Part 2

The result will give the same sense of satisfaction that a well-made glove or a good tennis racket produces. These principles apply to everything that is printed: to an edition of Aristotle, to a choral book for a cathedral, to the circular for a pottery or a sale of handkerchiefs, to the label for a pot of jam. * * * * * There is a passage in the _Architecture_ of Vitruvius that may serve as a text for printers who forget that the adaptation of a thing for its purpose is half its charm. Speaking of winter dining-rooms, he says that “neither paintings on grand subjects, nor delicacy of decoration in the cornice work of the vaultings, is a serviceable kind of design, because they are spoiled by the smoke from the fire and the constant soot from the lamps.” “In these rooms,” he adds, “there should be panels above the dadoes, worked in black, and polished with yellow ochre, or vermilion blocks interposed between them.” And he goes on in the same practical strain to recommend the Greek method of making floors of a porous material, so that at dinner parties whatever is poured out of cups, “no sooner falls than it dries up, and the servants who wait there do not catch cold from that kind of floor although they may go barefoot.” Vitruvius makes, as all good craftsmen do, the necessities of the case the factors of his choice of decoration and material. Indeed, the limitations of a piece of work are often a help to him who plans it. “Any designer is assisted, though also limited, by conditions of construction as well as by art considerations,” says a recent writer. “A thorough knowledge and acknowledgement of these conditions will enable the designer, no matter in what material he works, to make the most of his opportunities; and the recognition of his limitations should prove a help rather than a hindrance to him. The architect is limited in the size, site, and cost of his building. The designer is restricted to the use of a certain number of colours for his carpet, and is compelled to recognize the conditions of its manufacture. The artist must plan the positions, form, and colour of the features of interest in his picture. In fact, none of them are absolutely free in their work.

If they recognize their limitations, they know that there are things they may do, and things which they cannot do; and the success or failure of their efforts will be largely influenced by their acceptance of the conditions under which they work.” Bearing in mind these limitations, and also Morris’s three propositions: “First, that a page should be clear and easy to read; second, the types well designed; and third, the margins in due proportion to the page of letter”; and that “furthermore, in a book the effect of headlines, the size of type in relation to the size of page, spacing between words, leading, style of type-face, title-page, and decorations have all to be thought of”--we have the problem before us. If our books are to be purely retrospective volumes, reprints in the Gothic style, Renaissance style, or the French eighteenth century manner, that call for close study of books of the period, there is little opportunity to go wrong, if enough time and thought be devoted to the problem. But the important characteristics of a given style are not always those which at first glance appear to be so. Consider an Aldine book. In reproducing one, many printers would lose sight of the fact that the characteristic points of the Aldine edition were as much Aldus’s use of small roman capitals combined with a slightly larger italic, as his use of italic for the text of an entire volume. The particular point which needs emphasis in planning reproductive work is that the study of old models must be minute--not alone in the type used, but in all details of its management. But nine times out of ten a printer’s work is to design pages for modern books. It is not enough that such a book should be legible because set in good type, clearly arranged, and sharply printed.

Over and above this, there is a suitability which is as important, and which constitutes the charm of typography. Of course no piece of printing is good for anything which is not legible. Yet granted this, it may still be a failure if it breaks down along the parallel lines of literary and artistic suitability. A prayer-book may be printed in a type which is readable, but which is so out of tune with liturgical work that no person who wanted a prayer-book would buy it. You could not sell _Punch_, however well printed, in black-letter; not because black-letter is not in itself a good type-form, but because it is not appropriate nor the kind we like in illustrated humorous periodicals. So while a book must be easily read, it must also be printed in a manner suitable for its purpose--attractive to the cultivated through the mind, as well as to the ignorant through the eye. Thus a modern book is often difficult to plan successfully because it involves a personal view of the question, and there is no explicit guide in designing work of this sort. The designer can succeed only by his ability and taste in taking advantage of the factors in the problem which are pointing out how the book is to be designed.

