This decade saw the creation of the Committee for Education in Letter Forms, which would be a driving force in ATypI’s educational efforts for type and typography. (The name of the committee occasionally morphed, even in English; one version said it was for education in “Letterforms and Related Characters.”) This committee, which was proposed by André Gürtler, was established at the London congress in 1971, and under Gürtler’s leadership organized ATypI’s first Working Seminar, to be held in Basel on 18–23 November 1974.
More than 90 participants came to the Working Seminar from five continents. “Under the chairmanship of Ivan Chernayeff, Adrian Frutiger, Nicolete Gray/Michael Twyman, and Armin Hofmann members worked in four Workshop Groups each covering a different theme.” (President Tage G. Bolander’s report, December 1974) The seminar was reckoned a success, and Bolander added laconically: “The Seminar will be held again in the future.” After the Basel Working Seminar, Michael Twyman took over the chairmanship of the committee and began planning for a second one, to be held two years later at the University of Reading.
Early 1970s congresses
The announced theme of the 1971 congress in London was “Newspaper Design,” while the theme of the 1972 Barcelona congress was “Type in Society.”
Barcelona 1972: “Type in Society”
Wolfgang Hartmann’s memoir:
I myself organized two congresses in Barcelona, the first in 1972. I received considerable support from the authorities. The “Poble Español,” a Spanish village built for the 1929 International Exposition in the center of Barcelona and a tourist attraction ever since, was closed to other visitors during the congress. The lectures and committee meetings were held in the village’s town hall. Many events took place, including for accompanying guests who were not attending official meetings. On the first evening, there was a reception in the largest hotel at the time, followed by a reception at the mayor’s house the following afternoon, followed by a dinner and concert in the old town, under the arcades of the Gothic Quarter, and on the last evening, a gala dinner at the Poble Español with Spanish folkloric dances. For those congress participants who remained in Barcelona on Sunday, a bus trip to Montserrat was organized in the morning, and finally, a visit to a bullfight in the afternoon.
For the official part of the program, I invited Albert Hollenstein, Roger Excoffon, Herb Lubalin, and Kurt Weidemann. Their lectures received much applause.
During the meetings of the foundry owners’ and artists’ committees, a very lively exchange of views took place. A great supporter was Enrique Tormo Freixas, then director of the Printing Museum in Poble Español. The program booklet, featuring an original logo, was designed by Enric Satué, who later won a design award.
Copenhagen 1973: “Education in Letter Forms”
Originally, the 1973 congress was going to be held in Budapest, but at the last minute that plan fell through for lack of financial support. The venue was hastily switched to Copenhagen, with a theme of “Education in Letter Forms.” In line with that theme, Fernand Baudin and John Dreyfus had sent out invitations beforehand to around seventy noted designers and experts, asking them to respond with their thoughts on the current state of the teaching of lettering and type. Twenty-seven replied, among them many of the heavy hitters of the type world.
The resulting publication was a remarkable book, Dossier A–Z 1973, put together by Fernand Baudin and John Dreyfus.
Most of the contributors focused on handwriting and how it was being taught. Many of the essays took the form of beautifully handwritten pages. Some were heavily illustrated; others illustrated themselves, in the form of chancery italic texts. The whole book was designed by Fernand Baudin, with calligraphic comments in a second color scattered here and there, and pointers to the most salient points in the contributors’ text. As the editors said in their introduction, Dossier A–Z wouldn’t stand as a definitive study, but it did give a wide-ranging picture of the then-current state of education in letters and letter forms.
The 1973 conference also saw preparation by ATypI’s Experts Committee for the Vienna Conference later that year.
Vienna Conference on Industrial Property
In some ways the most notable event of the 1970s from ATypI’s perspective was the 1973 Vienna Conference on Industrial Property, where an agreement on protecting type design as industrial property was finally adopted: “Vienna Agreement for the Protection of Type Faces and Their International Deposit.” Although this agreement never officially went into force, the efforts of the Association that went into getting it adopted, and then into trying to get enough countries to agree to ratify it, did occupy a good part of ATypI’s energies in this decade.
New President, and a perspective on Board members
At the Copenhagen conference, John Dreyfus stepped down after ten years as President, and Tage G. Bolander, a Swede who worked for Mergenthaler International in Brussels, was elected to succeed him. In private correspondence to Bolander, Dreyfus gave him thumbnail descriptions of each of the members of the Board of Directors, since Bolander might not be familiar with all of them. These provide a fascinating and candid snapshot of the make-up of ATypI’s Board and its concerns at that moment.
