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The Monotype Corporation, 1922-1932

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The Monotype Corporation, 1922-1932 Innovative Industrial Design and Modern Public Culture: The Monotype Corporation, 1922-1932 Claire Badaracco • MarquetteUniversity Describedas one of the "benevolentmonopolies" ruled by autocratson a scale exceedingthat of Italian Renaissanceprinces, the Monotype Corporationdominated Anglo-American typesetting for booksand advertising over severalgenerations [14]. Monotypeintroduced an unprecedented numberof innovativebook and publicitytypeface product "families" to the emergingmass market communicationsindustry. The conceptof "families," originatedby Henry LewisBullen of AmericanType FoundersCo. of New Jersey,was the printingindustry's response to the growingimportance of the press-agentin the early modern period. To develop these families, composing-machinistsentered the type designarena. Each familyconsisted of a range of sizes and includedornamental dashes, brackets, decorative flourishes,as well as companionboldfaces for displaypurposes all in one brand face [5]. Foundedat the turn of the century,the MonotypeCorporation, U.K. establisheda programof recuttingsof "families"of classicaldesigns in 1922 underManaging Director Harold MalcolmDuncan. Duncan'ssuccessor from 1924 to 1942,William Isaac Burch, developedthe SuperCaster technology, whichgreatly expanded the machine'scapacity to set a greater range and number of lines at one time. With the new technology,the firm introduced what it called "new creations,""modern" families, claimed as exclusively Monotypebrand productions. These prompted unprecedented sales and an influence over the look of books and advertisementsso widespreadthat it shapedwhat is called"public culture" [8]. The diffusion of "modern"innovations epitomized ideological controversiesof "post-revolutionary"industrial designers in a numberof ways [12]. As saleswere linkedto publicacceptance of a popularsocio-aesthetic, packagedcampaigns to educateconsumers became inseparable from the goal of elevatingthe levelof publicculture through massive education, marketing, or publicrelations campaigns [6]. Printedproducts and printing technologies of the 1920sand 1930stied "modernism"to the conceptof socialutility as a keydeterminant in the valueof commercialinnovation through a philosophy •Theauthor wishes tothank the National Endowment forthe Humanities, theBritish Academy, the BibliographicalSociety of America,and MarquetteUniversity Graduate School for their support of this research. BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC HISTORY, SecondSeries, Volume Twenty, 1991. Copyright(c) 1991by the BusinessHistory Conference. ISSN 0849-6825. 226 227 of Functionalism. Rooted in the continental artistic revolutions that flourished between1890 and 1920,Functionalism argued that manufacturedgoods should have qualitiesof socialutility and permanence[12]. Best-Selling Type Fonts The best-sellingMonotype fonts in the twentiethcentury were new creationsrather than recuttings. The TimesRoman 327, introducedin 1932, sold close to 40,000 sets, and the Gill Sans 262, introducedin 1930, sold almosthalf that manyover the nextfifty years[16]. The otherrecord-selling fontsduring the centurywere introducedearlier in the company'shistory: in 1901 (Old Style2, selling25,000 sets), 1923 (Baskerville 169, selling20,000 sets),1902 (Modern Extended 7, selling19,000 sets), and 1913(Plantin 110, selling10,000 sets) [16]. More than half the company'sforty-three brand familieswere introduced during the innovative decade between 1926-1936 [13]. Eric Gill updatedEdward Johnston's 1913 face designed for FrankPick of the LondonUnderground in 1928[18]. Monotypeused the Gill Sans,and later the Times New Roman, designedby StanleyMorison, as the basisfor two landmarknational corporate identity campaigns for theLondon and Northern Rail Systemin 1929 and the LondonTimes newspaper in 1931 [22]. The nationalscope of standardizationin thesecorporate identity campaigns was unprecendented[16]. While their preciseextent and consequenceis a matter of interpretation,the historicalfacts demonstratethat the producersat MonotypeCorporation believed that theywere exertinga positiveinfluence over the massof commonreaders, educating them to see not onlythe style of letters but the cultural messagesthose letters embodied [1]. These campaignsfor the newlynationalized British railroad and for London'sbest- read newspaperillustrate how commercialletters functionas productsand socialconstructs within the culturaleconomy [7]. History of the Company Monotypewas a type, lead, and rule casteras well as a composing machinemanufacturer. The idea behind Monotype'sinnovations--lines of individualtype that self-justifiedusing expanded spaces between words and betweenfonts of singletypes in "families"--servedas the