Cooper Type Specimen

O S WA L D C O O P E R

COOPER

with excerpts from

Lolita

BY V L A D I M I R N A B O KOV

LO LEE

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer.

The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.

Lo. Lee. Ta.

The story of Cooper has a definite homespun quality. It is no mere coincidence that various people speaking or writing of Cooper have mentioned his likeness to Lincoln, for there was much about him that was reminiscent of the

‘Great Emancipator’ -not only his long, lanky figure, but his kindly nature, his dislike of ostentation, and his quaint, dry humor.

02

TA

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied.

Look at this tangle of thorns.

History

Oswald Cooper

03

– Oz -

OR OZZIE TO HIS FRIENDS was the man behind the face. Cooper was a native of Coffeyville, Kansas. In his teens he settled in Chicago to pursue an illustration career. He eventually became one of the progenitors of the so-called Chicago style. In the early 1920 and 1930s American design was a mélange of regional dialects, each emanating from a big city under the influence of a single person’s mannerism or the confluence of a few.

It was the els all ove tourist ac fer the Fu nooks, ide

I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorsetparsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory.

04

&

en that began our extensive traver the States. To any other type of ccommodation I soon grew to preunctional Motel--clean, neat, safe eal places for sleep, argument, rec-

onciliation History

1904 OPENED THE AD AGENCY

Bertsch & Cooper WITH FRIEND AND ILLUSTRATOR While teaching at Holme, Cooper met Fred Bertsch, who ran an art service agency next door to the school. Bertsch loved Cooper’s work, and in 1904 they entered into the perfect partnership: Bertsch, a consummate salesman, and Cooper, the gifted artist.

FRED S. BERTSCH Together, they provided design and lettering services to their clients, and by 1914 they had added typesetting to their services.

Bertsch & Cooper was a visionary commercial art service. They were one of the first shops in Chicago that offered to create layouts, compose artwork, and typeset text all under one roof. They continually added staff, resulting in a scattershot assortment of illustrators, draftsmen, and compositors peppered throughout the same building in a variety of rooms. At their first location, Bertsch was famous for his “inter-office communication system” which consisted

of yelling upstairs and down from the inner balcony of the building to professional associates. Cooper was ensconced in the “bull pen”- a room with a half dozen or so other commercial artists scratching away at the jobs of the day. Cooper was renowned for his “filing system”- a towering, dusty, haphazardly curved pile of layouts, proofs, notes, and other assorted papers that loomed over his desk, each day’s ephemera separated by a newspaper from that date.

in New England, then meandered south, up and down, east and west; dipped deep into ce qu’on appelle Dixieland, avoided Florida because the Farlows were there, veered west, zigzagged through corn belts and cot-

n, insatiable illicit love.

BARNHART BROTHERS 06

& SPINDLER FOUNDRY BEGAN ISSUING TYPEFACE DESIGNS

BY COOPER DURING THE MID 1920S.

ton belts crossed and recrossed the Rockies, straggled through southern deserts where we wintered; reached the Pacific, turned north through THESE INCLUDED :

Cooper Old Style, A N D H I S M O S T FA M O U S D E S I G N :

COOPER BLACK[1] WHICH HE DESCRIBED AS A TYPE FOR:

“Far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers.�

[1] While not the first type to have rounded serifs, It is the most authoritative and imposing of the so-called fat faces: as eye-catching as a charging bull and as expressive as carnival barker. It has been influential too: had there never been a Cooper Black, the world might never have known Ultra Bodoni, one of the many behemoths designed to compete in the growing fat face market of the mid-1920s.

Voraciously we consumed those long highways, in rapt silence we glided over their glossy black dance floors.

