the AIGA. My question is why have any been honored? I think that …
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