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Tag Archives: advertising

Book of the Week — Prelude to Eden

03 Monday Jul 2017

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"graphic designer", acetate, advertising, aluminum, American, binding, book designer, Caledonia, calligrapher, Chiswick Bookshop, Dorothy Vernard Abbe, Electra, Fabriano, Frederic Goudy, Herman Cohen, Hingham, marionettes, Mergenthaler Linotype Company, photography, puppet, Püterschein Academy, silk-screen, theater, typeface, typographer, United States, William Addison Dwiggins, woodcarving, World War II

PN1980-D85-1956-Bow
“But I know, I know that they’ve got me in the wrong place! I know it! I know it! I know it!”

PRELUDE TO EDEN: A DRAMA FOR MARIONETTES
William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956)
Hingham, MA: Püterschein-Hingham Press, 1956

William Addison Dwiggins is one of the best known American book designers and typographers of the twentieth century. He studied under Frederic Goudy. He is credited with coining the term “graphic designer,” a term he used in reference to himself in 1922. His best known typefaces, still in use today, are Electra and Caledonia, created for the Mergentahler Linotype Company, for whom Addison worked from 1929 until after World War II. He was also a calligrapher and was legendary for his work in advertising. Dwiggins loved woodcarving, a passion that led to the creation of his marionette theater. He began a puppet group he called the Püterschein Academy, through which he produced several shows, including Prelude to Eden.

This “drama” is set in “A Wilderness Northwest of Eden” and features four marionette characters: Drace, the District Warden (who became The Serpent); Dijul, a kindly Antediluvian; Lillith, a young woman; and Azrael, an Archangel and Bailiff of Eden.

PN1980-D85-1956-PreludePN1980-D58-1956-Draco

Illustrated throughout using what is referred to in the colophon as a “tone-line” process, which involved photographing and then silk-screening images of Dwiggins’ marionettes. Typography, composition, printing, silkscreens by Dorothy Vernard Abbe. Dorothy Venard Abbe is the author of The Dwiggins Marionettes, 1970. She worked as a book designer at several university presses. Bound in aluminum sheet boards, attached with green Fabriano paper at the spine, also by Abbe. This is the first time that metal covers were used as a binding design in the United States.

PN1980-D85-1956-cover

Rare Books copy in original acetate dust jacket. It is a presentation copy, inscribed by Abbe to Herman Cohen, owner of the Chiswick Bookshop, and his wife, Viv. The original mailing box survives, split at the seams, and addressed to Cohen. Laid in are two letters from Dorothy Abbe written in black ink, one with the original mailing envelope. Edition of one hundred and seventy-five copies.

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Book of the Week — A Grammar of Color

12 Monday Dec 2016

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advertising, Alfred H. Munsell, Arthur S. Allen, balance, behaviour, color, color system, dimension, Fortune Magazine, grammar, Massachusetts, mathematics, Mittineague, Munsell System of Color, paper trade, printing, proportion, quality, Rudolph Ruzicka, Strathmore Paper Company, Thomas M. Cleland

qc495-c7-1921-title

“The sense of comfort is the outcome of balance, while marked unbalance immediately urges a corrective. That this approximate balance is desirable may be shown by reference to our behavior, as to temperatures, quality of smoothness and roughness, degrees of light and dark, proportion of work and rest. One special application of this quality is balance which underlies beautiful color.”
— A. H. Munsell

“The three dimensions of color are not involved in the mysteries of higher mathematics. There is nothing about them which should not be as readily comprehended by the average reader as the three dimensions of a box, or any other form which can be felt or seen. We have been unaccustomed to regarding color with any sense of order and it is this fact, rather than any complexity inherent in the idea itself, which will be the source of whatever difficulty may be encountered by the reader, who faces this conception of color for the first time.”
— T. M. Cleland


A GRAMMAR OF COLOR. ARRANGEMENTS OF…
Thomas Maitland Cleland (1880-1964)
Mittineague, MA: The Strathmore Paper Co., 1921
QC495 C7 1921

Thomas Cleland wrote and designed this manual of color, funded by the Strathmore Paper Company. He suggested nearly endless options, good and bad, for printing various colored inks onto colored papers. Twenty-six paper samples from Strathmore were provided in a separate envelope at the back of the book for experimentation. Soon after publication of this book Cleland became the art director for Fortune Magazine. Cleland’s text, with diagrams, explains the dynamics of the color system developed by theorist Alfred H. Munsell, who introduces Cleland’s essay. Munsell died just before the publication of the book.

A. H. Munsell devoted his life perfecting his Munsell System of Color. This is the first presentation of his system to the printing, advertising and paper trade. Nineteen folding color-printed specimens demonstrate color combinations.

qc495-c7-1921-3dcolor

Arthur S. Allen selected and arranged the color sheets.

Two plates engraved by artist and type designer Rudolph Ruzicka (1883-1978) depict balanced and unbalanced color schemes. Born in the Czech Republic, Ruzicka worked as a consultant to Mergenthaler Linotype Company for fifty years. He contributed illustrations to books published by the Grolier Club, Lakeside Press, and Overbrook Press. He collaborated with D. B. Updike on the design of several books for Merrymount Press.

qc495-c7-1921-balancespread

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