Meat slicers and produce scales have a larger role in graphic design history than you might think. For instance, the Dutch modernist designer Paul Hendrikus Schuitema promoted the modern sensibility through his advertising and catalog work for Berkel, the company founded by the meat-slicing inventor Wilhelm Van Berkel. The Berkel meat slicer invention revolutionized the butcher’s trade. And Schuitema’s typography is as fresh today as it was when it emerged from his creative oven.
Although meat slicing and weighing equipment did not, as a rule, get the New Typography treatment, the hardware was adorned with lovely typographic treatments done by anonymous drafts-persons who worked for their respective companies. The decals below are some of those examples.
See Wednesday’s Nightly Daily Heller on Shepard Fairey’s Fair Use Decision.
.For more Steven Heller, check out Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography, one of the many Heller titles available at MyDesignShop.com.