fingerprint file

by Jesse Marinoff Reyes ( Jesse Marinoff Reyes Design, Maplewood, N.J.)

Finger Print and Identification Magazine
January, 1954 issue
Editor/Design: T. Dickerson Cooke and Donald G. Cooke

Jesse Marinoff Reyes Design

A bit more sophisticated than a newsletter and more of a trade publication (but not really a full-fledged magazine), Finger Print seems like it was mostly put together by the two men noted as the editors in its staff box (no other staff noted) which is certainly plausible with a compliment of freelance writers and access to law enforcement photography. I know from my days working in community publications how doable this is—my first “true” art director was in fact the editor of the community newspaper where I cut my eye-teeth as a youth, who taught me how to lay out the newspaper and the design structure of news stories. How to “size” halftones and what art would work the best in terms of reproduction (in that case, on newsprint). I learned reams of old school technique, the rudiments of the printing press and specifying column type, years before art school and for that matter wasn’t really taught in school (well, we learned more of that at Seattle Central Community College’s commercial art program than could be bothered with at University—which is another story).

Finger Print is, like the community newspaper of my youth, a no-nonsense, structurally classic news-format publication. You might even consider it, hard-boiled, with a scientist’s detachment as it methodically documents its topic in its 32 pages, which is precisely what I like about it. I want my music and cultural publications to be engagingly designed, even avant garde, but something like Finger Print? Just the facts, ma’am, is in fact best.

But what is that guy at upper left smirking about is what I wanna know!