38 P R I N T 7 1 .

2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

THE TOP 25
20 CENTURY
TH

TYPOGRAPHERS
by
bySSteven
te
tev
ev
ve
en H
He
Heller
ell
ller
er
er

Letters of the alphabet that are and the typographer is not always an excellent type designer,

cast or founded for the purpose even though computer programs have made it possible to more
easily create faces.
of impressing upon paper are A typographer is, in my opinion, one who makes type and let-

known as type. The precise ters come alive on a page (or screen) through aesthetic manipu-
lation and organizationotherwise known as composition.
form of the types and the exact For the average person, the distinction between a typographer

position they need to occupy the and graphic designer may be fairly arcane. A typographer and
graphic designer do almost the same exact thing to an extent.
selected paper involve skill in the Yet specifying or setting a line of Helvetica is not typography, just

art that is called typography. as drawing an alphabet is not type design. Compare a violinist
to a ddle player. Both can play their parts, but one is a virtuoso.
Stanley Morrison, British type adviser to Monotype and For this issue, Print asked me to name 25 of the most signi-
designer of such typefaces as Times New Roman cant typographers of the past 100-plus years. In their minds the
focus would be on designers like Robert Hunter Middleton and
Matthew Carter, both great exponentsbut not typographers.
I further wanted to narrow down the list: American or inter-
Those reading this magazine should know the dierence national? Living or dead? Latin or non-Latin typography? I
between type design and typography. Right? decided on American, living and dead, Latin letters. Now, I rec-
Learning to draw letters is hard enough, wrote type designer ognize that my selection is probably dierent than yours. While
Jonathan Hoeer, but learning to create typefaces is some- there are some names we can all agree upon, there will be the
thing else entirely. Type design is the creation of a typeface inevitable wheres so and so? Or why is this person included? If you
family, from drawing the letters to developing all of its various have a complaint, letters, tweets and text messages will be read.
components. Typography is the application of typefaces, some So, herefrom my perspective, and arranged chronologically
that already exist, and others that are drawn for specic proj- by birthare the top 25 typographers active during the 20th
ects. Each demands uency in the craft, design and grammar century who have made powerful and lasting contributions to
of type, but the type designer is not always a great typographer, the American typographic language today.
 PRINTMAG.COM 39

BRUCE ROGERS (18701957), the father

2. of 20th-century book design, was inspired

by William Morris. Rogers designed the
Centaur typeface in 1914 for the Metro-
politan Museum of Art in New York City, and was
known as a classical typographer with literary air
in his output. In 1916 Rogers moved to England to
work with Arts and Crafts advocate Emery Walker,
hoping to establish a press for ne editions. How-
ever, because of the outbreak of World War I, they
only produced one book. Shortly after, Rogers be-
gan working with Cambridge University Press. He
then returned to the U.S., where he met the original
publisher of Print, William Edwin Rudge. Rudge
put Rogers to work, enlisting his talents as a book
designer for Mount Vernon Press. When Rogers
wasnt designing for Mount Vernon, he kept busy
as typographic adviser for Lanston Monotype and
designer at Harvard University Press. Starting in
1928 he took six years to oversee the typography and
printing of The Oxford Lectern Bible, which Joseph
Blumenthal called the most important and notable
typographic achievement of the 20th century.

WILL H. BRADLEY (18681962) was Americas rst

1. graphic designer and an American Art Nouveau and

Arts and Crafts pioneer. Under his Wayside Press he
served as illustrator, designer and editor of Bradley:
His Bookmaking him one of graphic designs earliest self-
branded entrepreneurs. His privately printed chapbooks and
keepsakes were precursors to the self-promotion journals that
led to, among others, The Push Pin Graphic and Pentagram Pa-
pers. He was also a consultant for the American Type Found-
ers, where he designed various faces, including Wayside Ro-
man, Missal Initials, Bewick Roman and Vanity Initials, as well
as type specimen books. As art editor for Colliers Weekly, he
made certain that its typography was up to a high standard. For
Victor Bicycles and other advertisements he integrated his sin-
uous lettering throughout the oriated iconography that was
a hallmark of his early output.

Bradley: Advertisements featured in Bradley, His Book, Vol. 1, May 1896.

