U&lc, Vol. 1 #2, 1974

This was only U&lc’s second installment, but the free quarterly launched in 1973 by the founders of ITC (International Typeface Corporation), Herb Lubalin, Aaron Burns and Ed Rondthaler, could already boast a mightily impressive roster of prestigious contributors. In the right column, papers originally read during the 16th ATypI conference in Copenhagen are listed with the names of their authors: Wim Crouwel, Nicolete Gray, Max Caflisch, Adrian Frutiger, Armin Hofmann, Günter Gerhard Lange, FHK Henrion … The ambitions of the self-styled “International Journal of Typographics” — to become at once the main information outlet for type-minded people the world over — couldn’t have been any clearer.

To create some contrast within the dense, saturated graphic space of this first page, Lubalin draws freely from the ITC catalogue, using an huge array of recent releases such as ITC Souvenir (Ed Benguiat, 1970), ITC Serif Gothic (designed by Lubalin himself with Tony Di Spigna, 1972), ITC Tiffany (Benguiat again, 1974), ITC AvantGarde Gothic (Lubalin and Tom Carnase, 1970), Friz Quadrata (Ernst Friz, 1966) and ITC Newtext (by Ray Baker — it is featured in the “What’s New from ITC?” section of the issue, along with Benguiat’s ITC Korinna).

The very tight leading (a Lubalin stylistic favourite) brings about much-needed minute adjustments in the display matter: spot, for instance, the reduced word space between “Interdependence” and “of” (Caflisch’s article, third from the top), or the dotless ‘i’ for “Technicians” in the title of Frutiger’s contribution.