machines for type composition. Not long since he spoke to me in
unflattering terms of the examples of typography shown at an exhibition
of the products of the Bauhaus School, originally of Weimar and
later of Munich. He protested against a practice there manifested
of discarding capital letters and depending solely on those in the
lower-case. I consoled him by showing him a French book, printed
entirely in this style. This volume, entitled _Typographie Économique_,
was published in Paris in 1837 and so far as it had any influence on
printing, then or later, is as dead as Queen Anne. The author, the
Count de Lasteyrie, who promoted this scheme, was one of a race of
French scientists, of some intellectual and social importance--one of
the daughters of Lafayette married into that family. In the eighteenth
century no less a person than the German writer Grimm tried a similar
typographical plan. In the Fairy Tales containing "Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs," later compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the
practice was not continued. This supports the contention that many
new and disturbing experiments, under the patronage of distinguished
names, are merely survivals or revivals of ancient failures. Thus in
the light of experience, there is in Bauhaus typography nothing for my
acquaintance--or anybody else--to be excited about.
Now Bauhaus typography is of the essence of modernism. That its
position may be fairly stated I quote the following from a _Bauhaus
Year Book_:--_verbatim_ and (I may add) _literatim_:
["] why should we write and print with two alphabets? both a large and
a small sign are not necessary to indicate one single sound.
_A_ = _a_
we do not speak a capital A and a small a.
we need only a single alphabet. it gives us practically the same
result as the mixture of upper and lower-case letters, and at the
same time is less of a burden on all who write--on school children,
students, stenographers, professional and business men. it could be
written much more quickly, especially on the type-writer, since the
shift key would then become unnecessary, typewriting could therefore
be more quickly mastered and typewriters would be cheaper because of
simpler construction, printing would be cheaper, for fonts and type
cases would be smaller, so that printing establishments would save
space and their clients money. with these common sense economies in
mind ... the bauhaus made a thorough alphabetical house-cleaning in
all its printing, eliminating capitals from books, posters, catalogs,
magazines, stationery and even calling cards.
dropping capitals would be a less radical reform in english. indeed
the use of capital letters occurs so infrequently in english in
comparison with german that it is difficult to understand why such a
superfluous alphabet should still be considered necessary.["]
Now in German printing all nouns have capital letters. In the sentence
"A Dog chases a Cat into a Barn," dog, cat, barn are all capitalized.
No one can be blamed for wanting to be rid of so much capitalization.
But when Germans purge anything the innocent invariably suffer with
the guilty. Thus all capitals must go. While it may have overcome a
difficulty felt in Germany, this imported missionary zeal corrects
no difficulty in the printing of English prose or poetry. In some
instances such a custom brings about surprising results. Suppose,
for example, a newspaper says "the white house favors black and
prefers even green to a dyed-in-the-wool red." To make the sentence
intelligible would need the addition of a number of words--which would
not be _typographie économique_! We need labour this point no further
but leave these experiments to the advertising of Coty and Elizabeth
Arden. Such effects have what is called attention value--like Neon
signs--but I am not considering that kind of typography. I have,
however, here traced the source of a current fashion of printing signs
and advertisements without capital letters.
I have been classed by my work as a conservative, but I am a liberal
conservative or a conservative liberal--whichever you like or dislike.
All I wish to conserve, either in traditionalism or modernism, is
common sense. What little I have was gained by experience. I regard
many typographic experiments with good will and many traditional
viewpoints with tolerance. I agree wholeheartedly with neither. I
remember--or try to do so--that every generation has in turn to be
told that there was once a man named Caesar, who wrote a very dull
book called the _Commentaries_, of which the first sentence is all
that most people remember; that the makers of Baker's Chocolate did
not invent the familiar picture of a chocolate girl, which was an
eighteenth-century painting by Jean Etienne Liotard now in a Dresden
picture gallery, and that William Blake did not write, but only
illustrated, the Book of Job. We who have long known these things
forget that people are born not knowing them. We should therefore look
tenderly on many typographic experiments. To us elders they may seem
akin to lighting a fire with kerosene or applying one's tongue to metal
in zero temperatures, but it is by such unwise ventures that we outgrow
them. And as I have spent a long life learning, and to most questions
do not yet know the answers, I have no right to frown on more youthful
and enterprising enquirers.
