Part 23

No printer, in safeguarding himself from the charge of monotony in his composition, should admit, against his better judgment, any typographical distraction doing violence to logic and lucidity in the supposed interests of decoration. To twist his text into a triangle, squeeze it into a box, torture it into the shape of an hour-glass or a diamond is an offence requiring greater justification than the existence either of Italian and French precedents of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or of an ambition to do something new in the twentieth. In truth, these are the easiest tricks of all, and we have seen so much of them during the late "revival of printing" that we now need rather a revival of restraint. In all permanent forms of typography, whether publicly or privately printed, the typographer's only purpose is to express, not himself, but his author. There are, admittedly, other purposes which enter into the composition of advertisement, publicity and sales matter; and there is, of course, a very great deal common to both book and advertisement composition. But it is not allowable to the printer to relax his zeal for the reader's comfort in order to satisfy an ambition to decorate or to illustrate. Rather than run this risk the printer should strive to express himself by the use of this or that small decorative unit, either of common design supplied by the type founders or drawn for his office by an artist. It is quite true that to an inventive printer decoration is not often necessary. In commercial printing, however, it seems to be a necessity, because the complexity of our civilization demands an infinite number of styles and characters. Publishers and other buyers of printing, by insisting upon a setting which shall express _their_ business, _their_ goods, _their_ books and nobody else's business or goods or books, demand an individuality which pure typography can never hope to supply. But book-printers, concerned with the permanently convenient rather than with the transiently sensational or the merely fashionable, should be on their guard against title-page borders, vignettes and devices invented to ease their difficulties. There is no easy way with most title pages; and the printer's task is rendered more difficult by the average publisher's and author's incompetence to draft a title or to organize the preliminaries in reasonable sequence.

VI

Those who would like to lessen or vary the tendency towards standardization in day-today book production have a field for their activity in the last-mentioned pages. The position on the page of the half-title, title, dedication, etc., and their relation to each other, are not essentially invariable. Nevertheless, as it is well for printers and publishers to have rules, and the same rules, it may be suggested that the headings to Preface, Table of Contents, Introduction, etc., should be in the same size and fount as the chapter heads; and should be dropped if they are dropped. The order of the preliminaries remains to be settled. With the exception of the copyright notice, which may be set on the verso of the title page, all should begin on a recto. The logical order of the preliminary pages is Half-title or Dedication (I see no reason for including both), Title, Contents, Preface, Introduction. The certificate of "limitation," in the case of books of that class, may face the title where there is no frontispiece, be incorporated with the half-title, or be taken to the end of the volume. This order is applicable to most categories of books. Novels need neither Table of Contents nor List of Chapters, though one or the other is too often printed. If it is decided to retain either, it would be reasonable to print it on the back of the half-title and facing the title page, so that the structure, scope and nature of the book will be almost completely indicated to the reader at a single opening. Where the volume is made up of a few short stories, their titles can be listed in the otherwise blank centre of the title page.

VII

Fiction, Belles-Lettres and Educational books are habitually first published in portable, but not pocketable formats; crown octavo (5 by 7-1/2 in.) being the invariable rule for novels published as such. The novel in the form of Biography will be published as a Biography, demy octavo (5-5/8 by 8-3/4 in.), the size also for History, Political Study, Archaeology, Science, Art and almost everything but Fiction. Novels are only promoted to this format when they have become famous and "standard"; when they are popular rather than famous they are composed in pocket (4-1/2 by 6-3/4 in.) editions. _Size_, therefore, is the most manifest difference between the categories of books.

Another obvious difference is _bulk_, calculated in accordance with the publisher's notion, first, of the general sense of trade expectation and, secondly, of the purchasing psychology of a public habituated to certain selling prices vaguely related to number of pages and thickness of volume (inconsistently enough, weight does not enter into these expectations). These habits of mind have consequences in the typography; they affect the choice of fount and size of type, and may necessitate the adoption of devices for "driving out," i.e., making the setting take up as much room as possible. By putting the running headline between rules or rows of ornaments; introducing unnecessary blanks between chapters; contracting the measure; exaggerating the spaces between the words and the lines; excessively indenting paragraphs; isolating quoted matter with areas of white space: inserting wholly unnecessary sectional titles in the text and surrounding them with space; contriving to drive a chapter ending to the top of a recto page so that the rest of it and its verso may be blank; using thick paper; increasing the depth of chapter beginnings and inserting very large versals thereto; and so on, the volume can be inflated to an extra sixteen pages and sometimes more--which is a feat the able typographer is expected to accomplish without showing his hand.