WE CAME TO KNOW THE CURIOUS ROADSIDE History SPECIES, HITCHHIKING MAN, HOMO POLLEX OF SCIENCE, WITH ALL ITS MANY SUB-SPECIES AND FORMS; THE MODEST SOLDIER, SPIC AND SPAN, QUIETLY WAITING, QUIETLY CONSCIOUS OF KHAKI’S VIATRIC APPEAL; THE SCHOOLBOY WISHING TO GO TWO BLOCKS; THE KILLER WISHING TO GO TWO THOUSAND MILES; THE MYSTERIOUS, NERVOUS, ELDERLY GENT, WITH BRAND-NEW SUITCASE AND CLIPPED MUSTACHE; A TRIO OF OPTIMISTIC MEXICANS; THE COLLEGE STUDENT DISPLAYING THE GRIME OF VACATIONAL OUTDOOR WORK AS PROUDLY AS THE NAME OF THE FAMOUS COLLEGE ARCHING ACROSS THE FRONT OF HIS SWEATSHIRT; THE DESPERATE LADY WHOSE BATTERY HAS JUST DIED ON HER; THE CLEANCUT, GLOSSY-HAIRED, SHIFTY-EYED, WHITEFACED YOUNG BEASTS IN LOUD SHIRTS AND COATS, VIGOROUSLY, ALMOST PRIAPICALLY THRUSTING OUT TENSE THUMBS TO TEMPT LONE WOMEN OR SADSACK SALESMEN WITH

C

Style

Roadside signs as Timber Hotel CHILDREN UNDER 14 FREE

OLD STYLE VARIETY:

soi-disant “high-class” resort 0123456789 MEDIUM ITALIC 22

IN A MIDWESTERN STATE 0123456789!& LIGHT 19

advertised “raid-the-icebox” 0123456789 MEDIUM 22

midnight snacks, complimentary morning coffee 0123456789!&@#*() DEMI 13

plainer motor courts, habitual haunts 0123456789!&@ DEMI ITALIC 16

SET THE ELECTRIC FAN A-WHIRR, 0123456789!&@#* BOLD 14

drop a quarter into the radio 0123456789!

LIGHT 22

WE PASSED AND RE-PASSED THROUGH THE WHOLE GAMUT OF AMERICAN ROADSIDE RESTAURANTS,

from the lowly

Eat

with its deer head (dark trace of long tear at inner canthus), “humorous” picture post cards of the posterior “Kurort” type, impaled guest checks, life savers, sunglasses, adman visions of celestial sundaes, one half of a chocolate cake under glass, and several horribly experienced flies zigzagging over the sticky sugar-pour on the ignoble counter; and all the way to the expensive place with the subdued lights, preposterously poor table linen, inept waiters (ex-convicts or college boys), the roan back of a screen actress, the sable eyebrows

10

Cooper is representative of 1930s American Midwestern typography

play

Aa BCDEFGHIJKLMN OQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

OLD STYLE LIGHT

to

only

words

◊$^¢£¤¥¦§€◊

have

I

Oh, Lolita,

my

of her male of the moment, and an orchestra of zoot-suiters with trumpets.

Cooper Old Style Comes in seven weights, which include: Light, Light Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Demi, Demi Italic, and Bold.

Aa BCDEFGHIJKLMN OQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

OLD STYLE BOLD

12

AaAaAaAa

with!

Variety

Variety

DO Y

SHE WAS LO, PLAIN LO, IN THE MORNING,

STANDING FOUR FEET TEN IN ONE SOCK.

SHE WAS LOLA IN SLACKS.

SHE WAS DOLLY AT SCHOOL.

SHE WAS DOLORES ON THE DOTTED LINE.

Though not based on a single historic model it exhibits influences of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the Machine Age.

MEDIUM ITALIC 72/65

Cooper Old

MEDIUM ITALIC 52/56

Cooper Old Style is an approachable

MEDIUM 38/39

Cooper Old Style is an approachable but elegant

LIGHT ITALIC 23/27.6

Cooper Old Style is an approachable but elegant font, with rounded serifs and long ascenders. It has no single historic model, but it exhibits influences of Art Nouveau,

LI GH T 1 6 / 1 9

L L O Y

O

Cooper Old Style is an approachable but elegant font, with rounded serifs and long ascenders. It has no single historic model, but it exhibits influences of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the Machine Age. Cooper Old Style became well known through the Packard Motor Ads in which it was featured.

OLD ST YLE LIGHT ITALIC

71 pt.

COOPER OLD

60 pt.

originally released a

50 pt.

typeface, which offered l

36 pt.

typesetting. Oz was never quite h

30 pt.

amount of “air” around the typefaces’ c

24 pt.

So he redrew the lowercase characters multiple t

18 pt.

toying with the rounded forms of the

m

Most “Col “gra win “unl

-m

D STYLE WAS

as a non-kerning

limited use to

happy with the

characters.

times,

t empty to her, too, were those lonial” Inns, which apart from acious atmosphere” and picture ndows, promised: limited quantities of

m-m food.”

