the mehallo blog. beta.

‘Over the 26 years that it was pub­lished, U&lc gathered a fol­low­ing of thou­sands of avid read­ers that eagerly anti­cip­ated each issue. It became the most import­ant typo­graphic pub­lic­a­tion of its time.’

The 1970s looked like the 1970s because of Herb Lubalin.

And the way he did this was thru Upper & lowercase magazine. Tabloid in size, printed on newsprint, U&lc was read by most of the graphic design industry. Within, the fonts and philosophy of Lubalin’s International Typeface Corporation [ITC] stressed letters that were set ‘close, but not touching’ and  . . .  aw, hell, let them touch, overlap and be funky.

By the time I was in design school, the look had fallen out of favor – most ITC fonts were actually banned from use in my homework. ITC’s philosophy was to reinterpret the classics, often into something strangely unique, full of its own style – or a lack of style. Like Helvetica.

The 1970s were all about that. Taking things like Art Deco and doing something totally new with it.

the influence
Lubalin’s style ended up making a comeback in the past decade, as young designers embraced – and regrew – some of his techniques. ITC Bauhaus and ITC Avant Garde were once banned by my professors – and by 2005, I was seeing them everywhere.

And starting this month, Monotype Imaging (current owners of ITC) are in the process of scanning the U&lc archive – offering the 26-year run of the magazine as high resolution PDFs.

Download your free vintage issues here.

Permed hair not required.

Found via Typegirl

tags: cool finds, design, design history, illustration, typography // 4 comments  . . .