Chapter C: R. Ashbee, of the Essex House Press, stated in The Private Press (4)

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.

Printing, a cheaper method of reproducing books than hand-writing, came therefore just at the right moment. Since its first fine careless rapture, and in spite of the genuinely disinterested efforts of ecclesiastical presses, University presses and the work of many notable individual printers and type-founders, the history of printing has been the history of its commercial exploitation. As is natural with men of business, the worse appears the better reason. Financial success is, rightly, their only aim, and technical perfection the only criterion they know how to apply to their works.

TYPOGRAPHY (the reproduction of lettering by means of movable letter types) was originally done by pressing the inked surface or "face" of a letter made of wood or metal against a surface of paper or vellum. The unevenness and hardness of paper, the irregularities of types (both in respect of their printing faces and the dimensions of their "bodies") and the mechanical imperfections of presses and printing methods made the work of early printers notable for corresponding unevennesses, irregularities and mechanical imperfections. To ensure that every letter left its mark more or less completely and evenly, considerable and noticeable impression was made in the paper. The printed letter was a coloured letter at the bottom of a ditch.

The subsequent development of typography was chiefly die development of technical improvements, more accurately cast types, smoother paper, mechanically perfect presses. Apart from the history of its commercial exploitation, the history of printing has been the history of the abolition of the impression. A print is properly a dent made by pressing; the history of letter-press printing has been the history of the abolition of that dent.

But the very smooth paper and the mechanically very perfect presses required for printing which shall show no "impression" can only be produced in a world which cares for such things, and such a world is of its nature inhuman. The industrial world of today is such, and it has the printing it desires and deserves. In the industrial world Typography, like house building and sanitary engineering, is one of the necessary arts--a thing to be done in working hours, those during which one is buoyed up by the knowledge that one is serving one's fellow men and neither enjoying oneself like an artist nor praising God like a man of prudence. In such a world the only excuse for anything is that it is of service.

Printing which makes any claim on its own account, printers who give themselves the status of poets or painters, are to be condemned; they are not serving; they are shirking. Such is the tone of the more romantic among men of commerce; and the consequence is a pseudo-asceticism and a bastard aesthetics. The asceticism is only a sham because the test of service is the profits shown in the accounts; and the aesthetics is bastard because it is not founded upon the reasonable pleasure of the mind of the workman and of his customer, but upon the snobbery of museum students employed by men of commerce to give a saleable appearance to articles too dull otherwise to please even the readers of _The Daily Mail_.

Nevertheless, as we have already shown, commercial printing, machine printing, industrial printing would have its own proper goodness if it were studiously plain and starkly efficient. Our quarrel is not with such a thing but only with the thing that is neither one nor the other--neither really mechanically perfect and physically serviceable nor really a work of art, i.e., a thing made by a man who, however laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God and does what he likes, who serves his fellow men because he is wrapped up in serving God--to whom the service of God is so commonplace that it is as much bad form to mention it as among men of business it is bad form to mention profits.

There are, then, two typographies, as there are two worlds; and, apart from God or profits, the test of one is mechanical perfection, and of the other sanctity--the commercial article at its best is simply physically serviceable and, per accidens, beautiful in its efficiency; the work of art at its best is beautiful in its very substance and, per accidens, as serviceable as an article of commerce.

The typography of Industrialism, when it is not deliberately diabolical and designed to deceive, will be plain; and in spite of the wealth of its resources--a thousand varieties of inks, papers, presses and mechanical processes for the reproduction of the designs of tame designers--it will be entirely free from exuberance and fancy. Every sort of ornament will be omitted; for printers' flowers will not spring in such a soil, and fancy lettering is nauseating when it is not the fancy of type-founders and printers but simply of those who desire to make something appear better than it is. Paradoxical though it be, the greater the wealth of appliances, the less is the power of using it. All the while that the technical and mechanical good quality is increasing, the de-humanizing of the workmen is also increasing. As we become more and more able to print finer and more elaborate and delicate types of letter it becomes more and more intellectually imperative to standardize all forms and obliterate all elaborations and fancifulness. It becomes easier and easier to print any kind of thing, but more and more imperative to print only one kind.

On the other hand, those who use humane methods can never achieve mechanical perfection, because the slaveries and standardizations of Industrialism are incompatible with the nature of men. Humane Typography will often be comparatively rough and even uncouth; but while a certain uncouthness does not seriously matter in humane works, lack of uncouthness is the only possible excuse for the productions of the machine. So while in an industrialist society it is technically easy to print any kind of thing, in a humane society only one kind of thing is easy to print, but there is every scope for variety and experiment in the work itself. The more elaborate and fanciful the industrial article becomes, the more nauseating it becomes--elaboration and fancifulness in such things are inexcusable. But there is every excuse for elaboration and fancy in the works of human beings, provided that they work and live according to reason; and it is instructive to note that in the early days of printing, when human exuberance had full scope, printing was characterized by simplicity and decency; but that now, when such exuberance no longer exists in the workman (except when he is not at work), printing is characterized by every kind of vulgarity of display and complicated indecency.

