A Mash-up of Chromolithography, Meat Extracts and MacArthur Fellows

No. 1: The artist composing the image in his studio.

No. 2: Extracting the limestone.

No. 3: The studio for lithographic reproduction. 

No. 4: Making press proofs.

No. 5: Printing the final large press sheets.

No. 6: The final trimming and collating of the cards.


The highly regarded German chemist, professor, and a founding father of organic chemistry, Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), invented a way to produce beef extract from carcasses (hmmm) as a cheap alternative to real meat. In 1865 he formed the Leibig Extract of Meat Company and like many businesses of the 19th century, he advertised his business with beautiful sets of trade cards. Nearly 2000 Liebig cards have been documented since the Liebig Company began issuing them around 1872. They continued to produce them for over 100 years on everything subject from famous Belgian scientists to masters of illusion, usually in sets made up of 6 cards. The earliest Liebig cards were printed using a method called chromolithography, and are prized among collectors for their fine quality of printing and design. 
       This set of 6 cards displayed above, from User Online, illustrate the actual production of chromolith printing of the day. The process of Chromolithography was invented in the late 1790s, 40 years before the invention of photography, and it was an alterative to the woodcut or engraving process where you carve into the surface in order to create a relief image. Chromoliths, (sometimes referred to as chromos), are known as planographic prints, meaning the images and text were drawn on a flat, limestone surface with a greasy crayon and when it chemically treated, the drawn areas would attract ink and the stone would repel it. Each color represented a different stone and press run, so the task of producing this method of lithography was not only extremely labor intensive, but an art that few mastered. The subtle texture of each print comes from the irregular grain of the stone. Some of the finest printers were in Germany and France where much of the best quality limestone was mined.
       The set of 6 cards above illustrate the entire chromolithography printing process in consecutive order. In one corner of each card is a small infographic of ink colors next to a portrait of Mr. Liebig. Each card progressively adds 2 more colors resulting in a combination of 12 ink colors for the final portrait. The background on each has an illustration of the one step of the print process beginning with the first card of your average long-haired, pointey-beard artist at his drawing table. Next, in consecutive order, is the extraction of limestone (a nice word for mining); a factory of artists painting stones; making press proofs; the printing; and then the final trimming, collating and packaging. I regret that I could not find larger versions of this set of Liebig cards, but the Princeton University Library reported on a larger rez which I've included below. It is a German version of the same French card No. 4 you see above. Interestingly, they were probably printed at two different printing houses and you can see some dissimilarities in color and detail. The text at the bottom of the German version is also much nicer, which leads me to think it was likely the original or first edition. Granted these are at 2 different resolutions, but it does appear that German card has more definition and detail overall. 

Another version of card No. 4, but in German this time.
Below is a photo of 2 litho stones which I took this past summer at the wonderful Museum of Printing in N. Andover, MA. The people at the museum actually printed from the stone recently and you can see an example of it next to the original.   

Below you can see a 1907 Liebig card on Venezuela from Four Ages of Sand. A magnified portion of it displays the extraordinary detail and combination of colors in a typical Liebig color chromo. 

If you are interested in learning more about the stone lithography process, you must visit The Museum of Modern Art's site, The Printed Picture, hosted by noted author, former Dean of the Yale School of Art, photographer and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient, Richard Benson. In addition to a video on chromolithography, Benson has a total of 8 hours of videos there discussing every printing process from early Lumière autochromes, Japanese woodblock printing, wood engraving to printing processes such as the old piano roll. It is an incredible archive of material and extremely well-documented. His beautifully designed companion book to the MOMA site and a 2008 exhibit, The Printed Picture is one of the most comprehensive guides on printing processes I have ever seen and an essential resource for printers of all stripes. You can read a great book review of it by Jerry Kelly on AIGAs site.

As a side note, Richard Benson just happens to be the uncle of Newport, RI stonecarver, Nick Benson who is also a recent MacArthur fellow. For those not counting, that is two "Macs" in one family! Nick was honored with a "genius grant" just last Fall for his lettering and stone carving work. I reported on Nick last Winter here on Letterology and for AIGA's Voice series, and I had the wonderful honor of visiting him and his brilliantly talented father John Benson in their RI shop in July. John's father, John Howard Benson began the family stone carving business at The John Stevens Shop in 1927. He was an artist, calligrapher, teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design and author of The Elements of Lettering. At the time of my visit I learned of yet another talented Benson; Nick's brother, Christopher, who lives in New Mexico and is a very fine painter in his own right. He also designs and publishes some very fine-editioned portfolios of artists work at The Fisher Press. I found it hilarious that each one of the Bensons will independently claim the other is more talented than the next. They are a one-family art colony—the art gene runs very deep in that family! 

Origami Parade

These 3 origami balls were a gift from a very sweet Japanese friend named Yayoi Matsuda from Osaka. She made them all from text pages of Parade Magazine as they were the lightest weight paper she had on hand at the time. Each ball contains about 50 different folded pieces of paper. Her father taught her how to make them when she was a young girl. He told her that origami will keep your brain active and sharp and be a prevention against memory loss. Yayoi tried to teach me how to make a ball, but I was not a good student. Which may account for my poor memory. Yayoi has since returned to Japan years ago, but left me with this beautiful 3D step-by-step set of instructions which I treasure as much as the origami balls. 

Typographic Alchemy

It's no surprise that my student Joe of The Viatorium Press, discovered the brilliant work of Kristen Haff. He is a big fan of alchemic texts and typography and does his research. I am grateful for the introduction.

