PHOTO-COMPOSITION TYPE BOOK VOLUME 2
[PHOTO-COMPOSITION FACES: Binder Title]
The Composing Room, Inc.
[The Composing Room, Inc.]: PHOTO-COMPOSITION TYPE BOOK VOLUME 2 [PHOTO-COMPOSITION FACES: Binder Title]. New York: The Composing Room, Inc., 1968. Original edition. Folio. White cloth titled in black six ring loose leaf binder. [190] pp. 95 leaves printed recto/verso. Three tabbed dividers. Copy fitting charts. Type specifications. Four-page introduction design by Bob Farber. White cloth lightly soiled from handling. First two leaves rolled inward towards the ring binding. A nearly fine example of this oversized, user-friendly volume.
11 x 17 six ring binder with 190 pages of type specimens and specifications, copy fitting charts, novelty faces, etc. showcasing 26 fonts and varietals: Baskerville, Bembo, Bodoni, Caledonia, Century Expanded, Century Schoolbook, Century Italic, Contempo, Eberhardt, Eurostile, Fairfield, Futura, Garamond, Grotesque, Helvertica, Libra, Melior, News Gothic, Optima, Palatino, Plantin, Stymie, Times Roman, Univers Vladimir; and 20 ornamental faces: Egyptian, Smoke, Phidian, Karnac, Nymphic, Madison, Bank Note, Soutache, Recherche, St. Clair, Plymouth, Alferata, Nubian, Aesthetic, Flirt, Columbus, Fantail, Octic Ext, Ringet, and Kismet.
Excerpts from “Dr. Leslie’s Type Clinic” by Steven Heller, published in Eye 15 [Winter 1994]: “The Composing Room of New was no mere type shop. While no other type business was more aggressively self-promoting, none so determinedly advanced the art and craft of type design or made such a remarkable contribution to design history and practice. What began as a campaign to attract the business of advertising agencies and book and magazine publishers in a competitive market evolved into one of the most ambitious educational programmes the field had ever known, including type clinics, lecture series, single and group exhibitions, catalogues, and one of America’s most influential graphic arts periodicals, PM (Production Manager), later called A-D (Art Director), which was published bi-monthly between 1934 and 1942.
“The programme, conceived and sustained for almost 40 years by the Composing Room’s co-founder Dr Robert Lincoln Leslie (1885-1986), was rooted in graphic arts traditions yet was motivated by a desire to identify and publicise significant new approaches, even if these rejected tradition. What made the Composing Room so influential, in addition to being a recognised leader in quality hot metal and eventually photo-typesetting, was a commitment to explore, document and promote design approached whatever their style or ideology. Despite his own preference for classical typography, “Doc” Leslie or “Uncle Bob”, as he was affectionately called, gave young designers a platform on which to publicise their experiments.
“Leslie and the Composing Room were instrumental in making new or Modern graphic design accessible to business,” states Gene Federico, who as a young man had his work exhibited at the Composing Room. But Leslie did not just have an open mind: he believed that by involving young people in its programmes, the Composing Room would ensure its own future prosperity. “By making our promotional material informative and constructive, we’ve made it educational,” he said. “Identically, it helped to develop a market for good machine typesetting, and it paid off.” Leslie assumed, correctly, that a well-informed and enlightened professional would be a more discerning customer, and so set up a graphic arts salon, regularly frequented by the likes of Ladislav Sutnar, Alvin Lustig and Herbert Bayer, that put his type shop at the centre of what might today be called “design discourse”, but was then practical design talk. The Composing Room’s efforts to elevate graphic arts and typography may have been driven by commercial motivations, but the result was the creation of a solid foundation for the study of American graphic design history.
“The Composing Room was founded in 1927 by Leslie and Sol Cantor, and had been instrumental in applying Linotype composition to high-circulation magazines Vogue, Vanity Fair and House and Garden. Leslie met Cantor at the Carey Printing Company, and around 1920 they became partners in the Enmor Linotype Service, which was sold to American Book-Stratford Press in 1927. Leslie stayed on as a director for four years and became a silent partner in the Composing Room when Cantor opened it that same year. In 1931 he joined Cantor as an active partner and began the promotional programme that was to put the Composing Room on the map.
