How can you ignore a book about a designer who is exposed and celebrated for so many flaws and curious triumphs … What a
juicy read.
Steven Heller,
Designers and Books
… put together with Loxley’s no-nonsense scientist/historian
style of writing. He fills gaps logically, and credibly connects the puzzle’s pieces where connections can and should be made … It must have taken a great deal of self-control to keep his propaganda sense alert, given how polarising his subject was, but Loxley manages to do that effortlessly.
Patrick Griffin,
The Devil’s Artisan
…a fascinating and well-researched picture of a man who could be very difficult, was almost impossible to know well… another great value of the book is the view it offers of many of the lesser-known characters … who participated in the typographic renaissance in the US and elsewhere in the first third of the twentieth century.
John Nash, Forum: The Journal of Letter Exchange
Printer’s Devil: the life and work of Frederic Warde
The book and type designer Frederic Warde is remembered today chiefly for his collaboration with Stanley Morison that produced the typeface Arrighi, and for being the husband of Beatrice, Monotype’s charismatic publicity manager. His life was short, dying in 1939 aged only 45, but in the previous two decades he had pursued a peripatetic, rollercoaster career that saw him come into contact with most of the leading players in his field, both in Europe and the United States.
In some ways Warde, up to this point scantily documented, is the missing piece in the story of design, type and printing in the interwar years, and this book will make essential reading for anyone interested in that period. He laid many false trails about his personal history, but I found a surprisingly large body of surviving documentation to piece together a fascinating picture of his life, and of the complex, frustrating, sometimes dislikeable, often inspiring figure at its centre. The best of Warde’s extensive body of work showed a restraint and economy linked to a striking colour sense that feels thoroughly modern in its approach. This output was maintained, sometimes erratically, against the backdrop of his mercurial and fragmented professional and personal life.
Polarising the opinions of those he met, Warde was a prolific, entertaining and informed letter writer, correspondence that provides invaluable insights into his world and those around him, a designer’s life played out against the backdrop of the
boom years of the 1920s, the struggles of
the Depression, and the obstacles and opportunities created by his own remarkable but troubled personality.
The young Frederic Warde, above, and some of his book designs, featured in Printer’s Devil.
