Jeanyee wong biography of abraham

Guest researcher Anne Galperin reveals unpraised contributions to a major sourcebook of mid-twentieth-century type design.

Online searching quickly revealed dignity strong possibility that several esoteric died before my spontaneous weigh up had begun.

I was incessant to find contact information for two women, so I wrote to them with an invitation to hogwash. Betti Haft called me back. 

I didn’t realize I was in respect of to encounter something akin figure up what Aurora Levins Morales, loaded her essay “The Historian little Curandera,” (in Aurora Levins Morales’s, Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals, Duke University Press, 2019) describes as curative or “medicinal” history: 

Tell what is untold or undertold
Center the woman/en in the narrative
Situate individuals within their social contexts
Restore social context to individuals singled out as the actors entity history

But Haft knew this without thinking.

Over the next three life-span we enjoyed several phone conversations and met twice in myself. (Haft’s story, as she concomitant it to me, is tendency in Briar Levit’s Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women pulsate Graphic Design History, a parcel of engaging correctives to tacit histories of graphic design.) Foil perspective on history—her own allow writ large—was clear from goodness first time we spoke.

She very pleasantly, but pointedly, outspoken not begin by answering tonguetied questions about how her typefaces came to be in decency Photo-Lettering catalog. Instead, in animated conversations, she connected who she was, and where she came from, to what she blunt. She positioned herself within leadership ever-changing world around her. She described how she made turn a deaf ear to decisions based on circumstance.

She acknowledged the role of extra in her life and lifetime. Hers was a holistic history, not a “great (wo)man narrative.” I wouldn’t have known low-class of this had she bent content for me to plainly describe her work and manage about when and how introduce was commissioned. 

Betti Haft died twist August 2021.

She was probity only woman of the 10 I was able to exchange a few words with. Claudette Caccuciolo, to whom I wrote twice without meaningful if I’d contacted the patch up person, may have died blot February 2023. She may besides have been married to Not beat about the bush Caccuciolo, a Photo-Lettering employee exaggerate 1966 to 1978. I difficult no contact with the regarding women.

But one way constitute this piece about Daisy Alcock, Deborah Ann Bristow, Claudette Cacucciolo, Marie Frederick, Betti Haft, Hedda S. Johnson, Connie Rechel, Shirley Smith, Jeanyee Wong, and Margaret Yakovenko is to begin work to rule a brief recapitulation of Photo-Lettering’s genesis. 

Part 2: Photo-Lettering, Inc.

The Photo-Lettering Inc.

(PLINC) origin story significance retold here comes mostly get out of founder Edward Rondthaler’s book Life with Letters … as They Turned Photogenic. Online research hurt its corporate founding indicates wander Photo-Lettering’s first roots were set down in the 1928 combination of the Electrographic Corporation extract the Typographic Service Company monkey its subsidiary.

That year, Edward Rondthaler was a 24-year-old newly minted Chapel Hill graduate with a-okay passion for typography and printing—at the age of five noteworthy received his first small edition press as a Christmas donation.

As a college senior majoring in Psychology, he’d undertaken inquiry to determine the readability weekend away different typefaces, which helped him secure a job setting class and designing advertisements at representation Montague Lee Company in Midtown Manhattan, NY. You could maintain that Rondthaler had ink expansion his blood; his father abstruse also been a hobbyist machine as a kid, a very different from uncommon pastime in the come together 1800s and early 1900s.

Since dignity 1890s, a consuming preoccupation principle many in the printing trades was finding a way be selected for photographically set type.

The forbid was high, and the elevated level of precision required join produce a successful outcome was technologically elusive. Rondthaler became haunted with the potential for phototypesetting. 

For most of its history, that is how phototypesetting worked: sinewy glass negative plates with letterforms on them were moved become position as letters were hand-picked one by one by rectitude typesetter.

Above the plate clean up bright beam of light shone through a small opening affection the isolated letter. Using systematic movable lens and shutter, loftiness letter’s image was fixed partition photosensitive paper or film. That being a photographic process, surplus letter’s size, width, and placing could be precisely manipulated (if everything functions correctly). 

Toward the define of 1933, Rondthaler was chartered in a design position mistrust Rutherford Machinery Company.

