The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author's words. He may put up a stained glass window of marvellous beauty, but a failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type like text gothic that is something to be looked at, not through. Or he may work in what I call transparent or invisible typography. I have a book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of Paris. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is called "fine printing" today, in that you are at least conscious that there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. That is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. This is the fact that the mental eye focusses through type and not upon it. The type which, through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of "color," gets in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type. Our subconsciousness is always afraid of blunders [which illogical setting, tight spacing and too-wide unleaded lines can trick us into], of boredom, and of officiousness. The running headline that keeps shouting at us, the line that looks like one long word, the capitals jammed together without hairspaces—these mean subconscious squinting and loss of mental focus.
And if what I have said is true of book printing, even of the most exquisite limited editions, it is fifty times more obvious in advertising, where the one and only justification for the purchase of space is that you are conveying a message—that you are implanting a desire, straight into the mind of the reader. It is tragically easy to throw away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the simple and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably alien to the classic reasonableness of the book-face. Get attention as you will by your headline, and make any pretty type pictures you like if you are sure that the copy is useless as a means of selling goods; but if you are happy enough to have really good copy to work with, I beg you to remember that thousands of people pay down hard-earned money for the privilege of reading quietly-set book-pages, and that only your wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting text.
Of course every one of you realizes that whatever interesting effects you can produce with displayed advertising, Direct Mail is your paradise. It is here that you approach the august precincts of the designer of books; here you can deal in the fascinating questions of paper, ink, presswork, and all those minute and thrilling technicalities by which the craftsman proves his worth. You also have the satisfaction of knowing that the better and more mannerly Direct Mail advertising looks, the more solid returns it will bring in.
To sum up: printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realize that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The "stunt typographer" learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair spaces. Nobody [save the other craftsmen] will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.
COMPOSED IN BEMBO TYPES