inspiration for a new face from any source--the lapidary inscriptions
of the first centuries of the Imperial age of Rome; a mediaeval brass
that marks the last resting place of a departed ruler; a manuscript
letter by some unsung scribe of the Renaissance, or an early type of
the golden age of typography. Or maybe he may even strive to put into
tangible form on his drawing board some vision from out of nowhere--the
realization of a chance thought straying through an idle reverie which
he will whip into a satisfactory medium of intellectual exchange. On
the other hand, he may prefer to attempt the re-creation of new letter
from the bones of a more ancient form, endeavoring to secure in it a
new expression of life and vigor, with new graces suited to our times
and our use.
If the designer chooses to disregard old types and go direct to
their source, the manuscript hands of the scribes, well, why not? By
revising their forms, refining them, eliminating their whimsicalities
and vagaries and formalizing their irregularities, he may meet, too,
the mechanical requirements and technical limitations of type founding.
This, probably, is the more legitimate method, since in this way he
will inspire from the real beginnings of our lower case forms. For
myself I am inclined to agree with a writer who maintains that "it
is doubtful whether the type designer benefits from a close study of
hand lettering," meaning of course the manuscript hands of the past.
Interesting as old manuscripts are, I find them of little practical
use as offering models for new types. Speaking for myself only I find
it more feasible to get my inspirations from a study of the earlier
types that appeal to me. They frequently offer opportunity for new
expression. With no attempt to copy their particular forms, or to make
changes merely in weight or serif, I endeavor rather to tear from them
the qualities and the spirit that makes them good, for incorporation in
my own letter shapes.
I realize, of course, that the letters I may select as my models were,
without doubt, inspired by some manuscript hand that personally I may
find offers little for use in my own work. With complete independence
of calligraphy I attempt, instead, to secure the negative quality
of unpretentiousness; I strive for the pure contour and monumental
character of the classic lapidary forms of the first centuries of the
Christian era; I endeavor in my work to avoid any bizarre quality or
exhibition of conscious preciosity. (It has been said that in this
latter aim I sometimes fail.)
Once in a while a type face by some other designer seems to present an
interesting movement or quality that I like. I take early opportunity
to make it mine, frankly and openly, in the same way that a writer
might use exactly the same words as another, but by a new arrangement
of them present a new thought, a new idea, or a new subtlety of
expression. Or as two painters using identical tools and colors, each
might produce a masterpiece, yet the work of one probably would not
resemble that of the other in any detail. By copying carefully a few
characters of the type that appeals to me drawn by another hand, I try
to secure in my own drawings some certain movement or rhythm his may
present. I soon discard my model and proceed from there, as it were,
under my own steam, and sometimes produce a face which my good friend
Kent Currie says "has an acid, typy quality" and (in substance) that it
is regular and well-ordered, that it has interest, color, movement, and
sometimes quaintness.
Several years ago I accepted a commission to make a type for a
magazine of large circulation. At that time it was my practice to make
drawings from which matrices were engraved for me by the late Robert
Wiebking of Chicago. His death occurred just about the time I was to
send him my originals for translation into "mats" from which to cast
the type. In order to carry out my arrangement with the magazine, and
finding difficulty in procuring the work elsewhere, I determined to
try doing also the mechanical work of matrix engraving myself. Like
Moxon, I "learnt it of my own genuine inclination," with no previous
instruction in the craft. With no engraving or casting plant ready to
my hand I began the getting together of the various paraphernalia of a
type foundry. Procuring machines for a type foundry was comparatively
simple; the operation of them, making patterns for use in the engraving
machines, the lining and fitting of the cast types, etc., all after I
had reached my sixtieth birthday, was something else. Looking back, I
am amazed at my temerity. It was literally a case of rushing in where
angels might well fear to tread. Yet, since that time I have engraved
many hundreds of matrices.
