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Post-war layout and design

by Arthur Phillips

Philip Marriage writes: Trained as a compositor, Arthur Phillips joined HMSO as a technical clerk in 1935 and remained for 38 years, apart from his wartime service in the Royal Navy. He made his reputation as a technical pioneer in the field of computerised typesetting, however his first post on returning from the war was in the newly formed Layout Section under Harry Carter. After nine years in layout and design he moved back into the mainstream and led HMSO's technical developments. In 1968 HMSO published his seminal work  Computer Peripherals and Typesetting. He produced many other technical publications and on retirement was awarded the OBE. This extract from his unpublished autobiography (a copy of which is in the St Bride Printing Library in London), deals with his layout years.

 
On my return to HMSO in March 1946 I was immediately involved in the work of the Layout and Design Section under Harry Carter, who requested that I should start by working on a desk abutting his own. Within a day or so I received a call from someone who had been responsible for production of The Pacific Post   a paper issued in Sydney for the British Fleet. I was feeling too uncertain of myself to accept his invitation to lunch and he was sure I was giving him the hand-off. The invitation was not renewed. It did not take Carter long to realise that I had limitations in my design ability, but it was deemed essential to have someone who knew the office background in this new section.

Sir Francis Meynell had been appointed honorary typographic advisor to HMSO, and was instrumental in the appointment of Harry Carter as head of the design section. It was now clear that HMSO was officially recognising that the design of publications was its official concern. The position of Departmental printing, that is all the printed matter used by Departments, but not issued as Government Publications, was more obscure.

In 1946 we were working to what was called economy standards which increased the text page size of royal octavo and reduced the type size compared with the recommendations in the 1922 typefaces report. An artist, Sydney Stead, was now one of the Layout Section staff which meant that many cover designs could now be prepared and artwork provided for letterpress or lithographic reproduction.

HMSO needed to make many adjustments to its staff policy now that the war had concluded. The technical clerks on the basic grade before the war had comprised the older men from the First World War and the new recruits from the 1935 and subsequent examination, most of the latter had gone into the services and their places made good by temporary staff. These temporaries were, of course, older men, because all the younger ones had been called up. There was therefore a big contrast between the ages of those who had joined the permanent staff from 1935 and the rest of the technical staff. Some of the temporaries had held quite responsible executive jobs with private printers before the war and when things were sorted out would find their superior officer was half their age. I did not detect any particular tensions arising directly from this age anomaly.

Prior to the war all promotion in HMSO was by seniority. The egalitist would consider this manifestly unfair, the alternative proposed in the case of HMSO was promotion by merit; this latter doesn't help the egalitist at all! The alternatives not  proposed would be random promotion which would achieve about the same result as seniority or merit, or by election, judging by the government we get this doesn't seem much improvement.

Promotion by merit required some assessment of this very subjective quality; and as said to the person criticising the pictures in the National Gallery 'It isn't the pictures you are judging'.

I have never tried to understand management theory. I have tried my hand at psychology, but I can't tell whether any of my ideas correspond to the bandwagon current model.

It was Alan Patrick who described to me four of the categories into which one could divide humanity when considering intelligence and industry.

     1 The intelligent and industrious = the top people.
     2 The intelligent and the lazy = those who get the credit for the work of (1)
     3 The dim and lazy = the proletariat
     4 The dim and industrious = the creators of chaos in society

These four sets, as they would be known in the new maths, can be further divided for the intelligent and industrious may not in fact work very much for the organisation that pays them; they may work for their own ends within the organisation. The second set will merely divert the credit of others to themselves.

One of the most important human qualities which does not appear as a heading on a report sheet is loyalty. If it did so appear I am not sure that the object of the loyalty would be adequately defined. My own view is that loyalty should not require the truth to be distorted or misrepresented. Many people have loyalties to ideas, sometimes their own, but more often those of others, and sometimes their own are only reflections of those of Machiavelli. Loyalties may be parochial, to a family or to a unit of an organisation to the exclusion of other units, or to the organisation, or quite differently to the function of that organisation.

In HMSO its function was to provide Departments with the services that one might require from a printer and publisher and the High Street stationery shop. There could be discussion between HMSO and a Department as to whether services required were legitimate and reasonable. To solve this an appeal might be made to the higher executives of both bodies, and finally to the Treasury. My own interpretation of loyalty was to the efficiency of the Service and not of any one section of it. As with the parable of the horse-shoe and the lost battle. It would be wrong for HMSO to find it contrary to its policy to provide local printing facilities for the Navy which resulted in lack of maintenance manuals for a Radar set and so having one out of action at a vital time.

* * *

As soon as I got back HMSO I thought about the possibility of attending some printing evening classes, but before I did anything Arthur Monkman phoned me and asked if I would like to teach to a final composing class. I felt a bit dubious about this as I hadn't given any thought to printing for five years, but he explained that there had been no technical changes in the trade during the war and I accepted. I did enjoy taking this class which was mainly men whose printing education had been interrupted by the war. I took the same fifth year composing the next year but the following year I was asked to take the intermediate grade.

Ellis Thirkettle was now principal of the London School of Printing and students were being prepared for the City and Guilds of London examinations. For my third year as a lecturer I was asked to take the students who were still in their mid-20s for an examination which required they attend the following year for their final composing certificate. I advised that they all entered for the final examination and so saved themselves a year of study. Rather naturally this did not receive the approval of the LSP who rightly said I was supposed to be teaching the intermediate syllabus. But I was not limiting the scope of my teaching to that syllabus. The following year the LSP found they could manage without me, but Thirkettle recommended me as a lecturer for Graphic Reproduction at the City of London College and I accepted this part-time job.

There was rather a strange anomaly because I took a class of students studying for an advertising qualification in which I explained all the various methods of preparing originals and the basics of the different printing processes. The second half of the evening was taken by a lecturer who came from Farnborough and taught layout. I earned my living in the Layout Section of HMSO, he was in the photographic section of the Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough.

