BUILDING PRODUCTS, TRADE LITERATURE AND STANDARDIZATION: THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE

Charles Rogers

Information Consultant, United Kingdom

Go to the list of modules

Click here to download the Word 6.0 .doc version of the article.
(206 K0)
  • "What signifies knowing the Names, if you know not the Nature of Things".

    Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

     

    PREFATORY NOTE AND INTRODUCTION

    Top of page

    The author of this paper is aware that he has probably overlooked some relevant publications but he can only plead ignorance or his current remoteness from sources of construction information. Otherwise he can claim, like Gibbon, to "have carefully examined all the original materials which could illustrate the subject I had undertaken to treat". Also, like Gibbon, he persuaded himself that the Notes and References "would be susceptible of entertainment as well as information" - at least occasionally. Apologies are offered to those, unlike the author, who object to the use of the term ‘literature’ in this context but its pervasiveness made it unavoidable.

    The assumption that a manufacturer of building industry products contemplating issuing trade literature must be in want of advice has been widely held in sections of the British building industry for well over fifty years. The holders of this assumption - not generally shared by the manufacturers themselves - have mainly been architects and other design professionals, librarians and other information providers, and government officials and other bureaucrats. The increase in the trade literature about factory-made building products, which began in the nineteenth century, turned into a torrent as the twentieth century progressed. So, to try and bring some order into chaos and help users, the British Standards Institution or some other body has from time to time published recommendations concerning the sizes and contents of manufacturers’ catalogues and other technical literature. The first appeared in 1946 and the most recent in 1994.

    This paper briefly charts the growth of mass-produced building products and the associated trade literature, surveys the backgrounds to the published guidance documents and assesses their impact. It considers the conclusions which might be drawn from this experience and the future prospects for standardizing the presentation of product information in the building industry.

    THE GROWTH OF FACTORY-MADE PRODUCTS

    Top of article

    Trade literature, the modern generally-accepted term for all forms of printed matter advertizing, describing and illustrating factory-made products, was itself a necessary product of the machine age. That period, which began about the middle of the eighteenth century, saw the transformation of building in Britain. The required building elements which had been largely fashioned on site from local and traditional materials (mostly stone, timber and clay) were, by the nineteenth century, mainly delivered by rail, canal and road ready-made for site assembly from factories far afield. Technological advance, allied to the continuous increase in the demand for buildings - by the 1830s there were very substantial building firms in London - stimulated innovation and the development of more and more materials and products [1].

    The first ready-made product was the brick. In 1840, contractors were still making their own bricks on site or nearby but after 1850, when the tax imposed in 1784 was removed, brickmaking by machine became economic and mass-production began. Improved transport facilities destroyed the use of indigenous materials (except for the wealthy) and not only cheap bricks but roofing and floor tiles, slates, glazed earthenware plumbing and sanitary ware, flues, airbricks, damp-proof courses and cast-iron products, for example, could be sent from factories to all parts of the country.

    THE MARKETING OF NEW PRODUCTS

    Top of article

    Manufacturers of building products, as always, promoted their wares in a variety of ways: by personal recommendation, by showroom displays, by advertizing in periodicals, at exhibitions and by means of catalogues and other publications. Some also wrote technical treatises and articles [2]. In 1777, Thomas Prosser flattered himself that his improved water-closet would be promoted by satisfied "noblemen and gentlemen in the three kingdoms" [3].

    Trade literature of one kind or another had been issued to sell building products since the eighteenth century. An early example is the literature promoting Coade Stone, a factory-made highly durable kind of terracotta of secret composition. From 1777 onwards, engraved plates had been made of the Coade factory products and these were collected into booklets of various formats. The 1784 catalogue listed seven hundred and fifty items - capitals, plaques, quoins, string-courses, friezes and chimney pieces - "which could be incorporated into buildings in the same way as natural stone features". In 1799, a handbook, Coade’s Gallery, was published to describe the products exhibited in the showroom in London. Practically every major architect in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century used the ‘artificial stone’ architectural decorations on their buildings [4]. It is pleasing to picture these famous architects making their selection from the catalogues!

