Who Is Dan X. Solo?

I was hired by Dan X. Solo in 1978, on a temporary basis, to set alphabets for some of his Dover books. He was/is a very private man and as the previous poster stated, he rarely allowed typography clients to come to his home. The exceptions were a very limited number of Bay Area graphic designers that he had developed a relationship relationship with over the years. I can actually only think of two that he ever allowed inside his house, but I don't think they were ever allowed in his shop, which was in the basement of his Oakland Hills home on Crestmont Drive. All of his headline/display type was set using a VGA PhotoTypositor, which actually exposed and developed one character at a time on a two inch-wide strip of photographic paper. Many of his 'Typositor' fonts were not commercially made, but rather contructed by Mr. Solo himself. I was an experienced Typositor operator and process cameraman, which is why he hired me. Each morning I would arrive at his basement door and be given a list a alphabets that he wanted set. Mr. Solo is, of course, known for his Dover Publication books, each containing 100 alphabets in a given style of type. His Victorian and Art Nouveau books were already huge sellers to the graphic arts community worldwide. I set the type for several books myself, including Brush Scripts, Scripts and Semi-Scripts, Blackletter, Modern Sans Serif, etc. Additionally, Mr. Solo would give me lists of alphabets to set for his SoloType catalog. He would write the sample lines of each font to match the style of 'feel' of each font. He later got tired of coming up with the sample lines each day and allowed me to use my imagination to make up the sample lines myself, and I set thousands of them in as many different typestyles.

Despite developing a very close professional relationship, Mr. Solo one day informed me that the job had ended. I had hoped he would hire me on permanently, but he had made it very clear from the onset that the job was temporary. I moved on, getting a typography job down in Hollywood, then returned to the Bay Area and worked in a couple of other type houses. The one day Mr. Solo, who was friends with my current employer, offered me a fulltime position as his apprentice, which I gladly accepted. That's when our professional relationship became additionally a personal friendship. I again worked on Dover books and samples for what would become the highly collectible SoloType's Cheap Catalog, which contained thousands of type sample lines, most of which I came up with myself. The earlier poster eluded to Mr. Solo's 'distorting device', which was his own invention, which he named the Altergraph. The Altergraph, which he personally trained me on, photomechanically modified lines of type into a variety of curves and arches. The other modification machine, which he trained me to use, was the Graphics Modifier. It was a commercially manufactured modification table that created outlines and dropshadows. Everything was done with using graphic arts film or photographic papers and the processes were quite time consuming, which is why the were so expensive. All the work done at SoloType was either for other typehouses, ad agencies or high-end designers.

I was accustomed to employers who would not turn down any job and promise them to clients, even when they knew the jobs could not be produced in the turnaround time being requested. I'm reminded of a cartoon from my days as a printing student at California Trade School in Hayward, California. It was this funny charter jumping around in circles, with a caption that read: Do you want me to rush this rush before the rush I'm rushing to rush now? Mr. Solo, on the other hand, had a quite different attitude. I can't begin to say how many times I would hear him tell a client on the phone, "No." That word was virtually unheard of in those days. He frequently turned down jobs that he either knew could not be produced in the required time or that he felt could be done by any average typehouse. He was, afterall, considered to be the world's foremost authority on the subject of antique and ornamental display. That's not just my opinion. One time during time with Mr. Solo he left me in charge of SoloType and flew to Chicago for a week to testify in a typestyle piracy suit in federal court. It was the federal judge who declared Mr. Solo the most knowledgable person in the world on the subject of type. I was beside myself that he would entrust me with doing all the jobs that came into SoloType during that week, and again, another time, when he and his first wife, Beverly, took a vacation to England. I distinctly recall how tickled he was when he went into a large bookstore in London and asked the clerk if she had any books by Dan Solo. She didn't know he was Dan Solo, but know who Dan Solo was immediately, and took him straight to a section that had all of his Dover Books.

He was a very wonderful man and treated me like a son, even buying a brand new Volkswagon Rabbit for me to use, so my wife could have our car during the day. He had already had an extremely interesting life before he started SoloType. As a child, he had collected hundreds of complete fonts of lead type before he ever thought of becoming a typographer. A little known fact is that Dan Solo was once a radio broadcaster and had, in fact, started the very first FM radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area. He had a dynamic, deep voice and always answered the phone, "Hello... Dan Solo." He was also an accomplished magician. He became a typographer when he purchased the Columbia Gazette in Columbia, California and the heart of the gold country. He produced the Gazette the old fashioned way, using his collection of antique metal type. He had confided to me that he planned to retire one day and turn SoloType over to me and I can only imagine how my life would have been different had that happened. Unfortunately, I had a turbulant marriage which I was trying desperately to save. My wife decided we had to move out of the area and I was forced to quit me job at SoloType. It broke my heart and, I think, his as well. He was gracious enough to credit me for my work in some of his books and catalogs and if you ever find one, you'll see my name in it. I, like the previous poster, last heard of Dan X. Solo and his later wife, working as an entertainer on a cruise ship line. The photo attached to this article is exactly as I remember him.