The American type foundry Barnhart Bros. & Spindler may have been fairly short-lived (it was founded in 1873 and bought out by American Type Founders in 1911, though it remained in business under its own name another 22 years after ATF purchased it) but it published some beautiful specimen books. During the nineteenth century, most of these were stout volumes with hundreds of pages. But by the early 1920s, when this beauty was produced, BB&S was releasing slender booklets devoted to a single typeface or a small, thematic selection of faces. This detail is from the cover of one such booklet that showcased “Modernistic and Extraordinary Typefaces.” With names like Cubist Bold, Old Dutch, Japanet, and Bamboo, the faces were guaranteed to give contemporary ads that much-desired, of-the-moment edge.
dori griffin : design research 