Obviously some of the eccentricities of present-day typography are
a natural reflection of that rather tortured world in which we find
ourselves. If art, the drama, literature, and music reflect current
trends of life it is natural that printing should in a measure do
so. If we throw overboard old standards of conduct, we may far more
readily throw over old standards of taste. When one casts a convention
away as useless and outmoded, we often learn for the first time why
it was there! It is urged that fuller expression of individuality,
unhampered by rules, is development. It seems to me more accurate to
say that through the experience of trying these experiments development
comes--though not always of a kind expected. Such development
ought never to stop until in the exact sense of the word we are
"accomplished"--finished--which few live to be.
The _problem_ is to distinguish between a true development, and a
false one. In judging either modernistic or retrospective typography,
that is what must be decided. Do these developments--wise or otherwise,
produce a well-made and readable book--in short a good book? "In the
printing of books meant to be read," says an authority, "there is
little room for 'bright' typography. Even dullness and monotony in
the type-setting are far less vicious to a reader than typographical
eccentricity or pleasantry. Cunning of this sort is desirable, even
essential in the typography of propaganda, whether for commerce,
politics, or religion because in such printing only the freshest
survives inattention. But the typography of books, apart from the
category of narrowly limited editions, requires an obedience to
convention which is almost absolute--and with reason."
It is the fashion, just now, to decry typographic conventions. Some
conventions and traditions deserve to be decried and some have already
been laughed out of existence. There are, however, good and bad
conventions and traditions in printing, just as there are true and
false developments, and the trick is to know which is which! Convention
and particularly tradition are, generally, the crystallized result
of past experiments, which experience has taught us are valuable. In
some of the extreme modernistic typography a little more tradition
might come in handy. The trouble with the modernist is that he seems
afraid not to throw everything overboard and mistakes eccentricity for
emancipation. Thus some books of today seem to be the arrangement of a
perverse and self-conscious eccentricity. Such printing is often the
work of eager, ambitious, and inexperienced men, and because they are
young and God is good, one can afford to be patient; sure that they
will, in the long run, outgrow the teething, mumps, and measles of
typography. Their convalescence will possibly be hastened by meditating
on the saying of Lord Falkland that "when it is not necessary to
change, it is necessary not to change."
No movement ever accomplishes all that its first promoters intended
or hoped for; almost all movements make some lasting contributions to
our common stock. Every new idea, every new invention brings along with
its expected benefits unforeseen evils. Modernistic architecture is
at present exciting because new and unusual; when more common it will
become commonplace. When it becomes difficult to differentiate the
exterior of a modernistic church from a warehouse, we may get very,
very tired of it. Then a compensating reaction will set in and balance
will be restored. The same thing is true of modernistic typography.
At present, it shocks us into attention, but we get tired of being
shocked, for we do not want printing to surprise but to soothe us. The
modernist must remember, too, that "such a thing as an underivative
work of art does not and cannot exist, and no great master in the
arts has thought or asserted otherwise." We gladly admit that some
modernistic formulas have had good results. In architecture, perhaps to
some degree in typography, they have taught us to get rid of clutter
and useless ornamentation. But neither the one nor the other leads
anywhere--except to a dead end.
The conservative, however, need not think that all truth is on his
side. However much he tries to practise retrospective or "period"
typography, consciously or unconsciously his work will show the
influence of his time. Just as there is a popular idiom in speech which
varies in each decade, so there is a current idiom in printing. All
these idioms, literary and typographic, have not come to stay, but some
become accepted terms. Under Theodore Roosevelt we suffered from the
word "strenuous." President Harding inflicted the word "normalcy" on
American speech. We now have "reactions," and "contacts." Clergymen
"challenge" things, have "spiritual adventures," talk of "strategic
positions" for their parish houses and aid parochial charities by
"clarion calls," though if confronted with a "clarion" (if this
instrument exists outside of sermons) they would be quite unable to
blow it. All these catch-words and stock phrases are in the air. We
suffer much the same thing in typography, about which there is also a
new jargon which replaces the old _clichés_ of my youth about rhythm,
balance, and colour. Neither in speech nor printing can one make a
clean sweep of the past nor help being of the present, no matter how
hard one tries. I deplore violent attempts to make current printing
accord with the spirit of the age. It always has, always will, and does
now.
