Oswald Bruce Cooper (April 13, 1879 – December 17, 1940) was an American
type designer
Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below.
A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...
,
lettering artist,
graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...
, and teacher of these trades.
Early life and education
Cooper was born in
Mount Gilead, Ohio
Mount Gilead is a village and the county seat of Morrow County, Ohio, United States.
It is located 41 miles (66 km) northeast of Columbus. The population was 3,660 at the 2010 census. It is the center of population of Ohio. The village was esta ...
but moved to
Coffeyville, Kansas
Coffeyville is a city in southeastern Montgomery County, Kansas, Montgomery County, Kansas, United States, located along the Verdigris River in the state's Southeast Kansas, southeastern region. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, ...
when quite young. He left high school at seventeen to become a
printer's devil
A printer's devil was a young apprentice in a printing establishment who performed a number of tasks, such as mixing tubs of ink and fetching type. Notable writers including Ambrose Bierce, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain served ...
. He studied illustration at
Frank Holme's School of Illustration
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compul ...
, first as a correspondence student, then moving to
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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to study in person. While doing poorly at drawing, he did so well in a lettering class taught by
Frederic Goudy
Frederic William Goudy (, March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and ...
, that he soon became director of the correspondence department for the school. After Holme died in 1903, the school closed due to financial difficulties, and Cooper took it on himself to provide correspondence education to prepaid students.
Career
In 1904 Cooper and Fred S. Bertsch formed the design firm of Bertsch & Cooper, providing ad campaigns for such accounts as the
Packard Motor Car Company and
Anheuser-Busch Breweries, with Cooper providing distinctive hand lettering and sometimes the copywriting as well. In 1914 the firm became a full-service type shop. By the time Fred Bertsch retired in 1924, Bertch & Cooper employed more than fifty people and was the largest art production facility in the
Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
. As he showed considerable talent for writing, many advertising agencies sought his services as a copywriter, but he wrote only for himself and his own firm.
Personal life
Tall, lanky, and homespun, Cooper was a shy man, avoiding social situations and even unnecessary business contacts. Those close to him called him "Oz," to everyone else, he was "Mister Cooper." In 1920, he married his second cousin, Mary Lou Foster. They had no children. For the last year-and-a-half of his life, Cooper was ill with cancer, dying in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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of the disease in 1940. A
festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
anthologizing his work was published in 1949.
Typefaces
*
Cooper series (
BB&S later
ATF
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as the ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and preven ...
) When Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Foundry (BB&S) approached Cooper with a proposal to design a complete type family based on his lettering, Cooper had doubts over the deal, but Fred Bertsch saw it as opportunity to gain exposure for Cooper's work and to further promote the design studio, so the deal was made. Digitised by URW and by Wordshape.
** ''Cooper'' (1918) originally ''Cooper Old Style''; Wordshape's digitisation includes initials.
** ''Cooper Italic'' (1924)
*
Cooper Black series (1922,
BB&S later
ATF
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as the ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and preven ...
). Called by designer as a font "for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers," it was hated by conservative typographers, but was popular among graphic designers, to the point that the foundry had problems making enough fonts. It became one of the most popular typefaces to be released in America at that time and had a great influence on the style of the 1920s and 30s.
** ''Cooper Black'' (1922), this became
ATF's second-best-selling type, after
Copperplate Gothic
Copperplate Gothic is a typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy and released by American Type Founders (ATF) in 1901.
While termed a "''Gothic''" (another term for sans-serif), the face has small glyphic serifs that act to emphasize the blunt ...
.
** ''Cooper Black Italic'' (1922)
** ''Cooper Hilite'' (1922)
** ''Cooper Black Condensed'' (1926)) 20% lighter than the ''Cooper Black,'' the designer described it as "condensed but not squeezed."
*
Cooper Fullface series An ultra-bold display
Didone. Richard McArther, general manager of the foundry, referred to it as "the hotsy stuff".
A specimen sheet was mailed out in 1929 just before BBS was taken over by American Type Founders. They continued to produce the roman face, renaming it Cooper Modern.
** ''Cooper Fullface'' (1929,
BB&S)
** ''Cooper Fullface Italic'' (1929) Never released due to the BB&S foundry closure; a lively Bodoni-esque italic.
A digital version based on Cooper's original drawings was released by Wordshape in 2010.
*
Boul Mich (1927,
BB&S)) In 1927 Cooper was asked by the foundry to take an advertising headline from a newspaper clipping and fill it out into a design for a complete alphabet, which he did, disclaiming any credit for the original design.
The face was named ''Boul Mich'', after
Michigan Boulevard, a street in Chicago where many of the city advertising agencies were located. Digital version released by Wordshape, 2010.
*
Pompeian Cursive (1927,
BB&S) Digital version released by Wordshape, 2010.
*
Dietz Text (c. 1927,
BB&S) Original drawings made by
August Dietz were not suitable for making patterns, so Cooper spent two months making them ready for matrix cutting. It was the last of Oswald's fonts released by BB&S before the foundry was closed in 1929.
Other "Cooper Faces"
*
Packard
Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958.
One of the "Thr ...
(1913,
ATF
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as the ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and preven ...
) Cooper's anonymous hand-lettering for Packard ads formed the basis of the Packard font prepared at the direction of
Morris Fuller Benton
Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937.
Many of Benton's ...
of
American Type Founders
American Type Founders (ATF) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...
.
*
Cooper Tooled Italic (
BB&S) was not designed by Oz Cooper, but was actually a knock-off of a "Cooper Italic" by a German foundry.
*
Cooper Tooled (1928,
Lanston Monotype
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...
) designed by
Sol Hess
Sol Hess (born 1886, Philadelphia, PA – d. 1953) was an American typeface designer. After a three-year scholarship course at Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Design, he began at Lanston Monotype in 1902, rising to typographic manag ...
and based upon ''Cooper Hilite'', though with the white line on the opposite side.
* Cooper and Cooper Black were also copied by Monotype under the same names
*
Rugged Black + Italic were
Intertype's copies of ''Cooper Black + italic''
*
Maiandra GD is inspired by Oz Cooper's hand-lettering for an advertisement in 1909, which was based on Greek epigraphy
References
* Lynam, Ian, "Heft, Gravy & Swing: The Life and Times of Oz Cooper," ''Idea Magazine'', Tokyo, 2010. .
* Haley, Allan, ''Typographic Milestones,'' John Wiley and Sons, NY, 1992, .
* Consuegra, David, ''American Type Design and Designers,'' Allworth Press, NY,
*Rollins, Carl Purlington ''American Type Designers and Their Work,'' in
Print, V. 4, #1.
*Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson, ''The Encyclopedia of Type Faces,'' Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. .
* MacGrew, Mac, ''American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century,'' Oak Knoll Books, New Castle Delaware, 1993, .
*Friedl, Ott, and Stein, ''Typography: an Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History.'' Black Dog & Levinthal Publishers: 1998. .
External links
Short biography Identifont
Fonts in UseTypophile: Oswald Bruce CooperBlueCotton.com: Visual History of Cooper BlackMaiandra GDOswald Bruce Cooper Papersa
the Newberry Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Oswald Bruce
1879 births
1940 deaths
American calligraphers
American graphic designers
American typographers and type designers
People from Mount Gilead, Ohio
People from Coffeyville, Kansas