At one time every printing house had a Chapel to which all the workmen belonged. The Chapel enforced the customs of the trade, acted as a mutual benefit society and was there to negotiate with the employer should disputes arise. The Chapel imposed a number of rules on the workmen memebrs, the breaking of which incurred a ‘solace’ or fine, including: Swearing in the Chapel Fighting in the Chapel Abusive language Being drunk in the Chapel Leaving a candle burning at night Stealing another compositors stick Stealing another pressman’s ink balls Leaving a blanket on the typan over night Refusal to pay the solace would result in the miscreant being taken by force by his fellow workmen, who would lay him on his belly over the correcting-stone, while another workmen who would strike him 11 times on the buttocks with a paperboard. Tradition recalls that in the early 19th century one workman was ‘solaced with so much violence that he presently pissed blood and shortly died of it’. Harsh times!

The ‘Miles’s Boy’ letters were a series of scurrilous documents printed and circulated amongst the compositors of London in 1806. Their authorship is anonymous and deal with the composing room politics of Luke Hansard’s office - printer to the House of Commons. The letters were mainly concerned with the dilution of skilled labour by apprentices, the ‘goings-on’ of these unruly boys and consequences of such large numbers of lads being crowded together: ‘On 26 August the young gentlemen of St Luke’s Press were pulled up to a police office to answer a complaing for an assault on the pot-girl, who they had cobbed, whose petticoats they had tied over her head, and for spitting and using paste in a place that shall be nameless. All this they did and were only fined 11s each for their lark. On 1 September they attempted to smother a poor journeyman printer in the dust-hole, and they would certainly have taken his life had not the compositors interfered!’ Life here in Birmingham is quite tame by comparison!

On 23 October 1666 140 ‘workmen printers’ petitioned against the use of apprentices in favour of journeymen. Their petition was issued 6 weeks after the Great Fire of London, at a time when the trade was in a great state of disorganization. Without doubt much equipment had been destroyed, work was at a standstill and unemployment was growing: hence their desire to eliminate boy labour. The 140 ‘workmen printers’ who signed a petition constituted the total number of men employed in the London printing trade in 1666. The petition proposed: That no Foreigners (that is to say) such an one as hath not served 7 years to the Art of Printing under a lawful Master Printer, as an Apprentice, may be entertained or employed by any Master Printer for the time to come. That a Provision may be made to hinder the increase of Apprentices, and a Limitation as to the Number; the said Restraint and Limitation to take effect and commence from the present Session of Parliament.

A Master Printer who claimed second sight (a gift which did not, however, prevent subsequent insolvency) once claimed he had clearly seen the ghost of Gutenberg admiring a Vertical Miehle at the International Printing Exhibition at Olympia, in 1936. The Founder of the Craft was also present in the pressroom of The Times at Printing House Square on the auspicious morning of 29 November 1814. For centuries before that, Herr Gutenberg had been ghostily popping in and out of printing offices around the world, to see affairs conducted mostly in the time-honoured manner of this own time and at the rate of 250 impressions per hour. But on this particular morning in 1814 Gutenberg vapoured through the keyhole to see the new ‘steam press’, the invention of his countrymen, Messrs. Koenig & Bauer, working for the first time when it printed an issue of ‘The Thunderer.’ From behind locked doors copies of the newspaper rolled off the machine at the rate of 1,000 impressions an hour thus marking a revolution in the history of printing.

This year is 150th anniversary of the production of parish magazines. Erskine Clarke's Parish Magazine (1 January 1859) marks the start of the genre. The Association for Church Editors (ACE) also reckons that the church magazine more or less as we know it today dates from around 1860. Another known early magazine - for Gillingham in Kent - is dated December 1866. The Revd J Erskine Clarke was Vicar of St Michael’s, Derby when he spotted the opportunity for a publication with a very clear objective: his magazine was ‘aimed not at the committed in the parish but at the other half’. Each month the magazine contained 16 pages of general interest material, but with a strong moralising thrust, and was offered to parishes to include in their own cover and whatever else they chose. Parish Magazine was circulated initially to 54 parishes and eventually reached out to 200. There were obviously many local efforts at parish communication, but Erskine Clarke was probably the first to promote his own publication within locally-published church magazines.