Kristen is a recent design graduate from the San Francisco Academy of Art and acquired her first job as a Junior Designer for Viking and Penguin imprints with the Penguin Group in New York City. Included in her portfolio of work is a series of four typography posters titled The Typographer's Stone which she produced several years ago as a school project. The assignment was to reinterpret the text from Robin Williams book, The Mac is Not a Typewriter and visually translate them into spreads. Kristen imagined Williams' text as a series of golden rules for any designer and was granted special permission to produce them as a set of posters for her assignment. Her teacher then suggested she treat them like sacred texts and to consider using different languages in order to give them a more cryptic feel. This inspired her approach of styling them after old alchemy diagrams which often contained vast amounts of information within elaborate structures. (The printers and designers of these old charts and diagrams were the original visual information designers). It is difficult for me to read and authenticate her presentation of the four different diagrams, however they are very beautiful visual displays of typographic hierarchy nonetheless. This is a very difficult and challenging exercise to distill such a vast topic as rules of typographic ettiquette into categories and hierarchies of information and I think Kristen did an amazing performance with visually displaying it all. If she were to revisit them again someday, she tells me she would like to give them each an aged, worn feel. I do hope she considers publishing them as posters or even a fold-out compendium of some kind as I suspect there would be a great deal of interest among information designers and typographers. Kristen has a very bright future ahead of her now in the publishing world and I look forward to seeing more of her book design work in the future. Below is a glimpse of her portfolio of student work.

Seven Fears of Childhood

What about clowns?
:: Via WackyStuff

A Love Target or Surveyor's Mark?

::Via Mr. Wacky Stuff.

Brit Lit

The New York Times reported in the most recent Sunday travel section on the literary town of Norwich England—a Getaway for Book Lovers. Included was an image and brief mention of the abandoned electrical plant which had been painted with the text of Sir Thomas More's 16th C Utopia. A further search directed me to British artist Rory Macbeth who painted the entire building's facade word for word. These are not short line lengths mind you. Each line of text appears to continually wrap around the entire building so the reader would have to circle round and round just to read it all. I'm sure he wasn't concerned with readability or optimal line lengths, but I have to wonder how many times he had to move his ladder while he painted the dang building. Note to self: visit Norwich someday.

Another interesting work of Macbeth's is his reinterpretation of the Bible. Using proprietary software he rearranges the Bible's text into alphabetical order and then printed it in an edition of 300. According to Michael over at Book Patrol, there are 313 exclamation marks, 56 uses of the word slaughters and 86 instances of the word ass. Who knew? This is also a great piece of data visualization that creates some nice text patterns.














::The above photo of Macbeth painting the building is by Sarah Morley.
::Other photos of Macbeth's Norwich is work from Daniel Weir's photostream.

Should I Work for Free?

Jessica Hische provides her Work for Free chart for free. Get yours here. Available for Google translation too.

Book Design is Off the Charts

From the book, An Investigation Into the Physical Properties of Books, designed by W.A. Dwiggins in 1919 and published by The Society of Calligraphers. Dwiggin's witty infographic illustrates the Calligraphic Societies generally low opinion of the design of books during the decade after 1910. It was this scathing attack that lead to his work with publisher Alfred A. Knopf. There he designed a total of 329 books, 17 of which were chosen as AIGA selections. In addition to his distinguished book design career, Dwiggins was also a skilled calligrapher, worked in advertising, and designed many typefaces—most notably Electra and Caledonia for Linotype. He also coined the term, Graphic Designer in 1922 in reference to himself. His celebrated design of H.G.Wells, The Time Machine was published in 1931.

Does Letter Gothic Make My Book Look Fat?

Design student, Julian Hansen from the Danish school of Media and Journalism in Copenhagen, arrived at this beautiful typeface flowchart, So You Need a Typeface as a graduation project. What began as a school assignment evolved into a light-hearted, but systematic approach in choosing fonts. His list of typefaces is based loosely on the 100 top fonts from FontShop. Copies of his poster are still available over at Scribble for $22.

Marge Goes Euro

This wonderful example of Cartozoology (the detection of living creatures in maps) is from Mickey Hulse and first posted over at Strange Maps. You can see his original map over at Google Maps and zoom in to see that Marge's eye is actually Paris, the Pyrenees are actually her distinctive red baubles around her neck, and her mouth is the Loire River.

Designers Don't Let Friends Use Powerpoint

From information designer, Mark Goetz, comes this satirical take on firearms and Powerpoint. It's IRONY folks – not reality! No kittens were harmed in the making of this infographic.

Chartered Territories

Information is everywhere. We are all drowning in it. As part of an exercise this past week, my student's were tasked with collecting data and displaying it as a personal geography. Their objective was to display the information in a visually interesting and entertaining manner. It was also to be fact-based, include a title and display handlettered text. From some of their many fine results are Things People Leave on Trains, by Hiroko Ebizaki; An Apartment's Surface Area, by Marta Sivertsen; The Analysis of a Scarf Collection: Belonging to the Twins, by Chelsey Scheffe; and Some Stuff in My Body, by Dane Herforth. Click on images for larger views.

Wear Everrrr

Working on maps and information graphics in class this week has taken me to many far off places exploring other people's wonderful maps. Is it me, or are there an explosion of new sites about maps and infographics these days? I never grow too tired of looking at new ways to display information. It has been fun seeing lots of new material from my students this week which I will display here in short order. Meanwhile, take a further look at Elizabeth LeCourt's lovely map wear here.