All Things Considered

Robert Harling
Posted by Simon Lewin

In response to my post about the Playbill typeface I'd recently purchased, our friend Phil Abel from Hand & Eye kindly dropped me a line about the work of typographer Robert Harling who worked for Sheffield based type foundry Stephenson Blake & Co., reviving Playbill from their archives in 1938.

"Robert Harling, who has died aged 98, was a key figure in mid-20th
century graphic design. As a typographer and editor, he bridged the gap
between the gentlemanly artist-craftsmen of the prewar printing world
and the new breed of professional postwar graphic designers. A
multi-talented and raffish character who resisted being typecast, he
also wrote successful novels, one of which - The Paper Palace (1951) -
has been become a Fleet Street classic, based on his own days in
journalism. He was an inspirational editor of House & Garden in the
great days of glossy magazines." Read this Guardian obituary in full.

Thanks to Phil for passing this information on.

Posted by Simon Lewin on March 26th, 2009