Tenth Letter of the Alphabet: June 2012

Monday, June 25, 2012

Street Scene: John D Wendel

• N E W Y O R K C I T Y •

Fifth Avenue between 39th and 40th Streets, Manhattan

(Next Monday: The Dynamite 3-D Poster Book)

Monday, June 18, 2012

Wood Type: Morgan Press

Douglas Morgan, publisher

John Alcorn, designer

The catalog was published circa 1964.

It was reviewed in the Journal of the

Printing Historical Society, Number 1, 1965.

The Peculiar Manicule has all pages.

Related Post

Dan X. Solo, Man of a Thousand Faces

Further Reading
Fine Print on Type: The Best of Fine Print

Magazine on Type and Typography (1988)

(Next Post on Monday: John D. Wendel)

Monday, June 11, 2012

Alphabets: Dan X. Solo

DANIEL “DAN” X. SOLO

April 29, 1928 – May 15, 2012

Links to articles and video

Alameda’s Neptune Beach

The Type Heritage Project

Urban Influence

I have four of Dan X. Solo’s books, Art Nouveau Display Alphabets, Circus Alphabets, Condensed Alphabets, and Victorian Display Alphabets. When I wanted to photostat an alphabet, sometimes it was a chore to make the page level because the book, in some instances, did not lie flat. So, I used an X-acto knife to cut off the book’s spine, then used a three-hole punch on the pages, and put the pages into a binder. I used some of the wood type alphabets, from his books, on one of my Christmas cards.

Related Post
Dan X. Solo, Man of a Thousand Faces

(Next Monday: Wood type and the Morgan Press)

Monday, June 4, 2012

Under Cover: The Color Wizard

In 1988, Byron Preiss collaborated with Bank Street College to produced a children’s book series, Bank Street Ready-to-Read, to be published by Bantam Little Rooster. The series had three levels: Level 1 (Blue), Getting Ready to Read; Level 2 (Red), Reading Together; and Level 3 (Yellow), I Can Read It Myself. The Color Wizard, one of the first books in the series, was written by Barbara Brenner and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. I was responsible for the design.

I do not have the color comprehensives of the proposed cover designs. So, what I’ve done is to place two of the proposed panel designs over a printed cover. Byron showed the design to Bantam, which gave its tentative approval. A short time later, Byron informed me that Bantam rejected the design. The panel was dropped altogether.

Rejected cover design

For the revised cover design, a designer at Bantam came up with the “bullseye” flanked by “Bank Street” and “Ready-to-Read”; Byron called it “the propeller”. Each level was in a colored capsule, which he called “the hot dog”. The font was ITC Souvenir. The Color Wizard title, based on LetraSet Glastonbury, was hand-lettered, in outline, by the Dillons. The credits were set in the font ITC Korinna.

Front cover design

The first page of the book with art

picked up from the interior art.

Title page with art
from the last story page

First page with text

The Dillons produced a sample spread with hand-lettered text, but the lettering was rejected. Two sample spreads were made with fonts from the ITC Benguiat Gothic and ITC Korinna families.

Photocopy of sample art with hand-lettered text

Photocopy of sample art with ITC Benguiat Gothic text

The art was ink on watercolor paper, but before the colors were added, photostats were made of the line art. Byron planned to produce a coloring book version but it never happened.