the snub of the authorless vernacular category

The Evergreen Theaters and a mystery man of American graphic design….

Art Chantry (art@artchantry.com)

This is a mystery. maybe you can solve it.

For years I’ve collected old type books (an obsession). During the course of gathering together all that useless crap, I (of course) found at least a dozen old “speedball text books”. they’re sort of ubiquitous.

These were pamphlet style handbooks sold (cheap) to promote the “speedball pen system”. back in them olden dayz of yore, when pen and brush lettering was how virtually all large typography was created, some fella devised a set of pen points in different odd shapes. Each shape created a different type of line. Each line quality could make unique and interesting lettering. He successfully marketed these pen “nibs”, largely through the popularity of these “speedball text books”.

they were written by a guy named Ross F. George. He lived in seattle (!) In these books he demonstrates how to use these different nibs to do damn near anything imaginable. he was an extremely talented lettering artist (old school signpainter style) and a gifted instructor. His simple step by step instruction (complete with each stroke of the pen given a number so you can easily follow the drawing in proper order) could teach ANYBODY to do pen lettering.


AC:i'm familiar with carbarga's "art deco" books. laing's stuff is peppered throughout. i met him (carbarga) once and forgot to ask about that - like where he found those particular old ads. seattle papers? or were those ads distributed as far south as hollywood? little things like that go a long way toward tracing folks down.

He launched an entire generation of commercial artists. He should be a famous guy in design history, but academics are only interested in things that start in Europe. So, all the ‘great American designers’ of that era are usually lists of folks doing work derivative of what was happening in European graphic design circles. American design traditions are usually dumped into the anonymous authorless “vernacular” category. The ultimate snub.

Every year the speedball pen company came out with a new ‘edition’ of the booklet. The format was usually vertical 5 1/4 x 8 1/2, but once or twice they folded it on the other side so it was horizontal. Kinda cool.

Every year they’d leave the information inside largely intact, but they’d always change a few small things. The reason I always pick them up is that every year there is a a few new and different type face designs presented. It’s cool to see these because they are generally useless and and extremely faddish typefaces. For instance, they become ‘art deco’ when Art Deco is popular. They become ‘moderne’ when Modernism becomes popular. That sort of thing. It’s hilarious, really.I love that sort of stuff – hot styles changing with passing fads. However, almost all the traditional lettering designs stay consistent throughout he entire 50+ year history of the little books.

Another thing they change is the exam


they use to illustrate the possibilities of this work. Usually the little books are peppered with wonderful examples of “how to” showcards and ads and logos. These are really inspiring to look at and I keep them around to just be hit with new/old thought ideas, etc. They’re a time capsule of early American graphic design thinking.

Here’s the mystery. In about 1938 (and a couple years thereafter), the Speedball books ran a page of these little movie newspaper spot adverts. They are all for old Seattle theaters and there is a credit line at the bottom of the page crediting a Seattle artist named Robert Laing. Who the heck was this guy? He was absolutely brilliant! I lived and studied in Seattle for 25 years (i was even born there and spent the first ten years of my life there as well). I’ve NEVER heard of this guy. NOBODY HAS!

You’d think that with a city as small and isolated and inbred as old Seattle was, that I’d have somehow heard of a guy with this sort of talent and connections, wouldn’t you? I’m an amateur historical scholar on all sorts of ‘commercial art’ in Seattle. yet, this guy is a total blank.

But, look at that work! He was an absolute master of his craft. His caricatures and drawing styles, his typography and lettering work, his layout and design thinking – all of it is extremely impressive and stylistically complete and fully realized. The guy not only had an ‘eye’, he had a ‘voice’.

Over the years, I’ve examined old movie spot ads at length (they are as hard to find as old newspapers.) Most of them were done by ‘bull pens’ inside the Hollywood movie industry – anonymous lesser designers and crafts, who literally cranked stuff out to suit the master above them. Basically junk work to make a buck.

But, Robert Laing’s work is as easy to spot as Rick Griffin. or Herschfield. or Seymour Chwast. I can look through old newspapers form that era and instantly spot his hand. I can pick old clip art books and see his old art lifted and dropped in straight across. This guy was an American master, a major league graphic design stylist. Yet, he’s utterly unknown, outside of this one reference in a few old Speedball books. who was this guy?

Anybody out there knowledgeable about the beautiful and masterful and wonderful work of Seattleite Robert Laing?

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