    ORGANIZING BUILDING PRODUCT INFORMATION

    Top of article

    Building product information began to be organized in the nineteenth century. The Builder [5], a wide-ranging weekly illustrated magazine "for the Drawing Room, the Studio, the Office, the Workshop and the Cottage" was begun in 1842. The first issue contains a list of the building trades and the second a list of tradesmen, manufacturers and others who are, or should be, interested in the new periodical "both as a medium for obtaining information and for advertizing their own products and requirements". This list covers, among many others, the areas of builders’ plant, supplies of building materials, supplies of building components, and the supply and installation of equipment and services [6]. The Builder was to be an indispensable advertizing medium and source of information on products for the rest of the century.

    The use of trade exhibitions to promote sales of products was initiated by the Great Exhibition in the ‘Crystal Palace’ in Hyde Park in London in 1851. The aim was to stimulate trade and to exhibit the best examples of manufactured products from around the world. Although the catalogue [7] illustrated and described some products of interest to builders (highly ornamental fireplaces, fenders, stoves, doorhandles, knockers and wallpaper, for example), it is the building itself which is of greater interest here. Paxton’s vast prefabricated [8] conservatory of cast-iron columns and girders infilled with glass marks the change to ‘modern’ building using prefabricated parts made from new materials [9]; it anticipates the structural steel and reinforced concrete frame buildings where spaces are filled with glass and other claddings.

    Regular specialized building exhibitions have been organized since at least the end of the nineteenth century. The firm of Dent and Hellyer, manufacturers of plumbing and sanitary fittings, took part in the 1851 exhibition and others later in the century although "it has not been a policy favored very much by the firm to take part in Exhibitions" [10].

    In addition to The Builder, there were soon to be other publications in which manufacturers could advertize their products. In 1868, Wyman and Sons published The Architect’s, Engineer’s and Building-Trades Directory, a Business Book of Reference for the Various Industries Connected with the Art of Construction, a massive tome of some 832 pages which contains at the end a "good, thick section of classified advertisements with many useful woodcuts" [11].

    Specification, the annual reference book of products and processes known to some as ‘the architect’s bible’, was first published in 1898 giving "facts, precedents and specialities for all interested in building".

    It is appropriate to mention here that the world’s first national standards body was founded in Britain in 1901 as the Engineering Standards Committee, becoming the British Standards Institution in 1931.

    THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TRADE CATALOGUES

    Top of article

    The building products trade catalogues of the nineteenth century had much more in common with the cabinet makers’ pattern books of the previous century than with their glossy counterparts of today. They were often large, lavishly produced volumes filled with illustrations - engravings, line diagrams, scale drawings and perspectives. Most of the major manufacturers of terracotta goods produced catalogues showing pilasters, balustrades and other items. The catalogues included schemes drawn up by architects to illustrate the virtuosity of the material. The Ruabon Brick and Terra-Cotta Company’s catalogue of the 1890s included ‘suggested treatments in building’, illustrated by a detailed line drawing; it was, in fact, an early design guide.

    By this time, however, the term ‘catalogue architecture’ had acquired a pejorative shade of meaning which made architects wary and many preferred to rely on their own designs. Tiles, on the other hand, were generally selected from catalogues issued by the major manufacturers. These included scale drawings of stock patterns and they were widely distributed to architects, builders and merchants [12].

    Probably the most prevalent of the nineteenth century catalogues were those issued by the manufacturers of sanitary and plumbing goods: Adamsez, Allied Ironfoundery, Dent and Hellyer, Doulton, Shanks, Twyford, Jennings and others [13]. The catalogues of George Jennings, the great sanitary innovator, who installed public lavatories in the Crystal Palace in 1851 [14], "have superb drawings of urinals" [15] and the Shanks and Twyford catalogues have been extravagantly described as "like illuminated manuscripts" [16]. Walter MacFarlane and Co. of London and Glasgow, self-styled ‘architectural, sanitary and artistic ironfoundry’, published from mid-century richly illustrated catalogues showing designs for pipes, gutters, railings, urinals, water-closets and much else. The MacFarlane catalogues of the 1870s have been described as "spectacularly vulgar and the very essence of what we think of as Victorian vernacular" [17].