But, alas for humanity, there is the thing called compromise; and the man of business who is also the man of taste, and he of taste also who is also man of business will, in their blameless efforts to earn a living (for using one's wits is blameless, and earning a living is necessary), find many ways of giving a humane look to machine-made things or of using machinery and the factory to turn out, more quickly and cheaply, things whose proper nature is derived from human labor. Thus we have imitation "period" furniture in Wardour Street, and we have imitation "arts and crafts" in Tottenham Court Road. The-man-of-business-who-is-also-man-of-taste will tend to the "period" work, the-man-of-taste-who-is-also-man-of-business will tend to the imitation handicrafts. And, in the printing world, there are business houses whose reputation is founded on their resuscitations of the eighteenth century, and private presses whose speed of output is increased by machine-setting and gas engines. These things are more deplorable than blameworthy. Their chief objectionableness lies in the fact that they confuse the issue for the ordinary uncritical person, and they turn out work which is neither very good nor very bad. "Period" printing looks better than the usual vulgar products of unrestrained commercialism, and there is no visible difference, except to the expert, between machine-setting and hand-setting, or between sheets worked on a hand-press and those turned out on a power-driven Platen.

Nevertheless, even if these things be difficult to decide in individual instances, there can be no sort of doubt but that as industrialism requires a different sort of workman so it also turns out a different kind of work--a workman sub-human in his irresponsibility, and work inhuman in its mechanical perfection. The imitation of the work of pre-industrial periods cannot make any important ultimate difference; the introduction of industrial methods and appliances into small workshops cannot make such workshops capable of competition with "big business." But while false standards of good taste may be set up by "period" work, this "good taste" is entirely that of the man of business and his customers; it is not at all that of the hands--they are in no way responsible for it or affected by it; on the other hand, the introduction of mechanical methods into small workshops has an immediate effect on the workmen. Inevitably they tend to take more interest in the machine and less in the work, to become machine-minders and to regard wages as the only reward. And good taste ceases to be the result of the restraint put upon his conscience by the workman himself; it becomes a thing imposed upon him by his employer. You cannot see the difference between a machine-set page and one set by hand. No, but you can see the difference between Cornwall before and after it became "the English Riviera"; you can see the difference between riding in a hansom and in a motor-cab--between a "cabby" and a "taxi-man"; you can see the difference between the ordinary issue of _The Times_ today and its ordinary issue a hundred years ago; you can see the difference between an ordinary modern book and an ordinary book of the sixteenth century. And it is not a question of better or worse; it is a question of difference simply. Our argument here is not that Industrialism has made things worse, but that it has inevitably made them different; and that whereas before Industrialism there was one world, now there are two. The nineteenth century attempt to combine Industrialism with the Humane was necessarily doomed, and the failure is now evident. To get the best out of the situation we must admit the impossibility of compromise; we must, in as much as we are industrialists, glory in Industrialism and its powers of mass-production, seeing that good taste in its products depends upon their absolute plainness and serviceableness; and in so much as we remain outside Industrialism, as doctors, lawyers, priests and poets of all kinds must necessarily be, we may glory in the fact that we are responsible workmen and can produce only one thing at a time.

That if you look after goodness and truth beauty will take care of itself, is true in both worlds. The beauty that Industrialism properly produces is the beauty of bones; the beauty that radiates from the work of men is the beauty of the living face.

COMPOSED IN PERPETUA TYPES

FREDERIC W. GOUDY

TYPES AND TYPE DESIGN

The Syracuse University School of Journalism awarded its first
medal of honor to F. W. G. in 1936, "for distinctive achievement in
typographic design." His address then, reflecting the typographic
philosophy and practice of two-score years, is reprinted as published
by the University in 1936.

It would be mere affectation on my part were I to pretend not to be touched by the signal honor you extend to me this evening, and I would be ungrateful indeed if I neglected to voice my very great appreciation of your kindness. I wish that I might express that appreciation in words that would leave no shadow of doubt in your minds as to the depth and sincerity of my feeling.

I am not conscious of any outstanding reasons for the kind words spoken here tonight of my work. At the same time I am under no illusions as to the ultimate value of the work I have _attempted_ to do, although it is, after all, merely the every-day work of an earnest craftsman who endeavors to perform each task well and the next one, if possible, even better; and withal no thought or expectation of acclaim.

My craft is a simple one. For nearly two score years it has been my constant aim and endeavor to create a greater and more general esteem for printing and type design; to give to printers and readers of print more legible and more beautiful types than those in current use. This has involved some little sacrifice; the missionary seldom acquires much more than the satisfaction of work well done, and yet, on the whole, I haven't done badly, since my work has brought me a wealth of friendship beyond measure.

