Font Submissions in the 1970's

Ray Larabie

I was looking through my Letraset and Mecanorma catalogs and wondering what the process was like for font submissions 40-50 years ago. Many of the new additions in each catalog were from established designers and non-exclusive, but some designs were submitted by young "indie" designers and perhaps students. Does anyone know what the process was like? Were designers involved in producing the final layout for the dry transfer sheets? Did each designer set sidebearings in order to set the spacing guides (dashes under the characters) that were included on the sheets?

James Puckett

Frank Romano probably knows. You can probably get in touch through the museum of printing. 

kupfers

At first, in the 1960s, there were lots of competitions to kick things off. Nick has some photos of VGC booklets on his Flickr, as one example from phototype times. https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicksherman/8316315454/in/photostream/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicksherman/8315252049

@Mark Simonson, please tell us more!

Florian Hardwig

By the 1970s, both Letraset and Mecanorma carried more and more exclusive designs. In previous years, their catalog was mostly comprised of adaptations of existing metal typefaces.

Some of Letraset’s exclusives were designed and produced in-house, by the studio members which over the 1970s included Colin Brignall, Alan Meeks, Freda Sack, Bob Newman, and others; while others were submitted by or commissioned from freelancers like Fred Lambert and Martin Wait. From what long-time studio manager Mike Daines writes in Faces from Letraset, I understand that most of the production work on external designs was done in-house, including cutting the stencils and hence defining the final outlines. It’s not explicitly mentioned, but I’d assume this extends to setting the sidebearings and certainly to laying out the sheets. In some cases, Letraset would also alter or add glyphs – Motter Femina’s second ‘r’ being one documented example.

In 1970, Letraset launched Letragraphica, with designs selected by a panel including Herb Lubalin and other well-known designers. This range of faces included both old and new designs, both exclusives and adaptations. In 1972, their International Typeface Design Competition attracted over 4,000 entries from all over the world. However, it didn’t yield a lot of entries that showed potential, in terms of design quality and marketability. After this experience, Letraset focused on their own studio’s creations, complemented by existing faces licensed from others – now mainly contemporary designs from Face Photosetting, ITC, Photo-Lettering, Vorarlberger Grafik, etc. – plus submissions from freelancers.

Mecanorma didn’t have such a studio with staff members that would work on their own designs. They sourced their exclusives in a permanent type contest. An article in Graphis from November 1972 sheds some light on the selection criteria and royalties:

Every two months the projects contributed by graphic designers from various nations are examined by a specialized commission. More than 300 type creations have been received. Those considered best suited to modern graphic needs are then issued in the form of transfer letters. The creator of the selected typeface receives a royalty of Fr. 0.15 for each sheet sold. Due to the well-organized distribution network of Mecanorma, the artist may receive anything between Fr. 2,000 [ca. 400 USD then] and Fr. 10,000 or more per year.

A 1970s catalog explains the process:

When submitting a new type design, it must be set in the following words:
“I Love Normatype”
It must be set once in capitals, and once in lower case (providing, of course, that the design is available in upper and lower case). The height of the capital letters should be 20mm or ¾ of an inch. The letters should be in black on a white background and may be photographic prints or photostats mounted on illustration board.
If a type design is selected by Mecanorma, S.A. the designer must, within 30 days after notification of such selection, submit finished artwork of the complete alphabet (upper and lower case, numbers, punctuation marks, etc.). The height of the letters on the finished artwork must be 50mm (2 inches). The completed alphabet will not be accepted if it does not correspond to the lettering style originally submitted. In this case all material will be returned to the designer.

This doesn’t sound as if the designers were involved in the finer details like spacing or sheet layout.

Ray Larabie

@Florian Hardwig that explains a lot about the surge of experimental looking faces in the Letraset catalog from the early 70's. I remember when I was little kid, noticing some of those Letragraphica faces disappearing. Joc Line is one I remember vanishing from the catalog and picking up a sheet on clearance. I didn't know about that book; just ordered it.

Every time I picked up my Mecanorma catalog and saw this page, I wondered how the submission process worked.

Stephen Coles

https://twitter.com/typographica/status/1452916251219546112

Mark Simonson

@kupfers I don't have anything to add about the process of submitting designs to Letraset, Zipatone, or Mecanorma beyond what @Florian Hardwig wrote.

