The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

The main condition in the matter of scale appears to be that we cannot afford to ignore the average human standard. As we may say that the human frame itself contains the elements and principles of all ornamental design, so its proportions and scale control the proportions and scale of all design. Objects intended for human use and service are bound to be of certain fixed or average sizes—seats and couches about eighteen inches from the ground, for instance; ordinary domestic doors not much over six feet high, and three feet six inches or four feet wide. The size of casements, again, is strictly related to the power of the hand to open them; while the sizes of all movable objects of use are in like manner strictly governed by the average size, height, and strength of mankind.

Pursuing the influence of such conditions, we find that there are in every direction natural limitations in every department of design: in the first place of scale and position in relation to eye and hand, in the second place of method and material.

Take the page of a printed book, for instance. The body of type impressed upon the paper, gives the proportions and dimensions of the page. The double page, when the book is opened to show the right and left hand pages (or recto and verso, as they are termed), is the true unit, not the single page.

DROP REPEAT WALL-PAPER. DESIGNED BY WALTER CRANE.

The type should be placed so as to leave the narrowest margin at the top and the inside, the broader on the outside, and the broadest of all at the foot. And this for obvious reasons, since in holding a book in our hand we naturally want the type brought well under the eye, the pages being set as close together as the necessities of joining down the middle will allow conveniently, so that the eye need not have to jump across a large brook of margin in travelling from one to the other, while the deep margin below enables the book to be held in the hand well set up before the eye, without touching the type.

In taking up a book with the intention of decorating or illustrating it, we must accept frankly these conditions, which indeed are, properly considered, a substantial help to the artist, just as the necessities of the ground plan give suggestions for the elevation in architectural design. These conditions, we may take it, are the architectural conditions of book-page construction.

The size, then, of our page-panel being fixed, as well as the page of type necessary to the book (sizes of books are, of course, determined by folding of the paper—folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo, and so on), we are free to deal with it decoratively in a variety of ways, subject only to the acknowledgment of the essential condition that it is a book-page, and not a random sheet of paper to make blots of ink upon—or a stereoscope, or a card-basket, for instance, as some modern treatments of illustration in books suggest.

We may use the whole page for the design, surrounding it with a line or border. Or for the sake of richer and more ornate effect, while confining our picture or illustration to the limits of the type-page, we may use our margin for a decorative framework or border. As also in using ornamental initial letters the side borders can be utilized for ornaments branching up and down from the letter to emphasize the chapter or paragraph, in the manner of mediæval illuminated MSS., and in the way adopted by William Morris in his Kelmscott Press books.

Or, again, limiting our decoration to the actual type-page, we may divide the page at the opening of a chapter by a frieze-shaped panel or heading across the top, placing the initial letter below; or insert a picture in the text, occupying a half-page or quarter-page; or at the ending of a chapter design a tailpiece to fill the page where the type ends, treating any space within the limits of the type-page, which the type does not occupy, as a field for design, or placing one's pictures and ornaments in the midst or in place of the type.