And now to the subject which has been assigned to me for this occasion--something about types of the past, type revivals, and a bit about type design, as I see it. I trust you will not find that my brief postprandial attempt bears out Gay's lines too literally:

_So comes the reckoning when the banquet's o'er,
A dreadful reckoning, when men smile no more._

One hundred and twelve years ago type design was generally imagined to be a matter that concerned only the letter cutter. J. Johnson, author of _Typographia_ (published in 1824), wrote of a type face that the printer needed only to "observe that its shape be perfectly true, and that it lines or ranges with accuracy, and that by noting certain mathematical rules the letter cutter may produce Roman characters of such harmony, grace and symmetry as will please the eye in reading; and by having their fine strokes and swells blended together in due proportion, will excite admiration." He says further that "if the letter stands even and in line, which _is the chief good quality in letter_, it makes the face thereof sometimes to pass, though otherwise ill-shaped." Type design as a profession evidently did not exist in 1824. And even today many printers are uninformed as to the various steps that must be taken between the inception of a type face in the designer's mind and its eventual appearance on the printed page.

Today the designing of type is practiced by few artists as a separate craft; it is an humble art at best--and a minor one. Yet every user of types demands in them certain artistic qualities, i.e., invention, novelty, style, beauty, distinction (a few insist on legibility); most of those users forget or do not realize that these are qualities an artist only may secure, and even the artist cannot always insure that his design will present all of them.

First: Invention requires that we soar above mere caprices of fashion or the demands of passing fancy. Our letter forms have become fixed in their essentials by long use and tradition, yet a study of all that has gone before will enable the designer seeking new expressions to infuse new life and character into traditional shapes and inspire him to create new designs based on the broad impressions stored in the granary of his mind.

Second: Novelty gives us some new impression suited to and brought about by new conditions of life and environment--by the changes that time has wrought. By novelty I do not mean, however, the imitation novelty so frequently met with and presented as something new; too often it means simply some older thing newly described. Achieving the fantastic quality reminiscent of the "slimy trail" of _Art Nouveau_, which you older ones will recall as rampant in the 1890's, produces freaks of fashion in an attempt to be novel, but may not, necessarily, always secure the novelty desired. Traditions of the past need not be disregarded nor overlooked in order to meet the prejudices of the present.

Just now a seemingly insatiable demand for novelty is giving us a senseless and ridiculous riot of "beautiful atrocities." The inundation of freak types is largely due to a revival of some former products of ignorance bringing in their train new designs even more bizarre in the attempt to secure "novelty"--a detestable word used frequently, I fear, like charity, to cover a multitude of sins. It has no place in artistic considerations, as a thing that really is good should be good for all time. Sporadic outbreaks in the name of novelty inevitably occur from time to time and fortunately have usually only their little day in the sun before vanishing forever into the limbo of the forgotten.

I do not wish to imply that novelty itself is undesirable--by no means; striving for newness keeps things fresh and alive. It is the re-presentation of the extraordinarily ugly and bizarre types of the middle of the last century with no exceptional artistic warrant for their revival, in an attempt to do something different, that I deprecate. Newness for its own sake only may not always be worth while.

I find it difficult to speak dispassionately of some of the types advertisers are using nowadays, because I am too deeply steeped in the traditions of the past to accept them. I cannot be accused of intolerance, however. The best art of the designer, the highest skill of the printer, and the clear, lucid argument of the advertisement writer must be requisitioned. Yet in much of the typography of today many of the new types display a marked avoidance of everything that is plain, simple and legible. Why are simplicity and easy readability no longer esteemed as desirable qualities in print? Why are these outlandish characters selected? For four hundred years the Roman types of the early Italian printers have furnished models to suit all tastes and serve every purpose.

For several years past advertisers and even our magazine and book printers have somewhat strayed from a definite standard of dignity and beauty in the quest for novelty. Foreign types, imported to add a touch of novelty to our advertising (types which, no doubt, are good enough for the conditions in the bailiwicks that gave them birth), too frequently impart to print a fantastic or a too fanciful effect when used under the entirely different conditions found here. These types are likely to impart to our printing an air of incongruity displeasing to the trained taste. _En passant_, I am reminded of a suggestion offered by Reinhardt, the scenic designer: "Do not try to inspire from foreign ideas. Be interested in them, of course, and they will help to fertilize your own."

Third: Style is a subtle quality that comes from an intelligent use of a good tradition renewed and advanced into our own times; it is a quality inseparable from the tools and materials employed, and is not to be acquired simply by taking thought or by a determination to attain it. Style is the living expression controlling both the form and the vital structure of the vehicle which presents thought in tangible form--an intimate and inseparable something in the work of a craftsman wholly unconscious of style or of any definite aim towards beauty for itself.

Fourth: Distinction is more difficult to secure, yet, when a type presents an unassuming simplicity; when it expresses thought in every detail; when it is clear, elegant, strong; nothing in it that is loose and vague, no finesse of design, but showing clearly in every line the spirit the designer has put into the body of his work, that type can hardly fail of real distinction. To meet the demands of utility and to preserve also an esthetic standard is the problem the type designer must attempt to solve. Obviously a large order for a mere amateur (or even for a professional designer).