Limited editions of standard authors, or of authors whose publishers desire them to rank as such, are commonly given a rubricated title or some other feature not strictly necessary. A dreadful example of overdone rubrication is to be found in an edition of Thomas Hardy's verse, in which the running heads throughout the book are in red--the production of a firm which desired to make an impression on the purchaser in view of the price asked for the edition. This could have been better done by reserving colour for the initial letters. Handmade paper is generally used for _éditions de luxe_, and none but the brave among publishers will disregard the superstitious love of the book-buying classes for its untrimmed, ugly and dirt-gathering edges. That most of the public prefer to have it so is because a trimmed book looks "ordinary" to them. Any book which is "different" from the "ordinary" in one superficial way or another is apt to impress those lacking trade experience. And there has been a notable increase during recent years in the category of books, generally illustrated, known to the trade as _fine printing_, _éditions de luxe_, _press-books_, _limited editions_, _collectors' books_, etc. Hence, it is hoped that the above setting out of the first principles of typography may give the discriminating reader some sort of yardstick which he can apply not only to the entries catalogued by the book-sellers as limited editions, but to the output of publishers responsible for printing the literary and scientific books which are more necessary to society, and are often designed with greater intelligence.

COMPOSED IN NEW TIMES ROMAN TYPES

_American Type Designers and Their Work_

Published by The Lakeside Press 1947-1948. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

A piece of paper about two inches square, originally pinned to the manuscript of the Rev. Ezra Stiles's diary in the Yale University Library is all that remains of the first original American type design. It is a proof of letters made by Abel Buell, a Connecticut Yankee, in 1769.[35] Buell was his own designer, punch cutter, and caster, since in his day, as for many years after, the making of type was entirely a hand operation. Not the least exacting part of the work was the cutting of the punch on the end of a short bar of softened steel. It was not until the invention of the Benton pantograph punch-cutting machine in 1885 that any other method was known. All type made before 1885 was therefore dependent on hand punch cutting, and the designer of the type was almost always the same man who cut the punches.

Who these type designers were after Buell is a matter of uncertainty and obscurity. The first type specimen book in America was that of Binny & Ronaldson of Philadelphia, issued in 1812; and from then almost to our own day the type foundries have taken the credit for the type designs which they have offered for sale. Type designers, like architects, got no credit; possibly Modesty, with a backward glance at old specimen books, raised a warning finger, and the designers were willing to let the foundries have whatever glory there was.

Abel Buell and his contemporaries and successors followed the general trends in design in the arts as a whole. The Greek Revival and the Victorian Age, marked by the two great expositions at London and Philadelphia with their crudities and extravagancies in design, found echoes in our imitative craft of printing. So it is not surprising that type design began to improve, along with the other arts, with the advent of the '90's. We have always followed European and especially English models, and it is natural that the upheaval in type design in England under Morris's influence had immediate repercussions here. But while imitations of Kelmscott types were soon on the market, two surprisingly original American designs appeared at the same time as the imitations. About 1894 or 1895 the Central Type Foundry of St. Louis introduced a face which became widely used, called (for no better reason than attends the christening of most type faces) "De Vinne." It is of unknown parentage, though there is some reason to suppose that it descended from the Elzevirs; but it was a face of character and distinction. At the same time the same foundry brought out another design which had an acknowledged father--Will Bradley. Of this face it has been said that it has "remarkably bold letters, with peculiarities of form never before attempted." Thus we have in the De Vinne and the Bradley faces two fresh and distinctively American types, destined to be the forerunners of many others. And in one case the name of the designer was definitely attached.

With the invention of the pantograph punch cutter, type design became an "art" rather than a craft, and as might be expected the personality of the designer became for various reasons more important. It is not without interest that the chief designer of the American Type Founders Company--a man responsible for almost the whole type output of that foundry for many years--Morris Fuller Benton, was the son of the man whose machines were responsible for this revolution in type design. For it was the two basic machines invented and developed by Linn Boyd Benton which made it possible for those unskilled in the intricacies of type making to provide the basic designs for type. The machines were very ingenious, and the designs partook of the "faultily faultless, icily regular" perfection of the mechanical device. This method of making type faces involved the drawing of the design and the making of two or three patterns in thin brass of the outline of the letter--each pattern good for several sizes of type, and slightly modified for another group of sizes. This is the way in which modern type is designed. It is the reason why such a type series as "Cheltenham," designed by the architect Bertram G. Goodhue in 1900 for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, while very expertly handled in the details, seems monotonous in mass; whereas the Caslon type of the original cutting shows all the inevitable variations of hand work.

