So, also, when we come to the matter of taste, we come to the question of what should artistic printing {159} look like? Even if you are convinced that coated paper and the half-tone do not belong to ideal printing, how many can afford to attempt a piece of rough printing with heavy type, coarse paper and an outline device, and expect to retain his customers, when his rival, Smith, is using coated paper and half-tones that almost equal photographs? Very few printers, I fear, would be able to pay expenses by such a course. There are very few merchants but would have their catalogues printed by Smith with half-tone illustrations of photographs of their wares. Or even if the printer does not apply his art methods to job printing, but to his own publications, he will probably find few buyers who are cultured enough to appreciate his rough printing, so between the amount of time necessary for preparing artistic productions and the poor chance they have of receiving patronage, it is very difficult for a cultured printer to attain his ideal.
The writer has followed our art periodicals for years and knows too well that nearly all of them have failed. If artistic periodicals advertised for years to art-loving people have failed, how little is the chance of art methods succeeding with the people! We must, then, bear in mind that I may recommend methods because I know them to be artistic without expecting them to be accepted or put in practice.
The practical printer’s course must be a compromise. He introduces an artistic principle here, another there, without ever reaching his ideal. Sometimes it is his own circular, sometimes a literary pamphlet, or {160} sometimes a poster that allows him to experiment, while his average printing is commercial, nothing more.
But, let us say in parenthesis, that while we deprecate the lack of artistic culture that prevents our printers from turning out artistic work, we do not for a moment claim that that which is not artistic is poor, or that all printing that is not rough is not artistic. The half-tone and coated paper have their use. If, as a matter of news or information, exactness is required, any sensible printer will turn to the half-tone for assistance. Even Mr. Walter Crane, in publishing his book on “Decorative Illustration,” though he uses 303 pages of rough paper to exemplify the superiority of the simple wood cut of the past, employs eleven sheets of highly calendered paper to reproduce delicate facsimiles of old manuscripts! He felt that the purpose of these supplementary pages was to illustrate and not to embellish the book; so he sacrificed artistic harmony for science. So, also, a printer does well, when getting up a catalogue of houses, horses or chickens for sale, to insert a frontispiece of coated paper and print on the same a half-tone which gives an adequate idea of the house, horse or chicken to be sold. That is a scientific piece of work. The point is, that a catalogue printed on cheap paper with an insert of a half-tone printed on coated paper can never be an artistic unit, can never be exhibited as a piece of artistic printing. The French, who are extremely artistic people, have carried delicate printing as far as it will go, and the French printer will get you up a catalogue with a half-tone {161} frontispiece, but everything will be in harmony with it; the paper of the body of the book is coated paper, the type is delicate, the initial letters are equally fine, and the printing of the entire brochure is so delicate that it is in keeping with the frontispiece. That is the right principle for bookmaking, that the work be harmonious. There is no objection to fine type (so long as it is not so fine as to tire the eyes) if it is printed properly. The main reason for recommending such heavy type as Morris’ is, that it is pretty sure always to print well. When a French printer turns out a cheap newspaper he uses large type and heavy headlines, accompanied by illustrations that harmonize with such type and headlines.
Our examples of Forain’s work (see previous chapters) show the style of the French drawing made for the daily newspaper in harmony with the typography and in a suitable manner for printing on poor stock. The clipping from the French newspaper we give with this chapter, showing different styles of watch chains, is an excellent example of good taste in this direction. The type, the drawing, and the rules all harmonize. With a chalk-plate outfit a clever printer could supply such diagrams for his paper each week without feeling that he was transgressing the canons of the highest form of art.
From this example it will be seen that one of the requirements for a good newspaper drawing is that it harmonizes with the type page. You may feel then that it is not required of you to make a finished drawing for {162} a newspaper—in fact, the more finished it is the less likely it is to be a good newspaper design.
Another example of good newspaper designing is the Westminster Budget cover. The original covered a folio 10 by 13 inches. The paper being a cheap stock (yellow) and the design being bold and effective, serves as an admirable example of what we choose to call a poor-paper design.
This design will in future be again considered in connection with wood engraving and lettering; and in the next chapter we shall consider similar headings and covers.
CHAPTER II.
THE MATTER OF TASTE AGAIN UNDER REVIEW — “MAGAZINE,” “CITY NEWSPAPER” AND “COUNTRY NEWSPAPER PRINTING,” ARBITRARY TERMS — A STYLE OF DESIGN APPROPRIATE FOR CERTAIN KINDS OF PERIODICALS MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR OTHER KINDS — SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF DESIGNING — A BROAD, BLACK LINE DESIRABLE FOR LETTERING, “DEVICES” AND DESIGNS IN GENERAL; A FINE LINE MAY BE USED FOR ILLUSTRATIVE CUTS — BOLD MASSES OF LIGHT AND DARK APPROPRIATE FOR ROUGH PRINTING — THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE DESIGNS FOR JUGEND, PAN, LA REVUE ENCYCLOPÉDIQUE, ETC., CONSIDERED.