Book Review: Teaching Type to Talk

More a whisper than a talk

I've always loved the typographics from the late-fifties onwards that flowered in New York and presented in all kinds of print media. Alan Peckolick was one of a small band of talented designers that believed that twenty-six characters could say so much more than just the straight forward meaning of a word.

Peckolick's book can be added to a growing library of titles displaying the work of top designers from past decades. That said I was slightly disappointed with this book. Initially I thought it looked rather like a vanity project with its thick paper and well spaced essays set in large Typewriter that fill the first thirty-one pages. The essence of the book follows the essays and there are some quite brilliant typographic solutions for a variety of jobs: brochures; annual reports; magazine covers; book jackets and book design; logos (plenty of these) packaging; movie graphics. All of this material is shown perhaps a bit too large on the page. This is just a taste rather than a meal of all this creativity. Pages 120 and 121 show a clever design solution for the 1989 Oppenheimer Capital annual report with the cover and three inside spreads so you get an idea of how the design worked but this is an exception, most of the other work only has one big example, pages 148 and 149 just has a Revlon logo a bit over fourteen inches wide.

'Teaching type to talk' really doesn't compare too well with other excellent designer monographs, for example Kit Hinrichs 'Type wise', Bradbury Thompson's 'The art of graphic design', Dorfsman & CBS' by Dick Hess and Peckolick's own book on Herb Lubalin. These four books are bursting with illustrations in various sizes and really give the reader a comprehensive look at each mans creativity.

It's a pity that 'Teaching type to talk' doesn't quite achieve what it was supposed to for the reader.

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