CHAPTER I. 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,

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}

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

{157}

COVER DESIGN OF THE WESTMINSTER BUDGET. 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.