When graphic design history began to interest more people in the 1980s, a professor at North Carolina State University, Martha Scotford, asked whether the few existing design history texts had created a canon of objects and designers. Scotford strove to add diversity to the canon she identified, in part by writing a book about designer Cipe Pineles.

By 2009, when Angela and I wrote The Handy Book of Artistic Printing, the number of design books had exploded, but Angela and I felt there was a need for another because we believed that some important graphic design in the late nineteenth century had been overlooked. At the heart of our book are sixty specimens of the best artistic printing we could find, including the one above, which was designed in 1880.

This year two books have been published that contain this same image: The Rise and Fall of the Printers' International Specimen Exchange by Matthew McLennan Young, and Graphic Design before Graphic Designers by David Jury. Both books focus on the nineteenth century and reflect a contemporary interest in craft, ornament, and alternatives to modernism. One book is a close study of a narrow topic, from Oak Knoll Press, while the other, from the larger publisher Thames & Hudson, analyzes more design from a longer period of time.

Has this printer from Akron, Ohio, Paul E. Werner, joined the ranks of El Lissitzky and Herbert Bayer and other well-known designers whose work is considered part of a canon of graphic design? Obviously not quite yet, but the reproductions of Werner's design are certainly large in all three books. All three point out how striking the design is and it is interesting to compare their descriptions:

Graphic Design before Graphic Designers (2012)
"There are occasions when the efforts of artistic printers appear distinctly avant-garde in nature. Included in the first volume of The Printers' International Specimen Exchange, among the floral fete programme covers and choral society concert notices, Paul E. Werner's self-promotional piece provides a severe jolt to the senses. The choice and diversity of typefaces at the centre of the 'sun' and the wispy, cloud-like borders are the only reminders that this is 1880."

The Rise and Fall of the Printers' International Specimen Exchange (2012)
Young simply reproduces the slightly cranky 1880 review of Werner's work in the Printers' International Specimen Exchange: "Mr. Paul E. Werner, Akron, Ohio, U.S., unfortunately, in getting up his contribution, overlooked the regulation as to size, and made his specimen 2 inches too wide and an inch too deep, besides leaving us to pay the carriage on the parcel. Being the last arrival it was too late to return it, and we were reluctantly compelled to decide on using only the first page, which could be reduced without entirely destroying its beauty. It is a striking design, shewing concentric circles of black, red, gold and tint, an the order named, with golden rays (rules) extending from the outer edge, the white centre containing Mr. Werner's 'card,' [worked in black: this is enclosed in an ornamental border worked in two tints. ... of a quality which shews the unique style of Mr. Werner's work."

The Handy Book of Artistic Printing (2009)
"Some observers, such as type historian Herbert Spencer, have noted the latent avant-garde qualities of artistic printing, and this specimen exemplifies the 'modern' potential in its methods, elements, and ethos. Sixty years before Raymond Loewy designed the Lucky Strikes cigarette package, Paul Werner, 'Superior Printer' from Akron, foreshadows that icon of twentieth-century graphic design. Five typefaces—some of them fancy—give away the age of this composition, but they maintain a low profile and even weight that don't compete with the spectacular black, red, and metallic gold sunburst surrounding them. The unobtrusive, tan, corner-filled border also reveals a reluctance to relinquish conventional decoration."

The Werner bullseye is not the only example of artistic printing reproduced in all the books. A promotion for the Boston Type Foundry (below), designed by C. W. L. Jungleow of Boston, also appears, although it is quite small in Jury's book.

Perhaps the selection of these designs for the books simply reflects the eternal appeal of circles, or the inability of our twenty-first-century eyes to forget the bold geometry of modernism. Isn't it exciting when those Victorians designed apparently prescient forms, as Christopher Dresser did with his teapots? Whatever the reasons for their popularity, I expect to see more of these two designs in the future.