Typographer

“ Lower-case in square or block formation does not shape up harmoniously. Capitals exclusively should be used when such effects are planned.
Example 289.—A letterhead for a general store invariably presents a problem to the printer who wishes to produce a harmonious and well-balanced heading. It is difficult properly to display copy which includes such a variety of articles as furniture, jewelry, stoves and coffins. The typographer responsible for this letterhead set it in Caslon Oldstyle, grouped it as well as he could, and introduced decorative value by means of florets printed in color. ”

“ Good typography cannot be produced if preparation is slighted.
Quality printing is not accidental. Shops famed for the artistic excellence of their product have maintained their “shop style” despite changes in the force of workmen and executives, and this individuality, or “shop style,” as it is termed, has been obtained and retained only because the copy has been carefully prepared and the work has been intelligently laid out by some qualified person (artist, ad-writer or typographer) who understands shop preferences in the matter of style. ”

“ EXAMPLE 256
Classic, refined treatment, for art and literary purposes
The typographer who prefers freedom from care, and the blissfulness of ignorance, is a poor member of society. He should line up among the world’s workers and accept some of the responsibilities. The first things he observes, should he become a student, are the imperfections of his own product. Work that before looked good to him, now, viewed in a new light, is defective, and finally the old verdict is reached, “There is none perfect, no, not one.” ”

“ In selecting a man for the position it should be remembered that few typographers have qualifications combining artistic perception and thoro workmanship. It is in a great measure true that a nervous, artistic temperament unfits a typographer for thoro, finished work at the case or stone, while on the contrary, a calm, precise, methodical disposition is often accompanied by lack of imagination. 37Each workman should have opportunity to do that which he can do best. ”

“ The impulse received from the art object is individually interpreted and appropriated, and its value to the individual is determined by each recipient, in accord with his nature, training, and capacity.
The motive of a piece of printing is driven into the consciousness of the reader with brutal directness, and it is one of the offices of the typographer to mitigate the severity of the message or to give an added grace to its welcome. ”

“ Art is essential to printing; so are Uncle Sam’s specimens of steel engraving. The more art the printer absorbs the larger should grow his collection of these engravings. Study of art arouses ambition; ambition brings better and harder work. It reveals in the typographer the difference between mere lead-lifting and the artistic selection and arrangement of types. The boy who sweeps the floor and does his best is nearer art-heaven than he who sets type and cares not how he does it. ”

“ No one is producing perfect typography; but when perfection is the pacemaker no result can be commonplace.
The good typographers of the past had the spirit of the master craftsman and their product was inspired. The modern printer to succeed needs only the inspiration that comes of study, hard work and love of his trade.
Inspired work, however, is generally the result of preparation.
Artists and advertising men realize the necessity of careful preparation for the process of printing, but typographers as a class evidently do not. ”

“ Many persons of the present day will shy at the use of a single capital letter immediately following the initial, but that is the way it was done in the old days. Typographers should early begin to accumulate a library of books. They should frequent the second-hand bookstores, and occasionally purchase some old volume that shows the style of typography of fifty, one hundred or more years ago. ”

“ It had never occurred to the young man to ask why this was done. Thus it may be with the typographer. He arranges a job of type composition in the style of something good he has seen, but fails to get the quality of the original because he does not comprehend just what has served to produce that quality.
Morris was a student of ancient printing. His thoughts were back in the fifteenth century with Jenson, Aldus and Koburger, and when he began to print, he printed understandingly. There was a well-defined plan, and there was harmony in ornament, type, ink and paper. ”

“ In Example 67 the page consists mostly of blank space, the type standing modestly 56and apologetically in the midst of that space. This treatment is proper on dainty works of poetry or when the demands of extreme refinement are to be satisfied. Example 68 is the “happy medium,” the compromise—a strength of display that will be satisfactory in almost every case. This method of arriving at correct treatment emphasizes the need in the typographer of a judicial as well as an artistic temperament. The wise judge knows that truth is about midway between the claims of opposing counsel. ”

“ The distribution of color is uncommon. The italic short-and (&) adds a touch of decoration to the heading. Typographers will find that these old-style italic short-ands look well in display lines substituted for the spelled-out “and.” The roman short-and (&) is severe in character and is not so pleasing.
Example 298.—Occasionally it is advisable to inclose type matter in a panel, altho in most instances the typographer will find that a letterhead is neater if no rule panel is used. However, there is something attractive and different about the panel treatment of this letterhead. ”

“ Example 234.—This announcement page is lettered in a style that suggests the sturdy masculine character of the lettering that has been developed with the new German decorative art. Typographers should not make the mistake of assuming that a page set in the so-called gothic types of the typefounders would give this effect. While the letters are without serifs, as are the gothic types, yet they have not the mechanical perfection of those types. Type-faces, lettering and drawing of any kind seem to be better liked when they possess the human quality of imperfection. ”

“ The tone is made uniform by printing the border in a light color. Page by University Press, Cambridge
Lack of artistic feeling among typographers and customers is responsible for unpleasant contrasts in tone. A dense black illustration or initial will be set in a page of light gray reading matter, or type of black tone will be used on a page with an illustration of light lines. Great contrast in any detail of typography is not art but eccentricity ”