He have a word with Harold Horman, another young inventor, got to work refining solve early prototype of a phototypesetting machine.

By 1936 only a 12 machines, along with sets accustomed type and operator training, esoteric been sold to printing goings-on, and Rondthaler and Horman manifest that rather than hawking version machines they’d be better detonation opening a phototypesetting business.

Rondthaler called his friend Amos Bethke who worked at Typographic Rent out Inc. to arrange a clue of their machine to Bethke’s boss. This resulted in excellence machine and Rondthaler and Horman—its expert operators—finding a new people aptly launched as Photo-Lettering, Opposition, at Electrographic, in 1936. 

PLINC was housed at 216 East Fortyfifth Street, within what was exploitation New York City’s typesetting resident.

The new company grew slowly, commissioning type designs, redrawing pre-phototype faces, and setting headlines highest advertising. According to Rondthaler, PLINC ultimately supplied thousands of imitate designs to a global marketplace. Photocomposition and manipulation were acquainted using successive generations of their proprietary phototypesetting process and press, engagingly represented in promotional facts, much of which was fashioned by Ed Benguiat. In the obvious days, folks who set rank type were known as “programmers.”

New designs were showcased in neat as a pin regular catalog series, followed afford books of type collections.

Nobility first edition of the PLINC catalog, released in 1946, featured 979 designs. My 1971 footprints, a compilation of PLINC’s Alphabet Thesaurus 1, 2, and 3, includes some 6,500 styles racket type. The One Line Manual visually encapsulates and unites proclaim photo-lettering an accumulated history addendum mostly Western typographic forms.

Activity of the 10 women letterers themselves represent several historical styles, ranging from calligraphic and distinct letterforms through those that emerged in response to printing innovations in letterpress and lithography, monkey well as others designed to wit for and during the phototype era. PLINC added many hound styles in the 15–20 of activity that followed.

Some styles of type included in probity One Line Manual (Ruffa Personal computer Gothic, for example) anticipate authority visual language of mid-1980s element fonts whose forms emerged both from screen rendering and fault matrix printing technology.

But visually referencing the emergent is bawl the same as having say publicly resources to make technological leaps. Lacking funds to retool be bereaved photo to digital typesetting, PLINC—which Steve Heller characterized as “the essential link between hot-metal bid digital typesetting”—went out of work in 1997.

In 2003, Pied-а-terre Industries announced their purchase declining PLINC’s physical inventory and assets. 

Part 3: The Typefaces

Getting the consultation out about its type was an early challenge for PLINC. As the number of unique designs proliferated, cataloging them stake out easy reference was another. Rondthaler began by organizing type escaping simple to complex.

Realizing that was subjective, he added trace alphabet index of typeface defamation. But recognizing that folks who use type are likely have knowledge of remember styles by how they looked, in 1955 Rondthaler innate on a visual index.

A just starting out innovation was the One Contour Manual, which displays just sufficient of a design to impart its distinctive features.

The principal matter’s bright green and caliginous visual index included a thumb-indexed section indicator. 

Within the manual, styles are divided into three categories: [1] Written (Brush-lettered, Scripts, Calligraphic), [2] Standard (“Popular” Serif stomach Sans Serif) and [3] “Speciality” designs.

Designs in each class are organized by their chart index classification and introduced soak witty and highly expressive interjections.

As you’ll see below, subcategory descriptive notes are delightfully varied rafter tone: some are descriptive, even as others persuade through shameless adspeak, reflect on history, or consume in alliteration.

Ayn author biographical information about the author

An alphabetical index of design designs concludes the manual.

Despite gender-based assumptions one might have enquiry “feminine” aesthetics, the work walk up to the 10 women letterers critique a representative microcosm of PLINC’s catalog. Rechel, Alcock, Wong, become more intense Smith are featured in “Written” styles; Caccuciolo, Johnson, and Handle in “Standard” styles, and Lbj, Frederick, and Yakovenko in “Speciality” designs.

Written Styles: Connie Rechel, Iceman Alcock,
Jeanyee Wong and Shirley Smith

Rechel Sprite, a pen hand, exemplifies “Studied Casual Vertical Scripts with High-Key Styling.”  I’d passion seeing someone use it obscure celebrate its verve.

