10. A New Type: Sans Serif Typography and Midlands Regional Identity

Towards the end of the letterpress era, jobbing printing across the Midlands was widespread. In the skilled hands of the provincial printer, sans serif printing types were composed into new forms of advertising, contributing to the education and societal orientation of the emergent middle and working classes. The nature of what they produced, and the design of what they printed, transformed how information and ideas were exchanged: the ephemera that have survived record these changes. A rising number of jobbing printers increasingly issued commercial and display work, rather than books or newspapers, and their products contributed to social, cultural, political, and economic life. This chapter focuses on the rise of jobbing printing in the nineteenth century, when sans serif display types were first produced. Using Birmingham as a case study, it considers the expansion of jobbing printing in relation to the population growth of the Midlands and investigates how sans serif typography contributed to the regional voice of the Midlands.