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

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The human race has a liking for ornamentation—Natural and artificial beauty—Nature furnishes motives for man’s work—The average man giving thought to art—Beautiful things all about—Privileges of museums and art galleries available to printers—Take less thought of food and raiment and these things shall be added—Is ornamentation necessary to art typography?—Paper as embellishment—Covering poor stock with decoration—Ornaments under lock and key—Revising ideas of art—Abstinence—Using ornaments with discrimination—Study of significance and appropriateness—Motive or reason in ornamentation—Italian and German influences—Harmony because of sympathy between arts and crafts—Inharmonious ideas of several persons—Relation of typography to architecture shown in alphabets—Roman and Gothic—Ornamentation both inventive and imitative—Conventionalized ornament—With or without perspective—Things which have inspired the decorator—Artists’ work full of meaning—Leaves, mythical beings, sacred animals—Architectural designs on title-pages—Egg-and-dart and bead ornaments—Results of observation—Designs thousands of years old—Typographic borders—Triple division of taste—The severely plain, Doric—The slightly ornamental, Ionic—The elaborately ornamental, Corinthian—Sturdiness and grace—Difference in ideals and preferences—Some delight in magnificence, others in plainness—The three divisions of taste applied to typography—The style of architecture and home furnishings influence typography—The “mission” style and straight lines—The frivolous rococo style and curved lines—Rococo type ornamentation not successful—A style to please those who like neither the severely plain nor the elaborately ornamental—Ornament secondary—Should not distract attention—Excess of embellishment—Chippendale first made furniture serviceable, then added ornament—Regularity and variety in repetition—Four classes of ornament—Based upon geometrical lines, upon foliage, upon the inanimate, and upon the animate—Initials as means of ornamentation—Corner ornaments—Decoration with a motive—Reversing half of a design—A page with but a single ornament—Present-day preferences are for Gothic rather than for Italian type ornaments—The reason—Ornamentation.

THE TYPOGRAPHY OF BOOKS

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Good taste important in production of books—Judgment perfect in one respect and erratic in others—Good taste and conservatism—Catering to fashion leaves unsalable stock—Conservatives are few—Printed things that please for the moment—Art reasons in book typography applicable to job typography—The job compositor drawing closer to his book brother—The book typographer governed by precedent—The conservative man constructive—The radical destructive—Masterpieces discarded for frivolous things—Morris set out to change book typography—He offered the good things of the old masters—Age not proof of merit—Good typography always good—Book industry in America tremendous—Carnegie at first ridiculed, now acknowledged a benefactor—The need of good books well printed—Majority of books poorly printed—Rarely do reading pages, title-page and cover harmonize—Cover only part given artistic attention—Should be honestly what it seems—A book model in its way—Not a line in capitals—Only two sizes of type on title-page—Chapter headings cling to type page—Margins—Surface covered—Proportion—Bruce Rogers—Designs books for the Riverside Press—Regard for the appropriate—The literary motive the cue—Suggesting a product of the middle nineteenth century—Two pages with faults—Inharmonious typography—The cost of an appropriate title-page ridiculously small—Provide display faces to match machine letters—Artist and typographer and the literary motive—Composite Colonial and modern—Unfinished effect—Books that lend themselves to decoration—Serious books—Typographic results exceptionally good—General use of border—Title page an excellent example—Reading matter close to border—One margin—Style of the modern novel—Modern book composition set on the linotype—An unconventional page—Page from a book written and illustrated by Will Bradley—Harmony between type-face and decoration—Effectiveness of a plain initial—Title-page of classic design—Dignified beauty—Classic feeling in a modern title-page—A serious effort by the Roycrofters—Page from a book by De Vinne—An ecclesiastical book by Updike—Improving typography in America—A book with a French motive—Avoiding commonplace types—Fonts from old matrices—Specially designed faces—Arrangement of a book—Fly leaf, sub-title, title-page, copyright notice, imprint, table of contents and illustrations, preface, frontispiece, dedication, index—Numbering the pages—The space under running titles—Lowering of the chapter headings—The space around initials—Position of a book page—Em-quad or en-quad between sentences?

BOOKLETS, PAMPHLETS, BROCHURES, LEAFLETS

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Misuse of the word “booklet”—Definitions of booklet, pamphlet, brochure, leaflet—Chap-books—The booklet’s mission educational—Users—Ideas of writer and artist should be blended—Harmonious and complete—Printers have many artists to select from—The connecting link between job typography and book typography—Blending the typography with a lettered title-page—Pure typographical effects—Approved faces—Three series only—A page one likes to read—Reluctance to explore the past—Understanding of typography—Type alone can be effective—Good typography to be preferred to poor art work—Distinctive features—Space between sentences—Dignity in lettering and decoration—Title labels—A small amount of reading matter—Placing an illustration that is out of proportion—Care in the details of typesetting—Results of careless typography—Buyers slaves to conventionality—Newness and bright coloring that gets attention—Lower-case letters for capitals—Interesting decorative headings—The initial furnishes a spot of black—No decoration of any kind—Depending on type-faces and paper for results—Swash italic capitals and letterspaced capitals—Chapter heading not sunk—Suggestions from lettered designs—A standard type for old-style effects—Lettering in Caslon style on blue-prints—A memorial volume—Strict typographic harmony—Suggesting such volumes-Japanese paper printed on one side—Simple typography—Living in an artistic atmosphere—Printing journals—Specimen booklets for study purposes—Printers depend too much on artists—Possibilities of type arrangement never exhausted—Working together.

CATALOGS

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