marketingbasis for the products[16]. With a full complementof compositionfaces for books, journalism,and magazines, including display faces for advertising,signs, and posters,and a rangefrom 5 to 24 point,Monotype claimed that its products approachedthe hand-setmethod more closelythan anyother known method of mechanicalcomposition [10]. The Monotypemachine itself was a second-generationmechanical composition typesetter, succeeding the Linotype (inventedby Otto Mergenthaler)first demonstratedat the 1893 Chicago ColumbianExposition [10]. Inventedby an American,Tolbert Lanston,in 1887,the rightswere soldfor œ222,000in 1897to the Earl of Dunraven,following a chancemeeting as the machinewas being shipped to Englandfrom Philadelphia.Dunraven formed a syndicatewith œ550,000and started the Lanston Monotype 228 Corporation,building two limitedfont machinesin 1897,one in the United Statesand one in the United Kingdom. Limited font machineswere for newspaperwork and other relatively uncomplicated printing jobs. Within two years,however, Dunraven abandoned the idea of a limitedfont machineas unworkable[10]. Headed by J. S. Bancroft,the Philadelphiabranch of Monotypecontinued to experimentwith improvingthe technologyof the limited font machinery,while Dunraven'ssyndicate built a secondmachine with a full rangeof 224 characters.Lacking investors to underwritethe cost of cuttingand perfectingtypefaces, the Americancompany could do little to expandits marketand insteadconcentrated on improvingtechnology on the soon-to-becomeobsolete limited font machine[10]. In order for the United Kingdomto manufactureits own machinery ratherthan wait for Philadelphia'sshipments, Monotype U.K. constructedits own factoryin Salsford,Redhill. Frank Hinman Pierpont,an Americanwho had beenworking for the TypographCompany of Germany,joined Monotype to supervise.By the time Philadelphiashipped its first ten machinesin April 1901,matrices for the typefaceswere beingproduced in the Redhillplant accordingto slightlydifferent specifications than thoserequired by the U.S. machines.To accommodatethe difference,every machine that arrivedfrom Philadalphiawas completely stripped at the Redhillplant andreassembed by Britishmechanics [16]. Amongthe severalunanswered questions about the company'shistory is whetheror not the use of differentspecifications was intendedto drive the U.S. companyout of business;the U.K. operation succeeded,and within a shorttime the Philadelphiaoperation closed. The capabilityof a machinecompositor with a reach of 251 characterswith overhangingstrokes gave Monotype U.K. an advantagein cuttingOriental and other exoticfaces that appealedto a globalmarket [10]. Until 1920,Monotype designs were conventional. The firstfont, "Series 1,"was issued in 1900,and thereafterthe firm cut "bread-and-butterAlbions, Clarendons,Grotesques, Old Facesand Moderns"[20]. The corporation issueda numberof facestargeted for the continent:Russian (Series 17) in 1907,Irish (Series24) in 1903,Fraktur (Series 28) in 1904,Greek (Series 90) in 1910, and Typewriter(Series 82) in 1911 [13]. Monotypereached aggressivelyfor moderndesigns that wouldappeal to the massmarket [20]. Gill Sans and London and Northern Railroad Monotype'sSuper Caster made the companycompetitive in the burgeoning advertising,poster, and publicity printing businesses. Comparatively,book printing lagged behind. Introduced in January1929, the Super Castermade possiblethe developmentof an interrelatedgroup of twentyfour familiescomprising 235 fonts;display types could be blownup to 72 point with variationsof light, bold, and extra-bold,condensed and extra-condensed,cameo and shadow[20]. Not onlywas the bookindustry lagging behind the advertisingindustry in 1922;book fonts were more complexto develop,often requiring a rangeof fractionsand accents, as well as geographical, astronomical, mathematical, and 229 linguisticcharacters. One publisherrequired more than 8,000 punchesof specialtypes, including decorative ornaments. With the SuperCaster's unprecedented capability to developa family of facesin an extensiverange of sizes,Monotype was able to offer the British Rail Systemuse of its full rangeof fontsand sizesfor a corporateidentity campaignwhen the systemwas first nationalizedin 1929. Their selectionof the Gill Sanstypeface was basedon aestheticsand on legibility(the consumer'sability to readat a glanceor in a crowd),and on the principlesof masspsychology [17]. The realitiesof hiringa greatnumber of job printers, whoseabilities, training, education, and equipment might differ widely, drove standardization[18]. The Gill Sanswas easyto print and requiredlittle expertiseto reproduce. Over the next fifty years, more than eighteen thousandsets were sold worldwide, making it the fifthmost widely distributed typefacein the corporation'shistory. The Gill Sansremains the standardface
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