And now, one other personal note. It is my credo. For nearly two score
years I have made use and beauty the great _desiderata_. I have never
permitted myself intentionally to utilize the message I was attempting
to present, to serve as a mere framework or scaffolding upon which to
exploit my own skill, nor ever to allow my craft to became an end in
itself instead of a means only to a desirable and useful end.
COMPOSED IN DEEPDENE TYPES
[Illustration]THEODORE LOW DE VINNE[Illustration]
_The Old and the New_
A FRIENDLY DISPUTE BETWEEN JUVENIS AND SENEX
with a note by FREDERIC W. GOUDY
Published by The Village Press, Marlboro, New York, 1933.
_Juvenis_: What is it that you admire in the types of old books? Don't
you love them more for their quaintness than for their beauty? I have
seen originals or accredited facsimiles of the best books of Gutenberg,
Jenson, Aldus, Kerver, Caxton, and other notable printers, but I prefer
modern types.
_Senex_: Then you have seen the pointed black-letter, the round gothic,
the aldine Italic, the flemish black, and the early Roman. Did not any
of these styles please you?
_Juvenis_: Not one. To try to read the pointed black of Gutenberg
and Kerver is as repelling as a walk through the crypts of an old
church; the round gothics are as scraggy as a heap of oyster shells;
the Aldine italics are squeezed as to width, elongated as to height,
and incongruously mated with absurdly small capitals; the flemish
black-letter is the 'tour de force' of a literary acrobat. In all these
characters I see bad drawing and disregard of proportion. The founding
is as bad as the design; some characters are fitted too near, others
too wide, and many letters are out of line.
_Senex_: You surely cannot censure Jenson's Roman for bad fitting?
_Juvenis_: I do except that, for Jenson was a good mechanic, and so
was Kerver. Their types are well fitted and neatly lined. But I have
small praise to give Jenson for his much admired Roman letter. Better,
no doubt, than any other Roman of the period, but was it perfection?
Bibliophiles forget that this Jenson Roman was out of fashion fifty
years after his death, and that his models have been altered by every
succeeding punch-cutter.
_Senex_: How, then, can you explain the favor shown to the recent types
of William Morris? His 'Golden' type is based on the Jenson model; his
'Troy' and 'Chaucer' types are modeled after the round gothic of the
fifteenth century.
_Juvenis_: I do not pretend to explain freaks of fashion in typography
any more than in religion or art or music. The Athenians who worshiped
an unknown or forgotten god have successors in every generation.
There are Englishmen, nursed in the Catechism, who try to be devout
Buddhists; there are Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, and Wagnerians.
The lover of singularity who can invent nothing that is new must hunt
up something that is old, or at least odd, to keep up his reputation
for discernment. It is enough for me to know that the literary world,
outside of Germany, moved by common impulse, discarded all the
early types. The sacred black-letter of Gutenberg, and other forms,
went to oblivion for good reason. All were of bad form and hard to
read--obscured by abbreviations, misuse of capital letters, absurd
divisions, and inconsistent orthography. Much as a student of our time
may profess admiration for early typography, he will not consult the
'Bible of Forty-two Lines' for a disputed text, when a more readable
edition is accessible.
_Senex_: You confound two features of typography that should be kept
separate. The shapes of early types should be considered apart from
the skill, or want of skill, in their compositors. The black-letter
types of the fifteenth century are often fair copies of the admirable
manuscripts of the period.
_Juvenis_: The black-letter of every early printer was but a servile
copy of the manuscript most attainable. Malformations were copied,
but the flowing graces of penmanship could not be reproduced in
mechanically square types. No punch-cutter of the period improved on
the manuscript copy. All the early books abound in infelicities of
design and cutting, indicating that the work was not as thoughtfully
done as similar work is done now. It is a begging of the question
to assume that the early punch-cutters were demigods in art. To say
that they were right is to say that Albrecht Dürer and Geoffroy Tory,
who wrote books on the true proportions of letters, and Granjon and
Garamond, who gave a lifetime to type-making, were wrong. I prefer to
accept the teachings of known artists as of higher authority.
