Recent book chronicles history of the periodical, explains why it was important

My favorite spreads in the recent book from Mark Batty Publishers, U&lc: Influencing Design & Typography, edited by John D. Barry, are the pages from pp 62 to 65, exhibiting an article from the periodcal’s number Volume 10 Numer 2, published in 1983.

The article, titled “Almost Instant Graphics”, details and depicts the design and assembly of on-air graphics for the CBS Evening News, amongst other programs. It describes dazzling new graphics assembly tools such as the “AVA” (Ampex Visual Art) machine, which interfaces with the user via a stylus; another computer, cryptically called DUBNER, which was used to create graphic and add animation, and the ESS, or Electronic Still Store, which functioned as an online library–keeping a then-incredible 70,000 images available for instant retrieval.

If the desicription seemed a bit glowing and breatless, that can be understood; in 1983, your average graphic designer was still doing mechanicals, of course; the first Macintoshes were still a year in the future, the first release Aldus Pagemaker was still two years out, and ETA for the version 1.0 of Photshop was 1990–seven years hence. So any current graphic artist looking at the CBS setup would have felt like a kid in a candy store. The title of the article even hints at this: the title is cut out from type sheets, pasted down to an artboard with visible gutter lines, and held down in sompe places with tape.

The Shoulders of Giants

Of the notable type-oriented publications, U&lc (said “upper and lower case”) casts a long shadow. Founded in 1973 by type greats Herb Lubalin, Aaron Burns and Ed Rondthaler and intended as a vehicle for self-promotion by International Typeface Corporation, its pedigree couldn’t easily be more undoubted or stellar, and it obviously wasn’t statisfied to simply exhibit the new and interesting from the ITC foundry.

Each issue, driven originally by an editorial team headed by Lubalin and passing through a succession of designers down through its run, not only routinely explored the idea of type as art but also seemed to strive to make layout do dazzling things as well. The article referenced above not only communicated the interface of two ages by obvious visual references to mechanical pasteup but wasn’t afraid to leave a more than a quarter of a facing page absolutely blank, thereby increasing the overall punch of the layout. In other spreads the title dominates the text as though it were going to rub it out; on another, the text stays to a tight cross in the middle of the layout with copious white space all around. Letterforms are found in nature and made out of cotton swabs; a portrait is formed out of a story’s letterforms, varying the darkness by varying the point size and kerning. The alphabet was famously found in butterfly’s wings. Lubalin’s famous unused logotype for Mother & Child magazine makes its obligatory appearance. Everybody who could get it, got it, and almost everybody who got them, saved them.

U&lc looked at the world of type, documenting as well as setting trends, for 26 years. Due to dynastic changes (ITC’s parent company sold it in 1999, breaking up the company and selling the name and library to what is now known as Monotype Imaging) the print periodical no longer exists.

A Fitting Look

The book, edited by U&lc’s last editor, John D. Berry, is a love song to this late and important publication, attractively layed out and engaging with endpapers and endpaper foldouts showing each and every front page of each and every issue. The front of the book itself contains four insightful essays by Berry, Joyce Rutter Kaye, Rhonda Rubenstein, and Steven Heller, but the balance of the 192-page book (from pp 30 to 180) shows spreads from selected articles over the run of the publication that, while somewhat reduced, are clearly readable in and over themselves, giving the reader a dead-on sense of what it must have been to be a U&lc reader.

As a comparative late-comer to the world of type, I feel as though I’ve missed out on the best of it all, what with the demise of U&lc and similar publications. This book allowed me to get in on the action by bringing the best of the publication straight to me. Past readers and fans of the magazine will find this a memorial with no regrets and no despair, just fun and excitement and a concrete demonstration of what a type publication can be.

U&lc was (and still is) important. The book U&lc:Influencing Design and Typography will, in a most inspiring way, explain why.

By The Numbers:

• Title: U&lc: Influencing Typography and Design
• Publisher:Mark Batty Publisher, 2006
• ISBN: 0-9724240-9-1
• Availability and Information: [1] Publisher’s page, [2] Amazon.com.