“ All the early typographers, at all events from the sixteenth century, were members of the Stationers' Company, and the investiture of books in liveries of different kinds became the function of an unprivileged and unchartered body, of which our knowledge is on that account even more limited and imperfect than it would otherwise have been. ”

“ This sawing off of a portion of the descending strokes cripples the letters just as the sawing off of a portion of a man’s legs cripples his body. Not only is typography made imperfect by missing descenders, but, generally, the practice has worked toward the degeneration of type print, making it less easy to read, as the lines set too close together. When the descenders are of proper length they maintain a strip of blank space between lines, but when they are cut off the printer must add leads to recover the space—which he seldom does. ”

“ A page of display typography composed of a mixture of irregular gray and black tones is inexcusable in the sight of the art-loving reader. As combinations of inharmonious type-faces are wrong, equally so are combinations of incongruous tones. For the sake of contrast and variety in typography, art principles are too often ignored, the printer confessing to ignorance or lack of ingenuity. Contrast is necessary, but it may be had without sacrificing uniformity. ”

“ Very well, sir: we hope you will treasure them up. You say truly when you remark, that the printing done in this room is seldom, if ever, surpassed in America. We know that; and we intend to stand on the topmost round of the typographical ladder, and to show our fellow-artists what can be done with type such as we manufacture.
We are afraid, Mr. Typograph, that your long excursion over the house has wearied you. Let us go down-stairs again. These, sir, are our warerooms. ”

“ An experienced proofreader does not read a galley letter by letter, but recognizes a wrong type because the natural formation of the word has been broken.
Carrying the experiment further, place in “open formation” the words “Art and Practice of Typography,” and they must be read slowly one word at a time, but group the words closely, as has been done in the lower left of the same Example 508, and the entire group of words can be read practically at a glance. Just as an illiterate person laboriously reads letter by letter, a young child beginning to read will see only one word at a time. ”

“ Indeed, the dust of battle has added to, rather than diminished, the mysterious clouds which envelope the problem, and we are tempted to seek refuge in an agnosticism which almost refuses to believe that printing ever had an inventor.
It would be neither suitable nor profitable to encumber an investigation of that part of the History of Typography which relates to the types and type-making of the fifteenth century by any attempt to discuss the vexed question of the Invention of the Art. The man who invented Typography was doubtless the man who invented movable types. ”

“ Example 316.—The stationery of a book dealer should have a bookish character—that is, the typography should be inspired by the same skill and taste evinced in the treatment of a good book. A well-designed type-face should be selected, and there should not be a great contrast in the sizes used. When it is possible to have two printings, the extra impression could take the form of a simple rule border in color, as on this specimen. The first type line runs almost from border to border at the head, and another portion of the copy is arranged directly under it in three even lines. ”

“ TITLE-PAGE OF 1872
Showing the development during the nineteenth century of a severe and uninteresting style
Attractiveness is as necessary to the typography of the general job of printing as dignity and legibility are to a law brief, but, endeavoring to get attractiveness into their work, job printers often go astray. They wrongly labor under the impression that to have a job distinctive it must be made freakish. Typography is not good unless based upon art foundations. ”

“ Examples 157, 158 and 159.—Caslon Oldstyle and Caslon Text are factors in the effectiveness of the booklet of which these three pages are representative. These three examples are additional evidence that type alone when properly used is almost as effective from an advertising point of view as if supported by the best decoration and illustration. It might be said that good typography is to be preferred at all times to poor art work, altho really good art work properly subordinated will undoubtedly add attractiveness and interest to a booklet otherwise well treated typographically. ”

“ Example 315.—D. B. Updike makes plain by this specimen, as well as by the preceding one, that typographic art and good taste can be used in the designing of a billhead as well as in the designing of a book. The woodcut device has the same good quality as the typography. The old-fashioned “M” and “Dr.” are used, and blend well with the old dignity of the heading. The ruling on the lower part of both of these headings was printed from rules. There are other good printers who prefer brass rule to the ruling machine for billhead purposes. ”

“ The strictly conventional person can be supplied with a strictly conventional card, proper in all details. The artistic person, he of the flowing tie, can obtain a card with sympathetic qualities. The noisy huckster can be supplied with a typographic effect that almost shouts the message it contains. In fact, character and personality can be expressed typographically on the business card, and the printer will find this matching of typography with human nature an interesting study. ”

“ The plain, legible typography ably supports the strong illustration and attractive border treatment. By the Matthews-Northrup Works, Buffalo, N. Y.
Before proceeding with the composition of a catalog the printer should insist that the copy be legible, orderly prepared, and all points settled as to type-face, headings and position of illustrations. A dummy page should be planned and set up, and it should be studied and discussed by customer and printer before work is begun on the catalog as a whole. ”

“ The printer’s type (see Typography) would as a rule be based on a handwriting considered by the scribes appropriate to works of the same class; the chapter headings, headlines, initial-letters, paragraph marks, and in some cases illustrations, would be added by hand in a style which might closely resemble the like decorations in the manuscript from which the text was being printed; there would be no title-page, and very probably no statement of any kind that the book was printed, or as to where, when or by whom it was produced. ”

“ Introduction Many persons and many places have claimed the honor of the invention of typographic printing. That these conflicting claims should be made is the most natural thing in the world. Almost all epoch-making inventions and discoveries are of more or less doubtful origin. ”