As to legibility, I shall not here comment. Everyone knows (or thinks he knows) just what constitutes it; I fear I do not, or I would never permit myself consciously to make a type that was not the quintessence of legibility.

* * * * *

I am frequently asked how I design a type face. There are so many things that lead up to one that it is difficult to give a specific reply. I once told a student that "I think of a letter and then mark around the thought." That is hardly real designing. It may be easy to think of one letter, but to think also of its twenty-five relations which with it form the alphabet and so to mark around them that they will combine in complete harmony and rhythm with each other and with all--that is the difficult thing, the successful doing of which constitutes design. What is the inspiration for a new face? That also is difficult to answer. In the first place, it is hardly possible to create an absolutely new type or one that will not be reminiscent of the past.

It is quite within the province of the letter artist to take his inspiration for a new face from any source--the lapidary inscriptions of the first centuries of the Imperial age of Rome; a mediaeval brass that marks the last resting place of a departed ruler; a manuscript letter by some unsung scribe of the Renaissance, or an early type of the golden age of typography. Or maybe he may even strive to put into tangible form on his drawing board some vision from out of nowhere--the realization of a chance thought straying through an idle reverie which he will whip into a satisfactory medium of intellectual exchange. On the other hand, he may prefer to attempt the re-creation of new letter from the bones of a more ancient form, endeavoring to secure in it a new expression of life and vigor, with new graces suited to our times and our use.

If the designer chooses to disregard old types and go direct to their source, the manuscript hands of the scribes, well, why not? By revising their forms, refining them, eliminating their whimsicalities and vagaries and formalizing their irregularities, he may meet, too, the mechanical requirements and technical limitations of type founding. This, probably, is the more legitimate method, since in this way he will inspire from the real beginnings of our lower case forms. For myself I am inclined to agree with a writer who maintains that "it is doubtful whether the type designer benefits from a close study of hand lettering," meaning of course the manuscript hands of the past. Interesting as old manuscripts are, I find them of little practical use as offering models for new types. Speaking for myself only I find it more feasible to get my inspirations from a study of the earlier types that appeal to me. They frequently offer opportunity for new expression. With no attempt to copy their particular forms, or to make changes merely in weight or serif, I endeavor rather to tear from them the qualities and the spirit that makes them good, for incorporation in my own letter shapes.

I realize, of course, that the letters I may select as my models were, without doubt, inspired by some manuscript hand that personally I may find offers little for use in my own work. With complete independence of calligraphy I attempt, instead, to secure the negative quality of unpretentiousness; I strive for the pure contour and monumental character of the classic lapidary forms of the first centuries of the Christian era; I endeavor in my work to avoid any bizarre quality or exhibition of conscious preciosity. (It has been said that in this latter aim I sometimes fail.)

Once in a while a type face by some other designer seems to present an interesting movement or quality that I like. I take early opportunity to make it mine, frankly and openly, in the same way that a writer might use exactly the same words as another, but by a new arrangement of them present a new thought, a new idea, or a new subtlety of expression. Or as two painters using identical tools and colors, each might produce a masterpiece, yet the work of one probably would not resemble that of the other in any detail. By copying carefully a few characters of the type that appeals to me drawn by another hand, I try to secure in my own drawings some certain movement or rhythm his may present. I soon discard my model and proceed from there, as it were, under my own steam, and sometimes produce a face which my good friend Kent Currie says "has an acid, typy quality" and (in substance) that it is regular and well-ordered, that it has interest, color, movement, and sometimes quaintness.

Several years ago I accepted a commission to make a type for a magazine of large circulation. At that time it was my practice to make drawings from which matrices were engraved for me by the late Robert Wiebking of Chicago. His death occurred just about the time I was to send him my originals for translation into "mats" from which to cast the type. In order to carry out my arrangement with the magazine, and finding difficulty in procuring the work elsewhere, I determined to try doing also the mechanical work of matrix engraving myself. Like Moxon, I "learnt it of my own genuine inclination," with no previous instruction in the craft. With no engraving or casting plant ready to my hand I began the getting together of the various paraphernalia of a type foundry. Procuring machines for a type foundry was comparatively simple; the operation of them, making patterns for use in the engraving machines, the lining and fitting of the cast types, etc., all after I had reached my sixtieth birthday, was something else. Looking back, I am amazed at my temerity. It was literally a case of rushing in where angels might well fear to tread. Yet, since that time I have engraved many hundreds of matrices.

And now, one other personal note. It is my credo. For nearly two score years I have made use and beauty the great _desiderata_. I have never permitted myself intentionally to utilize the message I was attempting to present, to serve as a mere framework or scaffolding upon which to exploit my own skill, nor ever to allow my craft to became an end in itself instead of a means only to a desirable and useful end.

