Chicago modernism & the Ludlow Typograph
Subtitle: Douglas C. McMurtrie and Robert Hunter Middleton at work
By: Paul F. Gehl
Contributors: McMurtrie, Douglas C. (Douglas Crawford), 1888-1944
Publisher: Opifex
Published: 2020
Place of publication: Newton, NSW, Australia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 127
ISBN-13: 9780648680710
Subjects: Type designers; Type and type-founding; Graphic design (Typography); History; Design; Modernism (Art); Advertising; Ludlow Typograph Co; Society of Typographic Arts (Chicago, Ill.); 27 Chicago Designers (Organization)
Other titles: Chicago modernism and the Ludlow Typograph
Description: "This is the first book to provide a narrative account of type design in Chicago during the years 1925-50, when American typographers and graphic artists confronted the arrival of European modernism. Robert Hunter Middleton and Douglas McMurtrie were prominent in the period and spoke for Chicago in the national debates. Neither man was a Chicago native yet both worked for the Ludlow TypoƯgraph Co., a manufacturer of typeƯsetting machinery. As Paul Gehl examines their years of working side by side, it beƯcomes clear that differing experiences of the city and its design world created two different modernisms that can be traced in the beautiful types on which they collaborated, Middleton as artist and McMurtrie as 'promotional man extraordinary'. Gehl shows how the new typography--championed loudly by McMurtrie and practised quietly by Middleton--took root in Chicago a decade before the arrival of the New Bauhaus, usually described as the singular turning point in Chicago design history. The 'Bauhaus Boys', as Chicagoans called them, introduced new ideas, but the seeds of their success were sown in the work of Ludlow's two modernist pioneers."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes color reproduction of the type specimen book: Some modern Ludlow typefaces / Douglas C. McMurtrie. [Chicago, Illinois] : [Ludlow Typograph Company], [1929].

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: In the Metropolis of printing --; title: Type markets and type men --; title: McMurtrie kicks off a Modernist campaign --; title: McMurtrie's first Modernist claims, presented in Some modern Ludlow typefaces --; title: Professional modernism --; title: Two men, two missions --; title: Middleton speaks up --; title: Not just Mutt and Jeff --; title: Some thoughts on the literature.