    The building product catalogues still followed the example of those issued by furniture makers. Artistic catalogues, containing artists’ impressions of interiors as well as drawings of individual pieces of furniture, were issued and were considered good enough to "grace a drawing room table" [18].

    NEW MATERIALS, TRADE LITERATURE AND NEW ARCHITECTURE

    Top of article

    The problems associated with building trade literature, caused by its profusion, variety and inadequacy in describing new complicated products, did not arise in any serious way until the twentieth century. The number of new products, some of which were variations and improvements on existing ones to meet new design requirements, continued to grow. The Architects’ Standard Catalogues, an annual collection of manufacturers’ literature, began publication in 1912. The nature of product literature began to change as modern printing and photographic techniques became available and sophisticated marketing methods were introduced.

    There were some landmarks in the period before and just after the Second World War. In 1931 the Building Centre was started in London, the first of its kind anywhere, a central place for architects and others to see a range of new products and to collect trade literature. Then in 1934 came Herbert Read’s influential book Art and Industry, recognized as "by far the most authoritative" work on the principles of industrial design to have been published [19].

    Read, quoting the German architect Walter Gropius, deplored the fact that in spite of the transformation from manual to machine production "borrowed styles and conventional decoration [had persisted, but] this state of affairs is over, at last. A new concept of building, based on realities, has developed" [20]. The design of the book itself was an attempt to put into practice the principles expounded within it; there were objections that the two-column layout was only suitable for magazines and industrial catalogues, not for books [21].

    These two events signaled that manufactured products were now a dominant feature of the building design process and that designers should not just accept them but that they should welcome them and exploit ‘the new realities’. Many architects had, of course, expressed their enthusiasm in practice and in print. In 1930, W.A.Johnson, the architect for the Cooperative Wholesale Society, wrote that new architecture should be "in keeping with the motor car, the aeroplane, and other phases of our time. It must make use of synthetic materials including marble and stone, ceramics, and mass production articles. It should aim at the building which is the assemblage of mass production in the workshop and put together on site" [22]. This seems to echo in a general way LeCorbusier’s condensed statement of 1923 - ‘Une maison est une machine-à-habiter’. But half a century earlier than that (and not an entirely new idea then) Bannister Fletcher, the ‘father’ of the well-known history of architecture, said: "There is a good future for architecture, but it must be by striving to combine in building all the scientific inventions of the day [...] and herein new forms will be created by the use of new materials" [23].

    There were other significant events in the 1930s and the 1940s which demonstrated the growing importance of building trade literature. The progressive architectural firm of Sir John Burnet, Tait and Lorne began publishing in The Architects’ Journal each week a series of information sheets. These consisted of white line drawings on a black background, originally giving dimensions of domestic items but later the series included building trade products. The sheets were subsequently published in book form [24].

    In 1944, the Ministry of Works [25] re-established its library (absorbing the old Office of Works library) as an active building documentation and information service. Included was a product information section based on the collection of trade catalogues which was large enough to be arranged by manufacturers’ names under 101 broad subject headings [26].

    Modern architecture was recognized as different in kind from that of the past because of its dependence on machines and machine-made products. Some architectural historians of the 1940s wrote with excitement about new materials - "We are only beginning to explore the possibilities of plastics and various light metal alloys" [27] and again " [...] plastics, the newest and perhaps the most truly synthetic of all man-made materials; but, as yet, their potentialities have not been fully developed" [28]. The new materials - aluminum, plywood, rubber, synthetic wall boards, even asbestos ("has a definite place in building" [29]) - gave the architect the means, it was said, to provide the aids to modern comfortable living. The feeling was that the new architecture would be humanized and the postwar period would see the creation of a better world. On a more mundane level, the market for products increased after 1945 when there was a significant growth in the number, size and complexity of building projects carried out by large contracting companies. Trade literature had reached an importance it was to retain up to the present time.

