were neither signed nor attributed to any artist. Benton immediately ordered
the type redrawn and founded in metal, and called it Packard. But Benton
was also a man of integrity; when he learned that the original was designed
by Cooper he paid a fee and attributed the design to him.
Shortly afterward, Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Foundry
(BB&S), America’s second largest, approached Cooper to design a
complete family based on his lettering. Cooper did not immediately accept
the offer, reasoning that he was first a lettering artist, not a type designer,
and he was very busy with his own business. Bertsch, however, was not only
Cooper’s partner but his biggest promoter and worked feverishly to get
Cooper into the limelight. Bertsch called Cooper the “Michelangelo of
lettering,” and urged him to accept BB&S’s offer. In 1918 Cooper’s first
typeface was released, named Cooper, and later renamed Cooper Old Style.
In the early 1900 s typefaces were vigorously marketed to printers
and type shops, often through ambitious type specimen sheets designed
with the same artistic flourish as period sheet music. BB&S was
particularly aggressive and succeeded in popularizing Cooper’s first normal-
weight roman (Cooper). They further made it the basis for a continuing
family. The second in the series was the famous Cooper Black, the most
novel of early-twentieth-century super-bolds. BB&S declared that Cooper
Black was “the selling type supreme, the multibillionaire sales type, it made
big advertisements out of little ones.” Cooper responded that his invention
was “for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers.” Owing to its
novelty, it caused commotion in certain conservative circles. “The slug-
machine makers thundered against the black ‘menace.’ But the trend was
on—the advertising world accepted the black in a thoroughgoing way and
the orders rolled up in a volume never before known for any type face,”
wrote a type seller of the day.
Other related type designs followed in quick succession in what
became known as “the black blitz.” Cooper Italic was described by Cooper
as “much closer to its parent pen form than the roman.” Cooper Hilite
was made by the simple expedient of painting a white highlight on a
black proof of Cooper Black, with patterns cut and matrices engraved
accordingly. “It’s good for sparkling headlines; it cannot be crowded like the
black, but must have plenty of ‘air,’” wrote Cooper. Cooper Black Italic was
completed in 1926 to cash in on the swell in sales of Cooper Black. Cooper
Black Condensed was designed shortly afterward to have twenty percent
less heft and be generally more useful. A complete metal font of Cooper
Black weighed almost eighty-three pounds (thank heavens for transfer
type) and strained the back of many a typesetter, so the condensed version
was thought to save on costly chiropractor bills.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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