Chapter IX: Introduction: To Part II

INSTRUCTION IN DRAWING ABANDONED AND DESIGN CONSIDERED — THIS INSTRUCTION LESS ABSOLUTE THAN INSTRUCTION IN DRAWING — THE PRINTER TO USE AS MUCH OF THE SUBSEQUENT MATTER AS SERVES HIS PURPOSE — IN THE STUDY OF LETTERING ALL STYLES HAVE TO BE COVERED, THOUGH ONLY ONE OR TWO MAY BE OF VALUE TO THE PRINTER — WOOD ENGRAVING VALUABLE BECAUSE IT TEACHES CONCENTRATION AND ECONOMY OF LINE — THE PRINTER IN AMERICA NOT ABLE TO BE ALWAYS ARTISTIC, BUT MUST INTRODUCE ART FROM TIME TO TIME AS OPPORTUNITY ARISES.

The reader is asked to view this second part of “Drawing for Printers” differently from the first part. In the first part the writer aimed at establishing {154} recognized rules for drawing rather than giving his individual opinions.

He thinks that very little of the first part of the book can be questioned. For example, it is not a matter of personal opinion that the horizon line is on a level with the spectator’s eyes, or that a mantelshelf on such a level should be drawn with a straight line; it is a matter of fact, which he merely reiterates as the writer of a grammar reiterates the indisputable facts of a language, that a noun is a name word, a verb an action word, an adverb a word which qualifies a verb. But when the writer of a literary text-book has exhausted his rules of grammar and takes up the subject of rhetoric, although he endeavors to give only such examples of writing as are excellent, still his own personal taste is apt to guide him in his selections, and he may claim as admirable that which is to be criticised. A rhetoric of the eighteenth century would necessarily contain much artificial, sentimental and Latinized English which a teacher of today would not put before his students.

So it is that in the following chapters I may advocate,

(1) That which may not meet with the approval of my readers.

(2) That which may not suit my readers’ customers, and even

(3) That which is wrong.

You therefore may use as much of my advice as you find practical in your daily work, and discard that which is impractical. {155}

But do not forget that that which may be impractical today may come in handy some time next year!

That there will be much that you will find impractical goes without saying. It is absolutely necessary that the student of the arts (as the writer of these papers) acquaint himself with that which is classical; he then becomes fascinated with it and recommends it. But the classical covers an immense field, embracing that which is best in many ages and in many different lands, and it is utterly impossible that the practical worker in the arts should utilize all the classical styles at one time. Hence only a fragment of any text-book built upon the study of the classic can be practical at any given time.

Let us be more specific. Let us take the department of lettering alone. If an author publishes a work on lettering, and he is a cultivated man, he must examine the many styles of the past. He examines the monumental letter of classic Rome and the monumental letter of the Renaissance; the Caroline letter of 700 A. D., as well as the Gothic and the Visigothic. It is not his business to place one above the other, but to explain the beauty of all. If, however, you are a printer of today, and the Morris style of type is most in vogue, and you have stocked your cases with it, it is the Gothic letter you are most interested in, because it is what you are using and what your customer has just been trained to like; so the most practical part of a book on lettering would be that which would treat of the Gothic letter, and its offspring, the Old English; while the chapter on Visigothic, with its twisted letters, would seem quite■

{156}

From the Paris _Figaro_, showing harmony of drawing, type, and rules—a method of drawing that could easily be imitated on chalk plate.]

{157}

This mortised portion was used for advertisements.

Printed on light weight yellow paper, 10 by 13. An excellent example of the use of silhouette in design.]

■{158} impractical to you as you could not use the examples given. Yet it would be the business of the writer on alphabets to analyze them thoroughly, otherwise his work would be incomplete.

Now then, I shall try to be practical, and in the chapter on lettering bear in mind that the modern fonts are the Morris, Caxton, Jenson, Erhard Ratdolt, Old English and Touraine. I shall try to give a little more attention to the letters after which these are patterned than I shall to the Phœnician or Etruscan, the Visigothic, the Aldine, and the Irish text letter. But, on the other hand, no printer can be educated without knowing something about these latter alphabets. And so you must bear with me while I analyze them, though they may not be practical.

Once more, suppose you do agree that a style of lettering not now in vogue is a pleasing style, and one worth imitating, the question arises, How much time can you give to the study of it in order to use it? Nearly all artistic work requires hand labor, and hand labor is slow.

In our chapter on wood engraving, we shall recommend the study of that art, both because it can be used and because it trains you to appreciate good designing; but how many printers can neglect their business in order to spend hours and hours in practicing an eminently slow art, when rapid and cheap photo-engraving will serve the purpose almost as well? Very few, I fear.