    THE FIRST BUILDING TRADE LITERATURE STANDARD

    Top of article

    In 1945, at the request of the Ministry of Works and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the British Standards Institution (BSI) set up a committee "fully representative of producers and users of ‘sales literature’ issued in connection with the building and allied industries [to consider] the desirability and practicability of securing some measure of standardization regarding the dimensions and the contents arrangement of trade and technical literature" [30].

    The Ministry, it should be noted, had been involved with standards not only as part of its wartime control duties but also as part of its responsibilities for the technical aspects of post-war building policy. A Standards Committee, comprising representatives of government, local authorities, science, the professions and industry, had been formed in 1942 with the task of drafting proposals for standards, specifications and codes. These standards, intended for publication by BSI, were of two kinds: functional and dimensional; dimensional standardization could also be used as an indirect method of specifying quality, although functional standardization covered all standards dealing with ‘fitness for purpose’ [31].

    The Standard, BS 1311, duly published on 26 April 1946, had the full title: British Standard Recommendations on the Sizes and Contents for Manufacturers’ Trade and Technical Literature (Building Industry). The text, consisting of four parts, 1. Preamble, 2. Sizes, 3. Thickness, weight and titling, and 4. Contents, occupies just three pages, measuring approximately 8 1/2 inches high by 5 1/2 inches wide. The Standard notes that architects and builders "have a great desire to keep literature which is useful to them" but that they cannot satisfactorily file for reference material of unusual shape or size; such material "represents a waste of money to the producer and an annoyance to the recipient".

    Three sizes are recommended: the size of the Standard itself, another, 11 inches high by 8 1/2 inches wide and a quarter size [32]. "It is strongly recommended that the longest measurement should be from top to bottom". It also states that producers of reference literature "striving after too individualistic a treatment [...] in order to draw greater attention to it, tend to defeat their own ends". The Standard, very tentative in tone, is not only short but it is written in simple language.

    The recommended standard order of contents is:

     

    1. What the publication is about,

    2. What the item will do,

    3. What form the item takes,

    4. How the item is applied,

    5. What the item needs,

    6. How to ensure satisfaction,

    7. How the item is obtained, plus

    8. Index.

    Each part of this sequence has a succinct explanation of what is required. There are other recommendations, such as dating and page numbering of publications, which will recur in future standards, but there are two general recommendations of special significance - "Where [...] particular and precise technical data can be given, their provision is strongly urged [and] The contents of all publications should be arranged in a definite standard order" where the implication is that the comparison of similar products from different manufacturers would be made easier. These two linked requirements, more or less ignored by manufacturers, continued to be demanded in the following years.

    British Standard 1311:1946 had no discernible effect on the producers of building trade literature; those who knew of its existence chose to ignore it. The Technical Section of The Architects’ Journal did not refer to the Standard when commenting in 1948 on the "leaflets and handbooks [in which] the relevant data is not always easy to find. Hence, of course, the need for Information Sheets to present the relevant data, and all of it, in a form readily comprehensible to the architect" [33].

    The following year, the Building Centre’s Deputy Director identified the reason why trade literature "ceased to give the technical information required by specialists. [It was] the introduction of Art into the production of catalogues. [...] Some catalogues are designed to attract and fascinate, often to the exclusion of relevant information. Some, if their producers only knew, actually repel and revolt. If a catalogue is to be of real value, art must be confined to assisting in the presentation of facts" [34].

    The 1946 Standard was issued in revised form in January 1955, as a result of the deliberations of a BSI committee formed to consider the standardization of literature sizes for industry as a whole. The title of the Standard now became Sizes of Manufacturers’ Trade and Technical Literature (including recommendations for contents of catalogues), giving greater emphasis to size than to contents, which were relegated to Appendix A. The recommendations concerning thickness, weight, titling and sequence of contents were omitted. The list of kinds of ‘information that is generally required in technical literature’ now consisted of ten items, adding

     

    1. Date and publication identification number (also recommended was a clear space at the top right corner for the insertion of a classification number by the recipient), and

    8. Method of use.

    Otherwise, the list is essentially the same as before. The two recommended sizes were the same but the third quarter size was "no longer recommended". There was a distinct change in the recommendation about the provision of technical information; the "strongly urged [...] " became "whenever possible the fullest technical information about every product mentioned should be included". The text of the Standard covers six pages.

