Do you know what a Ludlow Typograph machine is? I've never used one, or seen one in use. They were just going out of mainstream use when I got into the business in the early 1980s.
I just saw a copy of the company's 1958 catalog. Here are the stamped letters from the cover:
And close-ups of photos from two of the opening pages, showing first the machine and two cases of matrices used to cast the type:
And some of the cast letter forms:
It's a thick, lavish catalog in cloth hardcover, with two-color pages in more than half the book (the second color varying), alternating with black-ink pages to display the typefaces in full.
The two-color pages each display multiple dummy ads created to show off one typeface. They're delightful glimpses at mid-1950s style (and often telephone numbers that use exchange names).
But it was this dummy ad that made me stop to take a photo and decide to post about the book:
It's both so beautifully clean and earnest... and so funny.
And then I saw this page:
It contains four ads, each one a perfect example of the mid-20th century hubris that has led us to our climate crisis: plastics, natural gas (standing in generally and specifically for fossil fuels), encouragement to build your individualistic accumulation of capital under capitalism, and inducement to spend the winter in sunny Phoenix, which had not yet grown into an unsustainable sprawl in the desert.
It was the plastics ad in the bottom left that made me stop:
What kind of copy is that? Heretofore? More than all the other ads, it's clearly just filler to show off the typeface. Maybe someone was getting tired.
1 comment:
I’ve never seen butter advertised as a source of energy. Usually it’s sugar. “Rich in dextrose,” as old ads sometimes say.
“Heretofore”? Pass the butter, please, and make it snappy.
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