Rogers (top to bottom): Fra Luca de Pacioli, Grolier Club, New York, 1933.
Essays of Michael Lord of Montaigne, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1902;
images courtesy of Letterform Archive, San Francisco.
40 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

OSWALD BRUCE COOPER (18791940), a progenitor of the Chicago Style during the

3. 1920s and 30s, combined calligraphic skill with typographic expertise to create mass
periodical advertisements that were modern in character and classic in form. But as
a prodigious typographer he may be overshadowed by his emblematic type design,
Cooper Black, the most imposing of the so-called fat faces and leader of the so-called fat face
market (or black blitz) of the mid-1920s. Coopers layouts were unfettered by decoration; he
was skilled at the art of arranging type for maximum eect without the owers, dingbats and
borders that junked up many press advertisements.
He often complained that he was beholden to public tastes: We lose hundreds of years of
taking seriously every inane suggestion from anybody anywhere, he once said.

Left: Sans serif lettering, c. 1909. Right: Customized lettering for Packard Motor Car ad, 1909.
 PRINTMAG.COM 41

WILLIAM ADDISON DWIGGINS (18801956)cred-

4. ited with coining the term graphic designwas a type

designer, calligrapher, book designer, letterer and
typographer, among his other arts. Dwiggins began
his practice as a letterer in Chicago with prolic type designer
Frederic Goudy; together they moved to Hingham, MA. He
spent the rest of his life there, designing, printing, writing, ed-
iting and performing with his homemade marionettes (really).
The typefaces he designed, Electra, Caledonia, Metro, Eldorado,
Winchester and more, as well as his book on typography, may
outlast his more commercial lettering work. Still, it can be ar-
gued that his book, advertisement and magazine typography
loom large in the stylistic pantheon of his era. Whether it was
the handlettering for the spines and jackets of Alfred A. Knopf
bookssuch as the exquisitely decorated Autobiography of a
Super-Tramp by William H. Daviesor the smartly fragmented
(schizophrenic) cover type and art for The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dwiggins worked on letterforms with the-
matic, harmonic and tonal precision.

Left: Handlettered book spine design for Economic Planning, 1949.

Above: Book cover of The 14th Formula, date unknown.
42 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

FREDERICK G. COOPER (18831961), better known

5. as F. G. Cooper, helped develop the commercial

American poster. He was known particularly for his
lettering, and noted for his interest in using lower-
case rather than capital roman letters. Also a cartoonist, his
lettering set a tone for the semi-comic/serious work of his day;
neither modern nor classical, it had a witty quality. According
to Leslie Cabarga in The Lettering and Graphic Design of F. G.
Cooper, by 1905 Cooper (not to be confused with No. 3 on our
list, Oswald Cooper) was entrenched in work for the New York
Edison Company, including their corporate character icon. As
time passed, his lettering became more typographic than car-
toony, and he became best-known for his illustrated magazine
covers for Life and others. Being printed from wooden blocks, MERLE ARMITAGE (18931975), an art di-
these very modern creations had the air of primitivity, noted
The Poster #13. And although it may not have always looked like
it, his strength was his complete and utter simplicity. 6. rector, book designer and theater set and
costume designer in New York City, had a
xation on modern artists like Picasso,
Klee and Kandinsky, which inspired his total immer-
sion into typography for booksoften books he wrote,
edited or published about progressive artists of his
time. Armitages notable books epitomized the Art
Moderne sensibility. Paul Rand once grumbled that
Armitage overdid it, referring to his signature mam-
moth type treatments, usually on two-page title
spreads (a form he claimed to have invented). He was
also extremely fond of generous margins and widely
leaded serif body texts. His unorthodox treatments
were the result of a mission to demolish antiquated
tenets and reect his time. He angrily described the
books of his era as anonymous among their fellows
becoming comparatively impotent as a means of
communication. Critiquing the publishing eld at
large, he noted, the grand escalator that has brought
us all up from darkness and slavery into light and
freedom has, in our time, lost its leadership, and is
uncertain of its function and its direction. He de-
plored ersatz William Morris and other classical
graphic forms, and replaced antiquarian aesthetics
with modern sans serif typefaces, custom-made let-
ters and bold pictorial images. Armitage imbued in
each book a certain monumentality that underscored
the words and enhanced the pictures.

