Beverly Warren-Leigh
Red Letter Days
Red Letter Days, edited by Beverly Warren-Leigh, marks Pinch's first large-scale foray into historical text design. The two-volume set, which contains every extant letter Ms. Warren-Leigh's father wrote and received from his childhood to the end of the Second World War, weighs in just shy of 1,000 profusely-illustrated pages.
The bulk of the book is concerned with the war, where Cameron Warren earned three Silver Stars as an officer in the Second Armored Division, and makes for an engaging and intimate social history of the period as it follows from Mr. Warren's childhood in Catholic boarding schools to his return from Europe and marriage in 1946.
Mr. Warren was a prodigious correspondent and at his death left an archive of hundreds of letters, photographs and related ephemera. His daughter, having been trained as a designer, made an initial attempt to get them into book form, but found that the less familiar duties of compilation and editing were daunting enough. She commissioned Pinch to look at organizing the free-ranging manuscript into an orderly, coherent, and pleasant-reading volume.
Although Pinch worked on Red Letter Days off and on for five years, actual development of basic layout and design took a reasonable two to three weeks. But the manuscript was not yet complete, and illustrations had to be sourced and painstakingly linked with appropriate passages in the text. Pinch delivered several partial builds of the as-yet incomplete text for presentation to investors over the five years.
Ms. Warren-Leigh came to us for help on typography, but the design process helped her to figure out what the book could be (similar to Barbara Tetenbaum's experience); seeing earlier sections of the book composed showed her what was missing, what was superfluous, and how to craft the enclosing narrative to give the sections greater meaning.
Exterior and slipcase.
The letters – as letters will – defied standardization. Some were one-line telegrams, some ran for several pages. Whenever possible, Ms. Warren-Leigh wanted to preserve as much of the context of the original letter as possible: hotel letterheads, marginalia, enclosures. Moreover, she felt as if the idiosyncratic spelling and grammar of each letter should be maintained, as well as that on the envelopes. The letters, and their envelopes and enclosures, were transcribed character-for-character, which meant no mechanical help. No spell-check; no find-and-replace.
Main title.
Screened back is an excerpt from one of Mr. Warren's letters that gave the book its title.
Typical section divider.
This photograph shows Mr. Warren at boarding school, at the age of seven.
Typical section opening.
Pinch designed the book on a five-column grid, with the bulk of the content occupying four columns, leaving one column free for labeling and ephemera: small images, enclosures from the letters, editor's comments.
Early letters.
Although Ms. Warren-Leigh faithfully transcribed all of the letters, there were some that begged to be included also in facsimile, such as this letter from the six-year-old Mr. Warren, at boarding school, to his single mother.
Ephemera
Many of the letters contained news clippings included by Mr. Warren's relatives. Those clippings were included in the book as well; here we see a man-on-the-street feature from the Philadelphia Inquirer
Typical layout.
Showing asymmetrical text area with maps and small images running inline among the letters.
Typical layout.
Layout showing treatment of ephemera included with the letters.
Maps.
Pages showing inclusion of Mr. Warren's combat maps, with his route and locations of engagement highlighted.
