Upper & Lower Case-Bound

Written by Grant Hutchinson on March 15, 2005

Mark Batty Publisher recently announced the availability of U&lc: Influencing Design & Typography — a lovingly case-bound collection of essays, covers and illustrations from the eclectically designed, but decidedly typographic, Upper & Lower Case quarterly. Anyone who can’t seem to part with that yellowing pile of slowly disintegrating U&lc newsprint under their desk (or wishes they still had their old pile…) will certainly appreciate this book. John D. Berry edited this compilation — covering the 27-year span in which U&lc was published.

A copy of the book is on its way to S. Coles and he will post a review shortly.

Grant Hutchinson appreciates typography, photographs suburbia, accumulates gadgets, and sweats the details in Calgary, Alberta. He enjoys black coffee, low-bit synthpop, geometric shapes, single malts, juggling, and the smell of a freshly tarred roof. A shelf in his office sports a Diploma in Visual Arts from the Alberta College of Art & Design (now the Alberta University of the Arts) and an Emmy Award for his technical work during the 1988 Winter Olympics. He is currently a board member of the Society of Typographic Aficionados and head glyph monkey at Typostrophe.

6 Comments

  1. A copy of this must-have tome is on its way to yours truly as well. Oh, and props to the magic text formatting elves ďż˝ they managed to make my original post look much nattier. Ta.

  2. This sounds pretty cool, even though I have nearly every issue. I first saw a copy of U&lc when I was in college in 1974. It was one of the key things that got me interested in type design.

  3. Joan Mas says:

    The first time I saw U&lc was when I was living in Ibiza, quite a few years ago. Several numbers had been pasted to the wall in a clothes shop storefront. I knew about the mag, because of Lubalin�s logo and it catched my eye.
    I found the layouts in those wallpapered spreads amazingly creative and imaginative �that same week I subscribed. Now that most copies are rather yellowed, this book will be equally welcome.

  4. jlt says:

    I was lucky enough to go to a high school with a well-appointed job printing shop. The shop teacher, Mr. John Thompson, also taught photography and drafting. In the shop he kept a good-sized archive of magazines – Communication Arts, U&LC and others. I pored over every copy he had in my four years there, and got a decent if abbreviated background in metal typesetting as well as linotype and platen press use at the same time. Sadly, that high school – Albany High School in Albany, California – was torn down and replaced with a new modern school a few years ago. And since Mr. Thompson’s retirement, there is no longer any letterpress training.

    Big coincidence department: Mark van Bronkhorst, who designed some really fantastic issues of U&LC, lives just down the street from that high school, and I believe his wife may have been a student there at about the same time I was.

  5. Ricardo Cordoba says:

    I spotted this book at the store across the street from Cooper Union a couple of weeks ago… Indeed worth having, whether you remember the original magazine or not…

    I first saw U&lc in the mid 80s, when I had already started studying graphic design in Buenos Aires… Diego Vainesman, of the Type Directors Club, was kind enough to part with his copy and thanks to him I got a subscription…

    It was a sad day when they announced their last printed issue.

  6. Maxim Zhukov says:

    In the late 1970s�early 1980s the popularity of the ITC newslettter, that is, U&lc, among Moscow designers was so huge that its pages (11 x 17 in. back then) were photographed by the fans on 35 mm film (b&w, of course), and reproduced, same size, using the photo enlarger. Those fuzzy photo prints were privately circulated, mostly among the designers affiliated with Promgrafika agency. I did not know about that, because I was not working for Promgrafika full time.

    I saw those prints made on matt paper�totally unreadable, of course�for the first time when I hosted Aaron Burns in Moscow (he and his wife Florence came to visit either in 1984, or in 1985). I remember his being entertained at a local design studio where he was shown those prints. Aaron was totally astonished. Of course he knew his newsletter was popular with the design community, in the US and in Europe. But he could not imagine it would become an object of a cult behind the Iron Curtain. Aaron was so moved, he cried.

Post a Comment

Comments at Typographica are moderated and copyedited, just like newspaper “Letters to the Editor”. Abusive or off-topic comments are not published. We appreciate compliments, but don’t publish them unless they add to the dialog. Thank you!