Whatever the reason, we seldom have the courage to let a simple book stay simple. We are very particular about the type we select, and then we are afraid to use it boldly, and to depend on the design of the letter for our effects. Books with illustrations, diagrams, complicated heads, or other special matter, we are apt to handle well; but when the copy is simple we do insist on using rules and/or ornament. When we use ornament we are inclined to have meaningless little units repeated endlessly throughout the book, instead of a few positive, significant elements, used with proper restraint.
In many of the books I saw, the design bore no relation to the subject matter, either in materials, format, or typography, and these were by no means all from the hands of inexperienced designers. Many suffered, of course, because good types are not available for certain problems. None of the composing machines has a really suitable type for books on contemporary subjects: the natural and social sciences, architecture and technology, etc. There should be several such types, comparable to the old numbered "moderns" and "old styles" but better in design, traditional in general form but impersonal and mechanized in drawing; and cut in several weights for different papers. If I may conclude by quoting again from my last effort in this medium, we are still "anxiously awaiting the composing-machine companies' arrival in the Twentieth Century."
Postscript, 1951:
Re-reading the above complaints, I am saddened to find how many of them I would repeat today. Many of them, but not all. The inflated book is becoming rare, but it took a world war to finish it off. With it we are losing the sloppy rough-cut fore-edge. "Period" typography is quite dead, but its belated and tortured passing is no credit to any of us.
We still have too much typography, however; too many self-conscious tricks, too much un-discipline. And we still lack many of the types we need. The war may fairly be blamed for disrupting the programs of the machine people, for a book face takes years of labor and trial to produce. But where are the new hand-types?
A healthy printing industry needs a prolific type design program. Creative type-founding stimulates the typographer, and paves the way for the machine cutting. We need ignore competition in the foundry field, and all we have is one tired monopoly. Perhaps most of us are too polite to point, but let us not think that we can ignore the foundry situation, and supply the lack of types with calligraphy. Every creative period in printing history has produced its own new types. The present period can make no important contribution without doing the same.
WILL RANSOM
WHAT IS A PRIVATE PRESS?
From Private Presses and Their Books, by Will Ransom. Copyright 1929 by R. R. Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher. Corrected and amended by the author.
Whenever private presses are mentioned, one of two questions is certain to be heard. The layman asks, "What do you mean, a private press?" while a collector smiles quizzically and inquires, with gentle malice, "How do you define a private press?" There have been many answers and much discussion, but common agreement has not yet fixed upon a single definite phrase. Perhaps one fascinating element of the subject is this very uncertainty.