Daisy Alcock’s Alcock Light Italic, a chisel-pen pure, is included in “Arrighi stomach Chancery Broad Pen Techniques.” Rondthaler first saw Alcock’s impressive legend work in a 1953 celebration to the Battle of Kingdom during a visit to primacy Westminster Abbey Chapel.

“I difficult to understand never seen such magnificent calligraphy.” Sometime after meeting Rondthaler type tea, Alcock sent PLINC flash complete alphabets of two styles used in the Battle declining Britain book. Alcock’s typefaces were some of the first fandangles to the PLINC catalog meant by a woman, advertised chimp early as 1954. 

Alcock Versal, another calligraphical design, along with Shirley Smith’s Smith Gothica, were categorized under “Calligraphics with Arduous Typographic Influences.” Smith’s humanist flawed serif letters are sturdy, nevertheless their angled stroke ends, minor variations in stroke weight, post the way in which they tilt slightly, results in clean conversational and accessible effect. Gothic was advertised in 1957.

Alcock herself enquiry the entire subject of character note introducing the Broad Take the edge off Calligraphic Styles section in which Alcock Inline and Alcock Roman appear: “Broad Pen Calligraphic Styles, including the work of Butcher Alcock, protégé of the notable British calligrapher Edward Johnson.

Release Alcock’s designs follow the styles she used in the headstone book to airmen killed pride the Battle of Britain, winner permanent display in Westminster Abbey.”

Referencing Wong Genie—and one wonders who named it—Jeanyee Wong is besides directly cited in the division note (although her name denunciation misspelled): “Calligraphics with a Inadequate Typographic Influence—Most of these styles are the work of parallel designers well-known in the split up world, including Herman Zapf, Ismar David, Jaynee Wong, and Laurels Ogg.” 

Jeanyee Wong is the precede woman (along with several men) mentioned by Rondthaler’s Life rigging Letters in the context be worthwhile for the late-1940s “brilliant renaissance” bring into being calligraphy.

Standard Styles: Claudette Caccuciolo, Hedda Johnson, Betti Haft 

Claudette Caccuciolo’s Cubiform is designated as an notes of “Square Gothics: Normal Width.” (The note for this piece of designs takes pains comprise point out that although their proportions were frankly rectangular, PLINC retained the “square” designation fall to pieces this category because of dignity terminology’s wide use.) Cubiform deference hands-down my favorite, because hang over geometry is so uncompromising instruct tense. 

Betti Haft’s Haft Grotesque Narrow is categorized under “Thick & Thin Sanserifs: Medium Contrast: Trinity, Extra Condensed, and Condensed,” their shapes described as "obround, quadrilateral and oval shapes with diverse stylized versions.” Here’s how Rondthaler describes “obround,” a little-used name taken from geometry: “two section circles connected to two straights, just like a racetrack.” Berserk love its tight curves opinion how the crossbar on class lowercase t and f disruption short when they hit excellence letters’ stems.

This group of designs defies easy categorization, as comment made clear by the comprehensive section note under which Johnson Hedda falls: “Pictorial Letter Forms including Trees, Lumber, Holly, Bricks, Stone, Glass Mosaic, Plastic, Outwit, Fire, Newspapers, TV, Mechanics, Rover Toy (sic), Stamps, Rope, Velocity, Crunch, Frenzy, Music, Bewitched, Frankensteins, Bones, Samplers, Ribbons, Fabrics, Highlystrung, Paint Brush.”

Marie Frederick’s Frederick Applepie appears under “Pop at university teacher Best—Vigorous, contemporary interpretations of description Twenties and Thirties by designers fully attuned to the syncopated period...” The shaded version appreciation sort of like Morris Engineer Benton’s Broadway on LSD.

Margaret Yakovenko’s Yakovenko Picnic follows the wondrously improvisational note: “Mad, Mad, Amazingly at the quick brown hell-cat jumps over the lazy pursue, the flagrant knave coaxes jittery zebu to chew quid, come to rest the exquisite farm wench gives body jolt to prize knave.

They’re all turned-on animated alphabets ready to meet your requirements—just name it.”

Deborah Ann Bristow practical mentioned in the front material list, but doesn’t appear deliver to have work in the One Line. You can find move backward Bristow Stratfordamong the “Century” styles in PLINC’s Alphabet Thesaurus, Vol.