Each piece of printing has a still, small voice of its own if we can but hear it. To listen to it saves taking many “false routes.” The subject-matter of a book should, as has been suggested, furnish a clue to its appropriate treatment. If you are to design a modern book like Vernon Lee’s _Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy_, you will not produce a suitable or agreeable effect if you use black-letter headlines or a modern German aesthetic roman type for its text, both of which connote an entirely different order of ideas. Give a slight suggestion of an eighteenth century Italian volume to your modern book by introducing into it a few characteristic eighteenth century Italian type-forms or methods of arrangement, which can be adapted without affectation to the work of to-day. The Italian eighteenth century book should not be copied, but it should be suggested. On the other hand, if you plan a book in such modern fashion that it recalls nothing of the eighteenth century, but might as well be _Stormonth’s Dictionary_ as far as charm goes, you have not made as good a scheme as you can with the material at hand. Lack of practicality is the most serious fault; but lack of suitability or appropriateness is still a fault, and one which the intelligent typographer must know how to overcome. The two horses must be driven together!

There is, too, the tendency to strive for undue originality. Now originality is all very well, but it must be an improvement on what is less original, and therefore more commonly used. I have often, when travelling, been tempted to go where scarcely any one else had been, because it seemed rather an original thing to do, and interesting (at least, to me) to tell about afterward. When I got to my destination I usually found that the reason the trip was not popular was because it was not in the least worth while to have taken it! The same is true in typography. Most experiments, wise and otherwise, have already been tried, and the sure way--which is not very original now--is on the whole the best way, unless it can be so much improved that its utility can be recognized at once. If it seems commonplace, it is often so because it is so much the best--merely common-sense! It was said of Congreve that “his nice scholarship had taught him the burden of association which time had laid upon this word or that.

He used the language of his own day like a master, because he was anchored securely to a knowledge of the past.” A man, to become a master of typography, should have this same anchorage. His typography should be allusive, and his originality should consist in perceiving opportunities for allusiveness when most printers would not. A modern book should show that the man who planned it has a knowledge of old styles, but never allows this knowledge to impair suitability for to-day’s purpose. No matter what book is to be planned, you must always ask these questions: What is it to be used for? Where is it to be used? By whom is it to be used? What is the most suitable, practical, simple, orderly, and historical method of producing it?--questions of universal application, with answers capable of endless variation. The result of such well-laid plans should be typography which is good for what it is meant to be, yet decorative too.

For ephemeral printing--circulars, prospectuses, etc.--we have to follow the principles laid down in planning books, except that we may treat the printing more fancifully and lightly. There, more than ever, we can hear the voice of the work speaking to us, if we are willing to listen. If we are printing a syllabus of studies, we must think, of the age of the person by whom the studies are pursued. If it is a lesson-book for children, the type should be larger, and its various features more clearly defined, than if intended for mature persons. In all works of education, where the aim in view is the most lucid possible statement, the typography should be of a transparent nature, _i.e._ which attracts no attention to itself and is merely a vehicle to convey the words of the printed page to the reader’s mind. If a title-page used in educational printing permits of a slightly decorative treatment, the kind of institution which presents the work must be kept in mind. If it is a seminary for clergy, it might have an ecclesiastical look; if a school of commerce, it should have a strictly business-like appearance. If it is a literary society, an old style type may be used; whereas for the school of commerce it would be better to employ a modern face type.

But for the religious seminary, school of commerce, or literary society, it is always possible to employ a type which is thoroughly good; the pages may be well proportioned and well imposed; the type well spaced and properly leaded; the impression clear and nervous. When the work is done, if it fulfils its purposes in the most suitable manner, it will have “that note of rightness which, evasive, indescribable, and intangible, nevertheless clearly marks off the work of a craftsman from that of a hack.” One can only plan successfully these smaller pieces of work by considering minutely what they are meant to accomplish. Let us take a menu. What questions would be uppermost in one’s mind in planning that? The first that would occur to me would be the hour of the meal and where it was to be served. Was it to be by day or night? If by day, by artificial light or not? The colour of the card and the size of type would be somewhat dependent on this.