CONFIDENTIAL
Mr. Tage G. Bolander
Merganthaler International SA
Rue Waelhem 102
1030 BRUSSELS (Belgium)Dear Tage,
I still haven’t got back the papers from Copenhagen which I gave to an English Friend to bring back in his car, but unless my memory has gone, this is a complete list of the present Board of Directors, which I have annotated for your use:
President: You (I won’t waste time on this line!)
M. Fernand Baudin, 64 rue du Village, 5983 Bonlem, Par Grez Doicenu, Belgique
Member of Committee of Management, and a close friend of mine. Worked once for the Etablissements Plantin in Brussels, not altogether smoothly. But is very well informed on matters relating to type design and manufacture, a subject which he has for a time taught at the Cambre school, and on which he has also written a good deal. Fluent in English and German, as well as his native French, and of course some Flemish. A close friend of Herman Liebeers, of the Bibliothèque Royale in Paris. Well known to our members in France. Willing and competent to translate into French from English or from German. Compiled and designed the Dossier A–Z for our Copenhagen Congress, and also a similar dossier lastd year for the UNESCO International Book Year. A reliable worker, though a bit volatile.Dr Eduard Born, 6050 Offenbach am Main, Dielmannstrasse 23, W. Germany
Vice-President, but unlikely to remain – he has written to say he wants nothing more to do with us. Formerly Secretary of the German Verein der Schriftgiessereien, now disbanded. Got this job because his father-in-law Dr Gerhardinger had it before him. Highly neurotic with good reason; suffered as German officer in the Russian hands as prisoner-of-war; lost his job; lost his greatly loved son and daughter-in-law in a terrible traffic accident. Wanted to be President, and refused to take up his appointment as General Secretary (to which he was nominated at our 1972 AGM in Barcelona) until he knew who would be President. Was interviewed at painful length in Vienna during June 1973 by me, Ovink and Peignot, as a result of which I virtually forced him to declare that he would definitely not take up the post of Gen.Sec., and this led to his letter telling me he wanted no more to do with us. Is nevertheless a paid-up member of A.TYP.I., and was not removed from our Board of Directors, which would I think have been a gratuitous insult to a man who had at his best worked very hard for type protection.M. Michel Brient, 6 & 7 Rue Lalande, 75014 Paris, France
Our National Delegate in France. Runs Techniques Graphiques and other graphic arts publications. Can at times be terribly dilatory, and is often beset by financial problems in his own business. But his heart is in the job of National Delegate for A.TYP.I. in France, and he did a fine job in speedily reproduced the French versions of our main Copenhagen speakers’ texts at an undermanned time of year. Gets on well with Charles Peignot, but needs watching, as he is liable not to collect overdue subscriptions. A vast man physically, and has a delight in good food and wine which justifies his girth.M. Adrian Frutiger, 23 Villa Moderne, 94 Arcueil, France
Chairman of our Type Designers & Typographers Committee. A great and charming man who has undergone far more than his share of family tragedies. His nerves are a constant impediment to his work, and he is it seems always under doctor’s orders. Nevertheless, he is invariably charming, good-natured, and hard-working. Mother-tongue is German, but he has lived so long in France he speaks almost equally good French, and ‘defends’ himself well in English too. As excellent a typographer as he is a type designer and teacher.Dr Walter Greisner, 6000 Frankfurt am Main, D. Stempel AG, Hoddersichstr. 106, W. Germany
Chairman of our Legal Committee, and member of our Managemente Committee. Has been a tower of strength to me. His work for A.TYP.I. has been made more difficult by the divergence of opinions within the Linotype companies on the question of type licensing (a subject of which you mus already be well aware). I have the impression that he and Offermann of Berthold have had their differences in the past, and they have yet to resolve the questions of whether Accidenz-Buch and Rotation are copies against the sense of our Moral Code or not. This remains a potentially dangerous affair, but must if need be be resolved by getting up a special committee of experts within A.TYP.I. to set as arbitrators. Walter’s immense help to me has always been made still more effective by the wonderful command of English (and the tact) of his secretary, Fraulein Benöhr. But he himself has a very good command of English too.André Gürtler, Im Müleboden 42, 4106 Thervil, Switzerland
Chairman of our committee for Education in Letter Forms. Very serious indeed, teaches at Basel Kunstgewerbeschule. Sometimes astonishingly unworldly and impractical. Nevertheless, we owe the idea for the creation of his committee to his own initiative, and he’ll grow up. He needs to be exposed more to the ways of thought and action of more experience and mature people, which is why I wanted him on our Board of Directors, to which I also considere him entitled as chairman of one of our Committees. Writes excellent English, has a charming wife who’ll probably prevent him having the series of nervous breakdowns which he would otherwise suffer. Alfred Hoffmann is marvelously helpful and patient in handling him, and I do consider he is worth bringing up.Herr Robert Haitz, 1 Berlin 33, Seebergstein 19, W. Germany
