EXAMPLE 1
Booklet cover page laid out with pencil and crayon on gray stock
Someone said, “The man who attained his ambition did not aim high enough.” Perfection is not attainable, but it should be the goal in our race. Many typographers are doing good work, altho each is doing it differently. No one is producing perfect typography; but when perfection is the pacemaker no result can be commonplace.
The good typographers of the past had the spirit of the master craftsman and their product was inspired. The modern printer to succeed needs only the inspiration that comes of study, hard work and love of his trade.
Inspired work, however, is generally the result of preparation.
Artists and advertising men realize the necessity of careful preparation for the process of printing, but typographers as a class evidently do not. If they did they would do even better work and make bigger profits possible. Every printshop should have a “layout” man.
In spite of the fact that much good printing is done today, fully nine-tenths of the product is partially unsatisfactory because of lack of preparation. When a business man decides to erect an office building he does not immediately go to a building contractor and tell him to build it. He first consults an architectural engineer, examines drawings and exchanges opinions, and when the building contractor starts his work everything has been planned and specified.
Should printing be done in a less thoro manner? Is not the making of a book, catalog or business card each proportionately as important and as well entitled to proper attention as the larger undertaking? Good typography cannot be produced if preparation is slighted.
Quality printing is not accidental. Shops famed for the artistic excellence of their product have maintained their “shop style” despite changes in the force of workmen and executives, and this individuality, or “shop style,” as it is termed, has been obtained and retained only because the copy has been carefully prepared and the work has been intelligently laid out by some qualified person (artist, ad-writer or typographer) who understands shop preferences in the matter of style. It is the “institutional idea.”
In printshops extensive enough to allow of the expense, one or more layout men should be employed, and in the smaller concerns the head job compositor or foreman could do the work. Solicitors, when artistically fitted, could in special cases lay out their own jobs of printing, as personal contact with the customer peculiarly fits them to do it satisfactorily. The important thing, anyway, is to please the customer. While the art side of the practice of typography is important, it is not all important. Typography is also a business.
If the customer’s tastes and prejudices were ascertained beforehand, many of the changes now made after jobs are in type, frequently causing inharmonious arrangements, could be avoided. The average printer rarely parallels the experiences of a few fortunate printing concerns which, when receiving an order for a booklet or catalog, are told the amount of the appropriation and given carte blanche.