Was there any particular scheme of colour in the decorations of the table? Because my menu must either match or at least not be discordant with it. Was it to be a big table with ample room for each guest, or a small one? Was the menu to be laid on a napkin or to stand upright? That would dictate my choice of size; for a menu is an incident, not a feature, at a dinner, and should not be so large as to be in the way if laid down, nor so big as to knock over glasses and fall into one’s plate if it is to stand. Decide all these little points in the light of “What is the thing used for? Where is it to be used? By whom is it to be used?

What is the most suitable, practical, simple, orderly, and historical method of producing it?” For even menus have a history, and were first used in the household of the Duke of Brunswick at Ratisbon in the first half of the sixteenth century. By consulting some of the French books which have been written on this and allied subjects, you will find out “a number of things.” Some one brings a programme for a _musicale_ to be printed. Here, again, you must know the hour; it must be printed on a single sheet of paper or upon a card; it must not have a printed border close to the margin; it must be in fairly large type. Why? Because the light makes a difference in the colour of paper and ink to be used; because a programme of more than one page rustles when turned over; because the ink may spoil light gloves if it is too near the edge and is much handled; and because all ages and kinds of eyes are to read it. If it is too long a concert for a programme on one page, then one can use a soft or unsized paper, so that it will not “rattle” when turned. And as to the style of the thing, “the world is all before you where to choose.” What is the music to be played? old or modern, French or English, sacred or secular, serious or gay? There are all sorts of sources to be consulted for the appropriate decorations for these varied classes of music.

Again: a service for the consecration of a bishop is to be printed. Now, in the Roman Catholic or Anglican communions, the canon of the Mass or consecration of the Holy Eucharist is the most solemn moment of the service, which must not be disturbed by turning leaves. So one would print all that part of the office on two facing pages and let the liturgical matter before and after come as it would. For a Protestant order of service, where there is no celebration of the sacrament, it is sufficient that the “turnovers” do not come in the middle of prayers, if the prayers are printed in full. About liturgical printing there are many other points to be kept in mind. I merely mention this as one of them. Every piece of work is different, yet each is governed by common-sense illuminated by imagination. Project yourself into the situation of the user.

What does he need? How does he feel? Where is he? If your design satisfies his feelings, needs, and situation, you have produced printing which is suitable for its purpose. But customers will not notice all these fine points, one may say. There is no reason why they should--they are not printers! But it is distinctly the printer’s job and what he is paid for, to help the success of the occasion by making his small part in it as perfect as he can. If he does, in time people will come to him for such printing, because they will say his work is “so right.” So it is very much the printer’s business to see that as Jack comes home from the musical party he doesn’t say to Jill, “Did you hear what a noise the turning of the programmes made in the middle of that solo?” Nor that she replies, “No, but that silly decorated border spoiled a perfectly good pair of white gloves.” Style, said Sir Walter Raleigh, is an index to persons. “Write, and after you have attained to some control over the instrument, you write yourself down whether you will or no.

There is no vice, however unconscious, no virtue, however shy, no touch of meanness or of generosity in your character, that will not pass on to the paper.” This is as true of printing as it is of writing. If you have anything in you, good or bad, you will translate it into the printed work for which you are responsible. In printing, as in literary composition, by expressing yourself (to use Raleigh’s words) you “anticipate the day of judgment and furnish the recording angel with the material.” Having refined our taste by a knowledge of standards, and regarding our work in the light of what is needed to-day, it remains to acquire the one thing needful: that personal touch, that personal note, which shall make our work different from other men’s work. The most dangerous moment for an ambitious designer of printing is that when, having learned something of styles of type and ways of arranging them, he begins to put his schemes into actual form. His ideas do not at first come easily. He is either obsessed by the number of things he has learned--like a young architect who tries to express in his first commission all he has ever been taught at the École des Beaux Arts; or he wonders what “the other man” is doing. A pair of horse’s blinders would be useful just then! But this will pass. “There is a time in every man’s education,” says Emerson, “when he arrives at the conviction that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” For when he begins thus to toil and to till, he releases for the first time that personal element which is “himself,” and which is so much the best thing he has to put into his work!