    THE BATTLE OF THE SIZES

    Top of article

    Although the international ‘A’ series of paper sizes had been in wide use in Europe and elsewhere since before the Second World War, only imperial sizes are recommended in the 1946 Standard. This insular attitude was perhaps understandable so soon after the war but no such excuse can be adduced for the rejection of the ‘A’ series nine years later. The imperial measures were retained on the grounds of economy, because of the existing preponderance of their usage and because they were the nearest UK sizes to the "popular" continental A4 and A5 sizes.

    In setting out the ‘Considerations in the selection of standard sizes’, the 1955 revision talks of "the measure of success already achieved with the recommendations of BS 1311" and the Foreword includes the equivocal statement that "while it cannot be claimed that the standard sizes have been used throughout the building and allied industries, the recommendations have been followed to a considerable extent". The reality was somewhat different.

    A well-placed observer commented in 1949 that "remarkably few people" produced their catalogues to BS size and "on the continent, things are better, but the size is different [...] Several European countries use the recommended paper size not only for information sheets but also for catalogues and periodicals" [34].

    The revision of the British Standard fared little better than the original. Some manufacturers may have cooperated in the framing of the new version but once again most chose to ignore it. "Far too few manufacturers in our experience," wrote an architect sadly over a year later, "are aware of the importance, or even the existence of this British Standard" [35]. He then quoted the Publicity Director of a well-known manufacturing company to the effect that "the architectural world does not necessarily practice what it preaches" including The Architects’ Journal which was over half-an-inch taller than the 11 inches specified in BS 1311, for example. This sparked off a response which pleaded with the journal not to conform to BS 1311 but to adopt the international A4 size, a move requiring but little adjustment. "Let the hopeless exhortations be stopped [to secure acceptance of BS 1311], let this purely insular Standard be forgotten, and let this now join foolscap, quarto [...] and the rest in going into the limbo already happily containing rods, poles, perches, hogsheads, and other anachronisms" [36].

    Other people [37] were now favoring the adoption of the ‘A’ series for practical, economic and typographical reasons, and as a means of overcoming the objections to standardization raised by manufacturers [38]. Then in April 1957 The Architects’ Journal published an editorial attacking BS 1311:1955 as "spavined, knock-kneed" and being determined by the alleged (and strongly contested) convenience of the literature producers. The ultimate criterion, it said, should be whether the users (i.e. architects) find it acceptable, "for in the end architects will only use trade literature if it gives them the right information in a manner which they find good to look at. On this count, BS 1311:1959 comes a hideous cropper". It praised the ‘A’ series for its engaging quality that the sides are in the proportion 1:Ã2 and extolled "the convenient way in which a sheet can be doubled or halved and still present the same proportion". It may seem curious to support standardization on aesthetic rather than rational grounds - comparing a "stocky, graceless proportion [of the larger imperial size to] the intrinsic charm" of A4 - but the occasion of the outburst [39] was the announcement of a joint RIBA/Building Centre competition for trade literature restricted to that conforming to the BS sizes. It wanted ‘A’ size literature to be permitted to enter.

    At the Building Centre Forum which followed the announcement of the competition there were two main issues: the BS sizes and whether there should be any form of standardization whatever. "The first of these issues was discussed with a bitterness that was very refreshing. [There was] no respectable argument [against standardization but] discussion on the more important question of what literature should contain was very poor and [only] served to show up the fact that though every architect thinks he knows what he wants from trade literature, no one has given sufficient thought to the problem to provide any worthwhile answers" [40]. It would seem that those who resisted any standardization were happy to listen to acrimonious discussion on paper sizes - while the real danger area of the arrangement of contents was ignored.

    The increasing pressure for BSI to adopt the ‘A’ series resulted in March 1958 in the publication of Amendment No 1 to BS 1311:1955. This stated that "literature in the relevant ‘A’ sizes can be supplied in conformity with this Standard". The following year, the RIBA published an Industry Note on the ‘A’ sizes, in which the Council of the RIBA "invited" all concerned in producing building industry literature to adopt the international sizes and "in particular they ask that the size A4 [...] should be used for all papers which are required to be kept for reference".

