The right type

This is the page from McCall's magazine  that featured the sundae glass.

I bought this in the early sixties and it's still a book I would recommend to anyone who wants learn about typographic finesse. Aaron Burns was the boss of the Composing Room, during the fifties and into the sixties. It was  New York's leading typesetting house for the graphic arts trade. I think it's worth saying that the contents reflect machine and hand-setting type, long before the computer but the fundamentals revealed in these pages are now just a few keystrokes away for anyone with a pc and the appropriate software.

The pages are divided into three sections. First a selection of type shown mostly as display setting for ads and editorial. Second an analysis of the pages in the first section showing the changes designers made to achieve the perfect setting. Third fundamentals covering spacing, alignment, punctuation, underscores, text setting, ragged lines, initials, combining faces, leading. This is a large book (fourteen by ten inches) and the 112 pages have plenty of examples of beautiful display typography whether it's some setting for an ad, editorial page or an order form for a chemical company.

Aaron Burns ended his introduction like this: Careful, constant, painstaking care and attention to every detail is necessary to achieve 'perfect' typography. Although the effort is great -- the reward is greater still for those who care!

*The only contemporary book I've seen that has much of Burns thoughts on typography is The complete manual of typography by James Felice and published by Adobe.

Brightwork classics

Page after page of dazzling chrome car ornaments from Ken Steacy's huge collection revealing the best an exuberant Detroit could offer through the mid-thirties to the late fifties.

Page twenty-seven shows famous pin-up artist George Petty working on a 1949 Nash ornament, possibly the only one in the world that had the artist's name stamped on it, page forty-one has a 1935 Hupmobile hood rocket ship straight out of a Buck Rogers thirties comic and pages sixty-four and five, with a space-age style background, with four  futuristic rocket hood ornaments from a fifties Oldsmobile.

Not only hood ornaments but horn buttons, emblems and my favourite section 'Scripts' with its Imperial, Fleetside, Ultramatic, Roadmaster, Futuramic, Dynaflow and Super DeLuxe, in bright, chrome cursive-bold-italic typography.

The back pages has some interesting comments on collecting and restoring these objects, most of which were made from cheap potmetal and then plated with copper, nickel and lastly chrome. Obviously not made to last for decades though nearly every example on the author's collection looks immaculate.

All of the images just jump of the page thanks to the lovely photos taken by Rob d'Estrube and the layouts by Ken Steacy. I doubt there is a better book of Detroit's brightwork.

Red dot dottiness

A delightful square book (twenty-three by twenty-three centimetres) with nine colorful spreads that open up a selection of pop-up shapes. One spread has two wooden poles holding colored circles that rotate as the spread is opened, another makes a tearing sound as six saw-toothed red semi circles brush against flaps cut into stiff card, a page has pull-out tabs to make five yellow circles move in a wave formation.

I think the book will intrigue children and adults (though probably more for adults) as each spread is opened. The book was made in China and each one must have taken some time to assemble especially as each spread has to close a three dimensional shape flat.
　
If you collect pop-up book, as I do, this has to be in your collection.