{"id":2752,"date":"2013-06-25T14:46:38","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T14:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/25\/a_brief_history\/"},"modified":"2023-07-18T13:38:15","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T17:38:15","slug":"a_brief_history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/25\/a_brief_history\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief History of Typography 1928 – 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: for the sake of posterity, and because I’ve been blogging long enough to know that online stories tend to go missing after a while, I’ve started trying to repost articles in which I’m included. This lovely post by Ellen Shapiro<\/a>, who came to see us at Pencil to Pixel, originally appeared<\/a> on <\/i>Print magazine’s site.<\/i><\/p>\n

At Monotype\u2019s<\/strong> \u201cPencil to Pixel\u201d<\/a> pop-up exhibition in New York City last month, 3,400 students and professions learned about the history of typography. Artifacts demonstrated how metal type was historically designed, made, specified by designers, and set by typesetting companies \u2014 and translated into today\u2019s font menus for individual users.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lesson from an exhibition like this is that the design of a typeface can outlast the moment that produces it, and that a good design can evolve to meet the needs of technology without losing its essential spirit,\u201d said Dan Rhatigan<\/a>, Monotype\u2019s UK type director. \u201cLots of younger designers who came through seemed really eager to see the background of the typefaces they already know, and the exhibit helped them appreciate why we\u2019re still trying to improve the technology behind those designs,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Here are close-ups of some of the artifacts that were on display as well as some typography<\/a> history:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1928 \u2014 Eric Gill\u2019s pencil and ink drawings for Gill Sans<\/strong>, the fifth best-selling typeface of the twentieth century.<\/b> Gill<\/a> (1882-1940), a British sculptor, stonecarver, printmaker and typeface designer, designed Gill Sans in 1926-1928 for Monotype at the request of Stanley Morison<\/a>, who was interested in a contemporary sans serif face with British character. Classified a \u201chumanist\u201d sans-serif face intended to be legible in both display and text, its proportions were based on Roman letterforms rather than being constructed geometrically. Famed uses of Gill Sans include programs for British Rail, the London Underground, Penguin Books, Saab Automobile, and the BBC. Note the use of white gouache paint to touch up the letterforms.<\/p>\n

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1937\u2014Copper patterns for Eric Gill\u2019s Joanna<\/strong>. <\/b>Copper pattern plates were utilized in the manufacturing stage between the drawings and the metal type itself. A transitional serif typeface named for one of Gill\u2019s daughters, Joanna was designed in 1930 and originally intended as a proprietary face for his printing business, Hague and Gill, opened in Buckhamshire, outside London, with son-in-law Ren\u00e9 Hague. It was adapted by Monotype in 1937 and made publicly available in 1958. Gill set the text of An Essay on Typography,<\/i> his classic book on letterforms, typesetting and page design, in Joanna. In the book, he demonstrated and championed the first use of \u201crag right\u201d rather than justified columns to create even letter- and word spacing.<\/p>\n


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1939\u2014\u201cBig Red,\u201d a comprehensive specimen book of Linotype faces.<\/strong> Published by Mergenthaler Linotype Company, this classic reference tool measures 7.75″ x 10.75″ and contains 1,215 pages of type specimens for hand-set headlines and text set on linotype machines, including model ads and announcements with lavish use of dingbats, ornaments and borders.<\/p>\n


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1932\u2014Littleworth<\/strong>. These rare, original letter drawings are in the Monotype archive for Littleworth, a hot-metal typeface no longer available,<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1971\u2014Classic linotype faces were remastered for photo-typesetting.<\/strong> These brochures announced Monotype newly released versions of Helvetica and Univers for use on the first photo-typesetting machines.<\/p>\n


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1980\u2014The ITC Typeface Collection, <\/strong>a specimen book of the library of the International Typeface Corporation. This 574-page, 12 x 12\u201d square book is a compendium of the individual \u201c26 Good Reasons to Use\u201d booklets originally designed by Herb Lubalin and released by ITC throughout the 1970s. It was published to interest manufacturers of typographic equipment and materials in licensing the ITC typeface library, which included American Typewriter, Avant Garde Gothic, ITC Benguiat, ITC Bookman, ITC Century, ITC Franklin Gothic, ITC Garamond, Korinna, Lubalin Graph, Serif Gothic, Souvenir, and Zapf Dingbats. In addition to Herb Lubalin, type designers included Ed Benguiat, Tom Carnase, Tony DiSpigna, Aldo Novarese and Herman Zapf.<\/p>\n

The book concludes with a copyfitting chart, essential to all designers, part of whose job was to mathematically convert typewritten manuscripts into set type by calculating the size and leading to fit on the page.<\/p>\n

In 1980, ITC subscribers included Cello-Tak, Chartpak, Letraset and Zipatone, manufacturers of rub-down lettering, in addition to Alphatype, Berthold, Compugraphic, Monotype, and other purveyors of photo-typesetting equipment. Agfa Monotype acquired ITC in 2000.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

2013\u2014the typographic body art of Dan Rhatigan<\/strong>, Monotype\u2019s UK-based type director. <\/b>This was the \u201cdisplay\u201d in the exhibit I was most curious about (even though he was standing next to a display of covers and spreads of U&lc, a few of which I\u2019d had a hand in).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/strong>\u201cMy tattoos are always a point of interest with type crowds,\u201d said Rhatigan, who said he got his first tattoo, the swashy \u2018R\u2019 of an ersatz family crest he designed, in 1998. \u201cAfter staring at that \u2018R\u2019 for months, I realized that my love of type is timeless. So I started adding shapes I loved from different typefaces, working with different tattoo<\/a> artists who appreciate the idea enough to carefully reproduce the artwork I supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rhatigan\u2019s friend Indra Kupferschmid put together a custom MyFonts list<\/a> of most of the typefaces that are tattooed on him. There are a few others, too, he added (some of which apparently can\u2019t be shown in polite company), including letters from Delittle Wood Type foundry; from H&FJ\u2019s Champion Gothic; and from Sodachrome<\/a>, designed by Rhatigan and Ian Moore for House Industry\u2019s Photo-Lettering collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: for the sake of posterity, and because I’ve been blogging long enough to know that online stories tend to go missing after a while, I’ve started trying to repost articles in which I’m included. This lovely post by Ellen Shapiro, who came to see us at Pencil to Pixel, originally appeared on Print magazine’s … Continue reading “A Brief History of Typography 1928 – 1980”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultraphotographic","category-ultrapress","category-ultratypographic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71092,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions\/71092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}