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FOR MODERN DISPLſly
CONTINENTAL
TYPE FOUNDERS ASSOCIATION - INC -
228 EAST 45TH ST • NEW YORK


25C, 25
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1410
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MODERNISM

Has COME TO STAY :
c.74
BY JIM CLARKE

HEN other printers start to ride me about my having "gone modern,"
they always make if sound ds though I were the lost printer in Boston to give woy
to progress. Now that I have fallen, they seem to think it must be about time for some
ofher new typographic foºd to come along dnd moke frouble for the Conservatives.
Ul).l. maybe so. I used to expect to be the lost
of the die-hords to see anything good in the type-
writer forces cºnd in the revival of the sons serifs
cºnd the condensed Gothics. Because this whole
business of whot we coll "modern" typography
certainly storted like just another fad, if ony-
thing ever did. Those were the days, you remem-
ber, when monufacturers couldn't sell goods fost
enough, so first they thought up the word "ob-
solescence" to make folks ashomed of their lost
year's cor, and then they hired stylists or fashion
experts in order to decide that their Super Royale
De Luxe line of tock hommers ought to have
marbleized handles and purple prongs.
Š. that when the wise boys began to talk about
my old copperplate Gothics as being "the sym-
bol of the new era," ond when there didn't seem
to be a trick left in the bog except to abandon all
borders ond start printing on tin foil—noturally,
I sory, anyone had d right to sit back ond wotch
this great new modern movement work itself out
for of while.
Then they threw oll the Sherbow charts out the
window and began setting ten-point type in 42.
em medsure with on inch leading between lines
ond not d copitol in a corlood of lower cose.
Then they discovered the word functional. As I
remember it, the Broadway type that soon broke
out oll over everything wors colled or "functional"
type. Remember Broadway? Then everybody
storted reading foreign magazines and setting
Gdvertisements with headlines perpendicular,
rectongular, or just at CIny old angle that some-
body thought wors "dynamic" or "asymmetric" '
or "occult" or something.
| still couldn't see anything in this "modernism,"
ond I used to say so. Then ofter the Great No-
Continental Typefounders Association, Inc., 228 East 45th St., New York City. Set in Orplid and Girder
tional Hangover began to taper off and it looked
as though the patient might live, I started to get
some glimmerings of an ided that this new style
of design, even as it applied to typography,
might be going to live, too. It was getting clearer
all the time that Modernism had come to story in
certain lines, because there was
better way to use type for modern publicity than
to begin by finding some excuse for being quaint
or historical or bookish about it.
Uljan we had little to choose from but classic
type faces, it was notural that the best printers
would be the ones who could
just no other good way to design, |
for instance, an automobile, on
airplane, or an ocean liner.
Uher. fashion has had a
chance to swing new styles back
to old, it has monoged to do so
in many instances—as when
women suddenly went back to
long skirts—and when Victorion
styles and all kinds of Empire
decoration came in again, re-
cently. But where function has
been more important than style,
the straight-forward new designs
of houses, refrigerators, fountain pens, tennis
shorts, and even type faces have not only per-
sisted in the face of criticism, but have actually
pulled the balance down the other way. The mod-
ern bothing suit makes a good example of this.
Maybe the one-piece bathing suit was a freak
of fashion when it began, I don't know. Anyhow
it served the purpose of endbling people to swim
better and to get a maximum of ton. It had good,
basic, "functional" reasons for its increasing
popularity. Now fashion tells girls to dress like
their grandmothers. Perhaps they do, on dressy
occasions, but do you see any of them imitating
Marie Dressler when they go in bothing? You
do not, ond I don't believe you ever will again.
l, the some way I don't believe we are ever
going to see CI lot of monufacturers ond ddver-
tisers going back to making their printing look
like something in bloomers and long block stock-
ings, after they have seen how it can be given q
chance to look like Joan Crowford or Johnny
Weismuller.
Šenously though, I have been completely con-
verted to the ided that there is olmost always a
WE ſºl RE LIVING IN ſº N
fil(GE OF
SPEED)
and printing ond typog-
rophy must keep up with
this speed or lose their
old right to leadership.
furnish the most authoritative
reasons for selecting or certain
type ond could then demonstrate
the most studious skill in adopt-
ing it to the job in hand.
But time-honored precedents
don't get you for, nowadays, if
you have onything redlly new
and important to say. The old
mumbling method of just being
nice and polite and historically
homdsome in a piece of printing
is certainly not the way I would
expect to sell goods in the day
of the New Deol.
l the new trend in typography hos done nothing
else, it has at least broken most of us of the
habit of trying to fake up a false dignity for the
makers of things like machine tools and plumb-
ing fixtures. We used to lough at opprentices
whose only idea was to get out a case of Old
English for on advertisement of Onything from
vermifuge to Eskimo Pie, but after all they
weren't very different from the kind of business
mon who used to think that the only wory to
write a dignified business letter was to clutter it
up with ultimo's, proximo's, whereases, pursuant
to's, ond all the rest of the legal jorgon that
made him feel like a professional man, and who
honestly believed that there was something
pretty special in always referring to himself as
"the writer" or "the undersigned" instead of just
saying “I” or "me."
These days are gone forever and with them the
necessity, at any rate, of making a phony, half-
historical, half-literary opproach to every ques-
tion of type selection and usage. If there was
ever a time when printing-for-business has been
given the chance to stand on its own fee; and
Continental Typefounders Association, Inc., 228 East 45th St., New York City. Set in Orplid and Girder

