Blue Pencil no. 7B—Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The (Mostly) True Story

I recently revisited the Transit Archives and discovered the contact sheet for the full page photograph on p. 26 of Helvetica and the New York City Subway. My sources for the photograph did not provide a date and I guessed that it had been taken in 1965. However, the sheet is dated April 18, 1968. The caption (Fig. 74 on p. 27) needs to be corrected. The contact sheet can be found in NYCTA Photographic Unit Photo Print Collection 1968, …
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Blue Pencil no. 7A—Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The (Mostly) True Story

My posting of mistakes in Helvetica and the New York City Subway System immediately led to a few other mistakes being sent my way. Jackson Cavanaugh has pointed out the following errors:
p. 27 “They commissioned a new logo from Sundberg-Ferar, an industrial design firm responsible for designing a new subway car, and they created special strip maps (set in Futura) for use on the no. 7 Flushing Line (fig. 270).” The reference for the TA logo should be fig. 269.
p. …
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Blue Pencil no. 8—Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity

Above. Das A und O des Bauhauses edited by Ute Brüning (Berlin: Bauhaus Archiv and Edition Leipzig, 1995), p. 63 (plate 46). Joost Schmidt. Plakat. 1922/1923. Lithografie. Druck: Reineck & Klein, Weimar. (60.5x48cm). Bauhaus Archiv.

Below. Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity edited by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), p. 153 (plate 194). Joost Schmidt. Poster for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition. 1922–1923. Lithograph on paper. …
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Blue Pencil no.7—Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The (Mostly) True Story

Blue Pencil has gained a reputation for hyper-vigilance in looking for errors of all kinds in design books. This does not mean that I expect such books to be completely error-free. That is an unreasonable expectation. Errors are inevitable. They are part of human nature and the products that humans make. However, it is the sheer number of mistakes, from the trivial to the substantive, in so many books today …
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Blue Pencil no. 6 addendum no. 2

James Mosley, former librarian at St. Bride Printing Library in London (one of the great repositories of type specimens), has this to say about the Claude Lamesle specimen in Type: A Visual History:
“…the big “thin” Gros Canon italic in the Lamesle specimen is Robert Granjon’s (not Jannon’s), and was used together with the “thin” Gros Canon roman (which is Garamond’s) in the Imitatio Christi of 1640, the first title from the Imprimerie Royale in Paris. There is a lot of …
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Blue Pencil no. 6 addendum

John D. Berry points out that the text of Type: A Visual History does not use f ligatures. This is emblematic of the book. Sloppy writing begets sloppy typography.

Blue Pencil no. 6—Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles

Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles 1628–1900 vol. 1
edited by Cees W. de Jong, Alston W. Purvis and Jan Tholenaar
texts by Jan Tholenaar and Cees W. de Jong
Hong Kong, Köln, London et al—Taschen, 2009
[the cover lists de Jong, Purvis and Tholenaar as editors but the title page only lists de Jong so it is hard to know who is responsible for the captions. The essays are credited to de Jong and Tholenaar.]
the design is by Sense/Net (Andy Dial …
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