U&lc magazine / Herb Lubalin
We’re huge fans of Herb Lubalin and thrilled to enrich the typography archive of our château collection with original copies of the first publication for typeface lovers, U&lc (Upper & Lower Case), dubbed The International Journal of Typographics.
It was all Lubalin’s idea, wanting U&lc to be “a panoramic window, a showcase for the world of graphic arts – a clearing house for the international exchange of ideas and information.” Lublin was the magazine’s art director, setting the aesthetics for the publication’s entire run of more than 120 issues (1970 – 1999), giving it a tabloid-style format, like a newspaper, with a fold down the middle and printed on newsprint pulp.
U&lc was created by Lublin and his team at ITC (International Typeface Corporation) to be the world’s single-source information space for type-minded people. The quarterly magazine showcased the latest and greatest typeface released by the company, which was notably one of the very first type foundries to move typeface from metal to digital, replacing metal-type production with film and computer typesetting in the 1970s.
What better way to advertise ITC’s ground-breaking work than to invite leading creatives to contribute to the mag using ITC’s innovations.? The result was a remarkable blend of illustrations (like Gerry Gerstein’s), comics (like Lou Myers’), photographs, prose, and articles juxtaposed on new typefaces and lavishly produced via phototypesetting. U&lc combined clever marketing with revolutionary type design, testing how expressive and eclectic lettering could be.
Even though U&lc was a trade magazine focused on typography, it was avidly read and collected worldwide. For our hero, Lubalin, it offered the ultimate freedom and he loved working on it, saying, “I have what every designer wants and few have the good fortune to achieve. I’m my own client. Nobody tells me what to do.”
Lubalin, Herb (Art Director and Editors); Burns, Aaron, and Rondthaler, Edward (Editors). U&lc. NYC: International Typeface Corporation,1973-1999.