_Senex_: Is not the difficulty of reading old black-letter due to its
unfamiliar abbreviations and to mannerisms in type-setting now out of
fashion? Would not modern types be obscure if similarly treated?
_Juvenis_: They would; but the fault begins with the shapes of the
printed letters. You note it in the modern German fraktur, always
a perplexity to every English-born student. The Germans themselves
practically admit its inferiority. Their scientific books are usually
in Roman. Their preference for Roman is a confession that Roman types
are better, and that the printers of the seventeenth century did wisely
in their general abandonment of pointed letters. The reading world had
outgrown them. Why should we revive them?
_Senex_: Let us not trouble ourselves about pointed letters. There is
no probability that they will ever be accepted by Americans for the
texts of ordinary books. Let us consider the Roman types that have been
in use by the Latin races and by English-speaking people for three
centuries. Are modern types as readable as those of Jenson? Here is his
Pliny of 1472, and here is the 'soprasilvio' of Bodoni, as exhibited in
his _Manuale Tipografico_ of 1818. Which is better?
_Juvenis_: I am surprised at the question. Every character in the
Bodoni type is correctly drawn; every system of uniform thickness,
every hair-line and serif sharp as a knife-edge. Curves are true and
graceful, angles exact; fitting and lining beyond criticism. In the
Jenson type there is not one perfect letter. The hair-lines are scant
and of unequal thickness, the serifs are stubby, the stems of uneven
width, the characters out of proportion. Raggedness of drawing and
roughness of cutting are not concealed by its fairly good fitting and
lining. No publisher of the last two centuries would dare to print, and
no reader consent to buy, a contemporary book in this type.
_Senex_: Can you not see something more in this Jenson type? Is it not
more readable? I put them side by side at a distance of ten feet, where
you can read the Jenson and cannot read the Bodoni.
_Juvenis_: True: but types in great primer are not made to be read at
ten feet distance.
_Senex_: True again; but the mannerisms that obscure the Bodoni type
at ten feet are more distressing in his small types, usually read at
the distance of fifteen inches. The over-sharp hair-line, the dazzling
serif, and the vanishing curve are more irritating in the smaller than
in the larger sizes. Ordinary eyesight does not seize at a glance the
entire face of modern type; it dimly sees hair-lines or serifs; it
deciphers the stems only; it sees but half of the letter, and guesses
at the invisible. The type of Bodoni is a wearying strain on the eye.
_Juvenis_: Your remarks do not fairly apply to readers of good sight.
_Senex_: They do apply to the majority of readers. It is a mistake to
make for ordinary texts types with lines that cannot be easily seen by
all.
_Juvenis_: If you think boldness of most importance in a type, why make
Jenson's type your model? Why not go back still farther? Why not take
up the lapidary letters of old Rome, Greece, or Etruria?
_Senex_: They are uncouth and wasteful of space. Designed to be
chiseled on stone, they are unfit for types. The 'Caroline minuscule,'
which is the basis of our Roman text letter, is more compact, quite as
irregular, and much more readable.
_Juvenis_: If you believe that there was a gradual improvement in the
shapes of letters between the first and fifteenth centuries, why stop
at the fifteenth? Why not admit that this improvement continues?
_Senex_: Because the changes that followed were not always
improvements. The faultless curves, sharp lines, and exact angles of
Bodoni were disfigurements made at the expense of readability. Types
are made to be easily read, not to show the skill of the designer. When
they fail in readability the fault is fatal. The proper development of
typography was checked by the invention of copper-plate that trod on
its heels. Its delicacy of line, its perfect graduation of shadows, its
vigorous blacks, and its facile rendering of a receding perspective
put out of fashion all strong and manly work on wood. Dürer's 'Little
Passion,' Holbein's 'Dance of Death,' and Vostre's _Book of Hours_ were
put aside, and the insipid effeminacies of overworked line-engraving
took their place. Punch-cutters of the sixteenth century thought
that printing would be improved if they imitated the methods of
line-engravers, and so they cut their types sharper and thinner.
