The Art & Practice of Typography / A Manual of American Printing, Including a Brief History up to the Twentieth Century, with Reproductions of the Work of Early Masters of the Craft, and a Practical Discussion and an Extensive Demonstration of the Modern Use of Type-faces and Methods of Arrangement

by Edmund G. Gress

TONE AND CONTRAST

This chapter is a story of the alpha and omega of color—white and black. Since the creation of the world, when light first illumined the darkness, these two colors (if I may call them colors) have been emblematic of extremes—white, the symbol of purity and goodness, black of impurity and evil. White and black represent extremes in color. Mixing of all the color rays of the solar spectrum produces white, and mixing of all the colors in the solid form of printing ink produces black. From this contrast of white and black maybe drawn a lesson in color. (Example [31].) Light represents warmth, darkness cold. As the colors are toward light they are warm; as they are toward darkness they are cold. Red becomes warmer as it takes on an orange hue, and colder as it takes on a purple hue. A warm color should be contrasted with a cold color—as orange with black. The further in tone the color is from black the more it contrasts with the black. As an illustration: Orange is more pleasing than a deeper shade of red as a companion color for black. Blue, purple or green, selected to be used with black, must be lightened with white ink to get the desired contrast.

EXAMPLE 31
Contrast in color and tone

White and black as a combination are and ever have been popular with writers, printers and readers. Fully nine-tenths of the newspapers, books, catalogs and other forms of reading matter are printed with black ink on white stock. It is coincident that optical necessities require for best results in reading a black-and-white combination, and black ink and white paper are more cheaply and easily produced than other colors of ink and paper.

EXAMPLE 32
An example of uniform tone and contrast of black and white. Page by F. W. Kleukens, Darmstadt

This chapter is also an illustrated sermon on uniformity of tone or depth of color, in which is pointed out the necessity of bringing many spots of black or gray into harmonious relation. The esthetic importance of uniformity of tone is universally recognized. Choirs are robed in white and black; fashion has its uniform clothing for the hours and functions of the day and night; theater choruses and the soldiery are living masses of uniform tone and color. As uniformity is important in these things, so is uniformity important in the tone of a page of printing. A type-page exhibiting a variegated mass of black and gray tones is not unlike a squad of recruits in different styles of clothing marching irregularly; while on the contrary a type-page of uniform tone and arrangement maybe likened to a uniformly equipped regiment of soldiers marching with rhythmic tread.

A page of display typography composed of a mixture of irregular gray and black tones is inexcusable in the sight of the art-loving reader. As combinations of inharmonious type-faces are wrong, equally so are combinations of incongruous tones. For the sake of contrast and variety in typography, art principles are too often ignored, the printer confessing to ignorance or lack of ingenuity. Contrast is necessary, but it may be had without sacrificing uniformity. Again making use of a military simile: soldiers are marched in platoons, companies, battalions and regiments that the monotony of solid formation may be broken; type is arranged in groups and paragraphs for similar reasons. While an absolutely solid page of type may present a pleasing tone, a slight break in the regularity is desirable for reading purposes. Thus art makes concession to utility, but such concession should always be granted reluctantly. There is classic authority for the arrangement of the type lines in Example [20] of the preceding chapter, but on the majority of printing jobs it is necessary to compromise with utility and emphasize important words, as in Example [19-a] of the same chapter. The secret of producing artistic typography in these practical times is to pilot the ideas of the customer into artistic channels; emphasize the words he wants emphasized, but do it in a way that will result in creditable typography. There is a right way and there is a wrong way of arranging type, and too many typographers arrange type the wrong way and unjustly blame the customer for the result.