Colin Barber

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the printing trade was showing signs of change. There was a feeling that the book was becoming an inefficient means of communication where information retrieval was concerned.

Colin Barber with no background in printing, pioneered, first in in the USA and then in this country, the application of data processing to type-setting with the aim and idea of making information in book form more readily available. Once a book had been keyboarded into the computer memory he believed that nobody need every keyboard that book again! Information could be sorted, indexed and re-assembled as required.

Colin Barber had been what was then termed a ‘brain drain’. A mathematical physicist, he was first working in North America with A. V. Roe Canada on stress calculations for the projected Avro Arrow aircraft. When this factory was to be closed Colin Barber moved to the East Coast and Mid-west of the USA. Thereafter Colin worked in the USA for SKF, Philadelphia as Senior Research Engineer, Honeywell, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, as an Analog/digital Systems Engineer and then RCA, Cherry Hill, New jersey, as a Physical Scientist.

In 1964 came the London Conference where, amongst other things, the Macintosh brothers were booed (a great British tradition to denigrate all innovators except financial ones!). Colin Barber was a speaker at the Conference.

Colin Barber was then persuaded to join Rocappi UK.

A deal was done with the unions whereby Rocappi Limited would train union members in return for the non-union ‘teachers’ being given full union cards. This led to Victoria Litzinger – so sadly no longer with us – later to become Mrs Colin Barber – holding a full union card. Viki played a most significant role and any history of early computer assisted type-setting development that does not mention her contribution is flawed.

Viki Litzinger

The typographical standards of Rocappi typesetting were based on an amended version of Hans Schmoller’s Penguin rules, since it was felt that computer intervention should not be allowed to cause any lowering of typographical standards! Monotype, Monophoto, Photon, Linofilm or Linotype tape output from Rocappi produced work indistinguishable from the finest conventional setting.

It was felt that this revolution, probably the first major one since Gutenberg would take printing into the communications industry and would make books and information more readily available with its many spin-offs.

L–R Lord Weidenfeld, Viki Barber, Margaret Drabble & Colin Barber

In the end Rocappi was shut. The financial experts said there was no future in the idea! Part of the team went to the USA. Colin Barber and John Robbins remained here to form C. R. Babrer and Partners and continued to create the basis of so much of the computer setting we take for granted today. Colin was a great contributor and indefatigable hard worker and like many innovators could not be said to suffer fools gladly.

In 1953 we [Westerham Press] printed Faber’s Christmas card, designed by Edward Ardizzone, and in 1958 we printed the menu for the Double Crown Club 145th Dinner that he designed.

Faber Christmas Card, 1953

Menu for Double Crown Club dinner, 1958

When he returned from Germany in 1945 Edward Ardizzone went back to his family. He spent a month working up his last war drawings, and resigned as an official war artist on 20 June 1945. His ability to make friends had served him well and was never to leave him.

He spent the next two decades illustrating books, painting and exhibiting. He taught first at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, where Charles Mozley stood in for him when he went to Italy, and later at the Royal College of Art, where many of his wartime friends were working. He pursued his love of lithography but gave this up in 1960 when he found that the skills were being lost with the retirement of lithographic craftsmen printers.

By the 1960s he became an illustrator rather than an artist. He reached the height of his powers as an illustrator and achieved international fame.

Menu for DCC dinner

On 28 June 1956 members of the Double Crown Club were invited as guests to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Ted Ardizzone was one of the principal guests and after a very fine dinner in a palatial gallery in the museum, the walls all covered by Rembrandts, Ted seized a candle and walked around the gallery carefully inspecting each painting and followed by his very nervous hosts. After thoroughly surveying all the paintings he returned to his seat, slowly replaced the candle and after some thought said ‘good magazine illustration’!

Title page of Charles Dickens, Birthday Book, 1948

When planning the Doulton exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1979, the designers, Trickett & Webb, had the idea of commissioning drawn backgrounds to the display cases from a range of illustrators. My son Paul [Paul Atterbury] was one of the organisers and suggested Ted Ardizzone be added to the list, mainly because it gave him the chance to meet him. They all had lunch together, and he was persuaded to undertake the work. He did the drawing, designed to be enlarged to fit a specific space and shape at the back of the case. He came to the opening in a wheelchair but died soon after. So, it must have been one of his last commissions. He was a splendid, talented man and a great supporter of fine work.

Most of these people I remember well although I met them as a child and I enjoy the mental pictures these texts bring to mind. Most of what’s written is probably true and, even though Rowley was never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, these stories certainly ring true in my memory!

Berthold Wolpe

Bertold Wolpe

Berthold Wolpe RDI OBE was a world class designer who has modestly slipped away from us all. A pupil and then assistant to Rudolph Koch, he came to this country in 1935 initially working with Ernest Ingham at the Fanfare Press and then joining Richard de la Mare at Faber & Faber where he worked until his retirement, mainly on book jackets but sometimes on books, at which he excelled, and usually after 4pm. His normal working hours being spent in second-hand book shops or junk shops of one kind or another. This was made possible by W. J. Crawley, Faber Sales Director who had to approve all jackets, not coming to work himself until after 4pm. In between times Berthold collected ephemera of all kinds; writing instruments, books, paintings, Lewis guns, nothing was too obscure for his collection. He also revived the practice of beachcombing along the banks of the Thames in the middle of London.

At his desk

Berthold was a great and most distinguished designer of type. He must surely be one of the greats of this century. Not for him another rehash of somebody else’s work. His work was original in thought and execution. Devices, ornaments of all kinds complemented his many type designs, Albertus, Pegasus, Hyperion, Decorata, Albertus Shadow and Sachsenwald to name a few. Albertus is well known, having been widely used, usually without acknowledgement. Pegasus, a little used splendid text face for newspaper or book, so preferable to the much debased Times New Roman and seen to advantage in Keith Murgatroyd’s proposed Daily Telegraph redesign and in Berthold’s own catalogue of his retrospective exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1980. Decorata, rarely seen, is a decorated type in the best tradition and will no doubt follow Ian Mortimer’s superb present work, when he arrives at contemporary decorated typefaces.

Bible Title Page

Albertus Shadow

Decorata

Berthold was a modest, warm man and a great supporter of younger people starting enterprises in the graphic fields. Somewhat fondly mocked by the satirical drawings of Charles Mozley and often dressed like Sherlock Holmes, he was greatly underrated. He may be gone but his work will live long after many inferior type designs are forgotten.

Satirical drawing

Satirical drawing