Cooper: Poster for New York Edison Company,

Keep Cool Electrically, 1919. Armitage:
Book title spread of Martha Graham, 1937.
 PRINTMAG.COM 43

ALEXEY BRODOVITCH (18981971) was

7. best-known as a magazine designer who

exquisitely mastered pacing photography
and type in a cinematic manner. He was
a typographic narrator, so to speak, echoing the con-
tours and moods of photographs with the uidity of
type. His favorite face in the late 1930s was Didot,
which he used while working in Paris on Cahiers
dArt in the 1920s. During his time at Harpers Ba-
zaar, Didot with its lights and darks, poise and bal-
ance, became Brodovitchs veritable signature that
dened the essential qualities of fashion of the pe-
riod. In the 1950s Bodoni shared the stage.
Typographically speaking, Brodovitch did incred-
ibly modern things with classical aesthetics. Port-
folio, published between 1949 and 1951, was a case
in point, a 20th-century graphic and industrial arts
magazine that elevated design and set the standard
of magazine layout that few publications then or
now can equal. The key to success was dynamic jux-
tapositions: big and small, bold and quiet, type and
pictorial. Brodovitch splayed comps out on the oor,
mixing and matching, moving pages and entire sto-
ries around as needed. He used a photostat machine
like a notepad; he would get stats of every photo, and
as he put them down all of a sudden a spread would
materialize beautifully proportioned, everything in
scale, with just the right amount of white space, type
and picture mass.

Above: Cover for

Portfolio magazine,
Winter 1950.
At left: Cover for
3 Poems, 1935.
44 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

BRADBURY THOMPSON (19111995) was a

8. maestro of the grand typographic symphony,

especially the turning of pages. He so mas-
tered the rhythmic tenor of his typography
that one couldnt help but hear music while seeing the
letterforms. His opus was the orchestration of the com-
pany magazine Westvaco Inspirations, which he edited
and designed for more than 60 issues (19391962).
Among these issues were some design and typographic
history milestones, but my favorites were two issues
produced on photography in 1954 and 1956, which
showed Thompsons genius for integrating photos, ty-
pography and painting together as essential elements
of design. This was not his only typographic feat, how-
ever: He designed Alphabet 26, a simplied English
alphabet system to help readers learn letters faster.

OTTO STORCH (19131999) was one of a handful of

9. graphic designers in the 1950s who helped modern-

ize the visual content of staid old American maga-
zinesin part, by returning to the past. He belonged
to what the graphic design historian Philip B. Meggs called the
New York School, a group of editorial and advertising design-
ers who based layouts on unied visual ideas rather than merely
embellishing the page with ornamentation. As art director of
the womens lifestyle magazine McCalls for 14 years starting in
1955, Storch wed stylish typefaces and studio photography into
word-pictures, so that a headline or text type was an integrated
component of the illustration rather than separated from it, as
was the common practice.
Typical of this approach was a 1961 McCalls layout for The
Thompson, top: Interior spread of Mademoiselle, 1952; bottom:
Interior spread of Westvaco Inspirations, 1961. Storch, top: Forty-Winks Reducing Plan, in which a picture of a sleeping
McCalls cover, 1961; bottom: McCalls interior spread, 1961. woman lying on top of the text distorts it to simulate a sagging
McCalls images courtesy of Letterform Archive, San Francisco.
mattress. Storch used a variety of photographic processes to
make type twist, turn and vibrate in the days before computers
made such special eects commonplace in magazine layouts. He
also helped revive late 19th-century Victorian wood typefaces,
which had been pass for decades, to add graphic impact and
contrast to the printed pagea style embraced to this day.
 PRINTMAG.COM 45

PAUL RAND (19141996)

