Making Papers Sing

Throughout San Francisco last week. Hearst's Call-Bulletin (circ. 148,079) splashed posters trumpeting "Your NEW Call-Bulletin" ran full-page announcements that the paper had been redesigned by the "world's foremost designer of modern newspapers." Across the continent in Manhattan, the Herald-Tribune (331,853), which has won more major typographical awards than any other paper in the U.S., made no announcement as it transformed its sports pages to test a front-to-back typographical overhauling. But both jobs were the handiwork of the same man--beefy, jovial Gilbert Farrar. 66. who has redesigned 60 dailies in the U.S. and Canada. and has earned a reputation .as "Mr. Typography" of the U.S. press.

The Tribune gave its readers only a small test sample of the changes Farrar prescribed, but the Call-Bulletin put on its new dress all at once, just as the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Portland Oregon Journal, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Houston Post and scores of others had done after Typographer Farrar redesigned them. Farrar, whose clients often call him "the Deacon" because of his evangelical zeal for tidy typography (i.e., his own), bases all his prizewinning designs on a simple theory: "There are more eyes among readers than intellects."

The Good Doctor. To catch the reader's eye, Farrar insists on "simplicity, clarity, variety," uses clean types ("The best types are those that can be read even when the bottom half is covered up"). He prefers putting long stories into two columns under one headline because "it doesn't look so long to read that way." He eliminates unnecessary banners in favor of shorter headlines that "can be read without moving the human eyeball," does away with captions above a picture ("The movement of the eye is from the picture to the caption below; no one reads the line above"). His two favorite headline discoveries: "Flush-left" headlines, which start evenly at the left border, and "kickers," i.e., a short, tone-setting line over the main head. "My ambition," explains Farrar, "is to make type sing."

Deacon Farrar finds the right tune for a paper not in his office (he has none) or his Laguna Beach, Calif, home but in a hotel room in the city where he is working. There, for a fee of about $100 a day and up, he cuts up heads from piles of old newspapers, pastes the letters into new arrangements, makes as many as 50 sample dummies. (Once a frightened chambermaid told the hotel manager: "There's a crazy man upstairs cutting out paper dolls.") Then Farrar "indoctrinates" the staff on how to put the changes into effect. He tries to base his designs on type the paper already owns, but sometimes prescribes new type faces.

The Boy Apprentice. Farrar learned about printing from the stone up. Born in Lynchburg, Va., he never got beyond the sixth grade; at 13 he went to work in a print shop. By the time other boys his age were finishing high school, Farrar had already won a national typesetting contest. Later he did the typography for International Correspondence Schools' books, began writing for printing-trade journals and teaching typography at New York University. In New York he also worked as a type expert for ad agencies, wrote The Typography of Advertisements That Pay (still a bible to admen), and opened his own office designing ads, catalogues, wrappers, etc. He struck pay dirt with his first big newspaper job in 1936, when he redesigned the Los Angeles Times. The next year the paper won newspaperdom's "Oscar," the annual F. W. Ayer prize for the best-dressed paper, and his customers multiplied.

Farrar's faith in the power of good typography makes many a prose-conscious newsman wince. Says Typographer Farrar: "A poor paper with a good package has a better chance than a good paper with a bad package . . . A good-looking paper inspires better writing. It inspires pride of ownership. It inspires the circulation and ad people to go out and sell."

*The Deacon's own favorite appeared in the Salt Lake City Tribune at the height of speculation over whether Hitler was really dead: IS HE IS OR IS HE AIN'T?

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