“… every job is unique”

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DAY 44: 29 April 2018

10×10

Ellen

Lupton

Typeface above is by Lucas Sharp

This is the fifth episode of 10×10. Produced by Alex Tomlinson as part of the Rhoda Lubalin Fellowship at Cooper Union, created for Lubalin 100. Each Sunday a new podcast will be posted, with 10 in total, resulting in 100 things you may not have known about Herb Lubalin. 

 

This week sees Ellen Lupton discuss Herb Lubalin and his legacy. Listen to the podcast and read some of the highlights below.

Lubalin was extremely  influential

By the late 1970’s, Lubalin was seen as a dominant force in the design profession and thus held a comparatively conservative outlook. However, studying Lubalin’s work allowed Ellen Lupton to discover the revolutionary aspects of his work and the greater arc of influence. 

Lubalin was incredibly prolific

By 1970, Lubalin was involved in a string of things—he had his studio, he was contributing to numerous magazines, and he co-owned a type foundry.

Lubalin found talent

Lubalin was exceptional at finding and working with talented people to help create his unique visual style. It was something that many designers attempted to replicate—sometimes with success!

Lubalin was interested in language

He loved word-play, and although Lubalin is heavily associated with a particular neo-Victorian flourished aesthetic, it was often a result of an intense investment in the language itself.

Lubalin considered every job unique

 

Lubalin approached each project as a unique problem requiring an equally unique solution. He would condense letterforms and shift proportions, editing typography to fit the specific solution—something that is sometimes lost in modern graphic design.

Lubalin was an identical twin

Being an identical twin herself, Ellen Lupton can empathize with Lubalin being a twin.

Lubalin created this:

Read more about Harlem on My Mind in our previuos post.

Lubalin was an incredible editorial designer

Lubalin did beautiful things with photography and set headlines wonderfully. He was hugely concerned with how the language combined and was able to weave letterforms together to find structure.

Lubalin created this:

Lubalinesque Klim

 

There are numerous designers and type designers who are seen to be influenced by Lubalin, but the luscious curves and thick/thin contrasts of Kris Sowersby’s typefaces exude elements of Lubalin’s aesthetic.

Interested to hear more? Last Sunday’s episode was with Louise Fili.

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How to stop reading, and why.

DAY 45: 30 April 2018

word

and

image

We continue the series of posts devoted to a closer analysis of a piece of design by Herb Lubalin. Alexander Tochilovsky, the Curator of the Herb Lubalin Study Center, explains what makes them significant. Read the previous posts, days 22, 26 and 40. 

 

This is a story of what a designer can learn by looking at something that may not necessarily seem hip, and perhaps a bit dated. 

In the mid 1950s medical advertising relied predominantly on images. The ad above is typical of that genre. As I pointed out before, Herb Lubalin was able to make type become a concept. The next step involved collapsing the space between text and image. In 1957 Lubalin designed the Pyribenzamine ad which made text into an image.

 

Lubalin describes his approach:

“I’ve always thought that typography was more than putting words on a page, that it was a very illustrative medium, like illustration and photography.”

 

Basically, that was what he did. He made type act exactly like an illustration. The effectiveness of this approach is the fact that it engages the viewer on a deeper level. The brain is processing language at the same time as it is processing the image. Those two processes are distinct functions in the brain, creating a deeper connection as more of the brain is active. 

This approach has long become part of design education, especially in studying typography. Most students are taught how type can be visually animated to express an idea, to become an image. Most designers, however, will probably not choose to do something like this as it seems so dated. But I firmly believe that there is still plenty to learn from this piece. If we can understand the ways in which design has evolved we may be able to lift those lessons out of history and apply to current design problems. 

 

The biggest takeaway from this piece, for me, is the concept of “not reading”. How was it possible for Lubalin to be able to combine text and image in this manner if this was not common practice? Intuition, luck, genius? Perhaps. Whatever it was it’s impossible to know now, but I think what was essential for this to occur was that Lubalin had to stop himself from reading. How does one do that? Well, it’s quite simple—and designers do this all the time.

