John L. Renshaw (Spartan)

Fernando Díaz

Hey everyone.

I'm searching for a picture of John L. Renshaw, the designer of Spartan.
A student is making a type catalogue containing 10 typefaces with the designers profile and picture but we can't find any of John.

Thank you! 

Thomas Phinney

I found his obituary which has a photo. Sorry he looks so dour!

André G. Isaak

Thomas Phinney said:

I found his obituary which has a photo. Sorry he looks so dour!

"Spartan" might be a better word than "Dour".

Fernando Díaz

Thank you Thomas!

Glad to finally see his face.

Nick Shinn

Paul Renner designed Spartan, which was a knock-off of Futura.

Thomas Phinney

Renner designed Futura (or at least the initial design which was then tamed by Bauer typecutters). I thought Renshaw did Spartan. It is certainly derivative of Futura, so there is every reason to credit Renner as well, and maybe even first.

Fernando Díaz

Nick Shinn said:

Paul Renner designed Spartan, which was a knock-off of Futura.

Perhaps that order came directly from ATF (or Linotype). He made an interpretation and so I don't think that diminishes his work as a type designer. Follwoing the same reasoning you can say that Helvetica was a "knock-off" of Akzidenz Grotesk

Nick Shinn

Fonts. com: “The Spartan font family was released by American Type Founders around 1936 as an American copy of Futura.”

A copy is not an interpretation.
Props to W.A. Dwiggins and Linotype for designing an original American sans, Metro.

@Fernando Diaz:

you can say that Helvetica was a "knock-off" of Akzidenz Grotesk 

Yes, I have in fact said that, and demonstrated it quite conclusively IMHO—but that’s another story.

John Hudson

Paul Renner designed Spartan, which was a knock-off of Futura.

This is where credits such as ‘John L Renshaw (after Paul Renner)’ are useful. Saying ‘Paul Renner designed Spartan’ attributes to Renner decisions that he never made and with which I think he would disagree, e.g. the Spartan M. Yes, Spartan was manufactured to directly compete with Futura, and is in many respects a copy rather than a new design in the same genre, but it is not Futura, and not as good.

Nick Shinn

Good point, John.
I like the “after”, and will add that to my own revivals of other designers’ work.

Because the present convention is to list the redesigner(s) and the original, as if they are co-designers.

Florian Hardwig

Renshaw contributed to the Spartan series, but giving him all credit for the design (or blame for the copy) doesn’t nail it. According to Mac McGrew, the series started at Mergenthaler Linotype with Sanserif 52 and Italic early in 1939, which were later that year offered as Spartan Black, alongside more weights. In 1941 ATF started to cut some of these typefaces for manual composition. “Over the following dozen years or more, additional weights and widths were drawn by Bud Renshaw and Gerry Powell for ATF, and by Linotype staff designers.” Renshaw didn’t start the copy, nor did he come up with the name Spartan. He didn’t even work for Linotype, the company that initiated it, and wasn’t the only one at ATF to work on the adaptations and expansions. A more accurate credit would read something like this:

Started by anonymous Linotype staff members after Paul Renner [insert qualifiers about Futura having more than one parent as well], adopted and expanded by ATF staff members including but probably not limited to John L. Renshaw and Gerry Powell, and also more Linotype staff members.

Not as catchy, but that’s how type history often is: muddy and convoluted.

Fernando Díaz

Nice point @Florian Hardwig!

And thanks to everyone for the insightful information! 

Hope you all have a wonderful end of the year

John Savard

I see that I don't know who to blame for Intertype's Vogue either. That typeface, although also created to rival Futura, is not entirely a copy; it is easily distinguishable from Futura.

Personally, I disliked Vogue, finding it unattractive. I'm most familiar with it from the pages of CRACKED magazine.

I would definitely say that however much Paul Renner may deserve the credit for anything good about Spartan, however close an imitation of Futura Spartan may be, the statement "Paul Renner designed Spartan", if it appeared without context and without qualifications, would be highly misleading. But this thread provides context - and through it we discovered that saying that John L. Renshaw designed Spartan is just as misleading... and for the same reason; neither Renshaw nor Renner worked for Linotype.

The Wikipedia entry on Spartan listed John L. Renshaw as its designer. I've made a correction; Wikipedia got this from Fonts in Use which was its reference.