Richard Nixon became embroiled in the Watergate scandal in 1974, which caused him to become the only U.S. President to resign the office. In that same year the first handheld cellular phone call was made, “The Godfather, Part II” won best movie of the year at the Academy Awards, and Secretariat became the first horse in over 25 years to win U.S. horseracing’s triple crown.

ITC also began publishing U&lc, The International Journal of Typographics in 1974. Herb Lubalin was the editorial and art director of the first issue and his seminal design set the stage for future issues of trend setting and award winning editorial creations.

The modest 24-page first issue declared, “U&lc will provide a panoramic window, a showcase for the world of graphic arts – a clearing house for the international exchange of ideas and information.”

And, indeed, it did.

Over the 26 years that it was published, U&lc gathered a following of thousands of avid readers that eagerly anticipated each issue. It became the most important typographic publication of its time.

While a couple of years lacked a full complement, U&lc was published quarterly, in its – large format – tabloid size, until the fall of 1999. Early publications were limited to black and white, and color was introduced in 1988.

Even though U&lc ceased publication over 10 years ago, we continue to receive weekly requests for back issues and reprints of specific articles. Unfortunately, because we have a limited supply of the hardcopy issues, we have been unable to fulfill these requests.

Thanks to technology, this has changed. Over this summer, we had a complete set of the publication scanned as high and low resolution files. Today, we are happy to announce that we will be making these scans available as downloadable Adobe® Acrobat® PDF documents – and the files will be searchable.

Every month, we will make one volume (a year’s worth of publications) available through the Fonts.com blog. There are, however, a couple of caveats. First, the files are big – as in “way big.” The low-resolution files can be as big as 18 MB and the high-resolution files are downright huge at over 85 MB in some cases. Second, they are not perfect. The original documents were sometimes faded, cracked or torn. That combined with a semi-automated scanning process (over 9,000 pages scaned) resulted in some unavoidable “character” traits. The final caveat is that the above plan could change depending on audience interest level (or lack thereof). So, if you love it, let us know.

Click below the links below, and you will be rewarded with the first volume of U&lc. Enjoy.

Low Resolution:

Volume 1-1 (Low Res).pdf (5.1 MB)

Volume 1-2 (Low Res).pdf (10.2 MB)

Volume 1-3 (Low Res).pdf (10.3 MB)

High Resolution:

Volume 1-1.pdf (21.4 MB)

Volume 1-2.pdf (42.7 MB)

Volume 1-3.pdf (46.1 MB)