So, also, when we come to the matter of taste, we come to the question of what should artistic printing {159} look like? Even if you are convinced that coated paper and the half-tone do not belong to ideal printing, how many can afford to attempt a piece of rough printing with heavy type, coarse paper and an outline device, and expect to retain his customers, when his rival, Smith, is using coated paper and half-tones that almost equal photographs? Very few printers, I fear, would be able to pay expenses by such a course. There are very few merchants but would have their catalogues printed by Smith with half-tone illustrations of photographs of their wares. Or even if the printer does not apply his art methods to job printing, but to his own publications, he will probably find few buyers who are cultured enough to appreciate his rough printing, so between the amount of time necessary for preparing artistic productions and the poor chance they have of receiving patronage, it is very difficult for a cultured printer to attain his ideal.

The writer has followed our art periodicals for years and knows too well that nearly all of them have failed. If artistic periodicals advertised for years to art-loving people have failed, how little is the chance of art methods succeeding with the people! We must, then, bear in mind that I may recommend methods because I know them to be artistic without expecting them to be accepted or put in practice.

The practical printer’s course must be a compromise. He introduces an artistic principle here, another there, without ever reaching his ideal. Sometimes it is his own circular, sometimes a literary pamphlet, or {160} sometimes a poster that allows him to experiment, while his average printing is commercial, nothing more.

But, let us say in parenthesis, that while we deprecate the lack of artistic culture that prevents our printers from turning out artistic work, we do not for a moment claim that that which is not artistic is poor, or that all printing that is not rough is not artistic. The half-tone and coated paper have their use. If, as a matter of news or information, exactness is required, any sensible printer will turn to the half-tone for assistance. Even Mr. Walter Crane, in publishing his book on “Decorative Illustration,” though he uses 303 pages of rough paper to exemplify the superiority of the simple wood cut of the past, employs eleven sheets of highly calendered paper to reproduce delicate facsimiles of old manuscripts! He felt that the purpose of these supplementary pages was to illustrate and not to embellish the book; so he sacrificed artistic harmony for science. So, also, a printer does well, when getting up a catalogue of houses, horses or chickens for sale, to insert a frontispiece of coated paper and print on the same a half-tone which gives an adequate idea of the house, horse or chicken to be sold. That is a scientific piece of work. The point is, that a catalogue printed on cheap paper with an insert of a half-tone printed on coated paper can never be an artistic unit, can never be exhibited as a piece of artistic printing. The French, who are extremely artistic people, have carried delicate printing as far as it will go, and the French printer will get you up a catalogue with a half-tone {161} frontispiece, but everything will be in harmony with it; the paper of the body of the book is coated paper, the type is delicate, the initial letters are equally fine, and the printing of the entire brochure is so delicate that it is in keeping with the frontispiece. That is the right principle for bookmaking, that the work be harmonious. There is no objection to fine type (so long as it is not so fine as to tire the eyes) if it is printed properly. The main reason for recommending such heavy type as Morris’ is, that it is pretty sure always to print well. When a French printer turns out a cheap newspaper he uses large type and heavy headlines, accompanied by illustrations that harmonize with such type and headlines.

Our examples of Forain’s work (see previous chapters) show the style of the French drawing made for the daily newspaper in harmony with the typography and in a suitable manner for printing on poor stock. The clipping from the French newspaper we give with this chapter, showing different styles of watch chains, is an excellent example of good taste in this direction. The type, the drawing, and the rules all harmonize. With a chalk-plate outfit a clever printer could supply such diagrams for his paper each week without feeling that he was transgressing the canons of the highest form of art.

From this example it will be seen that one of the requirements for a good newspaper drawing is that it harmonizes with the type page. You may feel then that it is not required of you to make a finished drawing for {162} a newspaper—in fact, the more finished it is the less likely it is to be a good newspaper design.

Another example of good newspaper designing is the _Westminster Budget_ cover. The original covered a folio 10 by 13 inches. The paper being a cheap stock (yellow) and the design being bold and effective, serves as an admirable example of what we choose to call a poor-paper design.

This design will in future be again considered in connection with wood engraving and lettering; and in the next chapter we shall consider similar headings and covers.

{163} CHAPTER II.