I’ve just been sent a type specimen for a rather lovely pictorial typeface. Embellishing the alphabet is not new: medieval scribes were masters of the illuminated letter; early printers delighted in decorated initials; Victorian type-founders were impresarios of ornamented types; and children have long doodled extravagant characters on abused schoolbooks. It seems everyone at some time has indulged in the design and execution of pictorial fonts, ornamental type, or decorated alphabets, either as an act of worship, to satisfy commercial demand, or to relieve the tedium of double-mathematics. The Roman alphabet is difficult to turn into abstract art and not easy to endow with a different aesthetic intention, but in expert hands the alphabet become as much a piece of art as it is type. At the height of their mid-Victorian popularity, decorated and pictorial typefaces were the work of woodcutters or steel engravers who produced exquisite, detailed letterforms – but with an inevitable mechanical edge. In the inter-war years of the twentieth century, the design of such typefaces lay first with the type designers and then artists who were commissioned to bring more verve to the genre.

In the mid-twentieth century an increasing number of international photography magazines competed for the interest of both emerging and established photographic professionals. Nearly every European country had their own professional periodicals and France in particular issued a large number of photographic titles. In 1960 Hachette publishers had launched Photo but this found stiff competition with the arrival of the mythic French photo magazine Zoom, Le Magazine de l'image. Founded in the early 1970s Zoom was a semi-glossy title, whose six annual issues were quarto format, soft-covered, bound in pictorial wraps and profusely illustrated in both black and white and colour throughout its 116-page extent. Issued by La Societe Publicness, publishers of adult comics, Zoom treated it readers to material of a decidedly erotic nature as well as reportage, fashion and art photography and focused on the work of the world’s most talented photographers including Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Cornell Capa, David Hockney, and Arthur Kaplan. So successful was the title it launched editions both in Milan and New York: the Italian issue of Zoom continues today.

French political culture has always been freewheeling, and the conduct of its leaders has ensured France with a well-established habit of satirical political journalism. An early example of French political satire is Maurice Joly’s Le dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (1864) attacking Napoleon III. The tradition continues with publications such as Le Canard Enchaine (1915-) founded by Maurice and Jeanne Marechal, and the left-wing satirical magazine Charlie-Hebdo (1992-) . At the heart of this tradition was the weekly satirical magazine Le Témoin (1906-35). Created by Paul Iribe a poster artist, caricaturist and journalist, Iribe is widely considered to be the precursor of the Art Deco movement. Le Témoin denounced with ferocity the abuses of the French political system and frequently berrated France for being squeezed between the competing interests of the Axis and the Allies, between the revolutionary communist left-wing and fascist right-wing. Blistering in its editorial the magazine was also innovative in its presentation and combined illustrations of geometric simplicity with figurative art to create recognizable forms with a modern flair.

First published in the late 1950s Plastics Today was produced by the Kynoch Press, Birmingham for ICI. Printed quarterly it kept readers abreast of developments and technology of the wide range of plastics made by ICI. Produced in seven languages including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, Plastics Today was a rare example of a multilingual publication produced at a time when only 18% of the UK’s print buying budget was spent on foreign-language work and only 20% of literature was designed specifically for overseas consumption. Typographically advanced, the Kynoch Press originally conceived Plastics Today but a number of issues were placed with the London agency, Fletcher, Forbes, Gill. Produced using the newly introduced A4 paper size, its modernity was reinforced by the use of the recently released Univers typeface. Innovation was also found in the range of plastic substrates it used as well as new graphic techniques such as issue Number 14 (1962) which displayed a repeated montage of British road signs – graphic repetition which was later to become the hallmark of Pentagram.

I have several copies of Penroses Annual - a review of graphic arts printed and published by Percy Lund, Humphries, Bradford between 1895 and 1982 which records the highlights and trends in the graphic arts both in aesthetics and in technique. The Penrose Annual was unique and its production complex. Through its many pages and inserts, it demonstrated each new technique, substrate and trend that had emerged during the year. The numerous tip-ins, fold-outs, different paper stocks, inks, artwork that were provided for inclusion by printers from around the world added to the complexity of the publication and all had to be incorporated into the Annual. As a showcase for the whole international typographic industry, Penrose had to demonstrate the highest of production standards. A small staff spent the year planning, compiling and producing it; and Percy Lund, Humphries & Co, would dovetail its production into their normal schedule. The importance of the publication lay in its ability to unite the multifarious elements of the trade. Today it remains a valuable source of reference to typographic scholars.

