A Velveteen Rabbit

For sale 

Velveteen rabbit. Needs good home. Ears permanently flopped and has obvious signs of being well-loved. Smartly attired, yet missing red buttons and one torn suspender. Reads at four year-old level, and comes with own book. Inquire within.

Selling 20th Century Design

A 1959 Czechoslovak How to Paint brochure designed in a very modern tone by an anonymous designer. 
Source: 108 Buddhas

Brochure of Képes Könyv design examples by Hungarian designer, Johann Tábor. Published in a 1930 issue of Gebrauschsgraphik.
Source: From the collection of David Levine.

The Chamber of Commerce of Czechoslovokia published this 1954 foreign trade guide in English. It was designed by Milan Hegar. 
Source: 108 Buddhas

A colorful Dutch brochure designed by Willem Hendrik Tweehuysen (1921-1981), for De Gouden Spin. Undated, but most likely from the 1960s. The text written in english playfully becomes part of the woven fabric. This is part of a much larger collection of Tweehuysen's 1950s and 60s design work which will be at auction on May 13th, 2014. 
Source: Burgersdijk & Niermans

These two cover designs from the early 1930s, advertising BMW Motorcycles, each sport a spare Bauhaus style of design and typography typical of this era. More on "selling speed" and the art of motorcycle marketing can be found at The Vintagent. It's a great read.  

Pranks and Pratfalls

With April Fools Day today, I have to parade my old fake pencil and spilled ink pratfall once again. I never tire of it. The "Pirate Pencil" is from The Lovely and Strange Etsy shop, where you can find an eclectic collection of dime store novelties from the 1950s. "Lucky Tat-oos", Re-lighting Candles, and my favorite, the Hindu Magic Book are all there! I've already dropped some coins on all of these. Half the fun is the old toy, but the packaging artwork, lettering/type and printing, with the liberal interpretation of registration alignment is the best. My fake joke rubber pencil I once owned as a child is long lost, but the "Pirate Pencil" covers for it nicely. To accompany it, I dragged my "trick ink" bottle down from the Letterology attic again. It always makes me smile ; )

    

The First Wearable Advertising

Pinback buttons are most closely associated with political campaigns to promote a candidate or a cause, and were considered the best advertising medium of all in the late 19th century. They were first developed in 1896 by the job printer, Whitehead & Hoag in New Jersey, after securing several important patents allowing them to print reverse designs onto celluloid. With the 1896 presidential election that same year, the buttons became an overnight success. Once advertisers saw it as an opportunity for promotion, W&H were steadily producing buttons at the rate of one million per day. Soon a new printing plant was built in Newark to accommodate their 50 new modern presses, a photo engraving plant, a complete art department and machinery plant. According to collector Ted Hake, several of the artists employed by W&H over the early years included Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and Harrison Fisher. 
     The pinbacks displayed here are all part of various collections for sale on the Hake site. The circa 1910 "penmanship" pin with Lady Liberty shown above is considered rare and was presumably used as a reward to the student of good handwriting. I predict this pin will be considered even more prized now that penmanship has been relegated to an archaic pursuit by the common core standards educational initiative. Replacing it with texting dexterity perhaps... Below are many more early 20th century advertising pins for your viewing pleasure.

Intelligent Designer: Erik Nitsche

Swiss-born graphic designer and illustrator, Erik Nitsche (1908-1998) is primarily identified with the remarkably modern work he produced for the defense contractor, the General Dynamics corporation in the 1950s and 60s, along with a series of smartly designed science and technology history books. All of this influential work sealed his position as one of the pioneering graphic designers of the last century. Previous to these achievements, Nitsche produced scores of advertisements for fashion and pharmaceutical clients in New York, and publishers such as Town and Country, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Arts & Decoration, House & Garden and Fortune magazines. His achievements in designing album covers for Decca Records were some of the most inventive of the modern era. Discovering this 1946 magazine advertisement for Holzer alligator handbags, found here, further impressed me with his range of talent and capability. Below is one of Nitsche's early cover designs for a 1933 issue of Der Querschnitt, (The Cross-Section), an art and literary journal which ceased publication during the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. 

Source: ZVAB

This undated Home & Food cover design is another fine example of the range of Nitsche's limitless talent. With exception of the toxic letter E, which should be banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency, his horticultural lettering appears as charming and fresh today as it was at the time it was first produced decades ago. Duly noted is the dripping hose.

     Nitsche lived until age ninety and enjoyed a long and successful career with clients as diverse as handbag designers to military submarines. Long after the age when most people retire, he continued to paint, design postage stamps, childrens' books and build a collection of avant-garde toy designs. For further reading, drop in at Typotheque to read Steven Heller's great essay, Erik Nitsche: The Reluctant Modernist. 

Alphabet Patterns

This beautiful alphabet specimen is a fine example of the sort of decorative letterforms familiar to many needlework specialists. Over 100 illustrated alphabets and monograms were traced and possibly gathered from printed source material, and then assembled into this bound volume sometime between 1860 and 70. It very likely may have originated in Germany, since a newspaper clipping from Der Bazar—dated March, 20th, precisely 143 years ago today—is glued to the fly-leaf of the book. This one-of-a-kind book is happily shared as a full download here. I've taken the liberty to color correct and display a number of my favorite alphabet examples for a sneak preview.