Perhaps it is the inherent ubiquity
of examples of printed ephemera - including brochures,
flyers, labels, tickets and receipts - that make these
fragments of material culture so culturally significant.
Throughout the course of an average day we collect and
discard many such items, visually encounter hundreds more,
rarely conscious of the process of interaction with which
we are engaged. And yet, these objects are important social
signifiers, reflective - through their physical appearance
and methods of reproduction - of the technological advances
and aesthetic concerns of the period from which they have
emerged.2
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CIÉ
Dublin train ticket (rector and verso), c. 1946,
printed letterpress; 3.0
x 5.7 cm
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While analysis of some ephemeral
items - including stamps, posters and paper currency -
have been acknowledged as providing valuable insights
into aspects of social history, to date there has been
little analysis of the most disposable fragments of material
culture - specifically tickets and receipts - beyond issues
of collecting and archiving.3
And yet, through these ephemeral artefacts, it is possible
to record social patterns, providing evidence of every
day experiences at a most basic and fundamental level.
This is particularly evident with regard to transactions
linked to consumption and travel, which generate a large
number of printed items.
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CIÉ
'time-date-check' ticket (rector and verso), in
use from 1945 to 1949 on
Dublin city buses, printed letterpress by Flanagans,
Dublin; 3.2 x
5.8 cm
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Derived from the Greek word 'ephemeros'
meaning 'lasting but a day', the term ephemera identifies
a subculture within print media and defines printed artefacts
not usually designed professionally, but which are part
of a wider range of vernacular objects.4
Most examples of printed ephemera are a phenomenon and
reflection of industrial production as prior to the Industrial
Revolution, fragments of print culture were almost exclusively
limited to proclamations, orders, licenses and some examples
of wrapping and ticketing.5
As patterns of production and consumption expanded, the
range of printed objects also increased to include packaging,
posters, stationary and travel tickets, thus ensuring
that tangible evidence of modernisation was recorded at
every opportunity.
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CIÉ
'time-date-check' ticket (rector and verso), in
use from 1945 to 1957 on Dublin county buses, printed
letterpress, probably by Williamsons, Britain; 3.3
x 7.9 cm
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As concentrated engagement with
such objects is fractional, this mitigates against the
absorption of the distinct, sometimes complex, visual
language which defines the functionality of these ephemeral
items. This is particularly apparent with regard to examples
of transport ephemera, specifically ticketing. Pragmatically
such tickets exist to provide tangible records of commercial
transactions; aesthetically, they employ a distinct, colloquial
visual language easily recognisable for a given target
audience; while culturally they chart patterns of movement
and migration. The information contained in a ticket format
is the product of a distillation process, the result of
the paring down of a complexity of information into a
visual form that has immediate and effective impact.
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Great
Northern Railway 'Setright' ticket (rector and verso),
issued
between 1953 and 1958, partly printed letterpress;
2.5 x 5.2 cm
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The origins of contemporary travel
tickets can be traced to the transport expansion of the
nineteenth-century. Reflecting the print technology of
the period, the earliest bus and rail tickets developed
distinct typographic conventions that replicated the compositions
of letterpress posters in miniature form. While early
examples were printed using book typefaces, those originating
mid century utilised fat, egyptian and grotesque typefaces,
thus reflecting the broadening range of display and novelty
type styles which industrialisation and consumption had
encouraged and facilitated.6
As travel opportunities increased, so too did the possibilities
of forgery, which led printers to complicate the layout
of information through the use of coloured stock and the
utilisation of a variety of different typefaces used simultaneously.7
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CIÉ
'time-date-check' ticket (rector and verso), in
use through the 1960s on the Dublin Airport bus
service, printed letterpress by Williamsons, Britain;
3.1 x 5.9 cm
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CIÉ 'time-date-check'
bus tickets - in use on Dublin City buses between 1945
and 1949 and on national buses between 1945 and 1957 -
demonstrate how security features introduced in the 1890s
were still in use in Ireland some fifty years later. In
addition to the use of coloured stock, which was often
overprinted in coloured ink, further authentication was
provided by the use of sequential numbering and mechanically
cut holes, made by the Bellpunch machines worn
by conductors around their necks. These tickets manage
to clarify a complexity of information - mode of transport,
price, company, stage of journey - through a visual system
of compartmentalisation.8
Produced in an era before the widespread emphasis on corporate
identity systems, these items do not feature a company
logo, while the frequent inclusion of the words Córas
Iompair Éireann in half-uncial typefaces, are
clear, although crude attempts to stamp such items with
some sense of national identity.9
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CIÉ
'Time' tickets (recto only), in use from 1965 to
the early 1980s,
on Dublin city buses; 3.7 x 8.2 cm
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As technology advanced, the aesthetic
and inherent logic of such objects altered accordingly.