The same problem in the design of printing is seen differently by every pair of eyes and every mind behind them, and all one can suggest is the background against which, the material with which, and the principles by which, your personality must “make good.” Plan your work sincerely and simply, and by and by you will arrive at a way of your own. Follow this way persistently, and inevitably it will make your work personal--so personal that it will not alone differ from the work of the crowd, but from that of any printer on the face of the earth! FOOTNOTE: [1] This was an occasional feature of earlier specimen-books. In the specimen-book of Pierres of Paris of 1785, and the little specimen issued for the Temple Printing Office (J. Moyes), London, 1826, the name of the founder immediately follows the name of the type displayed. * * * * * _Style in the Use of Type_ _Style in the Use of Type_ Among the illustrations common to books on typography there is a familiar plate which is an admirable lesson to the modern printer--that showing the 1486 specimen sheet of Erhard Ratdolt of Venice and Augsburg, which exhibits the types that Ratdolt had in his office and with which he made his books. There are ten sizes of black-letter, three sizes of roman type, and one size of Greek, and with these and the use of handsome initials he produced beautiful effects. The books printed from this limited collection of types were beautiful because the types were so in themselves and because the very limitations of his material produced a restraint and harmony that gave the work style. To-day, no printing-house would dare to confine itself to such a small equipment.

Again, the cases of books exhibited in the King’s Library at the British Museum have long seemed to me among the most valuable of courses in typographic education. And the contents of those cases especially which contain the Italian books are educative in the particular of style beyond the others. In fact, to digress a little, no man, I think, can study this splendid collection without recognizing the preëminent excellence of Italian work in the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. There is about it a sanity, a lucidity, and a severity which excels the work of other nationalities. One thing about these books is most apparent: that they are related to the book as we know it to-day, which the black-letter books are not. The latter speak of a time which is to the modern man largely an archaeological curiosity. For as a writer on the Renaissance has said, “the rest of Europe was free either to repel or else partly or wholly to accept the mighty impulse which came forth from Italy. Where the latter was the case we may as well be spared the complaints over the early decay of mediaeval faith and civilization.

Had these been strong enough to hold their ground, they would be alive to this day. If those elegiac natures which long to see them return, could pass but one hour in the midst of them, they would gasp to be back in modern air.” And this is true not alone of thought but of life, of the arts and of the trades. I am aware that this is not palatable to those admirers of Ruskin (if anybody reads him nowadays) who accustom themselves to alluding to “the foul torrent of the Renaissance,” but who forget that Mr. Ruskin’s books were printed in a kind of type which the Renaissance was the first to give! But this is a digression. The books which had great style and elegance were not, it appears, necessarily dependent upon archaic treatment for these qualities; and are related to books as we to-day know them, more intimately than any that preceded them. From this I should state as an axiom that a book in order to possess style need not be archaic. This self-evident truth is expressed only for the benefit of persons who, possessing more knowledge than judgment, have worked as if they thought otherwise.

Another quality that makes for style is simplicity; and here again the Italian books have much to teach us. They were strictly simple, depending only on beautiful type, good paper, and a well-proportioned type-page to produce a very elegant result. Any one can place a great red decorated initial upon a page to dazzle the beholder into a momentary liking for the effect. But to produce an agreeable and pleasing page simply by proportion of margins, type, etc., is a matter which requires study, experience, and taste. It appears, therefore, that, as some of the most beautiful books are without decoration, style does not depend upon decoration, but rather on proportion and simplicity. While to my mind the Italian books of the Renaissance possess the highest qualities of style that the world has seen, I believe it possible to attain much of the same quality in almost any manner that a man may choose to adopt. In this connection one should mention William Morris’s work, which possessed great distinction and style. One may agree or disagree with the conclusions he arrived at as to which books were the most beautiful models in printing, but he taught mightily by the body of colour and unity of effect which his beautiful pages display.