Stellar awardees; meaningful program; great camaraderie and fine dining!

Giving no more than a nod to an icy blast of January weather, over 200 PIM members and vendor representatives, family, friends and associates joined together Tuesday, January 12th at the renowned Michigan Printing Week Ben Franklin Awards Dinner.

The event, taking place at Laurel Manor in Livonia, saw two coveted awards given: Individual of the Year was garnered by Julie McFarland of McNaughton & Gunn in Saline; the Corporation of the Year went to Wolverine Solutions Group of Detroit. Along with these awards, six Michigan college students enrolled in printing/graphics programs were Scholarship Recipients.

And once again, Ben Franklin joined us for the fun, along with his wife Deborah!

The evening was introduced by Kevin Donley of Adair Graphic Communications who noted that the Printing Week Dinner is the one time each year that so many people associated with the printing and graphics industry in Michigan get together for a unique networking opportunity.

He noted, as well, that today marked the 310th anniversary of Ben Franklin’s birth, a man whose life was a mix of adversity and perseverance but filled with overriding innovation. All of these, Kevin made clear, were part and parcel to the printing and graphics industry.

“Today there are so many challenges,” he stated. Among them: the economic slowdown of late 2000 that lingers; and, the fast-changing technology impacting the industry, including digital, mobile and wireless realities. All need to be integrated.

“Success requires innovation, even along with risk,” Kevin said, adding that there were many examples of companies and individuals at the Awards Dinner that recognized this. And along with this was a tone of optimism that clearly ensures the printing and graphics industry will prevail.

Introducing Corporation of the Year recipient Wolverine Solutions Group was Tip Quilter of Tip Quilter & Associates, LLC. He is Wolverine’s leadership coach and strategy advisor.

Tip said Wolverine’s success was “no magic,” but a combination of “grit, determination and commitment” that has brought it the success it enjoys today.

Wolverine Solutions Group was founded in 1978 by Bob Tokar as Wolverine Mailing & Packaging, occupying 4,000 square feet of space on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. Its growth from there saw it move to 30,000 square feet, then to a facility with 180,000 square feet. It focused on the opportunities that the direct mail business offered, especially during the 1980’s and 1990’s, and made early entry into the digital print business.

High-speed multiline, automated sorting equipment came next, followed by continuous variable digital web presses. Wolverine, in fact, was one of the first companies to drive the presses from a PC platform.

By the early 2000’s Wolverine leadership knew it had outgrown its “mailing” nameplate; thus, the company name changed to Wolverine Solutions Group to better reflect its provision of solutions in the direct communications business. Today, Wolverine enjoys an active client base of over 300.

Tip noted that succession and quality people within the company were major factors in the 39% growth Wolverine has enjoyed as a result of its transformation through the years. He added: “Wolverine is receiving this award tonight because of success driven by hard work.”

At this point, Tip asked a number of employees of Wolverine Solutions Group to join him on stage. In a few moments, there were nearly 20 of them standing either side of him! He asked them if the hard work of change to better the organization had been easy. They exclaimed, “No!” But was it worth it, he asked. They joined in a resounding “Yes!”

Among those joining Tip on stage was Robert Tokar, the son of Wolverine’s founder, who began working at Wolverine shortly after its doors opened. Today, he is CEO.

Robert stated that he has enjoyed the hard work and the “journey” at Wolverine through so many years and that he has looked at life as the “glass half full,” just as his father did.

“And my dad always told me: “Always work to better yourself.’” Robert also especially thanked his wife, Felicia, for “staying with me” through all the hard work of being involved with a successful business.

Referring to the employees on stage with him, Robert said “This is what it’s all about; our most important asset is the right people.” He added that he has always taken the attitude that he will let them be creative, make their own choices, and make decisions that they feel would be best for the company and its clients.

Introducing the Individual of the Year Award recipient was Jim Clark, Director of Operations at McNaughton & Gunn, a renowned book printer. He noted that winner Julie McFarland’s important and steadily increasing responsibilities through the years with the company began in 1990 when she took the Assistant Controller position. She went next to Controller, then COO, then to CEO, and presently is President.

Jim also listed many of Julie’s numerous personal and civic honors and appointments, including Treasurer for the Ann Arbor Graphic Arts Memorial Foundation; Past President and Treasurer of the Saline Area Chamber of Commerce; United Way and Junior Achievement volunteer. In 2003, Business Direct Weekly named her one of the “Most Influential Women.” “Today, McNaughton & Gunn is profitable because of Julie,” Jim added.

Noting that the company has sales of $25 million annually, Clark called Julie “a great leader” who has been at the helm for the past 14 years. He stated: “And we are still producing books in this challenging industry!”

In 2015, McNaughton & Gunn celebrated 40 years in the business and has received numerous awards including: The Principal’s “One of the 10 Best Companies for Employee Financial Security; Printing Industries of America’s “Best of the Best Workplaces in America; and one of Crain’s Detroit Business’ “Cool Places to Work.” In 2006, McNaughton & Gunn received Printing Week Association’s corporate Ben Franklin award.

At the podium, Julie stated that she feels “very lucky to be part of this industry.”