Was appointed to our Board when the head of Berthold AG, from which he has since been ousted, and therefore feels bitter towards some of those who now hold power there. Ought not to be re-elected to our Board, as he is no longer active in the typographical field. This comment may sound antipathetic towards him, but I ought to make it clear I have always like the man (and his wife) and have been invariably treated with kindness and courtesy by him: and he still care about A.TYP.I.Herr Wolfgang Hartmann, Fundicion Tipografica Neufville SA, Traversera de Gracia 183, Barcelona 12, Spain
Brilliant and multi-lingual member of a distinguished family of German typefounders (speaks excellent French, English and Spanish as well as his native German). Ran our Barcelona Congress last year. Beset with plenty of commercial problems which made him unwilling to accept the Presidency, which otherwise I consider he could have done nearly as well as you. I suspect that in Germany there is still some antipathy to his action in closing the Bauer foundrdy and even more to his having given a Russian firm the agency for some of the Bauer etc products. But this seems to have abated. A lively fellow really, though his stay in Spain sometimes seems to have induced a slower-paced reaction than is to be expected from successful Teutons. I think is apparent rather than real.Peter Hemson, The Monotype Corporation Ltd., Salfords, Redhill, Surrey, UK
Honorary Auditor. Assistant Managing Director of the Monotype Corporation. Several years ago he succeeded the Corporation’s Managing Director, Jack Matson, to a place on the A.TYP.I. Board of Directors. Thought then that the whole affair had little point. Has since revised his opinion completely, and has given me the most loyal and enthusiastic support in our Management Committee over the past few years. Widely travelled, and fluent in English, French and German. A first-class fellow, and always cheerful and dealing with matters seriously, but with a light touch.Alfred Hoffmann, Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei AG, 4142 Münchenstein, Switzerland
Our Honorary Treasurer from the foundation of A.TYP.I., and well helped in this role by Fraulein Jung, his secretary. Another most reliable friend, multilingual, good-natured and efficient. With Karl Schneider’s appointment as General Secretary, it should be possible to reduce the volume of work and records handled by AH and Fraulein Jung.Herr G.G. Lange, H. Berthold AG, 8000 München, Neubauerner Strasse 8, Germany [Dreyfus actually typed G.F. Lange]
Prokurist & Kunstlerischer Leiter of Berthold AG. Can talk the hindlegs off a donkey, but only in German. Was elected to the Board of Directors mainly to appease Herr Offermann’s justifiable complaint that the Board as previously constituted had an excessive Linotype representation (though O. did not fully comprehend how tenous such connections were in some cases). Lange is deeply interested in type design and in education. Somewhat aggressive personality, and physically lame.Dr Giovanni Mardersteig, via Marsala 30, Verona, Italy
Honorary President. Grand Old Man of our Assocation now aged 82 but very spry and intellectually & artistically agile. Always can be depended upon for advice and interest, but understandably plays a rather inactive role. He is of course best known as founder and director of the Officina Bodoni (the hand press) and the Stamperia Valdonega (mechanical printing – now largely run by his son Martino).Herr Helmut Offermann, H. Berthold AG, 1000 Berlin 61, Mehringdaam 43, Germany
Fairly recently the head man at Berthold AG. See my remarks under Greisner and Lange. Fluent English. Though his attitude towards a more liberal attitude in licensing is disliked by several Linotype and Monotype people, manhy of the newcomers to the field of typography would of course like to create a situation where membership of A.TYP.I. was a passport in obtaining speedy granting of licenses. So this situation requires much thought and delicate handling. Offermann would have liked to have been President of A.TYP.I. but several members considered that he was too exclusively qualified as a businessman, and not sufficiently as a man who understood and loved the art of typography, and who was internationally known. He nevertheless unreservedly supported your own nomination as President. Be sure to give him the chance to talk to you fully and confidentially – it will pay off to do so.Professor G.W. Ovink, Amsterdam Typefoundry, Bilderdijckstraat 163, Netherlands
Honorary President. Was member of the Management Committee for past three years, and a most valuable member too. Highly intelligent, widely experienced and travelled, fluent in Dutch, English, French and German. Respected alike by our commercial members and our artistic members. Will now be a wise and useful elder statesman.Mr Mike Parker, Mergenthaler Linotype Co., Plainview, New York 11803, USA
