“Mortimer Leach: A hidden gem in the World of Advertisement Lettering”

"His work, which he tirelessly drew with his left hand while chain-smoking cigarettes, became part of the landscape of American advertising vernacular" — Cran, Riley. “Mortimer Leach.” Mort Modern, a Typeface in 56 Styles, Riley Cran, 2018, https://mort-modern.losttype.com/biography/.

Mortimer Leach, who was an American lettering specialist in the Advertisement Field for twenty-five years in his life. This is him having a cigarette on his left hand. As the quote explains, Leach was a person who contributed to form the Vernacular design in advertisements and commercial arts from 1930s to 1960s.

Type and Typography: The Designer's Type Book by Ben Rosen, 1963. This might be the only book that has two pages of texts about Mortimer Leach. As you can see on the right page, he worked on modifying classic typefaces in his own ‘hand’, making a slight twist, transforming the robust text faces into sparkling headlines for advertisements.

Art Center College of Design, HILLSIDE CAMPUS: The 30th Anniversary of Art Center's move to Pasadena, 1974. Leach also lived a life as an educator. He taught lettering classes over 20 years from 1950's at Art Center and his curriculum covered the sort of real-world practical lettering that he had done his entire career.

Illustration by Chris Sandlin, 2018, https://mort-modern.losttype.com/biography/. This is an illustration that portraits his living-room when he was preparing for his first book, Lettering for Advertising. Laurie Leach, Mortimer Leach's daughter, recalls "the type written texts covering every surface of the living room furniture, eventually ending up in my bedroom as well" and this tells how much effort he put on his first book.

Lettering for Advertising by Mortimer Leach, New York: Reinhold, 1956

Letter Design in the Graphic Arts by Mortimer Leach, January 1, 1960

The book on the left is Leach's first book, Lettering for Advertising. He was actually asked to compile his class materials from Art Center, along with other practical knowledge on lettering, into his first book. And the right one is his second following book about letter design.

Images from Lettering For Advertising, New York: Reinhold, 1956. These are images of type indication from the book Lettering for Advertising, which became later a 'go-to' text book not only for lettering artists wishing to learn outside of a formal class environment but by other institutions, trade schools, and internal art departments at companies that employed lettering artists.

Images from Lettering For Advertising, New York: Reinhold, 1956. This is a picture of Leach in the inking stage of lettering. He modified drawings of Caslon alphabets, Bodoni alphabets, formal scripts, and casual brush scripts, all with his own twist.

Leach says: “Experience will prove that it is faster and more practical to build up the letters freehand. Using the T-square and triangle for preliminary tissues is a painfully slow process and a definite handicap to the development of a spontaneously drawn line.”

Custom Lettering of the 20s and 30s, Originally published: February 2017, Rian Hughes. This is just an example of custom advertisement letterings in the 20s and 30s, just to let you know what the so called "Modification" from a Lettering Artist meant at that time. They have their own characteristics.

76 Union Gas Station Ad, 1967. Image from Google.

76 Union Gas Station Logo by Mortimer Leach, 1930s. Images from Google. Leach did the 76 Union Orange Ball Logo in the 30', which we still have now.

Ad for Hunts Ketchup designed by Mortimer Leach, 1953

Contemporary Logo of Hunts

Babe Ruth Old Gold Tri-Fold Advertising Display, 1930s, https://goldinauctions.com .

HUNTS tomato ketchup label lettering on the far left, probably not as famous as Heinz's but....Leach also did the long-running advertisement series for Old Gold Cigarettes.

Robinson's Department Store, Fashion Island, Newport Beach built in 1967. Designed by Welton Becket and William Pereria. Photo courtesy Orange County Archives. Later Leach did the lettering for Robinson’s department stores, which is I guess known as Macy's now, at the height of the mid-century shopping mall boom and after seeing all these works I was questioning myself why he's not better known despite all of these famous works.

Doyald Young (1926-2011), Photo of Doyald Young, NY Times, 2011. Leach had a lot of talented students including this man, Doyald Young, he was one of Leach's students who became later on best friends with Leach despite the 20-year age difference. At first he was a TA for Leach, and soon as he graduated, they both taught together at Art Center for over 15 years.

Cheesecake Factory Lettering by Doyald Young, 1978/ GE Lettering, Grammy Lettering ,1988. Doyald Young actually became even more famous than his teacher Mortimer, for doing all these logos for well-known brands like Cheesecake factory, General Electrics, Grammy Awards etc.

Rick Cusick (1926-2011)

Lettering work for HallMark, Kansas city

Poster for AIGA, designed by Rick Cusick

This is Rick Cusick, who was also a student of Mortimer. He has worked in lettering and typographic design and as a book designer for Hallmark Cards, in Kansas City, Missouri. And it is known that he also worked on the lettering for Las Vegas signage.

Since Leach worked and lived in California for most of his later life, his contribution to American Vernacular Design in Advertisement Industry was significant and furthermore, he passed on his skills to the next generation letting them to continuously work on designing letters that the public can easily empathize.

Leach and his students designed something that people saw each day in the aisles of grocery stores and in the pages of magazines. That means Leach was a great communicator, a person who really tried hard to make a lettering that the public can emotionally relate to.

Bibliography:

-“A Global Leader in Art and Design Education.” ArtCenter College of Design, www.artcenter.edu/. -Cran, Riley. “Mortimer Leach.” Mort Modern, a Typeface in 56 Styles, Riley Cran, 2018, mort-modern.losttype.com/biography/. -“HathiTrust Digital Library | Millions of Books Online.” Access and Use Policies | Www.hathitrust.org | HathiTrust Digital Library, www.hathitrust.org/. -Heller, Steven. “Doyald Young, Prominent Typeface Designer, Dies at 84.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Mar. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/arts/design/07young.html. -Leach, Mortimer. Lettering for Advertising. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1956. -“Letter Design in the Graphic Arts.” Echo Point Books & Media, LLC., www.echopointbooks.com/art/letter-design-in-the-graphic-arts. -“Mortimer Leach.” geni_family_tree, 23 Nov. 2014, www.geni.com/people/Mortimer-Leach/6000000002716920759. -“Custom Lettering of the 20s and 30s.” YouTube, YouTube, 11 June 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FwfpU1OW9U. -“Rick Cusick.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Cusick.