She added that she is passionate about books because they “allow us to explore emotions, explore new worlds, and to learn.” The industry also captures history and gives us a view of “where we can go,” she said.

Julie also stated that she is very happy to be a part of a family business, noting that her father, Bob McNaughton, was one of the company’s founding partners over 40 years ago. She recalled how in the early days, the “business phone was in the living room and we bound books in the garage.”

Julie said that in order to be successful, one had to “jump at opportunities as quickly as conclusions.” She urged all in the room to recognize that technology is impacting the industry, but that we must “take our expertise and our experiences” and work with technology.

Each year, the Michigan Printing Week Association, Printing Industries of Michigan and their numerous partners pool resources to provide scholarships to worthy college students in the printing and graphics curriculums.

This year’s recipients of Graphics Arts Scholarships were:

Ferris State University
Karen Lynn Readon and Carly DeWeert

Western Michigan University
Adrianna Bird, Andrew Bogan, Bradley Green and Sarah Meldrum

Congratulations to all! Perhaps the words of Ben Franklin, printed in the Award Dinner program book, offer some of the sagest advice for members of the printing and graphics industry today:

‘Tis true there is much to be done, and perhaps you are weak handed, but stick to it steadily, and you will see great effects, for constant dropping wears away stones, and by diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable; and little strokes fell great oaks.”

She concluded: “We need to continue to take pride in our industry, and color our world in print!”

Each year, the Michigan Printing Week Association, Printing Industries of Michigan and their numerous partners pool resources to provide scholarships to worthy college students in the printing and graphics curriculums.

Adrian Frutiger died on September 10, 2015 at the age of 87. He was one of the most important type designers of his generation, having created some 40 fonts, many of them still widely used today. He was also a teacher, author and specialist in the language of graphic expression and since his career spanned metal, photomechanical and electronic type technologies Frutiger became an important figure in the transition from the analog to the digital eras of print communications.

Frutiger was born on May 24, 1928 in the town of Interseen, near Interlaken and about 60 kilometers southeast of the city of Bern, Switzerland. His father was a weaver. As a youth, Adrian showed an interest in handwriting and lettering. He was encouraged by his family and secondary school teachers to pursue an apprenticeship rather than a fine arts career.

At age 16, Adrian obtained a four-year apprenticeship as a metal type compositor with the printer Otto Schlaeffli in Interlaken. He also took classes in drawing and woodcuts at a business school in the vicinity of Bern. In 1949, Frutiger transferred to the School of Applied Arts in Zürich, where he concentrated on calligraphy. In 1951, he created a brochure for his dissertation entitled, “The Development of the Latin Alphabet” that was illustrated with his own woodcuts.

It was during his years in Zürich that Adrian worked on sketches for what would later become the typeface Univers, one of the most important contributions to post-war type design. In 1952, following his graduation, Frutiger moved to Paris and joined the foundry Deberny & Peignot as a type designer.

During his early work with the French type house, Frutiger was engaged in the conversion of existing metal type designs for the newly emerging phototypesetting technologies. He also designed several new typefaces Président, Méridien, and Ondine in the early 1950s.

San Serif and Swiss Typography

San serif type is a product of the twentieth century. Also known as grotesque (or grotesk), san serif fonts emerged with commercial advertising, especially signage. The original san serif designs (beginning in 1898) possessed qualities lack of lower case letters, lack of italics, the inclusion of condensed or extended widths and equivalent cap and ascender heights that seemingly violated the rules of typographic tradition. As such, these early san serif designs were often considered too clumsy and inelegant for the professional type houses and their clients.

Along with the modern art and design movements of the early twentieth century, a reconsideration of the largely experimental work of the first generation of sans serif types began in the 1920s. Fonts such as Futura, Kabel and Gill Sans incorporated some of the theoretical concepts of the Bauhaus and DeStijl movements and pushed sans serif to new spheres of respectability.

However, these fonts—which are still used today—did not succeed in elevating san serif beyond headline usage and banner advertising and into broader application. Sans serif type remained something of an oddity and not yet accepted by the traditional foundry industry as viable in terms of either style or legibility.

In the 1930s, especially within the European countries that fell to dictatorship prior to and during World War II, there was a backlash against modernist conceptions. Sans serif type came under attack, was derided as “degenerate” and banned in some instances. Exceptions to this trend were in the US, where the use of grotesque types was increasing, and Switzerland, where the minimalist typographic ideas of the Bauhaus were brought by designers who had fled the countries ruled by the Nazis.

After the war, interest in sans serif type design was renewed as a symbol of modernism and a break from the first four decades of the century. By the late 1950s, the most successful period of san serif type opened up and the epicenter of this change emerged in Switzerland, signified by the creation of Helvetica (1957) by Eduard Hoffmann and Max Miedinger of the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein.

It was the nexus of the creative drive to design the definitively “modern” typeface and the possibilities opened up by the displacement of metal type with phototypesetting that brought san serif from a niche font into global preeminence.