Clockwise: Book cover of
The Second Man, 1963.
Package design, El
Producto, 1952. Spread
from childrens book
Listen! Listen!, 1970.
10. would not single him-
self out as a typogra-
pher; he was a com-
mercial artist or graphic designer, and
typography was part of the mandatory
job skillset. But there would be no Rand
design if typography was simply included
as part of a larger patchwork. He had a
lot to say about typography: I know peo-
ple who have religiously used only sans
serif, who suddenly switched to Times
Roman. Now, the reason they switched
to Times Roman is for the same reasons
they used sans serif. They considered sans
serif very functional, devoid of doodads
and ringlets and hair curlers. There is
no typeface that is more reasonable than
Times Roman. But lets face it, Times Ro-
man is ugly, especially in big sizes. Like
many of his Modern contemporaries,
Rand used only certain faces but not for
their looks alone. The real dierence is,
he said, the way space is interpreted:
that is, the way an image is placed on a
sheet of paper.
46 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

ALEX STEINWEISS

11. (19172011) often goes

down in history as the
rst graphic designer
to put art on 78 rpm album covershow-
ever, this claim must be modied to say
he was the rst to make typographically
illustrated posters for records. The dis-
tinction is essential; art was used on
some RCA albums before he introduced
his original designs in 1938, but these in-
stances were usually existing paintings
by great masters. As an illustrator and
typographer, Steinweiss was profoundly
inuenced by the French, German, Eng-
lish and Italian poster artists of the 1920s
and 30smost importantly A.M. Cas-
sandre, who hand-drew letterforms and
made typefaces for a range of advertis-
ing clients. Steinweiss eclectic typo-
graphic palette, which included 19th-
century wood and electrotype cuts that
he wed to more modern scripts and sans
serifs, helped dene the modern record
cover aesthetic. These albums were
sometimes raucous like theater bills and
other times subdued like book pages, but
in total changed the way records were
displayed and sold as individual typo-
graphical entities.

Clockwise: Magazine cover of AD, 1941. Record cover,

Andres Segovia Plays, 1954. Record cover, Concerto
in F, 1942.
 PRINTMAG.COM 47

Top: Detail of
Gastrotypo-
graphicalas-
semblage, 1966.
Bottom: Ad, Lets
Talk Type, 1958.
Courtesy of The
Herb Lubalin
Study Center
at The Cooper
Union.

HERB LUBALIN (19181981) amplied

12. the voice of typography. Although his

expressive work began prior to the ad-
vent of phototype, he anticipated its
wonders, as well as other technological advancesand
not just in how to set type, but in how to extract emo-
tion from it. Lubalins typography was sometimes like
a building block in which paragraphs, words and punc-
tuation t seamlessly together in a pattern that both
symbolized and stated the idea it was communicating.
Curiously, however, he was oended at being called a
typographer. What I do is not really typography, which
I think of as an essentially mechanical means of put-
ting characters down on a page. Its designing with let-
ters. His friend and business partner, the type impre-
sario Aaron Burns, called his work typographics, which
implies a kind of acrobatic skill that was clear from the
moment Lubalin left New Yorks Cooper Union and
became an advertising art director. Lubalin also de-
signed alphabets, his most famous being Avant Garde,
a tip of the hat to the future of type. But most charac-
teristic of his body of work was his playful approach to
design; he was amazed at how the shape and the weight
of each symbol could change the meaning of words.
48 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

CORITA KENT (19181986), aka Sis-

13. ter Mary Corita Kent (born Frances

Elizabeth Kent), used typography
as a means to an end. She was not
a commercial graphic designer, but type was a com-
ponent of her art, and art was a tool of her social ac-
tivism. She joined a Catholic convent in 1936right
after she completed high schooland served in the
Immaculate Heart of Mary order in Los Angeles for
three decades as a rebel nun and head of the art
department. (She ultimately left the order to pursue
art in Boston, feeling stied by an archdiocese that
did not always stand by her politicized service.) Kent
was mostly a silkscreen printer, although she also
published oset books because she wanted her art
to be aordable and widely distributed. Her designs
combined handlettering and vintage display letter-
forms printed in bright uorescent colors. She prac-
ticed during the heyday of Pop Art, and many of her
posters borrowed from this language. Damn Every-
thing But the Circus was one of her most gaily orna-
mented typographic assemblages, illustrating the 26
letters of the alphabet. On the whole, her circus-
themed prints drew on materials she saw at the Ring-
ling Museum of the American Circus, as well as in
19th-century American advertisements.

Interior pages from Damn Everything But the Circus, 1970.

