Vanity Fair Type: 1930 Style

Vanity Fair cover illustrated by Paolo Garetto, December 1931

In 1929, Vanity Fair magazine, the jewel
in the crown of Condé Nast’s publishing empire,
made typographic history. Influenced by Modern design trends throughout Europe, especially the Bauhaus, art director Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha introduced Paul Renner’s Futura — and also did away with all capital letters in headlines on columns and feature articles. The result was at once jarring and elegant — illustrating the capital M of Modernism, through the sole use of lowercase letters. It was also an indication that Frank Crownishield (then editor of Vanity Fair), a highly respected literary figure and social bon vivant, and Mr. Nast, one of the most powerful men in mainstream publishing, trusted their Ukraine-born art director enough to let him challenge convention.

The lower case “experiment” certainly helped visually define Vanity Fair as a progressive force on the publishing scene for years to follow. However, in truth, its lowercase legend lasted longer than the reality. After only a year or so, just as suddenly as capitals disappeared, they reappeared in the March 1930 issue and the editors published a full-page editorial titled, “A Note on Typography.” Such an explanation of design policy was a first for American magazines. The fact that Crownishied decided to “present the case pro and con capital letters in titles, writing finis to an experiment,” was evidence of the stature of art direction and design in the Condé Nast empire. Today the following text is a model of design erudition and a textbook example of how graphic design can be discussed on a public stage.

Imaginary Interviews by Miguel Covarrubias, from December 1931 issue

Here is the article as it first appeared in Vanity Fair, March 1930:

A Note on Typography
Vanity Fair presents the case pro and con capital letters in titles, writing finis to an experiment.

Vanity Fair has for the past several months omitted capital letters in the titles and subtitles of its articles and illustrations. The hawk-eyed reader will note that this issue of Vanity Fair returns to capital letters. Posterity anyway will be grateful for a review of the considerations that have led Vanity Fair, first to dispense with capital letters in its headings and now, after a trial period of five issues, to return to them.

Typography without capital letters was introduced in Europe soon after the Great War and
has been working westward ever since. It has not been used so much in text, but
in all situations where the value of display is paramount it has been extremely
popular. Thus, the intense competition of advertising, where the least optical
advantage makes itself felt at once, has already made some modern typography
familiar to Americans.

Capital letters are obviously Roman in origin, going
back to the beginnings of our era. Small letters, on the other hand, are
derived from the alphabet of medieval script, of scholarly longhand, dating
from the time of Charlemagne, about 800 A.D. Its characteristics are governed
by the natural movements of freehand writing and therefore in stylistic
opposition to the simple stone-engraved capitals of the Roman alphabet. With
the Renaissance and the revival of classical learning in the fifteenth century,
the Roman alphabet was merged into writing, and later into printing, wherever
capital letters were indicated. It would now seem illogical to continue to
submit to what was simply an historical accident, a symbol for the conceit the
Renaissance felt in its newly acquired sophistication in the culture of Rome.
Probably, as a matter of fact, the mere omission of a capital letter to
indicate the beginning of a sentence or a title is the least significant or
permanent item in the program of the new typography. Any art, particularly any art with a function as utilitarian as that of typography, consciously or unconsciously conforms itself
in the peculiar temper of the living and contemporary civilization.

The realization of this end takes the form of the arrangement of pictures on the
page, of various kinds of type, of new methods of photography, of decorative
treatment, of the massing of type on the page, and so forth. And incidentally the omission of
capital letters in titles. All this is really compulsory for any magazine that
pretends at all to a place in the modern parade. Nothing would amuse and shock
the modern reader more than to pick up a current magazine composed in the fussy
and dignified convention of magazines of the 1880’s.

The eye and the mind can adapt themselves to new forms with surprising ease. An
innovation stands out at first like a sore thumb but before it has passed its
infancy it has become invisible to the conscious eye. The unconscious eye,
however, is another matter. It is vaguely dulled by the stale and hackneyed, it
is antagonized by the tasteless and inept, and it is completely stopped by the
involved and illegible. The unconscious eye is a remorseless critic of all art forms, it awards the final fame and final oblivion. Thus, the conscious eye may endorse at the very moment
that the unconscious eye is absolutely condemning. And, on the other hand, the
conscious eye may continue to complain irascibly of innovations for some time
after the unconscious eye has given them its final approval.

In using, and continuing to use, the new typography, Vanity Fair believes that it
knows very well what it is doing. In modifying one of the conventions of the
new typography by returning to the use of capital letters in titles, it is
obeying considerations that outlast any mere “revolution in style.”

Three main factors dominate typography: first, appropriateness, as affected by the
time, the place and the function of the material; second, attractiveness,
ingratiating the eye and so the mind; and finally and most importantly,
legibility. The page may look as handsome as you please but if there is to be
any authority in words and ideas the page must be read. A title set entirely in
small letters is unquestionably more attractive than one beginning with a
capital or with every word beginning with a capital, but, at the present time,
it is also unquestionably harder to read because the eye of the reader is not
yet educated to it. The issue is thus one between attractiveness and
legibility, or between form and content, and Vanity Fair, not wishing to
undertake a campaign of education casts its vote by returning to the use of
capital letters in titles, to legibility, and to the cause of content above
form.

It may be said here that Vanity Fair has always and will always cast its vote in
that way. While it has tried to perfect its appearance, it has continued to
believe that to refuse to be a Magazine of Opinion is not necessarily to be
frivolous. Better things are said in one moment of even-tempered gaiety than in
a lifetime of spleen.

The notes on this page are not alone to announce a change in typographic style, an
event sufficiently self-evident and hardly worth announcing. They are even more
particularly to re-affirm some old pledges of Vanity Fair and to submit to the final
tribunal of its readers the credo of present policies. The assumption of its
readers’ interest may be naïve but Vanity Fair rests in the belief that it is
not unwarranted and subscribes itself, your very obedient servant.

Compromise: A headline from December 1931 issue with only one capital letter