I only had direct experience with submitting a face to ITC in the late seventies. Basically, you had to show drawings of what it looked like and a sample character showing a finished drawing. I did this and mailed my submission to ITC. After a few weeks, I got a letter confirming that it was received. About six months later, the submission was returned with an encouraging rejection letter. No idea what the process was if it was accepted.

I'm literally about to walk out the door to leave for a trip, but I can post some images later if anyone is interested.

Nick Shinn

I sent type design ideas to Letraset for several years during the 1970s and ’80s, without success.
I was working as an ad agency art director at the time, and my submissions were somewhat unfinished (“rough comps”), which is why, I presume, they weren’t accepted. Or else they were crap.

I had one typeface go into production at Typsettra in Toronto. They made it available for typositor and Diatronic (text setting), then ceased business when Les Usherwood died.

I had another typeface accepted at Headliners International, for phototypositor.

For both, my artwork indicated, as requested, only the baseline—no sidebearings or any other metric information.

Here’s what Typsettra wanted, pen and ink (and white-out paint): 4" tall.

Stephen Coles

Very cool to see an original drawing of your namesake — light traps and all!

Ray Larabie

@Mark Simonson Yes, I'd love to see more. Safe travels!
@Nick Shinn Shinn Bold? Can we see more? I love the reverse light traps on the corners. Was this basically what Shinn Bold ended up as in the digital version or was the phototype version significantly different?

I remember seeing Lee Usherwood's Alexon when I was a kid but not knowing what it was. I just thought of it as "the Canadian font" because I saw it on so many Canadian things.

Nick Shinn

Steve Jackaman digitized it and kept the drawings (except this), which he acquired with a lot of Typsettra assets. He removed the light traps and made other changes, including a horrible slanted italic. I haven’t made a cent off the digital fonts, so don’t promote them.

Marc Oxborrow

It's time for a Neue Shinn family, I'd say!

Nick Shinn

Sorry, that was then, it would be too much of a chore to revisit, I have some new ideas that interest me more, plus doing a variable version of Beaufort is my present chore.

Mark Simonson

My ITC submission from 1978 (I was 22)...

I made rub-down letters to set some sample text (a very presumptuous and immodest cover letter): 



This is the original mechanical. I sent a photostat of this:



Here's the sample drawing (at 4" cap height) and marker sketch on the left:



The sample settings (the rub-down letters) were all reduced from marker sketches.

I was not surprised it was rejected on hindsight. I had no idea how little I knew about type design, although I began to understand when I set the cover letter and realized how problematic those gigantic serifs were for spacing, plus the uneven proportions.

Florian Hardwig

I didn't know about that book; just ordered it.

Ray, just to manage your expectations: Faces from Letraset is a staple-bound booklet of 44 pages, and has hardly any of the eye candy that Unit’s Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution has to offer. 6 text pages are dedicated to “the story of the Letraset collection”, and another 8 to noteworthy designers and artists. The rest is comprised of an index of the library, with the names shown in the respective typeface, plus designer and release date. See some images on designer Sam Ingles’ portfolio. It covers the dry transfer faces and Fontek’s digital range. Note that only Letraset exclusives are included, that is everything from Aachen to Zipper, but not designs licensed from others, like Baby Teeth, Marvin, Motter Tektura & Ombra, Oxford, Yagi Link Double, etc. That said, I think it’s a splendid publication, packed with solid information.

Florian Hardwig

The selection criteria by type publishers are rarely publicly documented in detail, and change over time – they certainly depend on the phase the company is in: when starting up, there’s probably a greater openness to submissions, and quantity is favored over quality, in order to quickly build up a library. Cost of production (but also marketing) is an obvious factor, too.

In an interview conducted by Ilene Strizver for TDC’s Type Legends series, Ed Benguiat recounts the beginnings of his career as type designer. One day, Emil Schaedler, his teacher at the Workshop School of Advertising Art, had shown a Spencerian script typeface in class. “I decided to draw one, too. So I drew the first script. It took me about three days – it took [Schaedler] three years of whatever – and I took it to Photo-Lettering and showed it to Ed Rondthaler who was the president of Photo-Lettering, and he said ‘Beautiful! We’ll take it.’ Not realizing they’d take anything … It wouldn’t make any difference.” This was in the early 1950s. By the mid 1970s, Photo-Lettering had become more selective. A similar pattern can be observed for other eras and technologies, think Google Fonts.