COMPOSED IN DEEPDENE TYPES

THEODORE LOW DE VINNE

_The Old and the New_

A FRIENDLY DISPUTE BETWEEN JUVENIS AND SENEX

with a note by FREDERIC W. GOUDY

Published by The Village Press, Marlboro, New York, 1933.

_Juvenis_: What is it that you admire in the types of old books? Don't you love them more for their quaintness than for their beauty? I have seen originals or accredited facsimiles of the best books of Gutenberg, Jenson, Aldus, Kerver, Caxton, and other notable printers, but I prefer modern types.

_Senex_: Then you have seen the pointed black-letter, the round gothic, the aldine Italic, the flemish black, and the early Roman. Did not any of these styles please you?

_Juvenis_: Not one. To try to read the pointed black of Gutenberg and Kerver is as repelling as a walk through the crypts of an old church; the round gothics are as scraggy as a heap of oyster shells; the Aldine italics are squeezed as to width, elongated as to height, and incongruously mated with absurdly small capitals; the flemish black-letter is the 'tour de force' of a literary acrobat. In all these characters I see bad drawing and disregard of proportion. The founding is as bad as the design; some characters are fitted too near, others too wide, and many letters are out of line.

_Senex_: You surely cannot censure Jenson's Roman for bad fitting?

_Juvenis_: I do except that, for Jenson was a good mechanic, and so was Kerver. Their types are well fitted and neatly lined. But I have small praise to give Jenson for his much admired Roman letter. Better, no doubt, than any other Roman of the period, but was it perfection? Bibliophiles forget that this Jenson Roman was out of fashion fifty years after his death, and that his models have been altered by every succeeding punch-cutter.

_Senex_: How, then, can you explain the favor shown to the recent types of William Morris? His 'Golden' type is based on the Jenson model; his 'Troy' and 'Chaucer' types are modeled after the round gothic of the fifteenth century.

_Juvenis_: I do not pretend to explain freaks of fashion in typography any more than in religion or art or music. The Athenians who worshiped an unknown or forgotten god have successors in every generation. There are Englishmen, nursed in the Catechism, who try to be devout Buddhists; there are Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, and Wagnerians.

The lover of singularity who can invent nothing that is new must hunt up something that is old, or at least odd, to keep up his reputation for discernment. It is enough for me to know that the literary world, outside of Germany, moved by common impulse, discarded all the early types. The sacred black-letter of Gutenberg, and other forms, went to oblivion for good reason. All were of bad form and hard to read--obscured by abbreviations, misuse of capital letters, absurd divisions, and inconsistent orthography. Much as a student of our time may profess admiration for early typography, he will not consult the 'Bible of Forty-two Lines' for a disputed text, when a more readable edition is accessible.

_Senex_: You confound two features of typography that should be kept separate. The shapes of early types should be considered apart from the skill, or want of skill, in their compositors. The black-letter types of the fifteenth century are often fair copies of the admirable manuscripts of the period.

_Juvenis_: The black-letter of every early printer was but a servile copy of the manuscript most attainable. Malformations were copied, but the flowing graces of penmanship could not be reproduced in mechanically square types. No punch-cutter of the period improved on the manuscript copy. All the early books abound in infelicities of design and cutting, indicating that the work was not as thoughtfully done as similar work is done now. It is a begging of the question to assume that the early punch-cutters were demigods in art. To say that they were right is to say that Albrecht Dürer and Geoffroy Tory, who wrote books on the true proportions of letters, and Granjon and Garamond, who gave a lifetime to type-making, were wrong. I prefer to accept the teachings of known artists as of higher authority.

_Senex_: Is not the difficulty of reading old black-letter due to its unfamiliar abbreviations and to mannerisms in type-setting now out of fashion? Would not modern types be obscure if similarly treated?

_Juvenis_: They would; but the fault begins with the shapes of the printed letters. You note it in the modern German fraktur, always a perplexity to every English-born student. The Germans themselves practically admit its inferiority. Their scientific books are usually in Roman. Their preference for Roman is a confession that Roman types are better, and that the printers of the seventeenth century did wisely in their general abandonment of pointed letters. The reading world had outgrown them. Why should we revive them?

_Senex_: Let us not trouble ourselves about pointed letters. There is no probability that they will ever be accepted by Americans for the texts of ordinary books. Let us consider the Roman types that have been in use by the Latin races and by English-speaking people for three centuries. Are modern types as readable as those of Jenson? Here is his Pliny of 1472, and here is the 'soprasilvio' of Bodoni, as exhibited in his _Manuale Tipografico_ of 1818. Which is better?

_Juvenis_: I am surprised at the question. Every character in the Bodoni type is correctly drawn; every system of uniform thickness, every hair-line and serif sharp as a knife-edge. Curves are true and graceful, angles exact; fitting and lining beyond criticism. In the Jenson type there is not one perfect letter. The hair-lines are scant and of unequal thickness, the serifs are stubby, the stems of uneven width, the characters out of proportion. Raggedness of drawing and roughness of cutting are not concealed by its fairly good fitting and lining. No publisher of the last two centuries would dare to print, and no reader consent to buy, a contemporary book in this type.