 PRINTMAG.COM 49

SAUL BASS (19201996)

14. was the pioneer of motion

typography. While he was
not the first graphic de-
signer to make type dance on screen, he was
the most demonstrative, indeed ingenious,
Clockwise from above: Ad for Con-
to do so. Part of his strategy was to brand or
tainer Corporation of America, 1957.
identify a lm from the get-go, the advertise- Poster for The Magnificent Seven,
ments, then follow through with consistent 1960. Book cover of Great Issues in
American History, 1969.
title sequences. Using pictorial devices wed
to expressive lettering and type, as he did
for The Man With the Golden Arm and Bon-
jour Tristesse, among his many campaigns,
he developed a system emphasizing that
creativity is indivisible. In the May/June
1958 issue of Print, the editors acclaimed
that since trade requirements demanded
extensive credits on movie titles, It seems
that this usually rather dull interlude should
be converted into a positive introduction to
the lm. Saul Bass objective is to make the
titles suciently provocative and entertain-
ing to force movie-goers to remain in their
seats. While Bass did not completely
achieve this with type, it was his typography
that revolutionized the movie industry.
50 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

PUSH PIN STUDIOSMILTON GLASER, born 1929, and SEYMOUR CHWAST, born 1931created a ty-

15. pographic and language revival of past for present. In 1953 when the rst Push Pin Almanack was pub-
lished, it launched a graphic style challenging the prevailing ethic of functionalism, the International
Style, imported from the Swiss and adopted by leading American corporate and advertising designers.
A bimonthly promotional piece, the Almanack led the way of emerging historicist design trends. A taste for all things
old fashioned was returning, perhaps as a reaction to what was perceived as cold, humorless Modernism. It was called
the Push Pin Almanack, Chwast explained in a 1990 interview, because it was a quaint nameand quaintness was
popular in those days. Chwast and co. published six issues of the Almanack before Push Pin Studios ocially opened,
and two after. The Almanack evolved into the Push Pin Graphic, which began as a monthly broadside printed in black
and white on one sheet (usually newsprint). The elegant and emblematic logo was designed by Glaser in a variant of
German Fraktur. In all, 86 issues were published from 1957 to 1980, and they ran the gamut from the silly to the profound.
The Graphic had an incalculable inuence on the conceptualization of graphic design, and its evolution eclecticized
American design but also changed the style and content of American typography and illustration.

Glaser, left column, clockwise: Poster, I Heart NY More Than

Ever, 2001. Poster for Bob Dylans Greatest Hits, 1967.
Poster for Cooperstown Summer Music Festival, 2016.

Chwast, right column: Package for Artone Ink, 1964.

Interior spread of The Nose #14, 2006.
 PRINTMAG.COM 51

MASSIMO VIGNELLI (19312014) believed everything could be designed better

16.
Above: Magazine cover
for Dot Zero 4, 1967. At
right: Magazine cover for through the correct use of typefaces. In The Vignelli Canon, he wrote, Most
Industrial Design, 1969. typefaces are designed for commercial reasons, just to make money or for iden-
tity purposes. In reality the number of good typefaces is rather limited and
most of the new ones are elaborations on pre-existing faces. His essentials: Bodoni, Helvetica,
Times Roman, Century, Futura, Optima, Univers, Caslon and Baskerville. As you can see, my
list is pretty basic but the great advantage is that it can assure better results. It is also true that
in recent years the work of some talented type designers has produced some remarkable results
to oset the lack of purpose and quality of most of the other typefaces. Vignelli was a typo-
graphic minimalist; he favored clear hierarchy and dramatic contrasts, which allowed him to
achieve the maximum impact using economical means. He knew how to make a few typefaces
or images dramatic and expressive. While he admired classic typefaces, he avoided typeset-
ting traditions that created fussy complexity, such as paragraph indents and hyphenation. His
control made clarity look simple, when in reality it was dicult to copy his work unless one
shared his ideology. Merely using a few typefaces or cropping full-bleed images tightly wasnt
enough; his process involved nding the perfect balance of joy, surprise and consistency.
52 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