After I had had a couple of weeks delivering my lecture at the City of London College the head of department came into the class to see and hear what sort of lecturer I was. Well he did manage to hear, but not to see, for as soon as he sat down I switched on a projector to show a Dufay colour transparency and blew the fuses for the complete floor. So I concluded my lecture in the dark, possibly in more ways than one for I considered photography as practised by amateurs just another of the many drains down which to pour one's spare cash. I continued to lecture at the City of London College until I resigned to help run a choral society in Bracknell.

* * *

There was some unspoken opposition to the new Layout Section and the independence which Carter was able to exercise with the authority of Sir Francis Meynell; this resulted in the section coming under the Director of Publications not the Printing and Binding division which ordered the publications from the printers.

In 1947 I became involved in the design and printing of the Jerusalem City Plan  by Henry Kendall. The Greater London Plan  had already been produced largely by the efforts of H G Hyde in the publications ordering section of Printing and Binding Division before the formation of the separate Layout Section. This type of book calls for a good deal of technical knowledge in the reproduction of maps, coloured insets and half-tones independently of the design skill that might be used in arranging headings, title pages and text dimensions. The Jerusalem City Plan  was published just before Great Britain relinquished its mandate over Palestine on 14 May 1948; indeed it was essential to get the book printed before that date. I don't know whether Israel has benefited from Kendall's ideas or implemented any of them, but the book was selected as one of the National Book League Best Designed Books of the Year. The quality of the paper was not good enough but the volume was produced on an Agency basis to sell at £1. This meant that HMSO was paid the cost of printing; and did not have the usual publishers risk of having to recover the cost from sales.

The next big job I designed was the Clyde Valley Plan ,  this was an extensive regional plan for the environs of Glasgow. Some printing had already been put in hand by the architectural consultants before it was decided that HMSO should undertake the production of the book. As a result of this I sorted out the incompleted work and fixed up further work to be undertaken by HMSO. I was acting outside the terms of reference of the Layout Section, but had been asked to do so by the head of the publications ordering section. When published the Clyde Valley Plan was also selected by the National Book League.

HMSO was now looking at its post-war staff structure and making some plans for the concurrent retirement of many of the senior technical staff. Arrangements were therefore made to hold promotion panels at which a cadre of future executives would be selected. I was not considered to be in a technical section since we came under the Director of Publications, but I was surprised to find my name missing from the list of interviewees for the promotion panel. It had been crossed off by the Technical Assistant Controller and the reason given was 'technical inexperience'. I was reinstated at the request of the staff association but I considered myself in the same category as Belshazzar!

I had already attended one panel very soon after my return, this was to sort out those who would be promoted to 'Higher Grade Technical Clerk' or Technical Officer. This latter designation was new, and the old higher-grade corresponding to the 'three-to-four' (hundred pounds a year salary) was retained for the heads of sections deemed to be doing the more routine jobs. I knew that the panel was looking for someone to install the costing in Harrow Press, I did not want the job. I was asked some questions on costing and if I was interested. I replied that I was interested in managing a Press efficiently but not in costing. The response was 'So you want to start at the top'. I agreed. The only technical question I can remember came from C J Bruce who wanted to know why there had been difficulties with getting yellow printing ink. I could not think of a suitable reply and the chairman, Dashfield, excused me on the grounds that I was unlikely to know about the shortage of chrome pigment during the war. As a result of this first panel I was upgraded to technical officer in the Layout Section.

This second panel was far more important than the first for it assured subsequent promotion unless you blotted your copybook, something which I was particularly adept at. The successful interviewees became know as 'Flyers'.

I have always worked on the assumption that an examiner or interviewer gets tired and bored if he has a lot of answers to assess. Indeed as an examiner I could usually tell what the rest of an answer was going to be after reading the first four lines. And when you have read enough answers to the same question they make no impression on you at all and its time to pack up marking. On these principles I always tried to give unusual answers to any discursive question, it would wake up the examiners.

One of the directors had said before I was interviewed 'I can't understand some of your chaps, why one said to the question 'What paper do you read?' 'I don't read one!' As this applied to me I thought it a good answer to give. So I was asked what do you read? I included 'Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy ,  which I had been reading on the train and not taking advantage of the knowledge that its dust cover nicely fitted Forever Amber .  I answered questions on William of Occam and St Thomas Aquinas put to me by Wright, a kindly intellectual, but I also claimed a passing acquaintance with calculus and got caught out on that one.

As might be expected I was not chosen as a flyer. I can't remember any of the technical questions so I suppose I answered them adequately. One usually remembers the answers you haven't given on these occasions. But as a result of the 'technical inexperience' comment I decided that I would gain technical recognition outside HMSO. I know I could have found a commercial job, but I did not like the uncertainties of the commercial world.

* * *

I consider that my work in the Layout Section under Harry Carter was in the main an education for me; that was not HMSO's justification for paying me my salary but I did have one or two satisfied customers. I would like to explain my attitude to book design by first quoting Stanley Morison in his First Principles of Typography , in which he said:

'Typography may be defined as the art of rightly disposing printing material in accordance with specific purpose; of so arranging the letters, distributing the space and controlling the type as to aid to the maximum the reader's comprehension of the text. . . . It follows that in the printing of books meant to be read there is little room for 'bright' typography.'

Again from Oliver Simon's Introduction to Typography :

'To achieve harmony and legibility is the main object of typography'.

All this was summarised by Beatrice Warde whose lecture I attended when I was still an apprentice.

'If I listen to a sermon, and when it is finished I say to myself or my friends "That was a rattling good sermon". Then it was a failure, for if a success I would have said "I want to be saved!".'

