Uppercase. No.1.

London.: Whitefriars Press Ltd., 1958.. Original printed wrappers, rear cover detached, otherwise good.. 8vo.. Between 1953 and 1962, while establishing his own architectural practice, Theo Crosby acted as Technical Editor of Architectural Design magazine, which was seeking to bring a more youthful, vital and progressive approach to the subject than the previously dominant Architectural Review. Whilst at Architectural Design, Crosby attached himself to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, attended meetings of the Independent Group there, and was particularly impressed by the group's discussions of the impact of mass communication and information theory on architecture and design. It was Crosby who suggested, and steered to completion, what would be the Independent Group's swansong - the watershed exhibition This Is Tomorrow at London's Whitechapel Gallery. In Architectural Design Crosby wrote that the exhibition was "evidence of attempts towards a new sort of order, a way towards that integration of the arts that must come if our culture is not merely to survive, but come truly to life".Whilst Crosby is renowned for his work at AD and later the architectural practice of Pentagram, he was also to edit the little-known arts magazine Uppercase.."UPPERCASE is a journal of the graphic arts; it will deal with the whole field of visual communication, and if some of the connections are tenuous, then the reader must bridge the gap with his own experience and imagination ... In UPPERCASE we will try to find a correlation between the arts, and attempt to relate them specifically to print. The method will generally be to take a mass of material from an artist and present a typographical equivalent; each issue will thus be an experiment in type within the same overall format." (From Crosby's preface to this, the first issue).Understandably it is the work of the Independant Group artists which feature in the pages of UPPERCASE. In the first issue, the lead content is on Eduardo Paolozzi (about 30 pages of notes, illustrations and photographs). Also includes contributions by artists David Piper, Magda Cordell and John McHale.