VICTOR MOSCOSO (born

17. 1936) was a fallen Modern-

ist in the San Francis-
co psychedelic countercul-
ture. The Brooklyn-raised, Spanish-born
artist/designer stumbled into this milieu and
became a dening force in the distinctly
American typography introduced through
psychedelic rock posters. The style was note-
worthy for its illegible typefaces, electric col-
ors and antique illustrationsa conjoining
of 19th-century slab serif wood types and
Vienna Secession/Art Nouveau naturalistic
letterforms. Moscoso created some of the
most emblematic posters of the 1960s; the
Blues Project poster is one classic for which
he used a vintage photograph of a nude Sa-
lome. Following her contour, he arranged
the concert information in a typeface that
he called Psychedelic Playbill (an adapta-
tion of a Victorian woodtype). But he did not
just set the type, he drew the letters out of
negative space (whiting out all the areas be-
tween the bodies of the letterforms, rather
than drawing them directly). The gure was
Moscoso image: Poster for
printed in bright orange against an acid-
Blues Project, et al., 1967.
green background; the lettering was printed Above: Bea Feitler, cover
in process blue. The slightly o-register trap- for Ms. Magazine, 1973. At
right: Ruth Ansel, cover for
ping gave the letters a three-dimensional Harpers Bazaar, 1971.
look in addition to the vibrating sensation
produced by the juxtaposition of similar
chromatic values.

BEA FEITLER (19381982) learned magazine design, fash-

18. ion photography and typography from Marvin Israel, one

of her teachers at Parsons who, in 1961, became art direc-
tor of Harpers Bazaar. That same year, Feitler and RUTH
ANSEL (born 1938) joined the magazine as art assistants. When Israel left
Bazaar in 1963 to devote himself to painting, Feitler and Ansel, then in
their mid-20s, were named co-art-directors and at once channeled the en-
ergy emerging from pop culture: street fashion, rock music, pop and op
art. Each had their respective typographic preferences, which was a touch
of the modern, a bit of the classical and a dose of the spectacular. They
followed Alexey Brodovitchs tradition of designing magazines as a har-
monious and cinematic whole. They were open to accidents, material
around the studio and events surrounding them, Philip B. Meggs noted
in an AIGA prole. They maintained an inspirational wallsomething
like a mood boardthat would oer them (and anyone who laid eyes on
it) a resource for invention. Making type carry the weight of expression
was one such outcome. Feitler summed up her editorial design philosophy
as thus: A magazine should ow. It should have rhythm. You cant look
at one page alone; you have to visualize what comes before and after. Good
editorial design is all about creating a harmonic ow.
 PRINTMAG.COM 53
KATHERINE MCCOY (born 1945) was as much a catalytic force in

19. late 20th-century American typography as she was a practitioner.

Originally an adherent of clean Swiss Modernism and a problem
solver through modern objectivity, she was exposed to an alterna-
tive method of experimental expressionnotably by Edward Fella, who launched
his own rejection of Swiss-ness.
In the early 1970s McCoy co-founded a multidisciplinary partnership with her
husband, Michael, and eventually both accepted roles as co-chairs of Cranbrook
Academys graduate design departments. The schools Avant Garde legacy inspired her
to look dierently at design and typography through a linguistic lens. She encouraged
students to play more uidly and expressively with typography, teaching by example
with the Cranbrook materials she and Michael produced as McCoy & McCoy. Her
critiques at Cranbrook frequently addressed disrupting the norms of everyday practice.
She required students to read about both historical and contemporary design and
theory to really understand the context in which they were communicating. What
she founded became a Postmodern style but began as an intellectual conversation
on the pre- and post-digital age.

APRIL GREIMAN (born 1948) was for a while

20. the American incarnation of Wolfgang Wein-

gart. But then she was reborn in 1984 when
the Macintosh inched its way into the design
eld. She recognized the huge potential of this new medium
and quickly threw herself into it. The digital landscape fasci-
nates me in the same way as the desert, she said in an AIGA
essay. Greimans formal journey as a designer began at the Kan-
sas City Art Institute. She studied under Basel School of Design
alumni Inge Druckrey, Hans Allemann and Chris Zelinksy. Af-
ter experiencing their talents and being introduced to Modern-
ism, Greiman was inspired to pursue her graduate studies at
Basel as well, where she was a student to Armin Homan and
Weingart. At the time, Weingart was exploring what is now
called New Wave. He introduced a form of design that broke
away from the strict grid organization of the International Style
and encouraged designers to explore wide letterspacing, new
angles and changing weights and styles to expand their typo-
graphic communication. New Wave would later become a staple
in design history and in Greimans arsenal. After moving to Los
Angeles, Greiman collaborated with photographer Jayme Odg-
ers, which led to two experiences that would greatly inuence
the direction her life would takehe introduced her to the des-
ert and, shortly after, they formed a creative partnership that
was to last for four years and produce some highly visible typo-
graphic/photographic work that would dene the digital 80s.