“Before in-house photo-composition was economically feasible, type shops were the critical link in every pre-press production chain. At a period when time-consuming hand-setting was considered the best means of producing display type, combining speed with quality was the key to success. Cantor introduced advanced methods that not only accelerated the process but also ensured high quality. The Composing Room was born of “the revolutionary idea that much of the typesetting for fine advertising work could be done by machine, saving considerable time and expense required for the completed hand-setting of even the most routine jobs,” state the introduction to its 25 anniversary exhibition catalogue. Working directly with Linotyope and other manufacturers, Cantor encouraged the design of ligatures to improve bad letter combinations, and new faces were installed as soon as they came out. He insisted on close spacing, a good face for every job (worn type slugs were not allowed), and guaranteed that short-cuts would not be taken. Whether or not the Composing Room invented the role of the type director is uncertain, but Cantor made sure that each job was looked at by an aesthetically attuned eye before it left the shop. The Composing Room was also the first typography house to install the APL (All-Purpose-Linotype) machines; the first to have a range of font sizes from 5 to 144 point on hand at all times; the first to provide a special proofing press for transparencies; and the first to set up an air-conditioned room for its proofreaders.
“Cantor’s skill as a director was matched by Leslie’s genius as a promoter. He began by staging open houses at which the company’s new machinery and advanced processes were demonstrated, even to its competitors. He established typography and design clinics for production managers, commercial artists and advertising people at which prominent members of the field gave lectures, culminating in a remarkable series called “The Heritage of the Graphic Arts”. In 1934 he founded PM, “An Intimate Journal for Production Managers, Art Directors and their Associates”. First conceived as a house organ, under the co-editorship of Percy Seitlin, a former newspaper man, this small-format (6x8 inch) journal developed into an American Gebrauchsgraphik or Arts et metiers graphiques (the latter published by the Parisian foundry Deberny & Peignot, which like the Composing Room used publications and exhibitions to promote the French graphic arts). PM was dedicated to exploring a variety of print media, as well as providing coverage of industry news, and it developed a strong slant towards Modern typography and design. It was the first trade journal to emphasise the creative and marketing value of the work of the new European immigrants and included illustrated profiles of Herbert Bayer, Will Burtin, Joseph Binder and M. F. Agha, as well as native Moderns Lester Beall, Joseph Sinel, Gustav Jensen and Paul Rand. In 1940 the name PM was sold to Ralph Ingersol, who set up New York’s only ad-free daily newspaper PM, and the magazine changed its name to A-D, coincidentally marking a creative realignment within the profession from production managers to art directors and a gradual shift from craft to art.
“In the 1960s and 1970s Leslie was the president of Typophiles, an organisation of typographers and aficionados with a long conservative tradition. As such, he had to balance the passions of two opposed groups: the traditionalists, who were concerned with printing history, calligraphy and classical typography, and the Moderns, whose aim was to push traditions outwards. But as a business, the Composing Room had to focus on the here and now, and while its remit was quality whatever the style, the market demanded that it keep ahead.
“Aaron Burns (1922 – 91) became type director of the Composing Room in 1955. He was responsible for facilitating the difficult settings required by agency art directors, scrutinising all proofs before they left the shop and offering composition alternatives. Burns, who later went on to co – found the International Typeface Company, was according to designer Ivan Chermayeff, “always a seeker – outer of people who were cutting edge”. Indeed, under Burns’ direction, the term cutting g– edge had at times a very literal meaning. This was the period when the constraints of hot-metal composition made it difficult to achieve certain effects, such as tight spacing or touching, without razor –blading and repositioning the proofs and then having an engraving made of the new “art.” “As Leslie returned to the heritage of typography, Burns undertook practical experiments in an effort to expand the range of typographic communication. He conceived and designed specimen books that were clean and rational, but encouraged radical – in that it was difficult to set – typographic design. He also began to introduce photo-composition, which was difficult not only because of bugs in the new equipment, but because art directors were happy with the old methods. When Burns left the Composing Room to being his own business, he incurred Leslie’s wrath for having “abandoned” him.
“In 1976 the Composing Room merge with Royal Typographers to become the Royal/Composing Room, which in 1922 became PDR Royal. After Leslie retired in 1970 to devote himself to the Typophiles and other activities, the Composing Room continued to do occasional promotional pieces, but without his missionary zeal. Other organisations, institutions and schools picked up the torch. But for three decades the programmes developed by Leslie and his associates introduced Modernism, celebrate classicism and influenced contemporary practice. The Composing Room defined a significant segment of American graphic design history and left an enduring legacy.”