Of course Morison was restricting his comments to book production, but those remarks were particularly applicable to the information bookwork of HMSO. My critics would rightly observe that I was not an advocate of 'bright' typography because I was not a bright typographer, but that does not invalidate the view that for a great deal of bookwork one does not have to present the reader with bright ideas which will so often intrude between the author and the reader. Hugh Williamson expresses a similar sentiment in a different way in his Some Notes on Book Design :

'But book design is so inseparably a part of book production that the best man to design a book is the book production manager'.

In this he is referring to books from the commercial publishers but HMSO had nobody corresponding to a ‘book production manager'. This was an inevitable result from the split between production of publications under the Director of Printing and Binding, and Layout and Design under the Director of Publications. For the books which I designed I ignored this dicotomy and handed over to the Printing and Binding Division a complete specification, completing a paste-up and defining each section.

Hugh Williamson is right in his view that book production is inseparable from design, the more so as the book becomes more complex, but the less so as they become booklets, and then pamphlets. It is a problem that all publishers have to face in holding the author responsible for providing not only adequate MSS but also illustrations. Whilst HMSO relied on all Departments to provide adequate maps, diagrams and bromide prints it could not avoid the responsibility of deciding if they were adequate. This function traditionally belonged to the Printing and Binding Division and was not abrogated by them when the Layout and Design Section was formed.

The situation was usually resolved by co-operation at a lower staff level an example being a report on the Burma Campaign which HMSO published. Lord Louis Mountbatten had provided text printed in India and many maps and diagrams were to be added, these had been prepared by army survey units and were not at all suitable for reproduction. I was supposed to attend the meeting, to discuss which diagrams were acceptable and which had to be redrawn, purely as an observer; but I had done all the analysis of the material and virtually ran the meeting. Certainly the production requirements were equally important as the design. With the Regional Plans the situation was even more complex because one had to achieve uniformity in appearance of coloured maps from a collection of originals varying in size and colour and decide which ought to be colour litho and which letterpress. It may seem odd to think of letterpress maps but in some cases the map detail was just a background on which to indicate future development.

For this kind of book the text was on as good paper as could be afforded and half-tone illustrations were as tip-ins, wrap-rounds, inserts or art-paper sections. It was up to the designer to exercise his skill in getting these illustration pages between the text sections or wrapped round or inserted in the middle of a section to avoid the binder having to cut bolts (the head-fold) and at the same time keep the illustrations near the relevant text. The same conditions applied to insert litho maps, it was an obviously better job to wrap a map round a text section with a guard than to have to paste it in. Much of this called for a knowledge of imposition which one would not expect to find on the syllabus of an art school to the necessary depth.

Sometimes I would be too clever and provide gripper space on sheets of bleed-off illustrations which did not suit the printer. But one cannot always contend with the printer's work load and the resultant allocation of machines when the work is done under contract and the final method of printing left to the requirements of the shop floor.

* * *

There is one factor which has a considerable influence on the impact of an item of printing which is quite independent of any typographic excellence or incompetence; it is the quality of paper. No skill in typography can compensate for the printing on inferior paper. This regrettable fact was an implicit limitation on the work of the Layout Section although rarely acknowledged and debated. At its worst, the very thin papers used as an economy permitted the reverse of the title page and the first page of text to become a ghostly addition to any blank spaces on the title page. Other limitations on the use of colour, on the reduction of type size and loss of margins, could, at least in part, be compensated by the use of a well designed and appropriate type face for text and headings and vertical spacing.

The problems stemmed from HMSO wanting to reduce the substance of a paper to the minimum as an economy, yet not wanting to pay for expensive loading which would give the thinner paper the required opacity. When in 1935 I sat for the entrance examination for HMSO there had been a question about quality of paper and I had mentioned the use of titanium dioxide; to the best of my recollection this substance which gives high opacity was first mentioned in an HMSO contract just before I was about to retire in 1973.

HMSO Laboratory was responsible for defining paper specifications for competitive tender, and these were adequate in respect of furnish (the fibre content of the paper), substance (the weight) and calliper (the thickness) also the breaking strain of the paper. But up to the immediate post-war period very little attention was given to the printing qualities of paper.

In 1935 Julius Bekk gave a lecture entitled What the Printing Process Demands of Paper   and this was printed by The London School of Printing. Around 1950 I sent a paper to the Deputy Controller proposing the test equipment which our Laboratory ought to add in order to define printability of paper. There was nothing original about my suggestions, they were based on the Dr Bekk Report and were particularly concerned with smoothness of surface and picking. As far as I know the fact that the suggestions came from me and not from the technical division or Laboratory caused no comment and I remained on friendly terms with Eric Halsen who was Head of Laboratory.

What can and cannot be printed on various grades of paper is taught in the technical courses, thus in relation to half-tones it is held that an MF printing will not adequately reproduce halftones of finer screen than 65-85 lines per inch. But Carter who was not unduly constrained by technical theory had the Ruhr Coalfield report printed on MF paper with 120 screen halftones. It was perfectly successful.  It has to be appreciated that the technical information one is taught is generally applicable, and if a printer makes a mess of printing a 65 screen halftone on MF then you have cause of complaint, but if he makes a mess of a 120 screen on the same paper then you can be held responsible if you provide the block for letterpress printing.

This situation was made very clear to me after I left the Layout Section when we were asked to print some RAF manuals and had insufficient coated paper. I got them printed on a good litho paper although the blocks were 120 or 133 screen. Later my colleague faced with the same situation specified the same paper and it was a failure, but he had been warned by the printer so had some responsibility. He received an official reprimand for making a wrong technical decision, but nobody checked whether the paper he used had the same surface properties as the paper I had used.

There were occasions when the laboratory was called in because the paper was causing trouble to the printer, it was a practice of HMSO to supply all the paper required for its work, so there was an inherent risk that a printer would claim that the paper was at fault if the resultant print was substandard. But I was not impressed by the laboratory's approach to printing problems as when one of their staff seemed to think that 'show-through' and 'strike-through' were one and the same.

