ALUMINOTYPES

The age long progress in the development and perfection of typographical printing surfaces, from the period of Xylographic blocks on through the successive inventions of individual movable cast-metal type, stereotyping and electrotyping, by both the wax and lead-molding processes, reaches its culmination in Aluminotypes.

Briefly, it is a method of casting printing plates of aluminum alloy in molds made from a composition of plaster-of-paris. In its essential points it is a modern adaptation of the process credited to William Ged of Edinburgh in 1730 and afterwards modified and improved in the early 19th century by Earl Stanhope of England.

In practice, the original to be duplicated is placed on a molding-slab. A molding frame is set upon the slab and enclosing the original. A special kind of oil is then sprayed on the face of the original. This is to facilitate the release of the plaster mold so that it will not “tear” when it is ready to be lifted off the original after solidifying, and at the same time to retain the sharpness of the mold.

The molding medium of plaster composition in a semi-liquefied state is then poured on to the original in the molding frame. The surplus plaster is scraped off flush with the top of the molding frame. After the plaster matrix in its molding frame has set sufficiently it is released by means of cams from the working pattern on the molding-slab.

The plaster matrix is then placed in a drying oven, through which a forced draft of hot air is kept circulating at high pressure. The thorough drying of the mold takes approximately ninety minutes.

When the plaster mold has become sufficiently dried, a round hole is cut through the bottom of the matrix in an offset of the molding frame. This hole is the gate through which the molten aluminum is forced. The mold is then securely locked upright in a specially designed casting machine.

The Aluminotype is cast by pressure and not by pouring as in the case of stereotypes, which depend entirely upon gravity. Fused aluminum alloy is poured into a hopper on the casting machine. A piston operated by the agency of compressed air forces the aluminum evenly into all parts of the plaster matrix.

When the cast is completed the molding frame is taken from the casting machine and the Aluminotype removed from its plaster-of-paris matrix.

AUTHORITIES:

THE MAKING
OF THE FOOLPROOF
NEWSPAPER DRAWING

SOME ADVERTISING PICTURES PRINT WELL—OTHERS DO NOT. WHY? IT’S ALL A MATTER OF GOING ABOUT IT IN A KNOW-HOW WAY

By J. LIVINGSTON LARNED

An advertiser— perhaps one of the largest users of newspaper space in the country—sprang a surprise recently on his ad-manager. Into the office he came, one day, grim-visaged, jaw set, fire in his eyes, and armed with no less than fifty clippings from exchanges.

And on the amazed ad-manager’s desk he placed two conglomerate piles of advertising matter. One represented the national newspaper campaign of his own industry; the other a collection of newspaper advertisements, picked at random.

“I think I have conclusive proof,” said he, in no mild mood, “that you fellows are not as efficient as you might be. Here are our advertisements—from papers everywhere. The illustrations print abominably! Look at them. The matter has been called to my attention many times—by the newspapers themselves, by our road representatives and by local dealers. They say our electro service and our straight national campaigns are all muddied up with pictures that nobody can decipher. Here’s conclusive proof of it. Not a clean-looking cut in the series and you can’t blame it on paper and press work and all that—they’re all bad!”

The advertising manager glanced casually at the exhibits. The criticism was valid. Here was a daily newspaper campaign, running into space valued at approximately sixty thousand dollars, and the displays, three-fourths illustration, were mussy, involved, smeared up, and unsatisfactory from a reproductive standpoint. Solid black backgrounds were a sickly, washed-out gray and in other places intricate pen work had “run-together.”

It was equally true that clippings of competitive advertising and advertising in general, selected at random, were strangely clean-cut. The comparison was startling.

“Mr. X,” finally observed the ad-manager, “I see what you mean; all of us in this department have known of it, kept track of it; and the remarkable part of the entire situation is that these results can be traced back to you and your personal insistence on a certain type of pen and ink design, executed in a specific technique. These matters came up for your supervision and O. K. You did not care for the bold, simple outline drawings first submitted. You preferred too many, and a glut of detail. All of which is not compatible with newspaper printing, even in large space. We were afraid of this and said so at the time. Our objection was overruled. It’s one thing to prefer a pleasing, perhaps highly artistic pen technique and quite another to apply it to fast presses, poor ink and hurried make-ready. A great many things can happen, and do happen, to a newspaper design before it is printed and in the readers’ hands.”

DISREGARDING FUNDAMENTALS

Sometimes it is better to come out with the frank, brutal truth. In a great many instances, poor newspaper reproduction is the direct result of some executive’s marked preference for a certain artist or a certain technique, regardless of whether the man is qualified to draw for this field, or whether the technique is fitted for the purpose.

On the other hand, there is, unquestionably, a strange, well nigh inexcusable disregard of certain fundamentals of the business. There is too much swivel-chair composure; too much beatific reassurance, when proofs are submitted on good paper, from a flat-bed engraver-house press. A newspaper series is very apt to look 100 per cent when presented on the final electro sheet, or bound into a neat booklet for the dealer and printed on coated stock. These are ostrich methods!

In certain advertising agencies there is a standing rule in the matter of newspaper plates that all proofs must be pulled on newspaper stock—and a very inferior grade. A newspaper press is used, an entire series coming off at once. There is no make-ready to speak of.

By this process no one is deceived. You see exactly what will happen, or nearly so, when the series fares forth to newspapers all over the country.

The executive mentioned above had collected newspapers, big and little, from the four points of the compass. And he had collected a liberal number of perfectly satisfactory newspaper advertisements of the illustrated variety. Blacks were clean black, Ben Day tints held their own, there was no congestion, no smudging, no mishap of any sort.

If certain rules are followed, any newspaper advertising illustration can be made “fool-proof.” You can be absolutely certain of a printable result, despite all exigencies, all drawbacks, all hazards.

Failure usually follows a desire to attempt something beyond that which has been tried and is wholly practical. For the present, at least, users of newspaper space must bow to the inevitable. They must realize that there is a well-defined limit to what can be done mechanically. They must not defiantly experiment, although the desire to “do something new” and to be original is entirely praiseworthy.