 

If we look at a word not for the semantic meaning that it has, but rather at the letters themselves we can find the answer. The letters at their simplest are a set of shapes. We can tell letters apart by observing the differences in how they are shaped. A ‘c’ is an incomplete oval, while an ‘o’ is different in that it is more of an oval. That’s, essentially, how we learn to read: memorizing the differences in shapes. So, if you see a word by its shapes, you are able to ‘not read’ that word. You are seeing just below the language level. If you see letters and words as shapes, then how different are they from photos or illustrations? Not that different at all. If they are shapes that means you should be able to treat them the same. This allows you to alter them, to modify as you see fit. To perhaps even make it into a photograph as was the case with the Cough ad.

 

This method makes a lot of design work possible. Designers often blend reading and not-reading when they compose with typography. It’s a powerful tool that we can be reminded of from time to time, and can call upon to create work that cuts deeper into the mind of the viewer. This kind of thinking changed design and advertising. 

A way of thinking that changed everything

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DAY 46: 1 May 2018

Sudler & Hennessey

Herb Lubalin at S&H in 1956

Arthur Sudler and Matthew Hennessey met in the late 1930s while working for the Squibb pharmaceutical company. They started their new agency, Sudler & Hennessey in 1941, with Hennessey as president and Sudler as chairman.
 

“We were two people with similar ideas. If your name’s on the door, you want the best product. I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less. And nor was Sudler.”
—Matt Hennessey


Sudler & Hennessey became a proving ground for designers looking to develop their skills and learn the new, revolutionary ways of thinking that Sudler & Hennessey was quickly becoming known for.

“There was a design thing going on that was exciting as hell.” —George Lois


Between 1945 and 1964, Herb Lubalin worked at Sudler & Hennessey (later it became Sudler, Hennessey & Lubalin), alongside many renown designers, art directors, illustrators, and photographers. Some of the more notable names of employees who spent time working at S&H:

Charles Addams

Tom Carnase

Seymour Chwast

Carl Fischer

Art Kane

Helmut Krone
George Lois

Peter Lubalin

Fred Pappert

John Pistilli
Ronald Searle
Ernie Smith
Jerome Snyder
Andy Warhol

In 1953 Sudler & Hennessey decided to focus on the pharmaceutical industry, resulting in it becoming the leading medical agency within 15 years. With the growing reputation of Herb Lubalin, the company expanded into becoming an advertising agency, with a strong design studio helmed by Lubalin. After Arthur Sudler passed away, in 1973, Sudler & Hennessey became part of Young & Rubicam. Hennessey retired 11 years later. S&H led the way in changing the way advertising worked. They took a risk on the talent of Herb Lubalin and it paid off in significant ways. The time spent at S&H was instrumental in helping Lubalin realize his strengths and to explore the possibilities of what design and typography could do. 

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This approach has long become part of design education, especially in studying typography. Most students are taught how type can be visually animated to express an idea, to become an image. Most designers, however, will probably not choose to do something like this as it seems so dated. But I firmly believe that there is still plenty to learn from this piece. If we can understand the ways in which design has evolved we may be able to lift those lessons out of history and apply to current design problems. 

 

The biggest takeaway from this piece, for me, is the concept of “not reading”. How was it possible for Lubalin to be able to combine text and image in this manner if this was not common practice? Intuition, luck, genius? Perhaps. Whatever it was it’s impossible to know now, but I think what was essential for this to occur was that Lubalin had to stop himself from reading. How does one do that? Well, it’s quite simple—and designers do this all the time.

 

If we look at a word not for the semantic meaning that it has, but rather at the letters themselves we can find the answer. The letters at their simplest are a set of shapes. We can tell letters apart by observing the differences in how they are shaped. A ‘c’ is an incomplete oval, while an ‘o’ is different in that it is more of an oval. That’s, essentially, how we learn to read: memorizing the differences in shapes. So, if you see a word by its shapes, you are able to ‘not read’ that word. You are seeing just below the language level. If you see letters and words as shapes, then how different are they from photos or illustrations? Not that different at all. If they are shapes that means you should be able to treat them the same. This allows you to alter them, to modify as you see fit. To perhaps even make it into a photograph as was the case with the Cough ad.

 

This method makes a lot of design work possible. Designers often blend reading and not-reading when they compose with typography. It’s a powerful tool that we can be reminded of from time to time, and can call upon to create work that cuts deeper into the mind of the viewer. This kind of thinking changed design and advertising.