Immediately after the war it was understandable that we had to print prestige books on rather inferior printing paper, this applied more to text paper than to art sections. One very good thing about choice of paper by HMSO was that we never chose a featherweight for books in order to make them bulk more, a favourite resort of the publisher who based his cover price on the width of the spine. Departments would sometimes insist on getting a better style and paper quality than normal, they usually got it; one particular case was the FIDS reports of Sir Vivian Fuchs. I can't remember exactly when these were printed but it was in the early '50s and Sir Vivian explained to us that a better quality style was justified as it was necessary to impress the Argentineans that the Government was taking an interest in the Falkland Island Dependencies. I've no doubt that the extra cost was not significant in relation to the 1982 venture with the Falklands. But I do wish that I had been less ready to accept the economy standards although these were agreed between publishers and remained in force for some time after the war.

This digression on paper emphasises that book design is inseparable from book production and although HMSO still assigned production to the Printing and Binding Division and design to the Layout Section under the Publications Division it only worked because staff at all levels had a amicable modus vivendi .

* * *

The organisation of the Layout Section might reasonably be described as 'adaptive'. Carter had a small partitioned office to himself with his desk and a random where he could stand to draw when he felt inclined. His clerical-assistant secretary kept a record of all the work coming into the section. Well nearly all the work, because every day one of the publications staff from the Parliamentary Paper Section would come dashing in with a bunch of copy to have a cover and title page, tables and headings marked up for type size; this would be handed to Hyde or to me or to one of the others with the instructions 'Must get the 4 o'clock messenger to Drury Lane'. This had no connection with My Fair Lady  or any other ghost of Charles II's good friends, but with the much more mundane Linotype operators at Drury Lane Parliamentary Press.

Tables in the copy were set Monotype and I do not suppose it was strictly necessary for us to mark up the table type size, because we did what the Monotype operator would have done, measure the width of the table as typed in 12-point ens if it was 12-pitch type and convert that to whatever number of ens of 6-pt or 8-pt would fit the page upright or landscape. This rush Parliamentary work was able to have scant attention and our ability to deal with it contrasted somewhat with what we had heard was the perfectionist approach of Sir Francis Meynell who was recorded as having 22 different title page designs set before he was satisfied in one of his books.

All the non-Parliamentary work and some of the less urgent Parliamentary publications came into the section and were entered in the record, then put on a large trestle table in the main room. It was up to us to take a job from the table when we had finished our current one, and to see that the work on the table didn't hand around too long. When one job was delayed I admitted to the Director of Publications that it had been in Layout Section a fortnight, his reply was 'I wouldn't like to think that any   job spent a fortnight in Layout'. This showed a commendable expediency, which most commercial publishers, including my American one would do well to emulate. It also shows some unawareness of the work required in the design of complex books. Of the trivial, it was the HMSO advertisements which annoyed me, they were always wanted in a hurry and once when I complained to Harry that they were a nuisance that might be dealt with by some standard style instructions he replied 'Well I do my share'. This was absolutely correct, he would take them off the table as often as we did, but it was not the point of my complaint although it speaks highly of his notions of egality.

One problem which arose from out 'adaptive' routine was that each individual seemed to collect work of a particular Department by reason of his contact with that Department. This resulted in the individual designer being full up with work and not available to take it from the general pool. Such work became the prerogative of the individual. This is not a bad thing if it does not get out-of-hand.

* * *

Perhaps one might look with advantage at the different alternatives which are open to any head of a section such as HMSO Layout where it enjoys a reasonable degree of autonomy. These gambits are applicable to any organisation where a project is inaugurated at a meeting of executives with diverse but relevant interests.

A. The chief executive of the section attends the meeting, comes back to his office and starts work on the project himself.
B. He takes members of his staff to the meeting who come back and get on with the project.
C. He attends the meeting and comes back and instructs the staff what to do.
D. He rarely attends meetings but sends individual members of his staff to them to exercise a delegated responsibility.
E. He attends meetings makes promises, comes back to his office and does nothing himself nor issues any instructions to his staff to do anything.

According to the importance of the work, Harry Carter acted in accordance with gambit A and C but delegating as D when he thought applicable. If the reader thinks that gambit E is a figment of the imagination, it isn't but it did not apply whilst I was in the Layout Section.

I think that the organisation under Carter worked very well if one can judge from the satisfaction of Departments who provided the authors of HMSO publications.

Sir Francis Meynell was a great asset in that his status as Honorary Typographic Adviser gave Carter considerable independence from what might have been prejudices of senior permanent civil servants, for if his decisions were opposed he could appeal to Sir Francis and so to the Controller. I know of no particular case where this occurred, but the possibility was tacitly acknowledged.

Sir Francis would call on Carter at HMSO about once a month when he would look through the work of the section, he usually remained closeted with Harry though cheerfully acknowledging our existence. He was, as he says in his autobiography, directly involved in the Coronation printing and in The Laying of the Foundation Stone of the new Chamber of the House of Commons  which he designed in collaboration with Carter. Sir Francis was on the boards which chose the staff for the Layout Section, again as he correctly says in his autobiography he was unable 'to influence or even examine more than a tiny fraction of the vast Stationery Office output'. This statement does modi ••••••••  'Harry Carter and I had ourselves to do such significant typographical work as was done'. Unless this is read as the comment of the computer supplier who claimed 'IBM and I share 80% of the computer market!'

* * *

Herbert Grosvenor Hyde, a gifted all-rounder was the most colourful member of the Layout Section staff. He was known to all the staff of HMSO as 'Albert' and his personality ensured hewas  known to all the staff. Directly after the war he held the record for being interviewed at panels with no obvious affect on his career, he was even the guinea pig for the first panel to be held in order to test the techniques of the interviewing board. He also told the board that he didn't read a newspaper, he was unable to affect world opinion and that was all that mattered, he'd sooner get on with his model yacht making. He brought up to HMSO a marblehead model and had it by his desk until the director of the technical division, who was not our boss, but controlled our future, told him it indicated 'a split loyalty'. When Albert and I co-operated on a project, as we did on some exhibition panels there was the risk that the rest of the section would stop work to listen to our exchange of wisecracks.

