Expert on Type

Business is booming with Gilbert Powderly Farrar. Mr. Farrar, who calls himself a construction typographer, makes his living designing and redesigning publications. The war made publishers space-conscious, and one man who really knows what to do with newspaper space is Type Expert Farrar. This week he is redesigning the Portland Oregon Journal.

He is a large, moon-faced Virginian, 56 years old. Unschooled (sixth grade), he learned about printing by working for a printer in Scranton, got a working knowledge of make-up in a Connecticut advertising agency. He even studied at a Better Vision Institute. After writing for printing trade publications, he got a job at New York University teaching typography on a commission basis (his pay: one-third of the tuition his students paid). In ten years Farrar upped enrollment from 16 to 96.

Scissors & Paste. Since 1918 Gilbert Farrar has been in business for himself. He remodeled some 20 Spalding sporting catalogues. Twenty-two years ago he designed a Vick's Vapo Rub package which is still used. But not until 1936 did Gilbert Farrar strike oil: he streamlined the Los Angeles Times so effectively that the next year the Times won the annual N. W. Ayer award for typographical excellence.

Since then he has designed or redesigned some two dozen newspapers (including the Chicago Sun, the Brooklyn Eagle) and half a dozen magazines. His latest big operation was performed two months ago on the influential Atlanta Journal. He expects to finish the Oregon Journal job soon.

For his advice and suggestions, publishers pay him $100 a day, more or less, plus expenses. A job on a metropolitan paper takes three or four weeks. He works usually in his shirt sleeves, usually on his hands & knees on the floor, in a clutter of newspapers, clippings, glue, shears, pencils. When Farrar gets paste on his hands, which is often, he wipes it on his shirt. ("My wife," says he, "gives me hell.")

Invisibly Different. Remodeling the Atlanta Journal, he reduced the size of margins at the top and bottom of pages, saving four column-inches per page. He cut comic strip widths, reduced the size of standing headlines over regular features, eliminated white space around classified ad items, made other space-saving reductions. As a result, the Journal now prints in 28 to 30 pages what once filled 32, and is cleaner, smarter appearing. Best thing about the Journal job, Farrar says: it was accomplished invisibly. Readers were not irritated by a drastic difference.

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