TYPOGRAPHY 8
Summer 1939
Robert Harling [Editor] with James Shand & Ellic Howe
Robert Harling [Editor] with James Shand and Ellic Howe: TYPOGRAPHY 8. London: The Shenval Press, Summer 1939 [published in an edition of 2,500 copies]. Slim quarto. Thick letterpressed wrappers. Plasti-coil binding. 58 pp. Multiple paper stocks. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Wrappers lightly worn. Textblock lightly spotted throughout. A very good or better copy.
9 x 11 softcover book with plasti-coil binding and 58 pages of avant-garde typographic design from England, circa 1938. 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.
This edition of Typography includes maximum-quality letterpress printing on a variety of paper stocks. A phenomenal production that comes with my highest recommendation.
- Lament For A Bluebook Bureaucracy: R. S. Hutchings
- Victorian Street Ballads: Noel Carrington
- The Typography Of Childrens Comics: Denis Peck
- Topographical Typography: Robert Harling
- Rex Whistler's Book Decorations: by Edith Olivier
- Bookshelf: review of Moholy-Nagy's 1938 edition of The New Vision, where the reviewer not only compares Moholy to Walt Disney, but has some choice words about the typography of the New Bauhaus Books.
- Type Supplement: Reviews and Specimens
- Notes and acknowledgements
Here is the Publisher's Manifesto for Typography: " The Sponsors of Typography believe that fine book production is not the only means 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.
According to Rick Poynor, Herbert Spencer often spoke of the importance of Harling and Shand's Typography -- Jan Tschichold's article on Type Mixtures in the third issue had a decisive influence on his eventual direction (Poynor: TYPOGRAPHICA. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. page 15.)