They would not see that relief engraving and incised engraving are
diametrically opposed in theory and practice, and that the imitation
of one process by the other is impossible. Repeated failures did
not check this desire to imitate. Increasing refinements in types
produced a corresponding degradation in printing. The inferiority
of the average book of the eighteenth century is largely due to the
so-called 'improved' faces of type. The most irrepressible imitator of
copper-plate effects was Bodoni of Parma. William Morris is right in
saying that his imitations of copper-plate delicacy indicate a real
abasement of the typographic art.
_Juvenis_: If correct drawing, exact proportion, and high finish are
merits in other arts, why should they be faults in type-making?
_Senex_: 'Finish' is a merit only when it improves; when it
over-elaborates, when it leads the reader to think more of the means
employed than of the object sought, it is a fault. Bodoni's careful
drawing and finical cutting defeat the purpose for which types were
made. They do not fully show the letter; they do show Bodoni; and it
is a fair supposition that he was more intent on showing his skill
than he was on aiding the reader. Your ideal of merit in types is that
of mechanical precision. You forget that letters are of irregular
shapes, with intent to make them distinct. The more you prune away the
irregularities, the more indistinct they become. Readers do not isolate
and critically examine each letter; they read words at a glance. They
prefer characters with enough of irregularity to arrest the eye and
fix the thought of the writer. It is with types as with penmanship.
Has it been your misfortune to revise a long manuscript written in
feminine style with a crow-quill pen, and with admirable precision,
but with almost invisible hair strokes? Recollect your exasperation at
its mechanical precision and wearisome monotony. How gratefully you
turned to a jagged and masculine but readable style of penmanship,
in which you were content to have all the rules of writing-masters
violated! Recall these experiences, and then understand why I prefer
old types. Not because they are old, or of faultless form, but because
the letters are more distinct. They were made, not to show the skill of
the punch-cutter, but to help the reader; and they deserve the credit
due to straightforward workmanship.
A NOTE BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY
_In 1898 the name "De Vinne" meant little more to me than the name of
a then popular display printing type, until the day, in a book-shop
in Detroit, I chanced on a copy of_ The Book-lover's Almanac _for
1896. Of the eight or ten articles listed in the table of contents
one was by Theo. Low De Vinne. The article was written in the form of
a discussion between "Senex" and "Juvenis" on the comparative merits
of the early type faces and those of Bodoni and his successors. This
was, I believe, my first realization that "De Vinne" was the name of a
living personality._
_I was just becoming interested in the history of the typography of
books and was making also a closer study of type design, but it did not
occur to me that such study would ever lead to the actual practise of
the art I have since made peculiarly my own...._
_When I first read Mr. De Vinne's article it seemed to me that "Senex"
had rather the better of the argument, indeed, I have not found, during
the nearly two score years that have elapsed, any statements elsewhere
that have changed materially the opinions then formed as to the
soundness of his asseverations...._
_If I were asked to say what I think has been the greatest single
influence in my work as a type designer I would be hard put to find
a satisfactory reply; but there is no doubt in my mind that the
principles set forth in this article and in his book_ Notable Printers
of Italy During the 15th Century _have certainly loomed large in
crystallizing the character of my types. The consistency of thought
he displayed, his sound knowledge of old types, his fairness in the
consideration of each moot point, the simple yet lucid presentation of
his ideas and opinions interested me; they influenced my own thought,
and in turn are reflected in my work._
_If, to my more mature consideration of this discussion there is any
lapse of the author's pen, it seems to me it is, that "Senex" failed
to stress more strongly a demand for greater grace and beauty in types
in closer combination with legibility. I feel that the proper standard
of beauty in types basically resides in their utility, but there are,
nevertheless, secondary esthetic attributes which may be included
without any sacrifice of life and vigor and legibility. A certain