Albert was an enthusiastic photographer, when he had to do a recruiting booklet for the Prison Commission he appeared at the office with a spare uniform of a warder and invited me to dress up in it so that he could photograph me standing on the parapet on the roof of Atlantic House so that he would only have the sky as the background. I dressed up and went with Albert up to the roof, but for some reason he decided that he'd first take the lift down to the entrance vestibule, where he disappeared and left me standing there in the warder's uniform. It was around the Korean war time and the messenger at the enquiry desk looked at me with raised eyebrows and asked if I was happy in the service. I said I was. I then went and stood on the parapet.

Albert taught himself to be a very competent calligrapher. He did all the posters for exhibitions in the King's Library at the British Museum. They were very well done and he could have earned a reputation solely as a calligrapher. His ability was often misjudged through accident, he was missing from his desk when the Deputy Controller sent for him to promote him, and although I would have covered up for him, neither I nor anybody knew where he was, namely at a Stationery Office Dramatic Club rehearsal. Another time when he was somewhere other than at his desk, Carter was showing the Deputy Controller round the Layout Section and explaining what each of us was doing. An obvious calligraphic effort was rolled up on Albert's desk, Carter unrolled it after he had told the DC, 'this is something Albert is doing for the British Museum'. And unrolled, it invited everyone to a Brotherhood meeting at Chingford. But although this was interpreted as being done by Albert in official time it was done by him at home for his friend Arthur Barham, he had rather unwisely left it lying around. Albert's official reputation was often adversely affected by his ubiquitous kindness.

* * *

Much of the work we did in the Layout Section was the very ordinary Parliamentary Printing, indeed the work of the Publications Division was clearly divided between 'PP's and 'Non-PP's'. Both Sir Francis Meynell and Harry Carter were not satisfied with the Old Style design used for HMSO publications. Beatrice Warde pointed out that in the days of hand-setting a book a printer who had all the sizes required for setting in Old Style No 5 would have many cases of the same size type and would have to double his case racks to provide a publisher with a different book face. This was a very good point in favour of Monotype, for the printer only needed one new matrix case for each type size to provide a new face, although he would need more than one if he were to run two casters simultaneously on the same face and size. But this was not quite the situation with the linecasters for in order to use a fount of 180 characters it was necessary to provide about 1,250 matrices.

It was more or less inevitable that when the change was made from Old Style that Times New Roman would be chosen, its design carried with it the authority of Stanley Morison and it was available on the linecasters for Debates and on the Monotype for tabular work. Times carried more colour than Old Style which was an advantage in high-speed rotary printing. It was probably not realised at the time of the change that Times linecaster matrices were liable to more wear than some of the other news faces.

We did practically all the Victoria and Albert Museum printing that was published under the direction of Charles Gibbs-Smith who had the rather odd title of Keeper of the Museum Extension. This did not indicate that he was the caretaker of an addition to the museum, but that he was responsible for all the extra-mural activities of the museum including publishing.

The V & A Museum published a wide range of small picture books usually of 32 pages comprising a title page and two, three or four pages of text, the remainder illustrations. Pre World War II they were sold for sixpence, post war produced by HMSO they were one shilling in 1950, 1s 6d in 1952, then 2s 0d and half-a-crown in 1959. Until Harry Carter left HMSO to go to Oxford University Press in 1956 he did all the cover designs for these booklets, I did most of the texts, but this was not a very onerous design task, calling only for the scaling of illustrations, the choice of title page, text and captions using Perpetua for display and Bembo for text. The design chosen by Carter for the 1952 Christmas Picture Book   was the same illustration as appeared on the 11p stamp for Christmas 1976. This may be a coincidence but it emphasises Carter's ability to choose entirely suitable designs.

* * *

As might be expected, Harry Carter was not over concerned about observing Civil Service protocol in the writing of official minutes or other reports. When there was no copy for a draft leaflet for the Ministry of Labour, he put 'Spivs and Drones' as the title. Another time he replied to a senior officer's minute to which he objected with one word 'Rubbish'. He was taken to task over this remark by the Deputy Controller who told him that in the Civil Service one did not write that sort of remark – I don't know whether he added 'even if it was rubbish'. I suspect that you can write such things if you are a Minister!

The E5 [annual appraisal] reports on staff could also be a problem, Harry did not ask my opinion on any of the staff, or show me any of his reports even on the clerical assistants. He called me in one day to tell me that he had been told by Establishment Division that he must tell me he had reported me as having 'a quarter-deck manner'. This presumably would have been taken as a recommendation in the Royal Navy, where I am fairly sure the senior officers thought I lacked it! Under 'How she expresses herself verbally' he gave top marks to his clerical assistant, but added 'Can't shut her up'. On another occasion I was phoned by the Establishment Division to be asked when it would be convenient to transfer one of our best typographers. Carter was on leave and I stalled replying until he returned, and on seeking some enlightenment on this oddity was told by him that he had endorsed his (the officer's E5 with 'Would benefit from experience in another division' apparently unaware that this would be read as an euphemism for 'Get him out of here as soon as possible'. The officer in question stayed.

I may have been slightly influenced by Carter's unconventional reporting, but I was rather more careful not to write statements that might be given a different interpretation to what was intended when later I had the rather unenviable job of completing E5's in Printing Works Division.

In Layout Section, Carter gave us the full protection from criticism which his status obtained, he would support the actions of his staff if a Department was dissatisfied; but this rarely happened because the staff was competent and did not try to browbeat a Department to accept avant guarde  design at the whim of the typographer. On one occasion I had committed some minor extravagance in the eyes of HMSO administrators and received a file marked by the Deputy Controller 'Who was responsible for this?'; my reply 'I was' and my initials, was not considered adequate and the file was returned to Carter for further explanation. His minute began 'Of course Phillips is not responsible, as Head of the Section I am responsible although this action was done outside my privity.' His use of 'privity' caused hilarious comment in the section for some time.

