THE PENROSE ANNUAL
Review Of The Graphic Arts Volume 40
Jan Tschichold [Designer] and R. B. Fishenden [Editor]
London: Lund Humphries, 1938. First edition. Quarto. Green cloth stamped in white. Uncoated printed dust jacket. Endpapers printed in two colors. [268] pp. Text, illustrations, tipped-in plates, printing samples, advertisements. Binding, typography and advertisements designed by Jan Tschichold. Personalized vendor presentation tipped onto endpaper. Toned jacket with a chip to front upper edge and on the lower edge of the rear panel and a couple of short, closed tears. Textblock edges dust spotted.
8.5 x 11.5 hardcover book with 160 pages of illustrated text, 31 tipped-in printed samples and 56 pages of trade advertising. The PENROSE ANNUAL has served as official yearbook for England’s commercial printing industry by presenting a balance of general and technical articles with abundant tipped-in plates exhibiting the latest achievements. This edition is notable for Jan Tschichold’s typography, both for the text, editorial layout, binding, as well as the majority of the 56 pages of advertising.
Perhaps the best example of Tschichold’s transitional period between the New Typography and Classicism. The textblock is elegantly set in Monotype Van Dijck and the binding is both as progressive and proper as would be expected for any English document of record.
Contents include:
- László Moholy-Nagy: BILL OF FARE. London: Lund Humphries, February 1937. Tipped in A4. Single sheet of Flake White Parchment printed in three-color offset of the Trocadero Restaurant menu cover for the Walter Gropius farewell dinner held on March 9th, 1937 hosted by Dr. Julian Huxley. The progressive design community attended in full force to bid farewell to Gropius, with the guest list including Noel Carrington, Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, Geoffrey Faber, E. Maxwell Fry, Siegfried Giedion, John Gloag, V. H. Goldsmith, Ashley Havinden, R. S. Lambert, Henry Moore, László Moholy-Nagy, Christopher Nicholson, Nicholas Pevsner, J. Craven [Jack] Pritchard, Herbert Read, Arthur Upham Pope, J. M. Richards, Gordon Russell, P. Morton Shand, and H. G. Wells, among others. Within eighteen months of the dinner party the secretary of the organizing committee E. J. Carter became the organizing secretary of the RIBA Refugee Committee, offering placement assistance and references to refugee architects fleeing the rising waters of Fascism. See David Dean: ARCHITECTURE OF THE 1930S [RECALLING THE ENGLISH SCENE]. New York: Rizzoli 1983, figures 122, 123 for the cover and the guest list.
- Design Marches On: John Gloag
- The Significance of the Paris Exhibition: Noel Carrington
- Art In Photography: Jan Gordon
- The Detection of a Bibliographic Forgery: A. J. A. Symons
- Book Production To–Day: I. M. Parsons
- Penguins and Pelicans: Allen Lane, Director, Penguin Books Ltd.
- The Advertising of Travel: Howard Wadman
- Imperial Airways’ Publicity: Michael Gifford
- Autolithography: Harold Curwen
- Illustrations. Using Half-Tone Reproductions to the Best Advantage: Louis Flader
- Additional essays by Allen Lane, Paul Standard, Frederick Horn, Michael Gifford, Robert Harling, and many others.
- Artwork by Herbert Matter, Albe Steiner, Herbert Bayer, Professor L. Moholy-Nagy, E. McKnight Kauffer, Sidney Martin, Richard Beck, Maurice Bennett, W. A. Dwiggins, Lucian Bernhard, James Gardner and others.
- Approximately 56 pages of trade advertising matter, with many examples designed by Tschichold
In EINE STUNDE DRUCKGESTALTUNG [1930] Tschichold further defined the characteristices of his New Typography: freedom from tradition; geometrical simplicity; contrast of typographic material; exclusion of any typographic ornament not functionally necessary; preference for photography, for machine-set type and for combinations of primary colors; and the recognition and acceptance of the machine age and the utilitarian purpose of typography.
By 1938, Tschichold was flipping through those characteristics like a magician through a trick deck of cards. The advertisements in this PENROSE ANNUAL act like a primer for the application of the tenets of the New Typography.
Excellent overview of the turbulence in the English Graphic Arts Industry caused by displacement of the European Avant-Garde by the rising tide of National Socialism.
“A few years after Die neue Typographie Hitler came. I was accused of creating ‘un-German’ typography and art, and so I preferred to leave Germany. Since 1933 I have lived in Basle, Switzerland. In the very first years I tried to develop what I had called Die neue Typographie and wrote another textbook, Typographische Gestaltung in 1935 which is much more prudent than Die neue Typographie and still a useful book!
