TYPOGRAPHY 3
Summer 1937
Robert Harling [Editor] with James Shand and Ellic Howe
Robert Harling [Editor] with James Shand and Ellic Howe: TYPOGRAPHY 3. London: The Shenval Press, Summer 1937 [published in an edition of 2,000 copies]. Slim quarto. Thick letterpressed wrappers. Plasti-coil binding. 54 pp. Multiple paper stocks. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Publishers plasti-coil binding broken with some loss. One of the Ashley Havinden tipped-in color plates missing. One newspaper insert neatly split at fore edge crease. Wrappers lightly soiled, binding fragile and deteriorating, so a fair to good copy only. Rare.
9 x 11 softcover book with plasti-coil binding and 54 pages of avant-garde typographic design from England, circa 1937. The good folks at Bloomsbury's Shenval Press were fighting to bring the international revolution in New Typography to England's sheltered shores in the 1930s. An excellent keepsake and snapshot from the trenches in the battle between Art and Trade in the typsetting industry.
“When [Typography] first appeared in 1936, the journal broke new ground in its coverage of the European avant garde—including the first serious article on Jan Tschichold's work to be published in Britain. It was also very different from earlier, and primmer, typographic magazines in its zest for letters of all kinds, not just fine book printing. Issue one contained an article on Kardomah tea labels; issue two an analysis of tram ticket typography. Robert Harling’s early championing of typographic ephemera anticipated the burgeoning of 1960s Pop.”
Here is the Publisher's Manifesto for TYPOGRAPHY: " The Sponsors of TYPOGRAPHY believe that fine book production is notthe onlymeans of typographical expression or excitement. We Believe, in fact, that a bill-head can be as aesthetically pleasing as a Bible, that a newspaper can be as typographically arresting as a Nonesuch." Sounds good to me.
TYPOGRAPHY 3 [Summer 1937, 54 pp.] Contents:
- Type Mixtures by Jan Tschichold. Original article by the most influential typographer of the 20th century, in which Tschichold gives a brief history of type-mixing and suggests some modern mixtures with specimens. According to Rick Poynor, Herbert Spencer often spoke of the importance of Harling and Shand's Typography -- Jan Tschichold's article on TypeMixtures in the third issue had a decisive influence on his eventual direction (Poynor: Typographica. NYC: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. page 15.)
- Ands & Ampersands by Frederick W. Goudy. Inquiry into the history, form and use. Illustrated with over 60 characters, drawn by the author and engraved and cast in type by his son, Fred T. Goudy. Goudy says this is 'the most important contribution to the history of this typographical character which has yet appeared."
- From Bewick to the Half-Tone Process-- Illustration Processes in the 19th century by Ellic Howe.
- Left-Wing Layout – Propoganda produced by the politically left in England by Howard Wadman From the books produced by Gollancz to the posters designed by the Labour Party. Workers of the World Unite!
- The Work of Ashley Havinden English Advertising Designer with an American and European Reputations by Herbert Read. Illustrated with 3 tipped-in color printing samples in color and a newsprint supplement.
- Monotype Corporation: Quod Est Demonstrandum: The Typographical Problems of the School Geometry Book by Peggy Lane
- The Front Page Newspaper Design by Allen Hutt, with (2) newspaper inserts showing the headings of (2) papers.
- Bookshelf. Includes a short review of Herbert Bayer's 1937 London Gallery Show.
- Type Reviews (Examples from Deberny et Peignot, Intertype, Klingspor)
- Correspondence and Notes and vintage Type Ads.
Among British typographic journals of the pre-war period, the eight issues of Typography (1936-39) stand out and retain their interest today thanks to an informality of presentation and modernity of subject matter that give them more in common with publications of the 1950s and later than with such bookish and book-like contemporaries as Signature or the earlier The Fleuron. Edited by Robert Harling, an advertising agency art director, and published by James Shand’s Shenval Press, London, the quarterly journal brought together articles on newspaper typography, train timetables, political graphics, patent medicine advertising and type in children’s comics, as well as the more predictable Victoriana such as ecclesiastical typography and street ballads. In issue 3—one of the finest—Jan Tschichold wrote about “Type Mixtures,” through Modernism remained just one interest among many rather than a passionate and exclusive commitment. The journal’s undogmatic eclecticism and breadth of content was reflected in a design format which, for the first six issues, varied from article to article, while its 11 x 9 inch pages were held together by a plastic comb binding that gave it the feel of a manual or exercise book. After the war Harling and Shand began a new journal, Alphabet and Image. In retrospect, the no doubt economically unavoidable switch to a smaller page size and a single text column highlights what was so fresh and distinctive about the earlier title. [Eye no. 13, 1994]
Jan Tschichold (German, 1902 – 1974) was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer. Tschichold was the son of a provincial signwriter, and he was trained in calligraphy. This artisan background and calligraphic training set him apart from almost all other noted typographers of the time, since they had inevitably trained in architecture or the fine arts.