* * *

Most publishers issue some sort of instructions to authors, these vary from a 16 page leaflet telling the author to double space his typescript, and the name and address of the editor and a few bibliographical reference instructions, to a 548 page Style Manual of the US Government Printing Office  or the 546 pages of A Manual of Style  from the University of Chicago Press. Is it a coincidence that they both have exactly the same number of pages; if you think 546 and 48 are not the same the difference is compensated by the GPO book having eight pages of prelims and the Chicago University book having ten!

In the respect of style manuals of HMSO has been somewhat like the cobblers children and reluctant to originate copy for its own purpose. The relevant item is entitled H M Stationery Office Guide  and like Gaul was in three parts; Part I Notes to Clerks of Stationery, Part II Notes on Preparing Copy for Printing, and Part III Rules for Authors and Printers.

A Clerk of Stationery was an officer in a Department whose duties were to indent on HMSO for all the items of stationery and printing required by his Department. Part I contained useful advice on the facilities available from HMSO including the disposal of empty ink bottles and the advice that new typewriter ribbons should not be issued by the Clerk of Stationery until he had examined the used one to assure himself that it was exhausted. In theory everyone was supposed to use the typing pool of the office, but typewriters would invariably wander off into sections and to individual officers who had cause to use them. At intervals there would be a round up and typewriters reclaimed by the Clerk of Stationery; it was advisable to keep a space in a cupboard with a lock where the typewriter could be accommodated on these occasions.

Until Harry Carter came to HMSO it was not clear who was responsible for preparation of the H M Stationery Office Guide . It would have seemed reasonable for Part I to be written by the Establishment Division, Part II by the Printing & Binding Division and Part III by the Publications Division. I never discovered who wrote Part I but the revision of Parts II & III was left as a part-time job for one of the technical officers about to retire. As far as I know his version never got into print and Carter was left to write his own contribution on style which ultimately became the basis of a Part II of the Guide entitled Standards for Authors and Printers which was first printed in 1958.

Harry Carter wrote some 63 folios of copy in his highly legible chancery hand but on the very sub-standard official light buff paper. My own contribution was 16 folios if highly illegible copy including comments on illustrative processes. I did not always agree with Carter's copy; of course the amount one writes on individual aspects of style are matters of personal preference and what the publisher of your manual will stand for. Thus Simon has 26 pages on the subject of preliminary pages including many excellent illustrations of title pages. The HMSO Guide as published in 1958 has a page-and-a-half on prelims. The University of Chicago Press Manual of Style has 12 pages on prelims. Carter wrote 'Preliminary pages if they amount to eight or more pages should be numbered in roman numerals, if fewer than eight, then in Arabic numerals in sequence with the text'. But one just can't make hard and fast rules, some copy comes in with a complete set of preliminary pages, some books do not get their prelims allocated until after page proof stage. Carter correctly stated that a short title should form the left-hand running head and the chapter title the right-hand page head. But he left it there and said nothing about more extensive and detailed books where it is advisable to put the chapter title on the left and subsection titles on the right, this suggestion is in the 1958 HMSO Guide.

Carter prepared at least two MS drafts for the Guide and it is of slight interest to look at some of the detail. One draft said:

'Footnotes: Where possible two or more footnotes should be set in a line, separated by at least 18-points space.'

 Another draft:

'Where possible two or more footnotes should be set on one line, spaced at least 18 points apart in the line'.

 This comment appeared printed in the Guide as:

'Where two or more short footnotes occur, they should be set in line, separated by a space of at least 18 points.'

Both Carter's drafts are unambiguous that short footnotes should be put into one line if they can be 18 points apart, but the printed version is ambiguous. Again the Guide says: 'References to footnotes are best made by superior figures starting at the beginning of each fresh page'. Carter suggests that up to four footnotes can be identified by the typographic marks * † ‡ and more than four by superior figures. In practice it depends entirely upon the frequency of footnotes and their purpose. In Acts of Parliament they are numbered consecutively by superior figures throughout the Act. When superiors are used for bibliographic references they cannot be used also for footnotes.

Carter, being well-informed was not inclined to accept criticism from the less-informed and when he submitted his draft of the HMSO Guide to a senior technical officer he came back from this confrontation, threw his MS into the bottom of his cupboard where it remained until the day before he left for Oxford. He made no comment on the nature of the criticism. About a week after he had gone I was called to see the Deputy Controller and confronted with Harry's MS I was non-committal and after some hesitation on the part of the DC I was given the MS with the remark 'Well get it into type'. This comment amused me very much as I had attended many meetings with this DC when he was in a more junior position and when he had impressed upon Departments and Authors that it was most important that HMSO should only be asked to set final copy, yet he was asking for the MS to be set when nobody had read it for some six years. As I was not appointed to Carter's job I thought I might as well employ his tactics, so put it at the bottom of the 'In' tray to await his successor. This MS of Carter's has become Part II Standards for Authors and Printers.of HM Stationery Office Guide    I expect that this is read by Government Department authors and will give the novice an introduction to printing terminology.

I suspect that few authors are very concerned about uniformity of hyphenation or capitalisation, T E Lawrence wasn't, they are concerned about the meaning of their text and conveying that meaning to the reader. I also doubt if many HMSO printers read and observe the standards in the Guide either they are good book printers with their own House Style, or they follow copy. During the war HMSO did sign on a temporary officer to deal with 'Layout'. I never met him and anything I say is only hearsay but he was by training, a printer's reader, and not being a typographic designer, did what anyone else might have done, spent his time marking up copy to make it 'uniform'. His efforts were not appreciated by the Departments or the authors and he was 'retired' before Carter took office. He had a final distinction, which in 1945 was an innovation but has been adopted in principle by various members of trade unions in more recent years. He staged a one-man sit-in and kept coming to the office after he had been removed from the pay-roll.