You don’t see Pears Soap much these days, But for two centuries A & F Pears, manufacturers of the world’s only transparent soap, enjoyed an international reputation and commercial success largely due to the efforts of Thomas J Barrett: a man often referred to as the father of modern advertising. Barratt improved the firm’s sales performance by implementing a series of expensive and highly original publicity campaigns. He persuaded prominent doctors to provide testimonials and boldly printed the endorsements in newspaper advertisements; the actress Lillie Langtry became the first ‘celebrity’ endorsement when she gave Pears a commendation. But Barratt’s best-remembered publicity campaign was the use of the ‘Bubbles’ painting as an advertisment for Pears. Painted by Sir John Everett Millais in1886 and bought by Barrett for £2,200. Pears had exclusive copyright on the picture, which they modified by the addition of a soap bar. Barrett spent £30,000 on the ‘Bubbles’ campaign and the number of individual reproductions of the painting ran into millions: many of the prints were made available to the public and hung – and still hang - in living rooms worldwide.

KID's? Foreigners? or Chinese Government Jobs? All names given to illicit print jobs. What do you call them? If you have a special term to refer to those under the counter jobs that go through your works, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks

Formed in the 1890s the Birmingham Group was an important school of artists, which formed the link between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Slade Symbolists. Inspired by John Ruskin, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, the Group advocated the use of illustration as simple decoration; believed realism had no part in book illustration; and considered text and illustration to be inseparable. To demonstrate its principles, the Group looked to wood engraving to revive the kind of beauty they believed early printed books possessed. Kate Greenaway was also a directional force. Her repertoire of Regency stage props, pronounced nostalgia, elegant distribution of image across the page, and exquisite, slightly Japanese sense of design particularly influenced the work of Georgie Cave France (1864-1934) France illustrated nursery books and her talent was particularly evident in ABC an Alphabet (1895) published by Elkin Matthews, London a leading poetry publisher of the period and A. C. McClurg & Co Chicago. ABC an Alphabet had a sympathetic charm and exemplified the beliefs and practices of the Birmingham Group.

Walking round industrial Birmingham last week I noticed several factories still displayed their original 1950s fascia lettering: particularly Profil. Designed in 1946, Profil was a new typeface for a new world order; a contemporary fount, which bore the hallmarks of mechanization and standardization, it was a product of the new machine-led era. The only typeface designed by the brothers Eugen and Max Lenz Profil was created for Edouard Hoffmann at Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei. Hoffmann was a visionary Swiss type director who established the Haas foundry as the centre of the Swiss movement in typeface design; he directed Max Miedinger in the creation of Helvetica (1957) and Hermann Eidenbenz in Clarendon (1953) as well as the Lenz brothers in their design of Profil. Immediately after the war, the skills associated with Swiss industries - particularly engineering - were reflected in the work of that country’s typefaces designers who designed industrial looking fonts. Profil, along with sans-serif typefaces such as Helvetica and Univers, satisfied this demand and helped spread Swiss Style across the world.

The periodical Arts et Metiers Graphiques (1927-38) was one of the most entertaining and visually satisfying graphic arts magazines ever issued. Published in Paris, Charles Peignot, director of the Deberny & Peignot typefoundry, was the impresario behind the publication assisted by Maximilien Vox, typographer and publicist along with a coterie of au courant French designers. Arts et Metiers Graphiques was concerned with the French book trade, and offered articles both on printing history as well as contemporary developments in the typographic trade. A patriotic publication it aimed to raise the profile of French designers. Later editions expanded to include articles on advertising and publicity and attempts were made to include new ideas from abroad. Although it did not overtly promote the trade interests of the parent company Arts et Metiers Graphiques was a wonderful piece of publicity for the Deberny & Peignot typefoundry. However, it’s true success lay in its ability to understand and showcase the new form of modernism emerging including industrial techniques which have since come to dominate communication: new printing processes, photography, film and animation.