A survey of the types of the first quarter of the present century, made by the Editor of the _Inland Printer_ in 1927, displays 161 type faces brought out by seven or eight of the leading foundries between 1900 and 1925. Of these, it was possible to name the designers of 72, almost all from the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry of Chicago, whose records seem to have been in better shape, or whose generosity was more spontaneous. Oswald Cooper, Sydney Gaunt, Will Ransom, Robert Wiebking, and George Trenholm were the chief names. It is unfortunate that the names of the designers of the types put out by the American Type Founders Company have not been preserved except in rare instances. Of course, Benton was responsible for the greater portion, and on the aesthetic side they occasionally scored a triumph as in the case of the "Cloister" face.

The list included in the _Inland Printer's_ survey fails to include some of the outstanding designs of the period. Goodhue's "Merrymount" was done in 1894, but after 1900 we have Mr. Rogers's "Centaur," Mr. Hunter's odd but forceful types (properly cut on punches by the designer), the output of the rapidly growing composing-machine industry, and Frederic W. Goudy's fifty designs completed in that quarter century. Goudy's output of six score type designs in fifty years is an amazing record, one probably never equalled. Such designs as those for "Goudy Modern," "Goudy Text," and "Hadrian" would establish his reputation. He had his limitations as a designer--most of his designs lack a certain crispness--but his versatility was extraordinary.

In the years since 1925 new designers have come to the fore: Blumenthal with his "Emerson," Dwiggins with his "Electra" and "Caledonia," Ruzicka with his "Fairfield," and Chappell with his "Lydian." This brief survey cannot hope to mention all types or designs which American designers have contributed, but it is well to see if any tendencies can be detected.

The type which Buell made in 1759, as well as the type of his immediate successors into the first decades of the nineteenth century, were mainly variations on the so-called "modern romans" of Didot, Bodoni, Austen, and Thorowgood. As the artistic styles in design in general, not alone in type, gradually lost the evolutionary force which has developed letter forms through the centuries, eccentricity and anarchy came into play. The nineteenth-century types as shown in the specimen books of Bruce, Connor, Farmer, etc., and exhibited in all their grotesque horror in Fred Phillips' "Old-fashioned Type Book," had no legitimate parentage, and they are as well relegated to the bizarre and pseudo-nostalgic advertisement. The result of the Kelmscott "revival" was to turn attention to type forms of the past which could be revived for modern use, and the type designers after 1900 did a remarkable piece of work in introducing good type faces. The advertisers have been eager to use new and novel faces, and have greatly stimulated this activity, even in many cases over-exciting it. The most interesting result has been the renewed interest in calligraphy. First directed toward new forms of script, the truer form of broad pen lettering is now beginning to influence type design, to free it from too slavish a devotion on the one hand to the serif, and on the other to a too-free rejection of the serif altogether. Such a face as Mr. Chappell's "Lydian" is an example of real advance in design, and if one could adduce European examples, more could be cited.

American designers have not developed many new or good book faces; such types as Oxford, Centaur, Emerson, Fairfield, Electra, are the exception. Their efforts have been given to the drawing of display and advertising types--too often not to the enrichment of the printer's repertory. It is quite as true now as in the past that distortions of the normal Roman letter form in the direction of extra condensed or extra heavy or very light mono-line letters result in eccentricities which have no permanent value. On the other hand such novel type designs as Garamond Bold Italic, Hadriano, the newspaper Ionics, and Lydian are meritorious additions to the printer's fonts. When it is realized that eccentricity and originality are not the same thing, we may expect from our increasingly intelligent designers indigenous types of usefulness and charm.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Reprinted in Lawrence C. Wroth's "The First Work with American Types," page 65.

TYPOGRAPHY--ERIC GILL

From _Printing & Piety_, An Essay on Typography by Eric Gill. Copyright 1931 by J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

One of the most alluring enthusiasms that can occupy the mind of the letterer is that of inventing a really logical and consistent alphabet having a distinct sign for every distinct sound. This is especially the case for English speaking people: for the letters we use only inadequately symbolize the sounds of our language. We need many new letters and a revaluation of existing ones. But this enthusiasm has no practical value for the typographer; we must take the alphabets we have got, and we must take these alphabets in all essentials as we have inherited them.

