Twentieth Century Type Designers

Trefoil, London, first edition, 1987. Cloth, 4to, 25 cm,. 168 pp, plates. From the blurb - "..Carter's new book examines the careers of a number of type designers working in this century, against the background of the enormous changes in the methods of creating and setting type, from metal characters composed by hand to the computerised technology of today. The introduction in America, a hundred years ago of three machines, the Linotype and Monotype hot-metal composing machines, and the Benton pantographic punchcutter, revolutionised the manufacture of type, and the Benton machine in particular caused a flood of new faces by designers most of whom could not cut a punch by hand. More recently, filmsetting and digital typesetting have brought new opportunities as well as new disciplines The designers of this century have worked from widely different motives, ranging from a practical need to produce faces for new machines to an idealistic attempt to create perfect letterforms for our age. Twentieth century type designers looks at the work of Goudy, Rogers, Koch, Dwiggins, Gill, Morison, Mardersteig, Van Krimpen, Trump, Tschichold, Excoffon, Zapf, Frutiger and others, as well as recognising the contribution of skilled technicians such as Benton, who redrew and improved many existing types; and it outlines the adaptation of classic designs of the past to the various changes in typesetting technology, notably in the series of recuttings undertaken between the world wars by the English Monotype Corporation. Booklabel of the bibliophile A R A Hobson on front pastedown endpaper, clipping of the TLS review laid in. Near Fine in Very Good dustwrapper.