Frutiger’s Univers

This was the cultural environment that influenced Adrian Frutiger as he set about his work on a new typeface as a Swiss trained type designer at a French foundry. As Frutiger explained in a 1999 interview with Eye Magazine, “When I came to Deberny & Peignot in Paris, Futura (though it was called Europe there) was the most important font in lead typesetting. Then one day the question was raised of a grotesque for the Lumitype-Photon [the first phototypesetting system]. …

“I asked him [Peignot] if I might offer an alternative. And within ten days I constructed an entire font system. When I was with Käch I had already designed a thin, normal, semi-bold and italic Grotesque with modulated stroke weights. This was the precursor of Univers. … When Peignot saw it he almost jumped in the air: ‘Good heavens, Adrian, that’s the future!’ ”

Originally calling his type design “Monde” (French for “world”), Frutiger’s innovation was that he designed 21 variations of Univers from the beginning; for the first time in the history of typography a complete set of typefaces were planned precisely as a coherent system. He also gave the styles and weights a numbering scheme beginning with Univers 55. The different weights (extended, condensed, ultra condensed, etc.) were numbered in increments of ten, i.e. 45, 65, 75, 85 and styles with the same line thickness were numbered in single digit increments (italics were the even numbers), i.e. 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, etc.

Univers was released by Deberny & Peignot in 1957 and it was quickly embraced internationally for both text and display type purposes. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, like Helvetica, it was widely used for corporate identity (GE, Lufthansa, Deutsche Bank). It was the official promotional font of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

Frutiger explained the significance of his creation in the interview with Eye Magazine, “It happened to be the time when the big advertising agencies were being set up, they set their heart on having this diverse system. This is how the big bang occurred and Univers conquered the world. But I don’t want to claim the glory. It was simply the time, the surroundings, the country, the invention, the postwar period and my studies during the war. Everything led towards it. It could not have happened any other way.”

Computers and Digital Typography

Had Adrian Frutiger retired at the age of 29 after designing Univers, he would have already made an indelible contribution to the evolution of typography. However, his work was by no means complete. By 1962, Frutiger had established his own graphic design studio with Bruno Pfaffli and Andre Gurtler in Arcueil near Paris. This firm designed posters, catalogs and identity systems for major museums and corporations in France.

Throughout the 1960s, Frutiger continued to design new typefaces for the phototypesetting industry such as Lumitype, Monotype, Linotype and Stempel AG. Among his most well-known later san serif designs were Frutiger, Serifa and Avenir. Frutiger’s font systems can be seen to this day on the signage at Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports and the Paris Metro.

The penetration of computers and information systems into the printing and publishing process were well underway by the 1960s. In 1961, thirteen computer and typewriter manufacturers founded the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) based in Geneva. A top priority of the EMCA was to create an international standard for optical character recognition (OCR)—a system for capturing the image of printed information and numbers and converting them into electronic data— especially for the banking industry.

By 1968, OCR-A was developed in the US by American Type Founders—a trust of 23 American type foundries—and it was later adopted by the American National Standards Institute. This was the first practically adopted standard mono-spaced font that could be read by both machines and the human optical system.

However, in Europe the ECMA wanted a font that could be used as an international standard such that it accommodated the requirements of all typographic considerations and computerized scanning technologies all over the world. Among the issues, for example, were the treatment of the British pound symbol (£) and the Dutch IJ and French oe (œ) ligatures.

Other technical considerations included the ability to integrate OCR standards with typewriter and letterpress fonts in addition to the latest phototypesetting systems.

In 1963, Adrian Frutiger was approached by representatives of the ECMA and asked to design OCR-B as an international standard with a non-stylized alphabet that was also esthetically pleasing to the human eye. Over the next five years, Frutiger showed the exceptional ability to learn the complicated technical requirements of the engineers: the grid systems of the different readers, the strict spacing requirements between characters and the special shapes needed to make one letter or number optically distinguishable from another.

In 1973, after multiple revisions and extensive testing, Adrian Frutiger’s OCR-B was adopted as an international standard. Today, the font can be most commonly found on UPC barcodes, ISBN barcodes, government issued ID cards and passports. Frutiger’s OCR-B font will no doubt live on into the distant future—alongside various 2D barcode systems—as one of the primary means of translating analog information into digital data and back again.

Adrian Frutiger’s type design career extended well into the era of desktop publishing, PostScript fonts and the Internet age. In 1989, Frutiger published the English translation of Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning, a theoretical and retrospective study of the two-dimensional expression of graphic drawing with typography among its most advanced forms. For someone who spent his life working on the nearly imperceptible detail of type and graphic design, Frutiger exhibited an exceptional grasp of the historical and social sources of man’s urge toward pictographic representation and communication.

As an example, Frutiger wrote in the introduction to his book, “For twentieth century humans, it is difficult to imagine a void, a chaos, because they have learned that a kind of order appears to prevail in both the infinitely small and the infinitely large. The understanding that there is no element of chance around or in us, but that all things, both mind and matter, follow an ordered pattern, supports the argument that even the simplest blot or scribble cannot exist by pure chance or without significance, but rather that the viewer does not clearly recognize the causes, origins, and occasion of such a ‘drawing’.”