Ourselves. An Essay on the National Character by Henry W. Nevinson
From Mike Ashworth:
One of the many BBC booklets issued over the years and by the mid-1930s they were, after a very staid early start design-wise, starting to get a little more thoughtful. This vignette is by “Douglas” and the pamphlet was printed at the Kynoch Press in Birmingham, the ‘house’ printers of ICI who were also indertaking external work some of a very high standard.
The booklet discusses a series of broadcast radio talks, twelve in total, that look at what made the British British and there are some assumptions that nowadays may be slightly cringeworthy, some bordering on the topic of now discredited eugenics!
Title and author name are set in tracked out caps from Koloss, designed by Jakob Erbar and first cast in 1923 by Ludwig & Mayer. Its name is the German version of Colossus, from the Ancient Greek word for a giant statue. The three lines in small roman caps use Goudy Modern, designed by Frederic Goudy in New York, USA, inspired by the caption on a French engraving. “National Character” is in Plantin, an oldstyle roman produced in 1913 by the British Monotype. It’s loosely based on types cut by Frenchman Robert Granjon and named after Antwerp-based printer Christophe Plantin. The Plantin typeface was made by American-born designer Frank Hinman Pierpont, with help from Fritz Stelzer, his assistant of German origin.