Must be thoroughly known to you, but I’ll add that I have ever-increasing respect of his processes (and depth) of thought. I only wish that he sometimes did not seem incapable of dealing with correspondence – perhaps he travels too far and too often. But he’s a stalwart and a real friend.M. Charles Peignot, 21 rue Casimir-Perier, Paris 7, France
Honorary Founder President. A giant and a great friend. Feels rather out of things, having been kicked out of his own family firm, Deberny Peignot, now in my view practically stripped and ruined. He remains deeply interested in A.TYP.I. and it was a fine idea of yours to plan to see him or phone him when you can. A dear friend, and capable of understanding a rather uncertain amount of English.Signor Gianfranco Repetti, Ste Nebiolo, Via Bologna 47, Turin, Italy
Our sometimes ineffectual National Delegate in Italy. Always bland and cheerful, though I’ve never made out what he really does, or is good at. Civilized and polite, but to me a cipher I have never unravelled.M. Maximilien Vox, 04 Lurs en Provence, France
Honorary Vice-President. Practically immobilized by gout and other feet troubles. Fluent English. A practically octogenarian imp, interested in us from the touchlines. Created the Ecole de Lure, which has since come apart in his hands under absurdly bitter personal circumstances. So he regards A.TYP.I. as a model association and views us respectfully (and sometimes impishly disrespectfully) from afar. Don’t trouble with him, and he’ll leave you alone in all probability.Dr Bror Zachrisson, Venevagen 49, 18264 Djursholm, Sweden
Must be already familiar to you. Made an Honorary Vice-President at our Copenhagen AGM. Was a tower of strength to our Committee for Research into the Legibility of Type (which led to the publication of Legibility Abstracts by Lund Humphries, London). Remains most affectionate towards A.TYP.I. which he knowls of old. Here’s one Swede to whom you can write or speak in your mother-tongue without inhibitions about A.TYP.I.Forgotten from the above list is:
Herr Walter Cunz, D. Stempel AG (address as for Greisner)
Was made Honorary Vice-President on retirement from Stempel, and is a sleeping member of our Board who never turns up or manifests any interest in what we now do – which is why I forgot him. Hope I did not forget anyone else.My dear friend, I hope these candid remarks will help you to feel that you know the people on our Board. I remain at your service to help with any further confidential information if you require it.
On 5 September 1973, Dreyfus wrote a follow-up letter, with names that he had forgotten.
Dear Tage
When I wrote you yesterday, I omitted two members of the Board of Directors who were elected in Copenhagen:
Don Bernes Esq., Messrs Letraset International Ltd., 195 Waterloo Road London SE1
I know nothing of him personally, having met him for the first time in Copenhagen. But it is important that we have rub-off letter manufacturers represented on our Board (Mecanorma in France are also members of A.TYP.I.).Mr Aaron Burns, International Typeface Corporation, 216 East 45th Street, New York 10017, USA
You probably know him: formerly with the Composing Room, then with Visual Graphics Corporation, now with both the company name in the address above, and also a partner in Lubalin, Burns in New York. Aaron is the kind that constantly gets really steamed up about something or other, and also is given to changing jobs. But he is quite devoted to typography, and is as interested in creation, marketing, and legal protection as he is in education. He exhausts me, but is worth the effort.
1975 Warsaw: “Letters serve understanding!”
The year 1975 saw the second ATypI congress to be held in a socialist country. (The first had been Prague in 1969.) In association with UNESCO, the congress celebrated the 500th anniversary of printing in Poland, with lots of historical exhibits, including rare samples, facsimiles, and catalogs from manufacturers around the world, primarily of “societies using a script based on the Latin alphabet.”
There was also a look toward the future: Hermann Zapf & Peter Karow both spoke on computer-aided design of typefaces, and Karow introduced URW’s new digitizing software, Ikarus.
Wolfgang Hartmann recalls:
Then came digitization. I clearly remember a lecture by Peter Karow, co-founder of URW (Management Consulting Rubow Weber GmbH), which he gave in 1975 on computer programs and the digitization of typefaces at the ATypI Congress in Warsaw. He introduced Ikarus, a software program for digitizing typefaces. This tool marked the beginning of a new era! At that time, I was still chairman of the committee of type foundries in ATypI, and Hermann Zapf was chairman of the committee of type artists. Zapf, who was teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the USA, pointed out the importance of the new findings that would later enable the production of digital typefaces.
Another talk focused on Polish diacritics for OCR-B and on optical character recognition, with a Polish-built OCR machine.