rugged beauty is perceived without difficulty, and irregularities
which in isolated or individual characters, might seem objectionable
from the standpoint of grace alone, may prove highly desirable in the
composed line. Readability is of course to be considered above every
other quality, because, failing this it fails utterly, regardless of
every other excellence; yet, while striving for legibility, beauty of
form should also be given almost equal consideration.... I venture to
disagree with Senex's statement that "the lapidary letters of old Rome
are uncouth and ... unfit for types"...._
_Marlboro, N. Y., May_, 1933
[Illustration: Bruce Rogers]
PARAGRAPHS ON PRINTING
From _Paragraphs on Printing_. Copyright 1943 by William E. Rudge's
Sons. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher
_NOTE: The text for this book on the functions of the book designer
was elicited from B.R. in talks with James Hendrickson. These informal
observations on typographical problems were accompanied by numerous
reproductions of pages of Mr. Rogers' design, by way of illustration
and example._
You think of the _book_, the size and shape of the book, before you
consider type or anything else. What kind of a volume should it be? In
what particular form and in what face of type would _you_ like to read
it? The type and format should be governed by your conception of the
character of the subject matter. As an instance take Conrad's tale,
_The Tremolino_, recently printed. It is a slight but vivid story, to
be read almost at a glance, so it would have been a misfit to make it
larger, say in octavo size. The vividness is indicated by the dramatic
little cuts in color, the slightness by the dimensions and open
character of the pages.
After the size is determined the selection of a suitable type
comes next. And that depends usually on what types are available
in the office in which the book is to be made. Even this is not
always necessary, as many offices have composition done outside by
type-composition firms, so that an almost unlimited choice may be
yours. There are so many varieties of type now, that for almost any
size or kind of book you plan you will readily find an appropriate
face. At any rate it isn't so vitally important as other things.
[Illustration]
It is a great advantage in laying out a page, especially a title or
display page, if the designer can handle pen or pencil; and the more
definitely he can represent the type he proposes to use, the greater
saving of time and expense there will be when it comes to the setting
of it. It is true that some masters of printing do not resort to
sketching--at least not more than mere lines on the paper, labeled
with the kinds and sizes of type they represent. But to visualize the
completed page in such slight indications is an unusual gift, and if
one does not possess this gift there is the probability that the first
setting of the page will have to be torn apart several times before a
satisfactory one is produced. It is sometimes well worth while to work
a page out very carefully, even in pen-and-ink, so that it will be a
pretty close approximation to the finished thing; especially if you
have to submit the scheme to a customer for his approval, or if he asks
to see alternative treatments.
Of course, after many years of familiarity with type faces, it isn't
necessary to draw them accurately for your own guidance, even though
you should possess that ability; but some nevertheless find it a
pleasant thing to see the page take form under their pencil or pen
before it goes into actual type. Frequently, however, there is a sense
of disappointment in seeing the first type proof, for the freedom and
swing of your sketch has usually vanished in its translation into type;
and the more formal the style of type the less it will retain the
quality of your sketch.
[Illustration]
Making an "allusive" format for a book--that is, casting it in the
style of the period of the original text--is in a small way something
like planning the stage setting for a play. An up-to-date style for
an ancient text would compare with staging _Hamlet_ in modern dress.
However novel and effective in its own way, you feel it to be strange,
and this sense of strangeness is an annoying distraction; you are
forced to think of the setting and the designer rather than of the text.
* * * * *
The character of the text to be printed is of course the first thing
to consider in selecting the kind of type; and the number of pages
to which the book will probably run is the determining factor as to
what size of type is possible. The width and length of the type page
are then to be proportioned to the paper page, which in turn also
helps to determine the size of the type. All these considerations are
interlocking.