Art is essential to printing; so are Uncle Sam’s specimens of steel engraving. The more art the printer absorbs the larger should grow his collection of these engravings. Study of art arouses ambition; ambition brings better and harder work. It reveals in the typographer the difference between mere lead-lifting and the artistic selection and arrangement of types. The boy who sweeps the floor and does his best is nearer art-heaven than he who sets type and cares not how he does it.
The printer who determines to learn about art—who makes continued effort to find the reason why one man’s work is good and another’s is not, will be surprised and gratified at the new world that unfolds itself as he studies. He will find that altho having eyes, he has really seen only as he has appreciated. There is no easy road to the appreciation of the beautiful. Art does not consist merely of a set of rules to be observed; there are few beacon lights placed by those who have trod the road. Beyond a certain point the novice must depend upon intuition or “feeling.” Great painters have been asked their method of producing masterpieces, and have been unable to explain.
EXAMPLE 53
In which vertical lines predominate
In introducing the subject of “Proportion” it is well first to dispose of book pages. In olden times the sizes of books were known by the number of folds to a sheet of paper about 18 × 24 inches. A book made from such sheets, folded once into two leaves, was known as a folio volume and measured about 12 × 18 inches. Folded twice into four leaves, a quarto, measuring 9 × 12 inches. Folded three times into eight leaves, an octavo, measuring 6 × 9 inches. Paper is now made in a variety of sizes, which allow of individual preferences being satisfied. For the sizes of catalogs 9 × 12 and 6 × 9 are becoming standard. The sizes do not depart far from the rule of proportion which holds that the width of the page should be two-thirds its length.
Examples [50] and [51] illustrate two widely-used methods of determining page lengths. By the first method (Example [50]) the page should measure diagonally twice its width. In this instance the width being eight picas, the diagonal measurement is sixteen picas. By the second method the length of the page should measure fifty per cent more than its width. Here the width being eight picas, the length is twelve picas. These measurements may or may not include the running titles or folios.
EXAMPLE 54
Compare with Example [53]
If only small margins are possible, the page (exclusive of running title) should be about centered, with a slight inclination toward the head and back. But when margins are reasonably ample the page should set liberally toward the head and back; the margins of the head and back (exclusive of the running title) should be about the same, the outer side margin should be fifty per cent more than the back margin, and the foot margin one hundred per cent more than the back margin. Various explanations of this rule have been put forward, a few of which are: The old book-owner making marginal notations as he read, needed wide margins for the purpose. Early manuscript books were bound on wood, and this wood was extended at the foot and used to hold the book when reading. Two pages being exposed to view were treated as one page, much as double columns are now treated. As book illuminators required room for their handiwork the margins may have thus originated. The principal reason why we should observe such margins is that the arrangement has the sanction of long usage and the approval of the best bookmakers since books were written.