Roman Tomaszewski, the organizer of the congress, gave a talk on the history of printing in Poland, “The Black Art.” His talk was translated into several languages, “along with a related article on typography of the year,” and was distributed to the attendees in two issues of the magazine ‘Projekt.’
Among the exhibitions connected with the congress were “Typoart,” on the typography of posters, hosted at the Poster Museum in Warsaw, and an exhibition on typefaces for editorial design, as well as exhibits of student work.
“The Poster Museum, the first poster art museum in the world, has been a center for the documentation of creative thought and artistic research in the field of international art since its opening in 1966.”
The poster exhibition was called “Typoart”: “In their works, these artists strive to break away from the linear, schematic layout of conventional typography, proposing letter mosaics of varying forms and presentations.” (From a report on the Warsaw congress published five years later in the magazine Litera.)
There was a good deal of emphasis on editorial design for both magazines and newspapers. “It is one of the youngest disciplines of applied graphics in art education, training future ‘newspaper architects.’” A very good multi-page essay on this subject by Krzysztof Lenka, associate professor at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódẓ, accompanied the exhibition, which later traveled to Toronto, Rochester, Reading, & Budapest.
New President Tage Bolander’s Dec 1974 report on the Warsaw conference gives a glimpse into the economics of the conference, or at least the costs to those who were attending from the West, and a breakdown of the categories of attendees. Prices were in Deutschemarks.
Corporate members of ATypI: DM 150,—
Free lance designers: DM 100,—
Typographers, students and trainees: DM 25,—
Accompanying persons and members’ wives: DM 25,—
Second Working Seminar: Reading 1976
The second ATypI Working Seminar focused on the teaching of letter forms, and was held at the University of Reading. Michael Twyman was head of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at Reading, and he organized the Seminar.
Like the first Working Seminar, the second attracted people from many different backgrounds, who brought a variety of ideas about typographic education. Some of the participants included David Kindersley, Lida Lopez Cardozo (later Lida Cardozo Kindersley), Erik Spiekermann, Gunnlaugur SE Briem, John Dreyfus, and lettering scholar Nicolete Gray. Gray was living in a house right on the Thames, and during the Seminar a boat trip was organized to take participants up the river to a reception at her house. The Seminar was a week-long event, with plenty of time for such excursions.
Sue Walker, who later went on to succeed Michael Twyman as head of the typography department, recalls: “For me, as a just-graduating student, it was amazing seeing all these people, making these lovely things.” And after the Seminar, she says, people continued the work, with “lots of thinking about typographic education” and attempts to “refine the discipline, through what was going on at ATypI.” Sue also won a competition for a logo for the Working Seminar: and then, as she says, “I had to do the logo!”)
On an academic level, Paul Stiff did research on the Vox/ATypI classification system of typefaces. On a more hands-on level, all the calligraphers at a luncheon that had tablecloths made of paper ended up drawing all over the tablecloths. (No one, apparently, thought to save the evidence. But Sue claims that the department still has a blackboard that was used at the event.)
End of the decade
In 1976, the year of the second Working Seminar, ATypI’s congress was held in Hamburg, and produced a document titled Beeinfllussung von Technik und Druckschrift. The 1977 congress was in Lausanne, the 1978 in Munich, and the 1979 in Vienna. At the Lausanne congress, Tage Boland stepped down and Martin Fehle was elected as ATypI’s fourth President.
According to Alfred Hoffmann, Fehle had been the delegate of the administrative board of the Haas’sche type foundry, but he wasn’t intimately involved in the type business. He was also head of finance for the Lindt & Sprüngli chocolate company, which Hoffmann said was “80 percent of his position.” For a while, ATypI was partly funded by chocolate money.
Wolfgang Hartmann says of Fehle:
Martin Fehle was president of ATypI from 1977 to 1992, making him the longest-serving president. He led ATypI with a steady hand and solved problems very professionally. However, he didn’t come from the world of type, as he represented one of the co-owners of the Haas type foundry. I had a very good relationship with Fehle. At the end of his term, technological change came, and with it conflicts developed among the members of ATypI. A new president was to be elected for 1995. Fehle asked me if I would like to take on the position, especially since I was organizing the congress in Barcelona that same year. However, I suggested Mark Batty, who, as then president of the International Typeface Corporation (ITC), was much more familiar with the new technologies. Thus, in the fall of 1995 in Barcelona, Mark was elected president, and I was elected his vice president. Mark Batty set ATypI on a new course, thanks in part to the efficient support of his future wife, Cynthia Hollandsworth.
But that, of course, takes us to a future chapter.