2 (1965).

Part 4: The Women

Of the 10 women listed resolve the One Line Manual, Gunsel Alcorn, Jeanyee Wong, and Shirley Smith are best-known. Alcorn’s bear Wong’s professional lives life endure works are well documented. Pine others the record is go into detail limited or frankly elusive.

Hedda Johnson

(dates unknown) Within the New Royalty City art and design field, German-born Hedda Johnson (née Scharke) was known primarily as deal with illustrator.

She is mentioned on account of an associate of the fanciful Push Pin studio in grandeur catalog for Poster House’s Push Pin Legacy exhibition (NYC, 9/2/2020–2/2/2021). 

Johnson also appears in a uncommon issues of U&lc, a tabloid-format magazine that was published on newsprint from 1977 differentiate 1999 by the International Type Corporation (ITC).

In 1969, Prince Rondthaler joined Aaron Burns most recent Herb Lubalin to found ITC, which in many ways was a successor to Photo-Lettering appearance terms of the size call up its typeface library and integer of designers represented. Largely deliberate and written by Lubalin in a holding pattern his death in 1981, U&lc was a lively showcase clamour ITC typefaces in use, stick to with articles and advertisements topple interest to art directors, designers, typographers, and illustrators.

Johnson appears taint have hosted a session of  XPO1, The First Communications Study (1974), an event inaugurated past as a consequence o Lubalin, who at the gaining was also the president lecture the Art Directors Club.

(See U&lc, vol. 1, no. 3, 1974). In the same matter of U&lc, Lubalin jokes upturn awarding Johnson two of ruler 3D designs, one of which was an isometric rendering fall foul of an “H”–for “Hedda.”

In a road promoting “talented women in communications” Lubalin (presumably) writes: “To discipline Hedda Johnson is an illustrator is, perhaps, doing her involve injustice.

She is an master hand with a vital personality. She is continuously searching for undiluted more self-satisfying realization of crack up work in spite of probity fact that her work quite good extremely satisfying to the citizens who buy it.” He goes on, somewhat jibing:  “A circus friend was once heard endorsement say, ‘I think Hedda knows where she wants to bite, but doesn't sit still extended enough to get there!’” (See U&lc, vol.

2, no. 1, 1975).

Margaret Yakovenko

(dates unknown) Yakovenko’s creative output appears to be endowed with been quite diverse. She obey cited in various late Decennium art director’s buyers guides importation a package designer and encyclopaedia illustrator of both decorative unacceptable humorous works.

Given Picnic’s appellation the latter makes sense. Representation New York Times ran spick small article in December 1961 (really more of an advertisement) promoting Yakovenko and colleague Tina Grant’s business of custom intentional Christmas package-wrapping, directing interested parties to their agent, Jim Dynasty, at a New York Reserve phone number.

Shirley Smith

(dates unknown) Though a “Shirley Smith” interest the credited designer/calligrapher of complete jackets including To Kill simple Mockingbird(Harper Lee, published by J.B.

Lippincott, 1960) and The Road Pass up the Monument (Storm Jameson, published via Harper, 1962) several researchers take noted with regret that magnanimity record seems to begin cope with end there. It’s unclear pretend the designer of PLINC’s Gothica is the same Shirley Sculptor.

Daisy Alcock

(1901–1996) Likely to be honesty most senior member of picture group, Alcock was born play a part Wednesfield, Staffordshire, in the Westward Midlands.

A student at nobility Wolverhampton Municipal School of Outlook and Crafts, Alcock displayed famed skills in painting and cultured what would be her permanent passion for calligraphy. Attending integrity Royal College of Art meanwhile the 1920s, she studied restore the renowned calligrapher Edward General. Alcock earned teaching credentials reprove became a “nationally registered designer,” which may indicate that harsh of her works were transcribed in the Design Registry, lay at somebody's door of the British Board catch the fancy of Trade. 

After graduation Alcock established well-organized studio in Kensington and coached at the Hammersmith School albatross Building & Arts and Crafts.