“In time, typographical things, in my eyes, took on a very different aspect, and to my astonishment I detected most shocking parallels between the teachings of Die neue Typographie and National Socialism and Fascism. Obvious similarities consist in the ruthless restriction of typefaces, a parallel to Goebbels’ infamous Gleichschaltung, and more or less militaristic arrangements of lines.
“Because I did not want to be guilty of spreading the very ideas, which had compelled me to leave Germany, I thought over again what a typographer should do. Which typefaces are good and what arrangement is the most practicable?
“By guiding the compositors of a large Basle printing office I learnt a lot about practicability. Good typography has to be perfectly legible and is, as such, the result of intelligent planning. The classical typefaces such as Garamond, Janson, Baskerville and Bell are undoubtedly the most legible. Sans serif is good for certain cases of emphasis, but is used to the point of abuse today. The occasions for using sans serif are as rare as those for wearing obtrusive decorations.” — Jan Tschichold. “Lecture to the Typography USA seminar sponsored by The Type Directors Club, New York on 18 April 1959.” Print XVIII 1 (1964): 16–17.
Jan Tschichold [1902 - 1974] was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer. In a special issue of the German printing journal Typographische Mitteilungen, entitled “elementare typographie” and dated October 1925, editor Jan Tschichold proposed a radically new direction for German typography and advertising art. Amidst reproductions of avant-garde books and Constructivist-influenced periodicals, as well as manifestos by László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky, Tschichold presented his own manifesto of ten principles and rules for a new typographic practice that summarized convictions about elemental forms and clarity of communication which avant-garde artists in Germany had called for earlier.
Tschichold’s special issue provoked considerable debate in subsequent numbers of Typographische Mitteilungen and in 1928 he followed it with an entire book, De neue Typographie (The New Typography), which was brought out by the Bildungsverband der Deutschen Buchdrucker, the educational wing of the German printing trade union who also published Typographische Mitteilungen. By 1931, the book was out of print and was not reprinted in German until 1987.
Tschichold's principal claim for the new typography is that it is characteristic of the modern age. Writing at a time when many new mass produced products appeared on the market, his intention was to bring typography into line with these other manifestations of industrial culture. Similar to the Russian Constructivists, Tschichold lauds the engineer whose work is marked by "economy, precision," and the "use of pure constructional forms that correspond to the functions of the object."
Due to his solid training in typography, Tschichold was a much greater technician than either Lissitzky or Moholy-Nagy; his own assertions on modernist design were based on an intimate knowledge of typesetting techniques such as leading, spacing, and the overall arrangement of type on a page. One look at Moholy-Nagy's essay titled (curiously enough) Die Neue Typographie in STAATLICHES BAUHAUS 1919-1923 (Bauhausverlag Weimar-Munchen, 1923, p. 141) clearly proves that Tschichold could run circles around the type cases of his peers.
Tschichold strongly believed in the Zeitgeist argument that each age creates its own uniquely appropriate forms. That belief allowed him to formulate a set of principles for his time and reject all prior work, regardless of its quality. One of the characteristics of the modern age for Tschichold was speed. he felt that printing must facilitate a quicker and more efficient mode of reading. Whereas the aim of the older typography was beauty, clarity was the purpose of the New Typography.
Tschichold was the most eloquent spokesman of the Neue Werbergestalter (circle of new advertising designers) established by Kurt Schwitters in 1928 and helped to disseminate Constructivist principles with his books. He favored asymmetrical layouts and an orderly presentation instead of the centered arrangements of classical book printing or the fluid individualism of Art Nouveau. Grolier Club, A Century for the Century, 36 (in reference to the 1935 edition of Typographische Gestaltung):".with its mixture of types and asymmetrical composition, clearly exhibits the modern sensibility. Basically revolutionary in its design, such work was to push printing in a new direciton, and Tschichold was one of the first and one of the best practitioners of modernist style."
The Circle of New Advertising Designers (ring neue werbegestalter) was a group who coalesced after the first statements on the new typography by Tschchold and Moholy-Nagy, and their purpose was the promotion of a common vision of the avant-garde. Ring neue werbegestalter intentionally echoed the name of The Ring, a group of Berlin-based architects which had been formed a few years earlier.
In Heinz and Bodo Rausch's Gefesselter Blick (1930), The Ring's point of view was defined by Paul Shuitema , acknowledging that modern design involved the separation of hand and machine which previous generations had so strongly fought against: "the designer is not a draughtsman, but rather an organizer of optical and technical factors. His work should not be limited to making notes, placing in groups and organizing things technically."
Tschichold was more succinct: " I attempt to reach the maximum of purpose in my publicity works and to connect the single constructive elements harmoniously -- to design."