TOWARDS A NEW STYLE
After retiring from the Hearst organization I was recalled and asked to go to Chicago and see if something could not be done to improve the printing of illustrations. A trip to Chicago was not necessary, there being an obvious change long overdue in the New York art departments, and not in the Cuneo printing plant. This fact was reported to Mr. Hathaway, who had relayed the request from Mr. Hearst in California; but Chicago was in the cards and I went. Upon my return a written report, the substance of which had received Mr. Cuneo’s approval, was given to Mr. Long. In lay language, briefly expressed, it said: “Illustrators should be cautioned about an over-use of fussy and valueless detail and asked to restrict their compositions to only so much of the figure or figures, backgrounds and accessories as are required for dramatic story-telling and effective picture-making; requested to forego a full palette when subjects are to be presented in only one or two colors, and to simplify renderings and avoid so many broken tones. Full-page and spread reproductions will then not only solve your press-room worries but create a new and finer type of magazine.”
Mr. Long read the report—thoughtfully, I believe—talked with his art editors, and finally decided the suggestions were too radical. But had Mr. Hearst been in New York, and had the report gone to him, his Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping would have led the field in adopting principles of illustration that are now universal.
When asked to provide a new lay-out for McClure’s magazine, then a recent purchase by Mr. Hearst, I reveled in an opportunity to apply the suggestions presented in the report. Making photographic enlargements of available illustrations and eliminating all non-essentials I used full pages and spreads and prepared the dummy with a new note in typographic headings. Ray Long looked at it and gasped. “Will,” he said, “a magazine like that would outshine and humble Cosmo.” Mr. Hearst was still in California. Too bad! I had made suggestions of worth and Mr. Hearst, running true to form, would have weighed their values—not for a revived McClure’s, perhaps, but for his other magazines.
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And now there is little more to tell, unless you want to listen to the way I enthuse about our present-day illustrators, their delightfully imaginative composition and masterly use of color. They are grand campaigners! God love them and the editorial lads who give them opportunity and encouragement. They are making an old man mighty happy—yes, making him envy their fun while he is relegated to sheer laziness in the siesta sun of California.
Before final retirement I managed to lay out a new Delineator, a new Sunday magazine for the Herald Tribune (about 1925), and a lay-out suggested by early New England news-sheets for the Yale Daily, and ... well, I guess that’s about all. No! Listen. In these last three lay-outs I continued to use my beloved Caslon!