TYPOGRAPHICA 1-16

Complete Set of the New Series
edited by Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer (editor): TYPOGRAPHICA 1-16. London: Lund Humphries, June 1960 to December 1967. First editions (new series). A complete set of perfect-bound magazines in stiff printed wrappers with uncoated dustjackets all printed in one color. None of the dust jackets are price-clipped and all interiors unmarked and very clean, with all original inserts present. Overall, a near-fine set with only the slightest imperfections. This is a unique opportunity to acquire a complete set of Spencer's legendary experimental typographic journal, coveted by multiple constituencies since Spencer vocally championed emerging trends such as Concrete Poetry, Semiotics and avant-garde Book Design.

Reproduction techniques include letterpress and offset-lithography. Inks include both spot colors and metallics. Paper stocks include matte, glossy, uncoated, rough sugar and wax paper overlays. Custom Binding includes tipped-in paper inserts; fold-outs and a bound-in sample of Diter Rot's Ideograms; a four-page fold-out; a three-page gatefold; a bound-in photography insert by Euan Duff; a tipped-in printed vellum fold-out by Diter Rot, a 48-page booklet by Brownjohn, Chermayeff and Geismar, and so much more.

Here is a rare opportunity for Graphic Design/modern typography aficionados to own a complete set of the legendary Typographica magazine. If you're reading this, you probably know that issues of this groundbreaking magazine seldom surface on the open market.

Typographica was the brainchild of founder, editor, designer and renowned typographer Herbert Spencer, and had a brief life, totalling 32 issues published between 1949 and 1967. But its influence stretched and stretches far beyond its modest distribution and print runs of the time. For many graphic designers, Typographica is something of an obsession, to be collected if and when found, savored, and poured over for designs, and techniques not seen since.

Spencer never intended to turn a profit, so no expenses were spared in production (just like Alexey Brodovitch's Portfolio). Different papers, letterpress, tip-ins, and more were all employed in the presentation of an eclectic range of subject matter: Braille, locomotive lettering, sex and typography, typewriter faces, street lettering, matches, and avant-garde poetry all found their way into the magazine.

Urbane, prolific and unfailingly modest, Spencer was a reformer dedicated to improving standards of design in a field dominated by the printing industry's outdated conventions. But he was also an aesthete with a connoisseur's eye for the wild modernist innovations with letterforms and layout of the 1920s. Spencer launched the seminal publication, Typographica, in 1949, when he was 25, and edited, designed and sometimes wrote for it for 18 years. Equally at home publishing one of the first articles in Britain about concrete poetry (then an international phenomenon), or an illustrated study of the design challenges presented by Braille, he was a new kind of designer-editor, able to think both visually and verbally, and to fuse images and words in meaningful new relationships.

Issue 1 (June 1960: 64-pages) Contents:

• Wrapper Design From a photogram by Anne Hickmott
• Britain's Royal Arms by Charles Hasler
• Five Polish Photographers by Adam Johann
• Yosi Bergner's Drawings to Kafka by Penuel Peter Kahane
• The Work of Franco Grignani by Alan Bartram
• The History of Numerals by Henri Friedlaender
• Photograms by Anne Hickmott
• Farewell to Trajan

Issue 2 (December 1960: 60-pages) Contents:

• Wrapper Design based on the detail from the photograph of a tree trunk by Herbert Spencer
• de Jong, Hilversum by B. Majorick
• BCG - The Works of Brownjohn, Chermayeff and Geismar
• The Books of Abram Krol by Sylvio Samama
• The Green Box by Edward Wright (ephemera)
• Max Huber in Italy by Antonio Boggeri
• A Humanized Alphabet

Issue 3 (June 1961: 76-pages) Contents:

• Typophoto Ken Garland
• The Books of Dieter Rot by Richard Hamilton (ephemera)
• National Zeitung (ephemera)
• The Drawings of Alcopley by Herbert Spencer
• From Painting to Photography: Experiments of the 1920's by Camilla Gray

Issue 4 (December 1961: 78-pages) Contents:

• Wrapper Design Composed of 13 photographs of illuminated letters by Robert Brownjohn
• Mile-A-Minute Typography by Herbert Spencer
• Road Signs in Holland 49 Photographs by Margaret Wissing
• Streetlevel by Robert Brownjohn
• The Civic Trust and Lettering: A Visit to Epping by Nicoleta Gray

Issue 5 (June 1962: 72-pages) Contents:

• Reading by machine Alan Bartram
• Penguins on the March by Herbert Spencer
• London Airports looks up
• DIN ­ A new, old Cause by John Tompkins
• A case for auto-letterpress? by Selma Nankivell
• Drawing for Illustration (book review) by Paul Hogarth

Issue 6 (December 1962: 68-pages) Contents:

• Reading by Touch by Donald Bell
• Pat McAuliffe of Listovel by Brian MacMahon
• Lettering in Coventry Cathedral by Nicolette Gray
• Typewriter Type Faces by Alan Bartram
• Penguin Covers- A correction
• Watching Words Move by Brownjohn, Chermayeff and Geismar (48-page booklet)

Issue 7 (May 1963: 72-pages) Contents:

• Typography in Britain
• 36 Typographers; biographical notes
• Piet Zwart by Herbert Spencer
• Design Underfoot by Anthony Robinson
• Printed Ephemera reviewed by Nicholete Gray
• Thematic photography by Euan Duff
• Education and the Child by R.B. Lendon
• This is my private World... by Jane Gate
• The Great Experiment reviewed by Jay Leyda

Issue 8 (December 1963: 70-pages) Contents:

• Josua Reichert: typography as visual poetry by Jasia Reichert
• Chance by Barbara Jones, with 17 photographs by Herbert Spencer
• Art and Writing ( an exhibition review) by Nicolete Gray
• The Visual Craft of William Golden (review)
• A Rich Man's Guide to Bingo by Anthony Clift (fold-out pages)
• Paul Schuitema by Benno Wissing (12 pages with many 2-color reproductions)
• Concrete Poetry and Ian Hamilton Finlay by dom Sylvester Houedard (includes 11 concrete poems by Finley)
• British Typography; Piet Zwart; and British photography (exhibition reviews)

Issue 9 (June 1964: 64-pages) Contents:

• Avant-GardeGraphics in Poland between the two World Wars by Anatol Stern: featuring futurist and constructivist work by Anatol Stern, Henryk Berlewi and others. Very cool indeed.
• Henryk Berlewi by Eckhard Neumann
• Sunday Photographers by Michael Middleton
• Crowns by Camilla Gray

Issue 10 (December 1964: 64-pages) Contents:

• Newspaper Seals by Alan Hutt
• The Compass Rose by W.E. May
• The Emergence of the Printer's Stock Block by Charles Hasler
• Sex and Typography by Robert Brownjohn

Issue 11 (June 1965: 52-pages) Contents:

• Alexander Rodchenko: a Constructivist Designer by Camilla Gray
• The inscriptional work of Eric Gill book review by Nicolette Gray
• Poem/Prints
• Massinby Germano Facetti
• Herbert Bayer's Photographic Experiments by Eckhard Neumann
• Words and Images by John Berger
• At Remaurian by John Berger (38-page booklet)

Issue 12 (December 1965: 76-pages) Contents:

• The Nymph and the Grot: the revival of the sans-serif letter by James Mosley
• Fishing Figures by Barbara Jones
• The Living Symbol by Aloisio Magalhaes
• Art on the Assembly Line by Ann Gould
• Diter Rot: Book Review with folding insert
• Emphatic fist, informative arrow by Edward Wright
• The Arrow in China by K. P. Mayer

Issue 13 (June 1966: 62-pages) Contents:

• Tombstone Lettering on Slate by Frederick Burgess
• Hong Kong Signs by Henry Steiner
• Aesthetic Pattern programmes by Eckhard Neumann
• Type Size: a system of dimensdional references by Ernst Hoch and Maurice Goldring
• Of the Just Shaping of Letters book review by James Sutton

Issue 14 (December 1966: 58-pages) Contents:

• Ideogrammes Lyriques by Stefan Themerson
• A Bookof Matches by Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes
• Protest by Design by Ann Gould. Includes work by Kurt Schwitters, Jan Tschichold, El Lissitzky, Theo van Doesburg and many others.

Issue 15 (June 1967: 56-pages) Contents:

• Paul van Ostaijen by Edward Wright
• Paul van Ostaijen: Lyric Poetry-- Instructions for Use by Paul Vincent
• Objects Count by Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes
• Spanish Street Lettering by Alan Bartram

Issue 16 (December 1967: 52-pages) Contents:

• Typographica 1949-1967 by Herbert Spencer
• John Heartfield by Eckhard Neumann
• The Word as Ikon by Berjouhi Barsamian Bowler
• Kurt Schwitters on a Time-Chart by Stefan Themerson

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