I appreciate that this is not a practical suggestion but it would certainly be an advantage if production managers of publishers, and their typographic designers had all written a MS for publication, and seen it through production. It would give them some sympathy for the authors with whom they would deal later. Generally I found all authors co-operative, of course they were anxious to get their MS published. When there was trouble it came from the Department's publications officer's endeavour to put their interpretation on the MS and to mark it up for 'uniformity' of style until the copy looked as though it had received the attention of a spider which had bathed in red ink!

* * *

Some time in 1950, Harry Carter confided in me that Sir Francis Meynell had slightly embarrassed the Controller by asking what action would be taken by HMSO in 'a certain event'. It was not immediately apparent to me what the 'event' was likely to be and with the Korean war in progress I assumed it had some connection with war. But it transpired that Sir Francis was concerned for the printing in the event of the death of King George VI. When this did happen Carter prepared a very attractive Order of Service and later it became apparent that there would be a great deal of work to be done on printing for the Coronation.

There had been no co-ordinated design of printing for past Coronations, it was left to the Earl Marshal's Office to deal direct with the King's Printer, (Eyre & Spottiswoode or Harrison & Sons) or Novello for the music. HMSO was entirely responsible for the printed matter for the Coronation of Elizabeth ii, although one might have expected the Central Office of Information to be involved due to its function and designing ability. HMSO was first approached in July 1952 to design letterheads for the Earl Marshall. Eighty different pieces of printed matter were ordered from this office by mid-1953, but many were in multiple sorts, there being 72 different kinds of admission cards to the Abbey lithographed in two, three or four colours, 21 different kinds of Summons to Peers and 38 different Passes.

Most of this jobwork printing was handled by David Napthine who was meticulous in the application of consistently good design principles to all these items. There were five kinds of Invitation Card with ornate decorative border engraved by Joan Hassall with the wording in Bell roman and a line of italic capitals. The wording was set and proofed and pasted-up with a pull of the engraved border. One very good thing about the Layout Section was that there was virtually no jealousy in the allocation of praise to its various members of staff; but recognition for the Invitation Card did cause some amusement. H G Hyde pasted up the wording set by Laytons, but it was given some further treatment by Syd Stead in extending swash characters. Syd took the finished artwork to the College of Heralds and arrived at the same time as a Press Conference was in progress. As a result he got the credit with Joan Hassall for the design and dashed out to buy a quire of Evening Standard  's which included the relevant paragraph.

David Napthine did get recognition for his work by receiving an invitation to the Coronation and a seat in the triforium of the Abbey, he was lucky that Moss Bros could fit him out with no notice.

There was also the award of Coronation medals; Harry was given one and two more assigned to the Layout Section. Carter called me into his office to apologise for not recommending me for the medal because he could not increase the allocation and undoubtedly Syd Stead and David Napthine were most deserving. This was perfectly justified as I had done no work on the Coronation printing, but could be considered as possibly entitled merely as one of the 'general issue'. But the joke came a little later when a second medal turned up for Syd Stead direct from the College of Heralds, it was returned.

In a slightly amusing sequel, Harry told me that an American was looking round the Office and would be coming to the Layout Section in the afternoon, he suggested I laid out some of our more interesting jobs including Coronation printing to show him. In due course the American arrived; I picked up the Order of Service  and started to tell him about it, but I only got halfway through one sentence when the American interrupted by telling me about his own printing office. I listened without comment for about 15 minutes and then took him into Harry's office. When he had gone Carter came to me with a smile and said: 'He told me what an intelligent chap you were!' Perhaps he was right, I'd known when to keep quiet!

* * *

The Laying of the Foundation Stone of the new Chamber of the House of Commons  gave Sir Francis Meynell an opportunity to design some fine printing for HMSO, a rare event, and competing for prestige with the Coronation work. This volume was bound in green buckram on bevelled boards and comprised a title page in 'tombstone' style in 48 point Perpetua Titling capitals, eleven pages of text in 24 point Baskerville 12 point leaded (Sir Francis was not trying to emulate William Morris) and five pages of collotype prints of the ceremony, in all 19 pages plus title and half-titles. It was certainly a fine production in crown folio format. Sir Francis tells an amusing incident in his autobiography about the need to have the title 'Mr Speaker' (not his name) in a larger type size than the titles of the other officials.

It is only understandable that the printing for the coronation and the House of Commons should require typographic preference, not unduly limited by expense and attracting considerable prestige. But one should not forget the considerable effort which Carter put into the design of Victoria and Albert Museum work, and the National Gallery monographs and such books as the Clyde Valley Plan  with 246 illustrations and 396 pages of text, and Jerusalem City Plan  with 192 halftones and colour litho plates and throw-out maps which I designed. To paste-up and scale the illustrations for these books took considerable effort, and certainly more than the 'fortnight' of the Director of Publications. I spoke to Donald Maclehose about the need for a paste-up of the Clyde Valley Plan  to which he commented, 'Well if you don't do it I shall, and my time is expensive'. Hamish Maclehose was annoyed at hanging around for a personal call from me on some trivial production matter, which was not really the purpose of my call but my concern that in trimming two inches off the 40-inch side of quad royal before printing he was going to have trouble with 1/8inch trim all round royal 4to.

* * *

I really did enjoy the time I spent in the Layout Section although when I showed a book which I had designed to any non-printer friend and explained that I didn't write it, I didn't draw the line drawings, I didn't edit it, and officially was not responsible for the printing I usually got the response 'Well then, what did you do?'. And if my reply had to be that I scribbled a rough layout with setting instructions I felt much like Lord George Brown must have felt when he showed his grandchild the printed version of his Memoirs, and when asked 'Did you really write it all' on affirming that he did, got the response 'Ain't it neat'.