McCoy: Poster for Fluxus Selections, 1988.

Greiman: Poster for Your Turn, My Turn symposium, 1983.
54 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

PAULA SCHER (born 1948) began her typo-

21. graphic journey as an archeological anthro-

pologist. One of her most well-known digs
included the Best of Jazz poster that was the
result of uncovering the much-forgotten Russian Avant Gard-
ists visual vocabulary, but she ended up with a distinctive tap-
estry woven of personal anities, problem-solving pragmatism
and New York derring-do. The letterforms are not Russian Cy-
rillic, but 19th-century American sans serif woodtypes savored
from old Victorian type catalogs. Yet Scher also borrowed the
constructivists strong geometric composition, thrusting diago-
nals and signature colors: red and black. High contrast is ap-
parent between the bold, black capitals that spell out Best and
the smaller, busier typography. Overlapping colors, surprints
and knockouts make the most of the limited color palette. There
is an unmistakable resemblance to Victoriana in the tightly
packed, nearly cluttered arrangement of type, the woodtype
typography itself, and the slant toward ornamentation. Al-
though it was a hybrid of two historical forms, the result was
fresh-faced, decidedly contemporary yet eerily familiar, much
like a child whose genetic code spawns frombut ultimately
transcendsthat of its parents. Schers work is never entirely
based on typography but it does play a central role in commu-
nicating her ideas. While the selection of typefaces may origi-
nate in the history of design as inspiration, inuence, homage, Clockwise from top left: Poster for The Public Theaters 19951996 season.
Poster for Shakespeare in the Park, 2016. Poster for Henry V, 1996.
quotation and parody, the results are clear interpretations held
together by the glue of knowledge and imagination.
 PRINTMAG.COM 55

LOUISE FILI (born 1951) is the paradigm of ty-

22. pographic elegance. Hired by the legendary

type maestro Herb Lubalin, a formative expe-
rience to be sure, she was already working on
expressive ways of retooling vintage and historical typefaces
from all over the world. As art director of Pantheon Books, she
had an extraordinary opportunity to experiment daily with many
dierent periods of design history, and produced close to 2,000
jackets and covers, including the now-classic The Lover, in which
she introduced a form of nuanced shadow lettering that inu-
enced many other typographers (Ed. Note: See page 84). Design
historian Philip B. Meggs wrote in Print that Fili was one of The
Women Who Saved New York, a reference to the revival of re-
vivalist graphic design emanating from the city. Yet Filis work
never slavishly references the past but rather incorporates its
virtues. She later left Pantheon to diversify and pursue another
passion through her work: food. Fili invariably began making
typographic logos that were elegant, witty and memorable. From
there, she produced distinct package designs with an intense
focus on type and typography. Typefaces that exist yet are re-
drawn are her driving design force, but type that expresses ideas,
if not moods, is what distinguishes her typography.

Clockwise from top left: Poster for School of Visual

Arts, 2011. Wine labels, Il Conte, 20072008.
Book cover, Grafica della Strada, 2014.
56 P R I N T 7 1 . 2 S U M M E R 20 1 7

