What is the best source (online or in book) for a list of his type designs? And an analysis of his
modus operandi as a type designer?
I am aware of Baby Fat, Baby Teeth, Baby Curls and Neo Futura (Glaser Stencil), all shown in the 1973 Monograph Milton Glaser Graphic Design.
In it, he comments, “I was surprised that the type reads as well as it does, in spite of the visual interruption of the letterforms”. (About the stencil design Neo Futura). He was certainly one to push the boundaries of character-recognition, at least at that point in his career.
Notably, in the monograph, George Leavitt is credited for “lettering execution”.
Poster image from miltonglaser.com. Typeface: Babyfat.
Comments
Baby Fat (2 wids + 4 var)
BabyTeeth (8 var)
Filmsense (2 var)
Futura Stencil (3 wts)
Houdini (6 var)
Under "GLASER-LEVITT":
Glaser-Levitt Eightway Shaded (16 var) [Only 8 are shown in the book]
I've never heard of any others.
You’ll also find links to a post by Zachary Sachs on Container List, the blog of the School of Visual Arts Archives and Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives, which has a number of images of photostats. The page is gone, but luckily still available at the Internet Archive. In addition to George Leavitt’s involvement, Norman Hathaway mentions that Michael Doret had a hand in the drawing of Glaser Stencil and Baby Fat.
Looking at specimens in the post, I am struck by how good they are and, even more telling, how I can remember having seen each one, in some cases not for decades. Milton’s type designs have the quality to which all type designers aspire: they look necessary. They are type, since the letters are intended to be repeated—how’s that for a simple definition!
Let’s hear it for stat cam typography! For a period of about seven or eight years, just before the advent of desktop scanners, I owned a really good Konica photocopier that enlarged and reduced very accurately and could accept paper heavy enough to take hot wax without discoloration. Using old type specimens and many of my late friend Dan Solo’s books, I could comp all kinds of fonts with surprising accuracy. The copier was my way around all of the expensive paper and darkroom supplies. Because copiers went out of adjustment quickly, I paid a Konica repair man “under the table” to give me a lesson on how to do the fine-tuning myself. But as soon as I had a scanner, I no longer needed it, so it languished in a corner until I donated it to a school. Talk about transient technology . . .