_Senex_: Can you not see something more in this Jenson type? Is it not more readable? I put them side by side at a distance of ten feet, where you can read the Jenson and cannot read the Bodoni.

_Juvenis_: True: but types in great primer are not made to be read at ten feet distance.

_Senex_: True again; but the mannerisms that obscure the Bodoni type at ten feet are more distressing in his small types, usually read at the distance of fifteen inches. The over-sharp hair-line, the dazzling serif, and the vanishing curve are more irritating in the smaller than in the larger sizes. Ordinary eyesight does not seize at a glance the entire face of modern type; it dimly sees hair-lines or serifs; it deciphers the stems only; it sees but half of the letter, and guesses at the invisible. The type of Bodoni is a wearying strain on the eye.

_Juvenis_: Your remarks do not fairly apply to readers of good sight.

_Senex_: They do apply to the majority of readers. It is a mistake to make for ordinary texts types with lines that cannot be easily seen by all.

_Juvenis_: If you think boldness of most importance in a type, why make Jenson's type your model? Why not go back still farther? Why not take up the lapidary letters of old Rome, Greece, or Etruria?

_Senex_: They are uncouth and wasteful of space. Designed to be chiseled on stone, they are unfit for types. The 'Caroline minuscule,' which is the basis of our Roman text letter, is more compact, quite as irregular, and much more readable.

_Juvenis_: If you believe that there was a gradual improvement in the shapes of letters between the first and fifteenth centuries, why stop at the fifteenth? Why not admit that this improvement continues?

_Senex_: Because the changes that followed were not always improvements. The faultless curves, sharp lines, and exact angles of Bodoni were disfigurements made at the expense of readability. Types are made to be easily read, not to show the skill of the designer. When they fail in readability the fault is fatal. The proper development of typography was checked by the invention of copper-plate that trod on its heels. Its delicacy of line, its perfect graduation of shadows, its vigorous blacks, and its facile rendering of a receding perspective put out of fashion all strong and manly work on wood. Dürer's 'Little Passion,' Holbein's 'Dance of Death,' and Vostre's _Book of Hours_ were put aside, and the insipid effeminacies of overworked line-engraving took their place. Punch-cutters of the sixteenth century thought that printing would be improved if they imitated the methods of line-engravers, and so they cut their types sharper and thinner. They would not see that relief engraving and incised engraving are diametrically opposed in theory and practice, and that the imitation of one process by the other is impossible. Repeated failures did not check this desire to imitate. Increasing refinements in types produced a corresponding degradation in printing. The inferiority of the average book of the eighteenth century is largely due to the so-called 'improved' faces of type. The most irrepressible imitator of copper-plate effects was Bodoni of Parma. William Morris is right in saying that his imitations of copper-plate delicacy indicate a real abasement of the typographic art.

_Juvenis_: If correct drawing, exact proportion, and high finish are merits in other arts, why should they be faults in type-making?

_Senex_: 'Finish' is a merit only when it improves; when it over-elaborates, when it leads the reader to think more of the means employed than of the object sought, it is a fault. Bodoni's careful drawing and finical cutting defeat the purpose for which types were made. They do not fully show the letter; they do show Bodoni; and it is a fair supposition that he was more intent on showing his skill than he was on aiding the reader. Your ideal of merit in types is that of mechanical precision. You forget that letters are of irregular shapes, with intent to make them distinct. The more you prune away the irregularities, the more indistinct they become. Readers do not isolate and critically examine each letter; they read words at a glance. They prefer characters with enough of irregularity to arrest the eye and fix the thought of the writer. It is with types as with penmanship. Has it been your misfortune to revise a long manuscript written in feminine style with a crow-quill pen, and with admirable precision, but with almost invisible hair strokes? Recollect your exasperation at its mechanical precision and wearisome monotony. How gratefully you turned to a jagged and masculine but readable style of penmanship, in which you were content to have all the rules of writing-masters violated! Recall these experiences, and then understand why I prefer old types. Not because they are old, or of faultless form, but because the letters are more distinct. They were made, not to show the skill of the punch-cutter, but to help the reader; and they deserve the credit due to straightforward workmanship.

