‘63 Awards’ poster – Cooper & Beatty, Allan Fleming, 1958

As this Cooper & Beatty ad suggests, the competition might have been a little uneven in the Typography ‘58 Exhibition. Sixty-three of Cooper & Beatty’s submissions were accepted or won awards, in addition to other works in the show to which they made uncredited contributions. But the copy also suggests that award shows were becoming increasingly common: the Art Directors Club of Toronto had been giving awards in advertising since 1948, and its Montreal counterpart since 1952; associations in New York also chose to shower Cooper & Beatty with prizes that year. Despite the tone of false modesty adopted by this piece, there was obviously something remarkable going on at Jack Trevett’s type shop.

The concept of this design is simple and direct, with their many awards represented by a row of red seals, too many to fit on the page, summed up by beautiful, greatly enlarged numerals and a clean, evenly set box of body copy, itself an example of the typographic clarity and award-winning skill on offer. Typical of Fleming’s work, typography and abstract shapes served equally as text and illustration. – Brian Donnelly