Tschichold's artisan background may help explain why he never worked with handmade papers and custom fonts as many typographers did, preferring instead to use stock fonts on a careful choice from commercial paper stocks. After the election of Hitler in Germany, all designers had to register with the Ministry of Culture, and all teaching posts were threatened for anyone who was sympathetic to communism.
After Tschichold took up a teaching post in Munich at the behest of Paul Renner, both he and Tschichold were denounced as "cultural Bolshevists.”Ten days after the Nazis surged to power in March 1933, Tschichold and his wife were arrested. During the arrest, Soviet posters were found in his flat, casting him under suspicion of collaboration with communists. All copies of Tschichold's books were seized by the Gestapo "for the protection of the German people.” After six weeks a policeman somehow found him tickets for Switzerland, and he and his family managed to escape Nazi Germany in August 1933. Apart from short visits to England in 1937-1938 (at the invitation of the Penrose Annual), and 1947-1949 (at the invitation of Ruari McLean, the British typographer, with whom he worked on the design of Penguin Books), he lived the rest of his life in Switzerland. Jan Tschichold died in the hospital at Locarno in 1974.
Ashley Havinden (United Kingdom, 1903 – 1973) joined the staff of the advertising agency W.S. Crawford at the age of nineteen, and he remained there for the whole of his career, becoming their Art Director in 1929 and eventually Vice-Chairman of the company. He encouraged Crawford to employ Edward McKnight Kauffer. Influenced by Stanley Morison and Jan Tschichold, Havinden designed a font for Monotype in 1930 known as ‘Ashley Crawford.’ Later he immortalized his own handwriting in the font ‘Ashley Script’ (1955).
Havinden had attended evening classes at the Central School of Arts & Crafts and in 1933 he received further lessons in drawing from the sculptor Henry Moore and became friends with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash and other pioneers of the Modern Movement. The London Gallery held his first solo exhibition in 1937 and two years later he was one of the nine British artists whose work was featured in an Exhibition of Abstract Paintings held at the Lefevre Gallery, London.
His continuously impressive and distinctive output of ideas, dynamic layouts and finished work (usually signed ‘Ashley’) was characterised in advertisements he created for many important clients including Martini, Yardley and Gillette. A poster for the Milk Marketing Board was much admired by Walter Gropius, during a visit to London in 1934. Havinden created a house style for Simpson of Piccadilly, Liberty’s store in Regent Street and KLM airlines. Alistair Morton RDI commissioned textile designs from Havinden for Morton Sundour Fabrics. His modernist paintings adapted easily to furnishing fabric and rugs, as well as dress fabrics for the House of Worth. He was a member of the Display Committee for the British Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition, designed the catalogue for the 1938 Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS exhibition). Havinden also designed the Men’s Wear section, and sat on the selection panel for Men’s Clothes, Cloths and Accessories for Britain Can Make It in 1946. Havinden was also instrumental in bringing the first exhibition of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) to London in 1956 (subsequently elected their President d’Honneur).
At the outbreak of the Second World War Havinden enrolled in the Highgate Home Guard Battalion and designed posters for the ARP and War Loan advertisements for the Ministry of Information. He then joined the army camouflage section. On his promotion to Captain in 1943 he was transferred to the Petroleum Warfare Department to work on ‘Pluto’, the petrol pipeline project to the Normandy beaches.
Havinden did much to foster education for design and its professional standards. He was a founder member, and later President, of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, President of the Creative Circle and the Double Crown Club, twice Chairman of the London College of Printing, Governor of Chelsea College of Arts and Governor of the Central School of Arts & Crafts. In 1961 Manchester Regional College of Art awarded Havinden an Honorary Doctorate of Arts. He also wrote Line Drawing for Reproduction (1933) and he published Advertising and the Artist (1956). For his services to industrial design Havinden received the OBE in 1951.
John Gloag wrote an appreciation of ‘one of the most distinguished pioneers of industrial design’ for The Times. He wrote that Havinden ‘will long be remembered…for the inspiring encouragement he gave to innumerable young artists and designers, for he was a great impresario of talent and took infinite trouble to find or make opportunities for designers of promise.’