We avoided Tourist Homes, country cousins of Funeral ones, old-fashioned, genteel and showerless, with elaborate dressing tables in depressingly white-and-pink little bedrooms, and photographs of the landlady’s children in all their instars. But I did surrender, now and then, to Lo’s predilection for “real” hotels. She would pick out in the book, while I petted her in the parked car in the silence of a dusk-mellowed, mysterious side-road, some highly recommended lake lodge which offered all sorts of things magnified by the flashlight she moved over them, such as congenial company, between-meals snacks, outdoor barbecues--but which in my mind conjured up odious visions of stinking high school boys in sweatshirts and an ember-red cheek pressing against hers.

OLD STYLE MEDIUM 32 OLD STYLE LIGHT 24

The quality of Cooper’s lettering was equal to the strength of his writing.

Cooper’s letterforms were not simply novelties, but “lessons in structural form, in free and friendly balance,” wrote Standard.

Cooper created as many new designs as he could. Yet he had an instinctual distrust of things superficially modish and conceptually strained.

“Types too dexterous, like tunes too luscious,” he once waxed, “are predestinated (sic) to short careers.”

OLD STYLE MEDIUM ITALIC 17

“

The Lo many n the gor boxes t every m I still h voices ibles se people like Sa and Ed and Pe and Pa and sen hits, al similar her var were to

ord knows how nickels I fed to rgeous music that came with meal we had! hear the nasal of those inviserenading her, e with names ammy and Jo ddy and Tony eggy and Guy atty and Rex, ntimental song ll of them as r to my ear as rious candies o my palate.

IF A ROAD SIDE SI G N SA ID :

Visit Our Gift Shop WE HAD TO VISIT IT, HAD TO BUY IT’S

Indian curios

DOLL S

copper jewelry cactus candy

Black Hilite Old St yle Medium

Black Italic Swash

Old St yle Demi Italic

Old St yle Light

Black Italic

The words

“ N O V E LT I E S & S O U V E N I R S ”

Black

simply entranced her by their trochaic lilt.

She it was to whom ads were dedicated:

Old St yle Medium

THE IDEAL CONSUMER

Old St yle Bold

She believed, with a kind of celestial trust, any advertisement or advice that appeared in Movie Love or Screen LandStarasil Starves Pimples, or “You better watch out if you’re wearing your shirttails outside your jeans, gals, because Jill says you shouldn’t.”

SWEET HOT JAZZ

square dancing gooey fudge sundaes

musicals

movie magazines

and so forth--these were the obvious items

in her list of beloved things.

Cooper Hilite was made by the simple expedient of painting a white highlight on a black proof of Cooper Black, with patterns cut and matrices engraved accordingly. “It’s good for sparkling headlines; it cannot be crowded like the black, but must have plenty of ‘air,’” wrote Cooper.

Style

Cooper isn’t trying to be a svelte and economical Helvetica, but instead almost luxuriates (if a font can do that) in its big and beautiful strokes and serifs.

18

Black

CO OPER B L ACK

G O U DY HE AV YFAC E

T

HE WOULD-BE ENTICEMENTS OF THEIR REPETITIOUS NAMES - -

all those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac’s Courts.

m e We came to know--nous connømes, to use a tian intonation--the stone cottages under en Chateaubriandesque trees, the brick unit, th unit, the stucco court, on what the Tour Boo Automobile Association describes as “shaded” cious” or “landscaped”grounds. The log kind, in knotty pine, reminded Lo, by its golden-bro of friend-chicken bones. We held in contempt t whitewashed clapboard Kabins, with their fain ish smell or some other gloomy self-consciou and nothing to boast of (except “good beds”), unsmiling landlady always prepared to have her . well, I could give you . . .”) turned down.

Nous connûmes (this is royal fun) the woul ticements of their repetitious names--all those Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Court View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac’s Court was sometimes a special line in the write-up, “Children welcome, pets allowed” (You are w you are allowed).

S

Ludlow Black LL Cooper

Cooper BT

Before his death in 1940 Cooper turned his attention to the fight for copyright protections for himself and all designers.