    The battle of the sizes was (almost) over!

    GETTING THE MESSAGE ACROSS

    Top of article

    It is difficult to promote compliance with standard paper sizes when there is no consensus on what these sizes should be or even whether there should be a standard at all. Nevertheless there were plenty of architects who wanted to file trade literature (and other relevant papers) together for reference and who therefore supported standardization as such. How should they demonstrate their annoyance at receiving catalogues in all shapes and sizes? The Chairman of the BSI Committee which produced the 1946 Standard wrote in 1950 that the recommended sizes "were worked out after a close examination of architects’ filing systems [...] but many manufacturers will still not conform". He offered to supply free of charge to any architect a supply of printed slips saying "This literature is the wrong size for my files. I am therefore returning it. It does not conform to BS Standards". Alternatively, any architect could bundle up the unwanted wrong sized literature and send it to him; he would return each piece to whoever originally sent it [41].

    The example of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) of about the same time was held up for emulation. AIA members were provided with sticky labels bearing words to the effect that the catalogue did not conform to agreed sizes, which they could attach to offending literature on its return to the manufacturer [42].

    The producers of Specifile® sheets recommended that all architects follow the suggestion of the late Michael Ventris and "send a protest card to the manufacturers if the size does not conform to BS 1311:1955, for which a template can be drawn on the [office] wall". The company had protest cards available which "might draw attention to the inadequacies in the content of literature which would be a far more constructive way of dealing with faulty literature than simply to throw it in the wastepaper basket, particularly bearing in mind that the producers are very often not aware of its shortcomings" [43].

    The problem of convincing producers of literature to follow the standard recommendations was a long-standing international one. A 1959 paper for the CIB congress in Stuttgart contains the following exhortation: "The standard format A4 [...] has been accepted as the only format for filing [...] The only effective way to convince publishers [...] is therefore to let them know: ‘Either in A4 files on shelf or in the wastepaper basket’ [and] it is essential that the practitioner makes it understood that he will first use his wastepaper basket to swallow the stream of all [...] documents not fitting into his files" [44].

    "At that time, the middle and late ’50s, the air was full of ideas for the rationalization of information services". The writer of these words was thinking primarily of his role in rationalizing paper sizes ("276 sizes to three") and in "shifting the whole of the building industry on to the rationale of the A range" [45]. In 1960, it was reliably reported that "concern with the efficiency of the information services to the building industry generally is increasing and moves are afoot to standardize the size of information documents" [46]. The moves, initiated by the RIBA and campaigned for by The Architects’ Journal and others, were achieving success.

    The British Federation of Master Printers issued a pamphlet on the ‘A’ sizes early in 1960 and the adoption of the range was being linked with "Britain’s prospects in relation to a future European Free Trade Area" [47]. Later in the year, others joined in the growing trend: the National Federation of Ironmongers, the Aluminium Development Association and the Institution of Production Engineers [48]. The Building Research Station changed its Digest to a new A4 format [49]. The President of Building Industry Distributors appealed to manufacturers to standardize their literature to A4 size ("in the series laid down in BS 3176 Printed Matter and Stationery)" [50].

    About this time the computing industry in Britain opposed the ISO demand to change all the inch-based continuous stationery to the ‘A’ metric range. The machinery used worldwide to manufacture continuous stationery was inch-based and would have to be scrapped to move over to exact ‘A’ sizes. "For those who could see the merits of computer print-outs based on ‘A’ sizes [...] it was not unreasonable to take an inch-based depth nearest to the ‘A’ size required" [51]. A call for print-outs to be A4 was made over a quarter of a century later "when the industry situation has changed dramatically" [52].

    The Postmaster General was also interested in paper size standardization because in developing new mail sorting machines "we are handicapped by the immense variety of shapes and sizes of mail" [53].

