Good company types

Inside back cover

A wonderful collection of type that is basically company names on their products. Bill Rose says in his Foreword that so many of the items he photographed are not much bigger than an inch or two wide so there are lots of initials like REG.U.S. PAT. OFF., MFRS., EST., PAT PEND., CAT. NO., REG. TRADE MARK to get the message across to the customer. The type and design depends on the material it's printed on, paper can produce a reasonable image but embossed out of metal or plastic, frequently with curves, reduces the sharpness of the letters, then age for a few decades until Rose found them to photographed and they assume a warm, well used patina. Because of their small size the designs were probably created locally to the manufacturers and virtually all the type is sans serif for ease of reproduction.

Another really nice thing about the book is it's square format (eight inches) and the layout with three hundred images works for the reader, some pages have just one badge, others have five, six or seven separated by a white margins. I doubt anything in these pages would kick-start any creativity for similar company logos, they are just too old for that. I regard the book as a lovely collection of typographic company names from the last few decades.