DAVID CARSON (born 1954) dened the zeit- RUDY VANDERLANS (born 1955) co-

23. geist of his epoch. In 1990, the magazine

Beach Culture, devoted to West Coast water-
sports, was a perplexing yet enviable radical
design object when it landed in competitions and annuals na-
tionwide. Surfers were its target audience, yet it was also fol-
24. founded Emigre, the clarion of the new
graphic design, with his wife, type de-
signer Zuzana Licko. The magazine
knocked the typographic establishment for a loop and
helped forever change visual communication and graphic
lowed by design practitioners and scholars. It was a turning design. Emigre was a laboratory for the new-new digital
point in publication design. Carson, its art director, created a typography that VanderLans type foundry was putting
vehicle rooted in raucous typography and design tomfoolery into the world, and a trailblazer in those uncertain early
that broke the same rules that Futurists and Dadaists had at- days when fonts became part of the ambient vocabulary.
tacked in the teens and 20s. With its deliberate design indul- Most designers were telling us the Macintosh was a fad
gences and computer-driven trickery, Beach Culture made a without any use for serious graphic design, VanderLans
statement that graphic design should not be simply a neutral has recalled. So at the time we felt very isolated within
frame for contentdesign tropes should be integrated into the the design community. We werent taken seriously at all.
content or even be the content. Carson catered to an audience We enjoyed the challenge and opportunities this tool of-
that was presumed literate enough to navigate through the fered, but we had no idea how big it would become, and
chaotic visuals and text. Although there were no rules about that it would solidify our place within it. Emigre issues
how a surng magazine should look, one would still not have were often designed in radically dierent styles from one
expected this to be a wellspring of typographic revolution, or another, some by guest designers, showing alternative
that its distinct style would wash up on the shores of main- ways of making typography using the Mac. Older Mod-
stream culture. Carson seized the opportunity; following in ern designers went nuts because the tenets of balance,
the footsteps of contemporary design experimenters, includ- hierarchy and elegance were turned on their ear. In 2005
ing Wolfgang Weingart, Rudy VanderLans and Neville Brody, the magazine ceased publication, in large part because
he began an expedition into new realms of visual presentation. of its tremendous production expense, nanced by type
But Carsons spin on typographic anarchy was dierent: He sales that declined when the economy dipped. But there
not only infused his pages with wit and irony, he accepted that were other reasons to discontinue Emigre, VanderLans
a magazine page is destined to be pulped, and should not be says. The world of graphic design was changing, the fo-
taken so seriously. Comically, it was taken seriously by design- cus became the internet and blogs, and I felt disconnected
ers and design historians. from much of it. It was too geeky for me. The legacy of
Emigres typography was the so-called design-culture wars
of the 90s, in which he and Licko fought with tradition-
alists over legibility and illegibility, classical versus experi-
mental. VanderLans concludes, Our type designs often
responded to the larger conversations that were circulat-
ing around design in general. Now our work is far more
inward-looking.

Carson: Magazine cover for Beach

Culture, 1990. VanderLans:
Magazine covers for Emigre #24,
1992, and Emigre #70, 2009.
 PRINTMAG.COM 57

Clockwise from top right: Poster for David Copperfield,

2012. Postage stamp, Emancipation Proclamation, 2013.
Poster for SVA, 2007.

GAIL ANDERSON (born 1962) is the quintes-

25. sential pot type masher. Her typography is

either pitch-perfect pastiche or a hybridized
version of Victorian, Deco and Futurist ap-
proaches. She ne-tuned her approach working with art direc-
tor Fred Woodward at Rolling Stone. Like actors on a stage,
Anderson directs letterforms to perform dramatic and comic
feats. In just two dimensions they emote, express and exude
energy that projects them o the page. In 2002, after a move
to SpotCo, her typography switched from the intimacy of a
magazine page to work that competes for the attention of the-
ater-goers. She is always looking for that little visual wink or
tiny gesture of extra care, Anderson says. Im all about the
wood-type bits and pieces. I love making those crunchy little
objects into other things, like faces. A fancy border and de-
tailed extras are always part of her repertoire. Id ask the de-
signers I work with to put them on everything, Anderson says,
but I like being employed.
For its human dimension, the art for The Good Body, the Eve
Ensler show about women and body image, struck just the
right chord with its curvy Isabelle Dervaux line drawing and
two ice-cream scoops for breasts. But Anderson may be best
known for the Avenue Q subway-inspired, puppet-fur logo, a
delightful image that became an indelible brand for the play.
Im denitely wittier on paper than in real life, she laments. I
think I approach the work looking for a little wink where I can,
because deep down, I hope people associate clever with smart.

Steven Heller is the co-chair of the MFA Design/Designer as Author + Entre-

preneur program at School of Visual Arts, and the author of more than 170
books. He is an AIGA medalist and received the 2011 Smithsonian Institution
National Design Award for Design Mind.