A NOTE BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY

_In 1898 the name "De Vinne" meant little more to me than the name of a then popular display printing type, until the day, in a book-shop in Detroit, I chanced on a copy of_ The Book-lover's Almanac _for 1896. Of the eight or ten articles listed in the table of contents one was by Theo. Low De Vinne. The article was written in the form of a discussion between "Senex" and "Juvenis" on the comparative merits of the early type faces and those of Bodoni and his successors. This was, I believe, my first realization that "De Vinne" was the name of a living personality._

_I was just becoming interested in the history of the typography of books and was making also a closer study of type design, but it did not occur to me that such study would ever lead to the actual practise of the art I have since made peculiarly my own...._

_When I first read Mr. De Vinne's article it seemed to me that "Senex" had rather the better of the argument, indeed, I have not found, during the nearly two score years that have elapsed, any statements elsewhere that have changed materially the opinions then formed as to the soundness of his asseverations...._

_If I were asked to say what I think has been the greatest single influence in my work as a type designer I would be hard put to find a satisfactory reply; but there is no doubt in my mind that the principles set forth in this article and in his book_ Notable Printers of Italy During the 15th Century _have certainly loomed large in crystallizing the character of my types. The consistency of thought he displayed, his sound knowledge of old types, his fairness in the consideration of each moot point, the simple yet lucid presentation of his ideas and opinions interested me; they influenced my own thought, and in turn are reflected in my work._

_If, to my more mature consideration of this discussion there is any lapse of the author's pen, it seems to me it is, that "Senex" failed to stress more strongly a demand for greater grace and beauty in types in closer combination with legibility. I feel that the proper standard of beauty in types basically resides in their utility, but there are, nevertheless, secondary esthetic attributes which may be included without any sacrifice of life and vigor and legibility. A certain rugged beauty is perceived without difficulty, and irregularities which in isolated or individual characters, might seem objectionable from the standpoint of grace alone, may prove highly desirable in the composed line. Readability is of course to be considered above every other quality, because, failing this it fails utterly, regardless of every other excellence; yet, while striving for legibility, beauty of form should also be given almost equal consideration.... I venture to disagree with Senex's statement that "the lapidary letters of old Rome are uncouth and ... unfit for types"...._

_Marlboro, N. Y., May_, 1933

PARAGRAPHS ON PRINTING

From _Paragraphs on Printing_. Copyright 1943 by William E. Rudge's
Sons. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher

_NOTE: The text for this book on the functions of the book designer was elicited from B.R. in talks with James Hendrickson. These informal observations on typographical problems were accompanied by numerous reproductions of pages of Mr. Rogers' design, by way of illustration and example._

You think of the _book_, the size and shape of the book, before you consider type or anything else. What kind of a volume should it be? In what particular form and in what face of type would _you_ like to read it? The type and format should be governed by your conception of the character of the subject matter. As an instance take Conrad's tale, _The Tremolino_, recently printed. It is a slight but vivid story, to be read almost at a glance, so it would have been a misfit to make it larger, say in octavo size. The vividness is indicated by the dramatic little cuts in color, the slightness by the dimensions and open character of the pages.

After the size is determined the selection of a suitable type comes next. And that depends usually on what types are available in the office in which the book is to be made. Even this is not always necessary, as many offices have composition done outside by type-composition firms, so that an almost unlimited choice may be yours. There are so many varieties of type now, that for almost any size or kind of book you plan you will readily find an appropriate face. At any rate it isn't so vitally important as other things.

It is a great advantage in laying out a page, especially a title or display page, if the designer can handle pen or pencil; and the more definitely he can represent the type he proposes to use, the greater saving of time and expense there will be when it comes to the setting of it. It is true that some masters of printing do not resort to sketching--at least not more than mere lines on the paper, labeled with the kinds and sizes of type they represent. But to visualize the completed page in such slight indications is an unusual gift, and if one does not possess this gift there is the probability that the first setting of the page will have to be torn apart several times before a satisfactory one is produced. It is sometimes well worth while to work a page out very carefully, even in pen-and-ink, so that it will be a pretty close approximation to the finished thing; especially if you have to submit the scheme to a customer for his approval, or if he asks to see alternative treatments.

Of course, after many years of familiarity with type faces, it isn't necessary to draw them accurately for your own guidance, even though you should possess that ability; but some nevertheless find it a pleasant thing to see the page take form under their pencil or pen before it goes into actual type. Frequently, however, there is a sense of disappointment in seeing the first type proof, for the freedom and swing of your sketch has usually vanished in its translation into type; and the more formal the style of type the less it will retain the quality of your sketch.

Making an "allusive" format for a book--that is, casting it in the style of the period of the original text--is in a small way something like planning the stage setting for a play. An up-to-date style for an ancient text would compare with staging _Hamlet_ in modern dress. However novel and effective in its own way, you feel it to be strange, and this sense of strangeness is an annoying distraction; you are forced to think of the setting and the designer rather than of the text.

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The character of the text to be printed is of course the first thing to consider in selecting the kind of type; and the number of pages to which the book will probably run is the determining factor as to what size of type is possible. The width and length of the type page are then to be proportioned to the paper page, which in turn also helps to determine the size of the type. All these considerations are interlocking.