Clearly I learned a lot from Harry Carter, not because he took my hand actually or metaphorically and guided it to draw Perpetua caps, but because of his attitude to typographic design which was to make the printed version of a book or booklet a means of communication between author and reader which had the maximum clarity and the minimum intrusion of typographic invention. If I achieved anything of similar degree it was because I lacked much typographic invention!

Bernard Shaw, in his essay on typography says:

'Of course printers who want to turn out fine work have constantly to face the difficulty that the average customer, unfortunately including the average author, dislikes it . . . he is not merely insensible to the beauty of a finely designed and well-printed page; he positively hates it.'

 It was not my experience that authors hated well printed books. Few incidents occurred when I had a difference of opinion on design with the author. An instance was Design in Town and Village  a 120 page booklet with 208 line or tone illustrations in the text. It was printed on art paper, which Shaw did not tolerate, but he was not involved in illustrated books, all the illustrations had to be as near the relevant text as possible, and this is possible when the typographer controls the size of the illustrations in a paste-up. My disagreement was over the vertical placing of the frontispiece, I wanted it to line with the top of the title page, the author wanted it dropped two inches. The author won, this time with Harry's support although I do not think he would have accepted that position for his own design. But one must not be trivial and make an issue out of a cap 'P' although I prefer one for Phillips.

Personal impression of Harry Carter
by A H P

I returned from Australia in February 1946 and phoned the Deputy Controller of HMSO sometime towards the end of February. He said he would like me to report for duty before the end of my Naval leave for they had just engaged Harry Carter to set up a Layout and Design Section. I returned to HMSO without waiting to finish my leave, I had not previously heard of Harry Carter. Being well aware of my own limitations in design I was somewhat scared of being judged by someone I did not know. I was aware that at that time there were few others on the permanent staff of HMSO who made any pretensions of being a typographer.

Harry was easy to work with but definitely remote, his friendship was mainly impartial, he was confident of his own ability and generally accepted the abilities and shortcomings of the individual members of his staff. I think that anyone of the staff who chose to call and see him in his home was made welcome although I never did so until he had left HMSO. I gather he had a big house at Limpsfield where his wife would give garden parties in aid of Dr Barnardo and he would get mistaken for the gardener, which amused him. I think both he and I had a similar sense of humour, and would tend to laugh at the pronouncements of officialdom.

I am always interested in what motivates people, those who are mainly concerned about personal advancement are easy to assess, although they often adopt a longer term policy than those who are only concerned about increase of salary. Although I lunched with Harry fairly frequently at the HMSO canteen it took me a long time to form any opinion on his motivation, and in fact I probably never succeeded.

I found we had a tenuous past connection, my father was active in the Guild of Handicraft and was teaching this at Abbotsholme under the head ship of Dr Reddy who was previous head of Whitechapel School where he was succeeded by Harry Carter's father.

Harry had the outlook of the academic, this is not a criticism, he was an acknowledged authority on the history of type whereas I had never even heard of Daniel Berkeley Updike until I met Harry, so I read Updike to improve my mind. It was not easy to discuss any subject with Harry except perhaps gardening. He would always answer questions on type history but would limit the answer to one or two sentences. I have not been able to copy his style as nearly everyone gets bored by the length of my answers to technical questions. To obtain any comprehensive background to a subject that Harry obviously knew required a fairly continuous prodding, I think this was due to his being a better writer than speaker and must have influenced his decision not to practise at the bar although he was so qualified.

In belief, Harry was an agnostic, perhaps one ought to say 'in unbelief'. There was probably some background to account for this in the family although he never discussed the beliefs of his father. But I consider the main reason for that view rested with the current philosophy during his time at University which was entirely mechanistic and Darwinian. Both attitudes die hard and in spite of research to the contrary are still maintained in the present views of Harry's generation, and a younger generation who have not assimilated the implication of present-day physics and biology. This made it rather difficult to discuss such subjects with him as he seemed entrenched in his 1920 attitude. He was both intellectually and socially honest, not in any way devious, his opinion was an honest opinion.

I was rather wished on Harry; for on typographic design ability alone I would hardly, have come up to his requirements, but my detailed technical knowledge of composition was an asset in the production of the complex volumes such as the regional plans and some mathematical volumes.

Harry's obituary in The Times  told me more about him than I ever discovered while working in close contact with him for eight years. Of course I knew of his friendship with Sir Francis Meynell, but did not know that Harry had worked at the Nonesuch Press, I knew of his work with Monotype and Kynoch. He had contact with Sir John Simpson in Palestine and this may have influenced his timing for leaving HMSO and going to Oxford University Press. His obituary says that Sir Francis Meynell noted 'his passion for sailing' is this Meynell's or Carter's passion? I cannot recollect Harry ever referring to boats. He did borrow my tent for camping, and having lost a couple of guy-line runners made replacements in sycamore wood 'which would not be affected by water' instead of popping into Black's and buying them.

I visited Harry at OUP and at Kingston Bagpuize both before and after Ella had died. I was greatly impressed by his courage in continuing work when his health was so shaky. I last spoke to him on the phone in December 1981 and was very glad that Peggy was looking after him.

I acknowledge my debt to Harry in obtaining a better understanding of typographic design and the history of types although my own activities have been on modern techniques of composition. I had a great respect for him, and a friendship which slowly developed, it was a privilege to have worked with him.

(There is a story about Carter and Fairbank that may amuse you. Carter was asked by Welch the Controller if he could recommend anyone for the OBE; Carter proposed Fairbank. Enquiries showed that there was nobody of that name on the staff, which puzzled Welch until Carter told him that Fairbank was at the Admiralty. Carter explained to me that he put the matter right by a word to an Admiralty official in the toilet of The Athenaeum, which resulted in the OBE to Fairbank).