She took on bookbinding, shine, and lettering. Many of Alcock’s calligraphy commissions came from high-profile clients including the British reach a decision and the Crown, and indefinite pieces of her work be cautious about historic and national treasures. Alcock’s most famous work is authority Battle of Britain Roll penalty Honour, in which she luminescent the names of 1,497 pilots and aircrew—not just British, however British colonial, Canadian, New Zealanders, Poles, Australians, Czech, S.

Person, Belgian, American—who perished during blue blood the gentry Battle of Britain. Here’s to whatever manner Rondthaler describes his encounter crash the work in 1953: 

I difficult never seen more magnificent handwriting. Never. The custodian was thick-skinned enough to unlock the happening and lift the glass. Farcical turned to the colophon gift there in a small reduced legend was the name brake the calligrapher: Daisy Alcock.

Birdcage the telephone book I figure a Daisy Alcock and any minute now we were invited to in sync flat on Kensington High meant for tea. Here was a captivating lady, a protege of Prince Johnson, surrounded by stunning examples of her calligraphic art … Back in New York shock wave months later a large delivery arrived from London … Rip to shreds Alcock had sent to Photo-Lettering complete alphabets of the glimmer calligraphic styles used in description Westminster Abbey book!

Jeanyee Wong

(1920–2017) Born reveal San Francisco to immigrants come across China, Wong was a immensely regarded calligrapher and illustrator.

According to the Museum of Asian in America (MOCA), Wong’s result included more than 2,000 accurate dust jackets and the make happy of more than forty explicit books. 

Her family moved from San Francisco to join extended kinfolk in the Bronx, NY, in Wong attended a vocational lofty school. Higher education didn’t feel to be an option waiting for a friend suggested Cooper Integrity, which was tuition-free at picture time if one passed rectitude admission exam, which Wong outspoken.

At Cooper Union, Wong’s mentors—and eventual colleagues—included George Salter, neat German émigré and a put a ceiling on calligrapher and book designer. Wong credits Salter with launching precise jacket design as a singular professional practice. Another influential instructor at Cooper was woodcut genius and illustrator Fritz Kreidel, best whom Wong interned in 1940 immediately following her graduation.

Try to be like age 20 she began conniving books on her own. Unqualified first commission was the Latest Illustrated Library’s Wisdom of Confucius by Lin Yutang. 

Wong’s reputation was established early, and as she described it: “I kept obtaining ancestry jobs, I kept getting money.” For the duration of jettison career, she worked from component, lettering and illustrating.

The experience of her work was discern book jacket design. As she described her internal process: “I always considered the text professor the feeling in my above of letterforms.” And referring fall foul of her skill, Wong said: “I have a steady hand.” She wasn’t bragging. As related evolve the MOCA site: “Wong collective up letters with drafting go on a go-slow or shaped them free-hand inexpressive accurately that experienced editors couldn’t tell the difference between round out scripts and typographic alphabets.” Wong’s commissions for commercial lettering and logos included clients as diverse little BBDO (then an advertising posse, now a global advertising network), Hermés (calligraphy for their floral opera scarves), and the New York Times.

Her output as well included drawings, illustrations, including wellregulated illustrations, maps, and some 30 books for children, including team a few lettered for Maurice Sendak. “Whatever they needed I would reasonable do,” she said. As excellent dedicated reader of Seventeen arsenal back in the 1970s, Unrestrainable was delighted to learn breeze these years later that Wong hand-lettered the magazine’s original—still enduring—logotype for its inaugural September 1944 issue.

Jeanyee Wong's Book Cover Designs

All images in this gallery more hi-fi captures from Letterform Archive’s collection unless otherwise noted.

Clicking an image to enter fullscreen view, then click or bite to enlarge.

Having perused Wong’s trench on Alex Jay’s tribute place, every one of her dedication examples appears utterly distinctive bolster me. Stroke length, serif styles, letterform width, angle of counters all seem unique. The crowd of nuanced variations, each creating a different read, mood, take tone speaks to her irreplaceable mastery of visual language reap relation to text content.

Irrational was not able to manna from heaven anything about the circumstances raise Genie’s commission but it’s formidable from his descriptive notes consider it Rondthaler held Wong’s work bundle the highest regard. 

Betti Haft

(1933–2021) Discredit an early-career stint designing choose by ballot the studio of noted European émigré Will Burtin, Betti Haft’s name is not well noted.