THE MATTER OF TASTE AGAIN UNDER REVIEW — “MAGAZINE,” “CITY NEWSPAPER” AND “COUNTRY NEWSPAPER PRINTING,” ARBITRARY TERMS — A STYLE OF DESIGN APPROPRIATE FOR CERTAIN KINDS OF PERIODICALS MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR OTHER KINDS — SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF DESIGNING — A BROAD, BLACK LINE DESIRABLE FOR LETTERING, “DEVICES” AND DESIGNS IN GENERAL; A FINE LINE MAY BE USED FOR ILLUSTRATIVE CUTS — BOLD MASSES OF LIGHT AND DARK APPROPRIATE FOR ROUGH PRINTING — THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE DESIGNS FOR JUGEND, PAN, LA REVUE ENCYCLOPÉDIQUE, ETC., CONSIDERED.

I suppose a very orderly writer would have finished his introduction in the last chapter, beginning in this with definite instruction. But I feel so overwhelmingly the importance of the subject treated of in the last chapter—that is, the matter of taste—that I must before proceeding add a few more words to the subject. Besides, further review will strengthen the reader’s understanding of my principle of instruction, which is that the fitness of things, the taste which you display in following a certain kind of design, is as much a matter of study as is the drawing of an object.

For example, I used the words in the last chapter, “printing on rough paper.” Now, of course, that {164} term is indefinite, and, like our terms “magazine,” “city newspaper” and “country newspaper” printing, can stand only for some style of printing agreed upon■

has been run; brothers, we must depart.”]

■by the writer and reader. Therefore, if you will allow, the term “rough printing” will stand for printing corresponding to all that done prior to the introduction of {165} coated paper, and where the type used was long primer or larger. And I choose, as a matter of taste, to insist upon it that all printing is bad that is not done in this way. Now, do not set me down as a faddist. I am not thoroughly converted to Morris’ printing, because in his matter the words are so closely run together that they are not read with ease, and, above all things, I do not consider the so-called “deckle-edge, handmade paper”—which in all probability is never handmade—such an “artistic” cloak to cover a multitude of sins as many printers consider it. The very fact that it is artificial and imitative makes it as objectionable as coated paper, which also is artificial and insincere.

The matter can be explained in this way: We may have no objection to a dress suit and high silk hat. We recognize in it as legitimate a style of dress as the workingman’s overalls; but we do not like to see a man working in a ditch clothed in a dress suit and silk hat. With this objection almost everyone will agree. But there are those who, wishing to follow the dictates of society, do not like to see a man, even if he is a lecturer or a bridegroom, disporting himself in a dress suit and silk hat at any hour of the day earlier than six o’clock.

Now, there are two distinct lines of judgment. The first is drawn so broadly that nearly all will agree. The second line is drawn so finely that but few may agree. But it is a fact that in either case the question is a matter of taste. So, then, when I claim that the title of a newspaper should be in heavy type, and not in such script as would be appropriate for a lady’s visiting■

{166}

By Eugene Grasset.

Admirable lettering (more closely following the Caroline manuscript than the design for _La Revue Encyclopédique_), united with harmonious design, the artist not being contented merely to introduce a girl with poster-like hair, but bringing out an idea—that of the expansive distribution of knowledge, signified by the dandelion seed, which is freely distributed by the wind; see motto “_Je seme a tout vent_.” I sow (or spread) seed with every wind.]

■{167} card, most of you will agree with me. But when I claim that the title should be in very heavy block type, and not in French Old Style, I shall not have so many followers. Of course, it is true that circumstances alter cases, and while I think it quite necessary that a “Daily News,” “Journal” or “Press” should have the heaviest of type, I will acknowledge that a dainty little weekly in 8vo, called “The Needlewoman,” or “Embroidery Notes,” might be properly printed with a pica italic heading.

I think the reader now understands the object of the second part of “Drawing for Printers,” and will see that nearly all the illustrations in it are selected with a view to their appropriateness for rough printing, simply because it is therein that you need to study the subject of designing for printing. It is self-evident that to print a half-tone cut you need calendered or coated paper, and that with this a little half-tone initial letter could be used, but as we study printing on poor stock, familiarity with the styles of the past is necessary to acquaint you with what is best in pictorial, or rather decorative, effect.

This much said, let us fall to considering some principles of designing. Other things being equal, a broad black line is best if there is any shadow or detail in the drawing. But if there is no shadow the outline need not be very heavy, but the drawing may partake of a diagram effect, as in the watch-chain illustration from the _Figaro_, given in a preceding chapter (page 165). Such a thin line harmonizes with the type and does not {168} attract too much attention. It is also well suited for the unimportant elements in a heading design. But if you wish to introduce in a heading an important element like the American eagle, the coat-of-arms of a state, or an emblematic design for a class paper, then a strong line or a solid black is preferable. Strong lines and blacks are also preferable for an initial letter that is to form part of the decoration of a page.

