The Inland Printer

By Steven Heller

When design was an offshoot of printing

During the 19th century an increase of printed materials fostered the rise in trade magazines. The content centered on information for the craft and profession. The Inland Printer was created in October 1883 “as a local trade magazine for the booming mid-western printing industry,” states a website entry for the Rockwell Center For American Visual Studies. It started small but within a decade this little monthly became the bible of the printing industry and has become a primary source of historical information especially regarding the burgeoning arts of type, typography, and graphic advertising design. In 1894, The Inland Printer became the first American magazine to have a new cover designed for every issue. Some of the most influential of illustrators of the day created distinctive covers for the magazine, including Will Bradley and the brothers J. C. and Frank X. Leyendecker.

 
These pages from a 1902-3 volume of The Inland Printer reveal the birth of communication arts as an industry in the United States—history in the making was made.

UCDA Designer magazine: Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring 2020)