CIÉ Dublin City bus tickets, introduced in 1965,
demonstrate the visual changes that were adopted as transport
companies moved from pre-printed ticketing, to those issued
on demand by the portable TIM machines also carried by
the conductor.10 With
each impression freshly made onto a paper strip in purple
ink, the tickets were automatically authenticated thus
dispensing with the need for earlier security features.
In addition, although not designed professionally, these
layouts do demonstrate a modernist sensibility through
the organisation of type within a grid-like system.
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Dublin
Bus 'Wayfarer' ticket (recto), issued in 2002; 3.7
x 16.2 cm;
all tickets courtesy the author
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While these items clearly contribute
to the documentation of social transactions and technological
changes, the directness with which they communicate and
their distinctive visual language has long had appeal
for professional graphic designers.11
This appreciation of the unpretentious, the vernacular
or non-designed object acknowledges, as one author has
noted, the "absence of the designer-as-heroic-creator,"
a pattern that design history has replicated from the
canon of art history.12
While the composition of an individual ticket may have
not have originated in a design studio - a distinctly
mid-twentieth century concept - that is not to say that
it has not been 'designed' in the broadest sense of the
term, as choice combined with chance has resulted in the
arrangement of the individual elements in their final
form.
Two recent publications -
Carouschka's Tickets and G1 - Subj: contemp.
design, graphic - testify to a growing interest in
the study of printed ephemera; the former acknowledging
the diversity and homogeneity of ticket designs and travel
experiences across national boundaries; the latter analysing
the inspirational qualities of such items.13
While these texts are specifically aimed at the design
community, a number of recent British print ads, directed
at a larger audience, have assimilated this aesthetic
of disposability while also acknowledging the directness
with which this visual language can communicate. For example,
the airline BMI has recently replicated the look of an
airport baggage label to promote its online booking service
- a practice which in itself will eventually lead to paper-less
and ticket-less transactions - while the RSPCA has used
the visual metaphor of a shopping till receipt to comment
on the cruelty of battery-farmed poultry.
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Magazine
advertisement placed by the Royal Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; courtesy RSPCA
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In the second example, the text
is included through the use of a coarse, but functional
dot-matrix or bitmapped font, imitating those used in
a range of contemporary transactions. This example demonstrates
how a distinct aesthetic facilitated by digital technology
has both changed the production of ephemeral objects and
has been absorbed into a professional commission, reflecting
current communication changes. American type designer
Matthew Bardram specifically attributes the design appeal
of such typefaces to contemporary society's increasingly
emphasis on reading information on screens, whether mobile
phone, palm-pilot or personal computers.14
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Magazine
advertisement placed by the Royal Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; courtesy RSPCA
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While the advance of technological
changes makes the ability to physically document social
exchanges through printed objects more difficult, there
are further obstacles with regard to the collection and
archiving of printed ephemera as such items are not intended
for permanency making preservation problematic. It is
to be welcomed therefore, that at a local level, that
the National Library of Ireland has recently committed
resources to the establishment of an ephemera collection.
This will include the cataloguing of material the Library
has acquired to date - mainly political and theatrical
ephemera - and the commencement of collecting within specific
strategic areas, of which travel and tourism, sport and
popular music are three proposed categories.
Thus, at least one State institution
is committed to the documentation of this aspect of Irish
social history and in doing so is acknowledging that the
collecting of fragments of print culture is motivated
by more than aesthetics or nostalgia. Although it will
be some years before the archive is made accessible to
the public, it will provide a valuable resource that will
be of interest to historians, designers, collectors or
anyone with a general interest in the importance of material
culture at it most ephemeral.
Linda King is a lecturer
in Design History and Theory at D - n Laoghaire
Institute of Art Design and Technology and specialises
in the history and theory of graphic design.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Joanna Finnegan and
Catherine Fahy, National Library of Ireland; Seán Sills,
NCAD; Alastair Keady, Hexhibit; Jacqueline Aldridge, Abbott
Mead Vickers BBDO, London; staff at the RSPCA. Special
thanks to Cyril McIntyre, Bus Éireann.
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