Spacing Chart poster – Cooper & Beatty, 1927

Formed in 1921 as Trade Composition Co., the company changed its name to Cooper & Beatty, Limited in 1926 after third partner J. L. Pepper left the firm. The remaining partners, Ed Cooper and Lew Beatty, ran the company until 1950 when they sold it to long-time employee Jack Trevett.

This is one of the earliest Cooper & Beatty promotional pieces we are aware of. It shows their early understanding of the value, and perhaps necessity, of educating their clients on how to achieve good typography. It was an approach they employed in their advertising and promotional materials well into the late-1970s. Promotional pieces such as this one helped to firmly establish Cooper & Beatty as the premier type shop in Toronto. Generations of typographers, and clients, would owe much of their typographic knowledge to C&B.

Following the examples of good spacing on this poster is still instructive, although it also shows just how much our approach to typography has changed over the last 100 years.