He tried to convince the government that patents should be awarded for typefaces. He also chided his colleagues about copying: “To work in the style of current trends or past periods is all right, but do it n your own way. Study the work of the leaders, but never have another’s work before you when you are trying to create. There was never a great imitator— not even in vaudeville. The way to become a master is by cultivating your own talent.”

Anatomy

20

Goudy Heavyface

Q

plunged into the comic books

Although Cooper’s designs initiated trends, he did not respond well to “the itch of the times”. Nor was he a fan of what in 1928 he called the extreme left, “the balmy wing of modernism”.

Yet his last face, designed in 1929 for BB&S and originally called Cooper Fullface, later changed in ATF catalogues to Cooper Modern, was in fact consistent with dominant styles and a precursor of Goudy Stout.

acquired for rainy days at Camp Q Of his own face, Cooper wrote in his notes for BB&S salesmen’s “talking points”: “This style, lately revived by the practitioners of the ‘modernistic’ typography, had created a demand for display letters that comport well with it – letters

that reflect the sparkling contrasts of Bodoni, and that carry weight to meet the needs of advertisers. Cooper Fullface is such a letter.”

Q

o

Anatomy

OUT OF THIS DEVELOPED

COOPER BLACK “Where others saw

cheap commodity, some saw an underappreciated classic.”

AaBcCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNn OoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz AaBcCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNn OoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

7.5 10 26 39 11

A VERY HEAVY VERSION OF COOPER OLDSTYLE. The blunt and rounded forms, blurred serifs, and very small counters make this a warm and friendly face. Its most distinctive features are the backward tilt of the counters on the

OQ &

as well as the elliptical dots in the ‘i’ and ‘j’.

SKELETONS OF BURNED ASPENS, PATCHES OF SPIRED BLUE FLOWERS.

The various items of a scenic drive. Hundreds of scenic drives,

thousands of Bear Creeks

SODA SPRINGS PAINTED CANYONS;

11

TEXAS, A DROUGHT-STRUCK PLAIN.

24

CRYSTAL CHAMBER

18

in the longest cave in the world,

19

CHILDREN UNDER 12 FREE

30

LO, A YOUNG CAPTIVE

Revival By the 1980s, Cooper Black mania had sullied the brand somewhat, with its jaunty, rounded serifs suddenly calling to mind bargain shoes and non-groundbreaking rock & roll. But unlike the similarly overused Comic Sans, the laughingstock of the design world, Cooper Black retains its dignity and, according to Isaac, inspired something of a revival among discerning designers in the late ‘90s.

We had breakfast

in the

township

of

Soda,

pop.

1001

Where others saw a cheap commodity, some saw an underappreciated classic.

Nous connûmes various types of

The populist, prosaic appearance of both Louis C.K. and Cooper Black belie a more deliberate cleverness. Despite his newfound wealth, Louis C.K. projects a working-class, underdog image; he is a flabby and unattractive representative of fumbling middle-aged men all across America.

One font-obsessed friend told me, “Cooper Black isn’t trying to be a svelte and economical Helvetica, but instead almost luxuriates (if a font can do that) in its big and beautiful strokes and serifs. Just one look at the curved tail of the uppercase ‘Q’ and you know that Cooper Black doesn’t have any body issues.”

Cooper Black seems to have been an instinctive decision for C.K., characterized perhaps by the same hedonism that inspires Louie to indulge in a few scoops of ice cream with lunch in the Season 3 premiere or gorge himself on ice cream and pizza when he gets a break from his kids for a few days in the first season’s episode “Dogpound.” Explaining the choice, C.K. told the L.A. Times “I just grew up watching TV in the ‘70s. I just like those aesthetics.” He just likes it; pleasure is pleasure, and sometimes you can’t go into a deeper explanation when something simply makes you happy. On Twitter, when a Berkeley-based graphic designer and self-described “type geek” demanded, “Why on earth did you pick Cooper Black?” C.K. responded in a tone not defensive or intellectual but almost naïve and optimistic, like a little boy: “it’s balloony and pretty and nice!”

MOTOR COURT OPERATORS,

reformed criminal, retired teacher

madamic variants

pseudo-ladylike

◊

MOTHERLY

BUSINE S S FLOP

ANTED,

DOLORE Hair: brown.

Lips: scarlet.

Profession: NONE, OR “STARLET”.

, WANT

ES HAZE.

Age:

5, 300 days