This is a classic. However, I imagine most of you graphic designers out there who have entered the market since the “digital revolution” have never heard of this book. This is the POCKET PAL®, edited by Michael H. Bruno, manager of graphic arts research at the International Paper Corporate Research Center. The copy pictured on page 248 is from 1970. This little “pocket book” format paperback was published for decades by IPC as a device/promo giveaway to help sales of their printing paper product line. (Side note: the IPC logo was designed by Lester Beall.)
First published way back in 1934, it celebrated its 20th printing in 2007. The info inside was always updated and modernized, but the real magic of this little book was that it was the greatest source of INFORMATION ever created about graphic design and printing. It has EVERYTHING in it—in concise careful detail and explanations so straight and easy even a numbskull can understand it. Yes, that means you.
While working for IPC, Mr. Bruno began writing weekly newsletters called What’s New(s) in Graphic Communications. It was an easy step to simply publish the info in a little book. The rest became instant history. That’s where this Pocket Pal came from: not academia, but the biz itself. This is the world of printing and design talking to itself.
Printing technology progressed and changed over time. For instance, originally the Pocket Pal dealt almost exclusively with letterpress printing, with some litho stuff and a dab of gravure. Hardly state-of-the-art even 30 years ago. As technology changed and graphic design became its own discipline, the information inside this book included more and more. It grew with the industry.
Some of the sections include chapters such as graphic arts and printing history (!), the printing process, art & copy preparation, graphic arts photography (the Photostat camera), printing itself, binding, paper, inks, and a glossary/dictionary of printing arts terms. This edition ends with a chapter pitching the IPC paper line.
This book was so invaluable in its day that no graphic artist was ever caught without one. It was assigned as a textbook in college and vocational school classrooms. It sat on every studio bookshelf or in the desk drawer or next to the printing press itself. It’s rare to find an old one in clean condition because they were so heavily referenced that they became dog-eared, damaged and otherwise loved to death. The steady updates and reprints became a backbone of the industry because they got used up so fast that the new editions became as essential as air.
Computer engineers changed the process, the dialog, the craft, the technology—the ENTIRE PARADIGM—so dramatically that many of the definitions in the glossary have now been abandoned or redefined into something different entirely (“font,” “pica,” “invert,” etc.). Indeed, paper variety itself has become so underused that most paper companies went out of business unless they manufactured ONLY No. 2 white coated paper.
Even though most of you computer folks out there seem to think you already know everything you need to know about graphic design when you bought the app, I think you should make the minimal effort needed to find a copy of the Pocket Pal® and read it. This book will actually tell you more about what it is you do as a graphic designer than every single piece of software on the market combined. This is still essential.
“Check your Pocket Pal, idiot.” That old insult now brings a tear to my eye.
