BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES
By J. H. MASON
THE Gazette du Bon Ton, now beginning its third year, is so extraordinarily clever that it sets one thinking about the typographical importance of magazines. It is in them that typography is seen at its liveliest, and it is a pity that after a comet-like career we frequently lose sight of them. Why do not British publishers and printers establish an exhibition hall on the lines of that at the Buchgewerbehaus in Leipzig? The exhibitions should be varied, not permanent, although there should always be an exhibition connected with this all-important group of trades. The book-production of one nation after another, their magazines, their book illustration, their types and posters, their paper, their colour printing and newspapers would provide ample material. Printing in its many forms is an almost omnipresent element of our lives, and for this reason the forms it takes are more important than the much-canvassed forms of modern pictorial art. In the series of exhibitions there should be one of magazines, particular care being taken to include those with a limited circulation, or those which were experimental and ran only for a short period. Gordon Craig's Mask, the Neolith, the Hobbyhorse, the Manchester Playgoer, the Russian Apollon, the Imprint, the Game, are just a few that occur to me as certainly not well known, and yet they are all suggestive attempts to deal with magazine typography, format, paper, and illustration.
The Gazette du Bon Ton would certainly be included in such an exhibition or section of an exhibition. Its two most important features typographically are its type, a revived old style based on a design of Nicolas Cochin, and its coloured illustrations. Three sizes of type are used, in the Avant-Propos a large 18-point, and in the body of the magazine 14-point and 10-point (I give the nearest equivalents in British sizes). The 14-point is an excellent choice, both in point of weight and scale. I should prefer using it all through the magazine to form a stable background to the very varied illustrations and the capricious choice of initials and captions. The fine line illustrations of page 10 are too light to keep the page together as they are meant to do. The drawings were probably made without being tested by comparison with the strong line of the type. The illustrations, in black with one or two flat tints or full colours, give a real colour value that is never obtained by the three-colour process. Take any book illustrated by this process and test it by comparison with these Bon Ton colours, and if the colour sense has not been vitiated by a wrong standard for coloured letterpress illustrations—such as oil paintings—the superiority of the flat colour will be obvious. Even the chiaroscuro block prints are capable of very pleasing effects, a hint of them appearing in the tail-piece on page 4.
The "Gazette du Bon Ton continuera d'être ... le lieu où les couturiers et les peintres collaborent pour composer la silhouette de leur temps." That sentence from the Avant-Propos sums up what I have to say of the type, the illustration, and the work as a whole. The large type attracts attention at once, it spreads itself a little—a shade wide—it slightly emphasises its idiosyncrasies (see the y with its terminal serif, or the s, or the capital G, they have the very accent of our own time); it is elegant, but not content with elegance; it is on a good model, but perfection, the golden mediocrity, is felt as constraint; it attains—reaches something a little outré.
Note.—Last month I inadvertently wrote Luckombe for Stower, although the latter's Printer's Grammar was on my table at the time.