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And Mitchell's, of course, is the first to dis-
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JM ITCH E L L’.S.
TENTH STREET AT MAYFAIR
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|
THE GLADSTONE schºol. OF APPLIED ARTS
ANNOUNCES A LECTURE ON
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TO BE GIVEN BY
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IN THE NEW UNIVERSITY LECTURE HALL
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Continental Typefounders Association, Inc., 228 East 45th St., New York City
ſſ](ODISH
H|AſS
Ladies of fashion know
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in the mode by Mlle. de
Lande. “Sleek, chic little
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realization of wearins a
de Lande chapeau!
†liſt. dº ſandt
76 East Sixtieth Street
Continental Typefounders Association, Inc., 228 East 45th St., New York City








let advertised articles have their own clean,
straight style of layout cºnd type dress, that day
is today. ... " .
N owadays, when you have the new typefaces
and the new freedom of arrangement to make it
possible for a letterhead or a business card, a
blotter or a folder, a broadside or a double-page
gdvertisement to be laid out and set up to look
business-like instead of bookish, why should
onyone wont onything else—except, as I said
before, where foshion has definitely more im-
portance than utility in the sole of the article?
(0); course it's not so easy as it was, with no
history to foll back on and with simpler, fewer
illustrations, to give choracter ond color to q
piece of printing. But if making type do more of
the work of publicity doesn't stump the Euro-
peans, I don't see why we should get scored
about tackling it. When you study foreign adver-
tising you realize how much quicker and harder
their artists ond typogrophers hove to make their
illustrations hit, ond how much more they seem
to be concerned with compressing their qdver-
tising messages ond driving home one ided, or
o single, boldly displayed word. In this country,
as far as I can see, there has been no loss of
interest or confidence in Gdvertising on the port
of people in general. In spite of everything that
has happened, Mr. and Mrs. Consumer still seem
to be willing to believe that most monufacturers
make good goods ond intend to advertise them
honestly, and that somebody will see that they
get their money back if things don't turn out to
be "as represented." So it still seems to be pos-
sible for the Americon printer, especially the
producer of advertisements, to do only o so-so
job of typography and yet be able to depend on
the patient reader to take the time and the
trouble to read o couple of hundred words of
copy which he will probably be justified in be-
lieving.
*- Three- I sory again, the breaks are oll with
us. Business is in the headlines every day. There
has never been so much emphasis on the honest
production and pricing of honest merchandise
Gs there is now. There hors never been less
necessity to be coy and kittenish Cibout offering
things ond services for sole. The functional right-
ness of the so-called modernistic trend is being
successfully proved by the rodical redesigning
of things as different Gnd os supposedly sunk in
conservatism as the architecture of post offices
Gnd the fostening of zipper shirts. We printers
now hove new types to work with, a brand new
freedom from precedent Cºnd rule, and on even
wider and more interested qudience.
| hove no quarrel with Onyone who still believes
that nothing significant or permanent has hop-
pened, typographically speaking, in these lost
few years. The toste of buyers of printing is still
voried enough—and perhaps it always will be—
to enable a printer to go right on CIs though there
had been nothing new since Will Brodley's Chop
Books. But, in the medntime, I feel pretty strongly
that ony such conservative disciple of Gutenberg
will be missing out on quite q bit of new busi-
ness—and on a whole lot of fun as well.
mighty results in printing.
The sraaight clean STRENGTH OF STÉÉl
cind the lightness and brightness of alumiuum have contributed to
mighty results in other industries. Similarly, I believe, a new point
of view on the structural problems of type ond format con produce
— JIM C L A R HE
REPRINTED BY THE LIND PERMISSION OF DIRECT ſº DWERTISING


§
S
Š
colò Al
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*
Continental Typefounders Association, Inc., 228 East 45th St., New York City. Set in Orpliq and Kabel


ORPLD
30 point 5
TYPE FOR IDEAS SMARTÉ R
24 point 7
Pl,EAS|N|G MODERN -
lATEST TYPE DESIGN CläAR FACE
A fil B C D = F G |H| || J } l M ſiſ) N. (O) P C R S iſ U
WWN, UU XYZ || 2 3 4 5 § 7 39 (0) $ , , * = • ( ) &
48 point 3
72 point This size furnished as reproduction proofs only.
|
84 point
|
This size furnished as reproduction proofs only.
-
Continental Typefounders Association, Inc., 228 East 45th St., Ncw York City