First of all, then, we have the ROMAN ALPHABET of CAPITAL letters (Upper-case), and second the alphabet which printers call ROMAN LOWER-CASE. The latter, tho' derived from the Capitals, is a distinct alphabet. Third we have the alphabet called _ITALIC_, also derived from the Capitals but through different channels. These are the three alphabets in common use for English people.

Are there no others? It might be held that there are several; there are, for example, the alphabet called Black Letter, and that called Lombardic. But these are only partial survivals, and very few people could, without reference to ancient books, write down even a complete alphabet of either. As far as we are concerned in modern England, Roman Capitals, Lower-case and Italics are three different alphabets, and all are current "coin." But however familiar we are with them, their essential differences are not always easily discovered. It is not a matter of slope or of serifs or of thickness or thinness. These qualities, though one or other of them may be commonly associated with one alphabet more than another, are not essential marks of difference. A Roman Capital A does not cease to be a Roman Capital A because it is sloped backwards or forwards, because it is made thicker or thinner, or because serifs are added or omitted; and the same applies to Lower-case and Italics (see Fig. 1).

The essential differences are obviously between the forms of the letters. The following letters, abdefghklmnqrtu and y, are not Roman Capitals, and that is all about it. The letters shown in the lower line of Fig. 2 are neither Capitals nor Lower-case. The conclusion is obvious: there is a complete alphabet of Capital letters, but the Lower-case takes ten letters from the Capital alphabet, and the Italic takes ten from the Capitals and twelve from the Lower-case. Figure 3 shows the three alphabets completed, and it will be seen that CIJOPSVWX and Z are common to all three, that bdhklmnqrtu and y are common to Lower-case and Italics; that ABDEFGHKLMNQRTU and Y are always Capitals; and that aef and g are always Lower-case.

But tho' this is a true account of the essential differences between the three alphabets, there are customary differences which seem almost as important. It is customary to make Roman Capitals upright. It is customary to make Lower-case smaller than Capitals when the two are used together; and it is customary to make Italics narrower than Lower-case, sloping towards the right and with certain details reminiscent of the cursive hand-writing from which they are derived. Fig. 4 shows the three alphabets with their customary as well as their essential differences.

Properly speaking there is no such thing as an alphabet of Italic Capitals, and where upright or nearly upright Italics are used ordinary upright Roman Capitals go perfectly well with them. But as Italics are commonly made with a considerable slope and cursive freedom, various sorts of sloping and quasi-cursive Roman Capitals have been designed to match. This practice has, however, been carried to excess; the slope of Italics and their cursiveness have been much overdone. In the absence of punch cutters with any personal sensibility as letter designers, with punch cutting almost entirely done by machine, the obvious remedy is a much more nearly upright and non-cursive Italic, and for Capitals the ordinary upright Roman. Even with a nearly upright Italic, the mere presence of the Italic aef and g alters the whole character of a page, and with a slight narrowness as well as a slight slope, the effect is quite different from that of a page of Lower-case.

The common practice of using Italics to emphasize single words should be abandoned in favour of the use of the ordinary Lower-case with spaces between the letters (l e t t e r - s p a c e d). The proper use of Italics is for quotations and footnotes, and for books in which it is or seems desirable to use a lighter and less formal style of letter. In a book printed in Italics upright Capitals may well be used, but if sloping Capitals be used they should only be used as initials--they go well enough with Italic Lower-case, but they do not go with one another.

We have, then, the three alphabets, and these are the printer's main outfit; all other sorts of letters are in the nature of fancy letters, useful in inverse proportion to the importance and quantity of his output. The more serious the class of book he prints, the wider the public to whom he appeals, so much the more solemn and impersonal and normal will be and should be his typography. But he will not call that book serious which is merely widely bought, and he will not call that a wide appeal which is made simply to a mob of forcibly educated proletarians. A serious book is one which is good in itself according to standards of goodness set by infallible authority, and a wide appeal is one made to intelligent people of all times and nations.

The invention of printing and the breakdown of the medieval world happened at the same time; and that breakdown, tho' hastened by corruption in the Church, was chiefly caused by the recrudescence of a commercialism which had not had a proper chance since the time of the Romans. The invention of double-entry book-keeping also happened about the same time, and though, as with modern mechanical invention, the work was done by men of brains rather than men of business, it was the latter who gained the chief advantage.