Got Religion?

Get yours at the Church of Type in Santa Monica. Some great work goin' on there by owner, printer, illustrator, typographer, Kevin Bradley; formerly of Yee-Haw Industries in Tennesee. I'm guessing the racoon cap designates Bradley as an ordained fundamentalist printer in LAs only Church of Type. 

::Thanks Steve, for passing the good word along!

Typographic Trade Cards

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Timely Tutoring in Topics, Tastes and Trends of Typography from Bradbury Thompson

Westvaco Inspirations for Printers may be one of the most influential and highly prized series of paper promotions ever produced in the 20th century. The leaders at Westvaco, formerly named the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company, believed their paper promotions should be an educational living record of advertising design and commercial art. What they often produced was something so entirely modern, that many issues still look contemporary seven decades later. Bradbury Thompson (1911-1995) was a key figure in their success. Beginning in 1939, he was responsible for the design and art direction of over sixty of the Westvaco Inspirations issues. Undaunted by minimal resources and budgets, he sourced out historic, public domain images and combined them with modernist effects. He relied on classic typography for the most part, but once went so far as to design a conceptual version of an U&lc alphabet he called Alphabet 26 which premiered in Westavaco Insprirations No. 180 in 1950. One of Thompsons' seldom seen art direction triumphs, issue No.129, is available here. This 16 page issue from 1941 is "A Primer of Typography, Including Timely Tutoring in Topics, Tastes and Trends." Thompson personally designed the front, back and 1st page spread. Other contributors were Charles Sheeler and Stow Wengenroth.

La Typographie

This first volume of La Typographie, on the techniques of book and graphic arts, was published in Paris in 1930 by Henry Babou under the direction of Marcel Valotaire. This cover photo by Jacques Evers is one of 30 photogravure plates of his work. I first discovered this beautiful French journal in the Wolfsonian archive at the University of Florida Digital Collections, however the title page seen just below was sourced here. 

These beautiful photogravure prints seen above of Evers photos are the only images available from the Wolfsonian Archives, however I was delighted to learn the entire book is made available from the International Monotype Memory Project (IMMP.) In their link to a black & white PDF (which appears to be from a reproduction), you can download this entire book complete with text (in French), photos and illustrations on the production of a fine press book;)

Respects to The Letter Man

:: Video from Kadambari Gladding
The design community lost another legend last week; Samoan-born, and New Zealand type designer Joseph Churchward on April 26th. He will long be remembered as one of the pioneers of hand-rendered type, and may well have the distinction of the most prolific type designer of all. Churchward left us with more indelible marks on this world than anyone. Over a year ago, I think it was at least 654 typefaces he designed since he first drew letters in the sand as a young child in Samoa. All of them were hand-lettered without the aid of the computer and each of them began with the name "Churchward".

In 2009, fellow New Zealand designer David Bennewith designed an account of Churchward's life and work in a 272 page book, Churchward International Typefaces. Published by Cloud, it went on to receive numerous accolades and awards. The small edition has long since sold out, but a video of it can be seen at Colophon.
::Image above from Churchward Intrntnl Typefaces 
  

I'm very grateful to reader Sean Duffell to bringing the news of Joseph Churchward's passing to my attention today. Respects are long past due.    
:: Image above of Churchward Maori font, and on left are from David Bennewith's book on Churchward, via 
It's Nice That.      

Lifetimes of Achievement

The American Institute of Graphic Arts announced eight lifetime achievement in design awards earlier this year. The prestigious awards went out to John Bielenberg, William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Stefan Sagmeister, Lucille Tenazas, and Wolfgang Weingart. As part of the presentation of the 2013 AIGA Medal, the AIGA commissioned short videos about each of the winners. It is difficult to single out any of these winners, so take a look at all the other videos here. (Spoiler alert: Sagmeister arranges all of his books by color on the shelf.) 

From the AIGA: 
The medal of the AIGA, the most distinguished in the field, is awarded to individuals in recognition of their exceptional achievements, services or other contributions to the field of graphic design and visual communication. The contribution may be in the practice of graphic design, teaching, writing or leadership of the profession. ... Individuals who are honored may work in any country, but the contribution for which they are honored should have had a significant impact on the practice of graphic design in the United States.

Butterfly Planet

It looks a bit like Animal Planet here today, but they're only paper butterflies. The colorful die-cut trade card above is a particularly nice chromolithograph specimen, dating from 1860 to 1870 and is about 8 inches wide. It was printed by the Brett Litho Co. of NY, which had a very colorful history itself. The entire collection of butterfly trade cards seen here was a recent eBay listing. I hope the buyer intends to put them under glass. Considering their age and condition (and their final bidding price) they certainly deserve to be.

This chromolith specimen was printed by the Donaldson Brothers of Five Points, NY. and likely dates between 1870 and 1890. The flip side is a particularly fine specimen of typographic achievement for the merchant H.O'Neill & Co.; makers of hats and bonnets for the ladies. Like most all job printing goes, these trade cards were designed in-house by highly skilled employees of the individual printers who specialized in artful printing of the period. Together, the combined talents of these brilliant artists and job printers invented the notion of advertising as we once knew it. How have we gone so far astray since then? 

Punctu@t!on Matters!

National Punctuation Day sort of escaped me yesterday, but I didn't want to 

let it go by entirely unnoticed here at Letterology. To put a finer point on it...

visual communication relies on punctuation. It reminds us when to breath, 

when to stop, when to pepper our speech with enthusiasm, and when to 

question. It behaves as signposts and wayfinders to help us navigate language, 

and signal action. Punctuation characters are the supporting cast for all the 

other 26 letters of our alphabet. Without them, words fail and language has no 

texture. 

     Learning when and where to apply punctuation is a perennial challenge at 

times—certainly for me that is! Then there are the diverse styles of marks—

each with various features, which we seldom see as we are too busy paying 

dues to 26 U&lc letters. By comparison, the marks may seem inconsequential, 

but enlarge them 800% and you will discover they all have distinct features. 

One of the best graphic examples I've seen of this is Heidi Neilson's 2003 book, 

Typography of the Period. It is a visual information guide examining the 

diversity of the period. Delightful, and one I always saved to show my type 

students in the past.

In the page spreads above you see a Jenson period and a Papyrus period.
     The many exclamation marks at top are in order of appearance from left to right: Avenir Regular; Bank Gothic Medium; Bodoni Book; Centaur Regular; Century Schoolbook Bold; Cooper Black Regular; Eurostile Bold; Agenda Bold; Gotham Bold; Optima Bold; Grand Central Bold; Adobe Jenson Pro Bold; Stone Sans Semi; Franklin Gothic Med Regular; and Whitney HTF Bold.

And a few punctuation haikus from National Punctuation Day:

Alas my text friend
Punctuation's gone again
How do I read this?
- Larry McGee

Exclamation point
means "I am so excited!"
CAPS LOCK is just loud
- Morgan O'Brien

I love the em dash.
It's a lot easier than
The 50-yard one.
- Lex Friedman