There have been several rules formulated for page proportions. One is that the width of the page should approximate one-half of the diagonal. Another is that the length of line should be one-half more than the length of a line of the twenty-six lower-case letters of the type used. But all such rules are only guides, to be discarded when the effect you are after seems to require something else; this something else to be determined only by the judgment of the designer and his feeling for the appearance of the page. In the reproduction of the styles of early typography the designer should avoid setting small type in too wide a measure. The old printers in their folio volumes did not seem to mind very long lines of comparatively small type. But most of these ancient books in Roman type were never intended for rapid reading. They were generally Latin texts where the eye follows the line better than in English or French composition. Latin composition naturally makes more beautiful pages on account of the preponderance of short letters--m, n, u, etc., with comparatively few ascenders and descenders. The evenness of spacing that the early printers got came from their abundant use of Latin abbreviations and their indifference as to how many consecutive word divisions occurred at the ends of lines, but it was never a conscious effort to obtain what is called "texture" in the page. There should be no laboring to produce a perfectly spaced page but rather an endeavor to avoid a badly spaced one.

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The amount of leading that a page requires depends on so many factors that it is difficult to give any fixed method of procedure. The kind of type, the size of type, the length of line and the general character of the text all bear on this point. Generally speaking, most types should be at least slightly leaded, especially if the lines are fairly long. This helps the eye to catch the following line in rapid reading more easily than when the type is set solidly. The solid pages were usually adopted when old-style types were used exclusively; but when modern type came in, beginning with Bodoni, the custom of leading, sometimes double-leading, arose. The effect of these new types was helped by a generous amount of white paper between the lines. This applies to Bodoni, Bulmer, and the Scotch face and their derivatives. Antique types were, however, occasionally very freely leaded, especially in Spanish books of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The conventional use of quotation marks is to place a double mark at the beginning and end of the passage quoted, with single marks for any quotations within it. In books with much conversation the use of double quotes frequently results in very mottled typography, and for many years some English printers have adopted the single mark for the major quotations, using double marks only if an inner quote occurs. This violates, a little, one's sense of relative importance, but in a book where there are only simple quotations there is no reason why the single mark should not suffice, much to the visual improvement of the typography. There is some possibility of confusion if the last word of the extract should chance to be a possessive plural, with an apostrophe, as the two marks are identical; but this occurs so infrequently as to be negligible.

Inverted commas were used for opening quotes in most founts until comparatively recent years, but now a separate pattern is provided for most founts. Reversed, instead of inverted commas now accompany many founts, particularly the reproductions of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century types, at which time they were first introduced.

French, Spanish and other continental founders furnish a special design of marks, « »; but these look rather strange to Anglo-Saxon eyes.

In Elizabethan printing the quotation marks sometimes ran entirely down the margins of the extracts, and if, as was frequently the case, the page was enclosed with rules, they were often placed outside the rules. This treatment occurs in one of the handsomest books of that period, _Nobilitas Politica vel Civilis_, printed in 1608 by William Jaggard, the printer of the First Folio fifteen years later. The _Nobilitas_ is generally accounted the masterpiece of his press, and in itself comprises nearly all of the various typographical features of books of that time. Large and small types, Roman, Italic, black-letter and Anglo-Saxon, both solid and leaded pages, tabular work with handsome braces, side notes, woodcut initials, head-pieces and tailpieces, and a series of costume plates engraved on copper and printed within the rules on folioed blank pages left for them in the form--all go toward making a book that is a compendious example for students of Elizabethan typography.

Red is the most satisfactory secondary color with black, and you will often find that it is better to use just one spot of color on the page. In using red for an occasional display line, blue-red or purple-red or orange-red should be avoided. A red such as the early printers had, a full-bodied, rather dull vermilion, which will hold up well with the black, is the most successful. If it is desirable to employ the blue for a border or an initial it shows up much more brilliantly when the design is in white on a solid or stippled ground of the blue. An outline design in blue is too light in mass to accompany the black of the type. But black and blue alone are never so pleasing a combination as when red is introduced as the second color, with blue as the third.

The black for the text or reading types should be intense without being glossy, because the gloss causes a reflection of light and interferes with legibility. The same objection does not apply to colors, for a moderate gloss enriches them and overcomes a sort of dustiness that their surfaces take on.

The text pages of most books should be printed in black ink.[36] The tendency of a young printer is often to try for novelty by printing with color rather than with black, not realizing that most types were not designed for anything but black on white. If, however, the job is somewhat aside from the usual run of books, and is not of too great extent, a brown or green ink may be substituted for black if the tint be dark enough to afford perfect legibility. But the result then acquires something of the character of an object of art rather than a book.

* * * * *

Letter-spacing is often misused. It is safe to say that lower-case type should practically _never_ be letter-spaced, for the individual letters were designed for close combination with other letters of the alphabet. If it becomes necessary to fill out a line it is preferable to put all the extra space between the words even though the resultant "holes" are distressing to the eye. Sometimes with very large types it is permissible to letter-space in a minor degree, as the spaces between the letters naturally are larger and letter-spacing does not detract too much from the appearance of the line, especially if it is distributed according to the irregular space between the different letters as normally set.