Therefore, if we consider the front page of a paper or catalogue consisting of a heading, an initial letter and an illustration, we may treat each design according to the following principles. If the illustration is to be the main thing, the heading and initial letter would best■

■be mostly in outline, as in the _Figaro_ watch chains. But if there is no illustration, and we wish the heading and initial letter to be decorative, a heavy outline and solid black may be used. As an example of heavy outline and solid black we have selected the dictionary cover by Grasset. This is strong enough to serve as a heading for a newspaper or periodical, but in the case of a {169} chapter heading such heavy lettering might not be desirable, and the lighter _Pall Mall Budget_ design might be preferable. So, too, as in the _Jugend_, since■

Designed by Caspari.

Showing harmonious uniting of free-hand designed letter, type, and device. The device, however, is a little too pictorial; it would be better if its background were simpler.]

■the illustration is not the most important thing, heavy blacks may be used; it is an excellent example of the {170} proper heaviness of the heading contrasted with an unimportant illustration. Here, however, the black is around, not upon, the letter.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable features of the printer-designer’s work is that of designing covers for booklets and pamphlets. If he does not have to confine himself to a definite idea, he may choose a motive from a thousand and one different elements. Of course, he must be more or less logical in his choice of motive, and not put a Pierrot upon a church fair programme, nor a bunch of violets upon a stove manufacturer’s catalogue, though we frequently run across such designing. One of the enemies to good designing is the prevalent taste for photographic half-tone covers, where the stove manufacturer requires the reproduction of his stoves on the cover. Now, we are utterly opposed to this; not on the ground that the picture of a stove is not a fit emblem for a stove manufacturer’s catalogue—for it certainly is quite proper—but we object on the ground that the printing of it requires coated paper, which often is not tenacious enough for a cover; and, secondly, on the ground that the delicacy of the half-tone, which has no strong outlines or masses of light or dark, does not make a picture that can be seen at a sufficient distance to warrant its being a cover. The brevier that you use in the body of a book is not the proper type for its cover, and so a delicate half-tone that is appropriate for the reading pages of your catalogue is not appropriate for its cover. The specimens we give in this chapter, therefore, are nearly all of them■

{171}

{172}

■adapted to rough, heavy paper, which will make a durable cover.

The design for _Pan_, by Franz Stuck, is a particularly good example. Possibly the shadow thrown by the head is a disturbing element in the composition; it makes the right-hand side heavy and is not in itself decorative.

The spacing also between the P and the A is greater than between the A and the N, without, so far as we can see, having a valid reason for so being. But the design was for the cover of a publication of artist’s sketches, and it was consequently more permissible for the artist to draw with freedom than had he been designing a more conventional cover. Stuck is one of the best letterers in Europe; and, in his more serious moments, is most exact in his spacing. The two most interesting characteristics of the design are the elegance of the letters and the boldness of the drawing of the head; {173} substitute more commonplace lettering as in the “Roebuck” heading (page 168) and such delicate drawing as in the Grasset “Encyclopédie,” and the design would lose force as a pamphlet cover.

The _Westminster_ design, given on page 157, recommends itself because of the silhouette steeple, which could be easily engraved on wood, and also because of the lettering, which is as good an example of “pen-hand” as is the _Pan_ of “monumental” lettering. It also suggests effects to be got by white on black, as does the _Jugend_.

The “Roebuck” (page 168) lacks the elegance of the _Pan_ and the robustness of the _Westminster_, but it shows a good style for such newspaper lettering as has to be made quickly; as, for example, drawn on the chalk-plate in half an hour, when perfect spacing and proportioning is out of the question. There are times also when a letter is needed that is not truly elegant. It seems sacrilegious, as it were, to design a heading for “On the Diamond and Gridiron” with letters from a Lucca Della Robbia monument, or the Mazarin Bible. Therefore, some such lettering as the “Roebuck” comes in appropriate for the light departments of a paper.

Akin to the _Pan_ design is the _Jugend_ (page 169), though it is not nearly so good. It would be better with a border about it, and still better if the _Jugend_ letters were not quite so narrow, and if the background behind the girl were more simply drawn; but the letter is good and strong, and the figure, being in outline, {174} might be printed upon the roughest paper. The whole page is interesting also as showing recent movement in type design in Germany. This is the result of the William Morris movement in England. It will be noticed that the type letters are broad and well proportioned; they are virtually modernized Jenson.

{175}

From _La Revue Encyclopédique_.]