    Since the abandonment of the classical scroll, the rationalization of the rectangular paper sizes had been proceeding in Europe. In Britain, the simplification of the multitude of sizes, which began with BS 730 in 1937, was achieved when the ISO Standard ‘A’ sizes were accepted generally in 1959. At least the use of standard sizes was introduced by persuasion and example. In France in 1527, François I decreed the formats of the folded sheets as standard throughout his kingdom; anyone breaking the rule was thrown into prison! [54]

    TRADE LITERATURE COMPETITIONS AND GUIDANCE

    Top of article

    Another method of encouraging conformity to standards was to hold competitions: to show how the literature should be by the example of the winning entries. The joint RIBA/Building Centre competition in 1957 had been preceded many years before by the first one to be held in the USA, sponsored by the AIA and the Producers’ Council. The aim was "to improve the quality of presentation of information about building materials". The assessors - architects, manufacturers and advertizing people - would demand "complete and accurate presentations of building products and interesting methods of application". It ran throughout the year [55].

    The British competitions, sponsored by the RIBA, the Building Centre and others, which continued into recent times, were much simpler. The judges met only once to select award winners from the literature submitted and vetted for compliance with the rules. The winning manufacturers received publicity at the award ceremony and in the professional press. The competitions undoubtedly helped to improve the presentation of product technical information but the entries tended to show that a few enlightened manufacturers always produced excellent literature (usually prepared by expert consultants), many produced nondescript literature and some entered literature that was downright bad.

    What were the criteria for judging the quality of trade literature? These can be found in Guide to the Preparation of Trade Literature for the Building Industry, the recommendations of the RIBA, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the National Federation of Building Trade Employers, published by the Building Centre in October 1961. The authority of the publication is reinforced by a Foreword by the Minister of Works. This Guide has a number of notable features:

     

    - The responsibility is placed squarely on the supplier to provide documents for immediate filing: prepunched, preclassified and in A4 size. The box at the top right hand corner of the front page or cover was no longer for the recipients’ own classification number but for the SfB/UDC [56] numbers supplied by the producer.

    - Each piece of literature should be restricted to one product or service to enable information on similar subjects to be kept together.

    - Information should be "factual, comprehensive, concise and arranged in logical sequence".

    The quality of trade literature is judged by the user on the basis of the information given "not on the lavish nature of its presentation". The other recommendations are similar to those of the earlier Standards. The publication itself follows its own guidance and it is simply and concisely written, and well set out in just eight pages. The introduction states that "the object of this Guide is not to create stereotyped literature", which was, of course, how dissenting manufacturers would perceive such guidance, then and in the future.

    It should be remembered that the BSI, in 1946 BSI warned manufactures against "too individualistic a treatment of their reference literature" - which was replaced in 1955 by the remark that "Standard sizes [...] need in no way restrict personal taste in design". BSI had, of course, long recognized the danger of standardization in general being seen as restrictive and had "preached the gospel [that it is not] the apotheosis of all that is dull and monotonous [or] everything out of the same jelly mould [or even of] mass production at its dreariest" [57].

    In this context, the significance of the Guide was duly noted. Comparing the British situation with that in the USA, where trade literature had been organized for forty years (meaning: Sweet’s Catalogue), and more recently in several European countries, notably Sweden and Denmark, the question was asked: "why have we been so dilatory?" The answer - which clearly had not changed over the past fifteen years - seemed to be:

     

    - 90% of trade literature was put straight into the waste-paper basket, without any thought about what was really needed;

    - competitive manufacturers, lacking a clear lead, followed their own ideas and produced a range of trade literature from the expensive and elaborate to the ill-designed leaflet;

    - prestige advertising was muddled up with proper information about the use and cost of the product.

    "There are still people in the building and manufacturing industries who do not realize the extent of the waste of effort and money involved in the present lack of system in building information". Now a notable beginning had been made in "the vast task of codifying building information [...] which, in the end, will help to step up the efficiency of the building industry" [58].

    A revised and expanded edition of the Guide was published in October 1965, the Foreword now by the new Minister of Public Building and Works. The text, still kept within nine pages, now included protection and maintenance, and dimensions were in metric units.

    Go to part 2
 
 
Copyright © IF Research Corporation and CIB 1998
All rights reserved