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“Advertising: Who Needs It?” pullquotes

Contributed by Nick Sherman on Dec 20th, 2016. Artwork published in
September 1972
.
“Advertising: Who Needs It?” pullquotes 1
License: All Rights Reserved.

From an article in Bell Telephone Magazine volume 51, number 5, September/October 1972. Al Catalano is credited as art director but it’s very possible the typesetting was executed by a third party type shop.

The compositions seem to take their style directly from Photo-Lettering’s specimen brochure for ITC Serif Gothic which was also published in 1972 (images of that specimen here), right down to the color scheme of black, white, and gold.

As with the many poor uses of ITC Avant Garde Gothic that Herb Lubalin complained about, ITC Serif Gothic is another typeface that can be hard to set well. These pullquote compositions do well though, using the typeface’s abundance of ligatures (many of which never made it into digital format) thoughtfully, and demonstrating sensitive handling with the super-tight spacing that was so poular at the time.

“Advertising: Who Needs It?” pullquotes 2
License: All Rights Reserved.
“Advertising: Who Needs It?” pullquotes 3
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.

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  • ITC Serif Gothic

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2 Comments on ““Advertising: Who Needs It?” pullquotes”

  1. I don’t think this typeface is itc serif gothic.
    There are many different things, but the letter “E” is quite different.

  2. Hi Yoon, the original version of ITC Serif Gothic for phototypesetting came with a range of alternate glyphs. The round uncial-like E is one of them. Sadly, these extras were not always incorporated when the typeface designs were digitized.

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