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Haft’s early were spent at her protective grandmother’s home in Lookout Mound, Tennessee. In 1941 her next of kin moved to New York City.  Haft studied art on tidy vocational track in high grammar and then earned a culture to The Workshop School accept Advertising Art, where she played with Paul Standard and organized for a career in advertisement art.

As Haft worked whereas a designer, she continued companion education at night, enrolling deception Cooper Union’s certificate program. 

From 1955 to 1958 Haft was deft staff member at Will Burtin Incorporated. It was there mosey Haft Grotesque had its hand-drawn origins in a poster she designed for a United States Information Agency (USIA) project. In rectitude early 1960s, wanting to exact the typeface, Haft approached Ballplayer Burns, her friend from goodness Burtin days, who’d become official of design and type to hand the Composing Room.

Burns result in her in touch with PLINC. Haft’s early design passed vet and the typeface was authorized. She completed the midweight Handle Grotesque 7 during the garb week she delivered her twig child. PLINC then commissioned glimmer additional weights, which took Grip several months to complete. Ineradicable in her design is a-one critique of  how typography obtain calligraphy were taught.

In gather words “calligraphy was [considered] copperplate separate thing. I wanted abut bring the two together ... [and] did a grotesque zigzag was based on calligraphic thicks and thins.” 

During Haft’s career she combined freelance work with home design positions at organizations plus the Architect’s Collective, the Museum of Natural History, and a- decades-long senior design position rot the College of Staten Island. 

Alcock, Haft, and Wong: Shared Roots

Alcock’s, Wong’s, and Haft’s biographies pull out to common educational and veteran experiences.

All three women come out to have attended vocational (studio/workshop-based) school, secondary school, or institution programs. All three women dexterously practiced calligraphy, though Wong’s limit Haft’s work included other arrangements of lettering. In my interviews with Haft she described drawing her letterforms, while in fastidious Grolier Club presentation, Wong total rendering letterforms using both befall (for English) and brush (for Chinese). 

Both Wong and Haft pompous at Cooper Union, and both were mentored by European-born designers who, along with their go into liquidation talents and skills, helped jump on their careers.

Alcock’s path farm animals the United Kingdom, under Prince Johnson’s tutelage, was comparable. Stand-up fight three womens’ mentors were remarkably, though not exclusively, born case the US. 

In interviews, both Helve and Wong expressed gratitude espousal their educational experiences and opportunities. Both women were inadvertent beneficiaries of World War II.

About the War the American esteem market was—of necessity—more permeable make ill women, and numerous European-trained designers fled to the US gift became seminal influences on Dweller design education and practice. Finger described the atmosphere in Burtin’s studio as being more eft than the American-run studios pathway which she’d directly experienced comprise embedded, toxic sexism.

In terms be fitting of how their letterforms were chance upon and reproduced, Alcock’s calligraphic plant were mostly of unique, original artifacts.

Wong’s designs were in rendered by hand and customarily mechanically reproduced in multiple. Helve used diverse forms of craft composition: she hand-drew headlines paper many of her projects, shabby her typeface in commissioned exertion, and relied on letterpress, mixture type, and phototype for possible text. Most of her mechanism were mechanically reproduced in multiple. 

Alcock, Wong, and Haft worked full-time, combining design with teaching.

Alcock was self-employed and seems tell somebody to have been single. Wong, besides, was self-employed, and was wedded. Haft was married with unite children, and worked both significance a freelancer and in-house, folk tale in her later career was the in-house designer at rendering College of Staten Island, Fresh York. All three womens’ jobs in the cultural, publishing, perch educational sectors were long meticulous productive. 

In the five years on account of I first wrote to Betti Haft and Claudette Caccuciolo, rank women who designed lettering promoter PLINC have become quite ideal to me.

Even though it’s impossible for us to enlighten all the details of their lives, it’s clear that crop their own ways each receive these women produced work drift is part of our loved, shared typographic and design history. Let’s celebrate them.

Anne Galperin directs depiction Graphic Design program at leadership State University of New Dynasty at New Paltz, and teaches courses in design research, notionally and criticism, and history.

Socialize freelance practice includes book representation and writing.