Nor need the conservative sniff at typographic experimentation. To
turn to another department of daily life, what would happen if no one
had ever tried experiments with food? In the distant past there was
the first human being who--as an experiment--ate an oyster, though
perhaps first trying jelly-fish with less comfortable results. Others
died of eating toadstools before people learned that they could survive
on mushrooms. Almost all our vegetable food we owe to gastronomic
adventurers. Thus the hide-bound conservative owes sustenance to the
fruits, and vegetables, of experiment.
To speak more seriously, both modernist and conservative should lay
to heart what Benedetto Croce says in his _Autobiography_ about "the
impossibility of resting on the results of past thought" and the
necessity of modesty in stating one's present position. "I see," he
writes, "a new crop of problems springing up in a field from which
I have but now reaped a harvest of solutions; I find myself calling
in question the conclusions to which I have previously come; and
these facts ... force me to recognize that truth will not let itself
be tied fast.... They teach me modesty towards my present thoughts,
which tomorrow will appear deficient and in need of correction, and
indulgence towards myself of yesterday or the past, whose thoughts,
however inadequate in the eyes of my present self, yet contained some
real element of truth; and this modesty and indulgence pass into a
sense of piety towards thinkers of the past, whom now I am careful not
to blame, as once I blamed them, for their inability to do what no man,
however great, can do ... to fix into eternity the fleeting moment."
There is, to the reasonable mind, no real quarrel between modernism and
traditionalism in printing, _except in degree_. Modernism must and does
influence the conservative in spite of himself--if by modernism we mean
a healthy awareness of the needs of the time in which we are living.
Tradition must and does influence the modernist, if by tradition
we mean patient and respectful appraisal of what that accumulation
of yesterdays, which we call the past, has to teach. It is only by
experience that we can effect a wise blend of the two. Then we produce
books which, while representing the best practice of our time, will
outlast it. The appraisal of their ultimate values we must leave to the
future.
"There is no past that we need long to return to," said Goethe, "there
is only the eternally new which is formed out of enlarged elements of
the past; and our real endeavor must always be towards new and better
creation."
COMPOSED IN BELL TYPES
[Illustration]PETER BEILENSON[Illustration]
_The Amateur Printer_:
HIS PLEASURES AND HIS DUTIES
From _Graphic Forms: The Arts As Related to the Book_. Copyright 1949
by Harvard University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Although the title of this piece is sufficiently long to be impressive
and important-sounding, all I really want to write about is printing as
fun. I am going to write about the amateur printer, and the amateur is
the fellow who has fun.
I do not wish to belittle the affection a professional printer may
have for his work. He should love his work. But he can love it only in
a different way: for after all he is essentially a businessman about
it. His work, like that of any other businessman, is something he has
to sit down to by nine in the morning and something he can't leave
until five at night. It is something that involves landlords and labor
unions, payrolls and tax inspectors, truckmen, office-boys, salesmen,
compositors, pressman, bindery workers--and customers. He has to worry
about payments, and depreciation, and publicity, and time sheets.
The professional has to concern himself with all these things which are
not printing at all, because he is in business and has to make money.
His primary yardstick of success as a professional is: _How much money
did we make last year?_ Of course he has other minor yardsticks of
success too: he may be successful because his presses turn out useful
things like timetables, or gratifying things like corporation reports
for the year, or beautiful things like four-color reproductions of
Varga girls. To make these things well is a kind of fun; and insofar
as the fun comes from the satisfaction in the thing itself rather
than in the profit that derives from it, I'd like to call it amateur
satisfaction.
But essentially our professional printer--and permit me to limit
myself to the professional book printer--is supposed to make money,
not to have fun. And he makes money best, nowadays, if his plant is
equipped with the efficient modern machinery which is designed for
maximum production. Such machinery is a wonderful creation of man;
it is thrilling to watch in action; and it gets results. But it has
its disadvantages. Now that mechanization is becoming more and more
complete in more and more places, we can begin to see clearly the
greatest disadvantage of all: under such mechanization individual
workers have lost pride and satisfaction in their work, because they
have become mere replaceable units of less and less importance; whereas
the machines they operate are more and more important, and have become
the essential units.
A generation ago the professional printer might have boasted of his
skilled compositors, who could set type more expertly, or his skilled
pressmen, who could make more careful overlays or match ink better
than someone else's craftsmen. Today he boasts of his remote-control
composing machines, his presses which come close to eliminating
make-ready altogether, and his ink supplier's new gadget which matches
colors scientifically. Today the most successful printer is the one
who with the least possible dependence on man-power, can keep the most
presses running fastest for the greatest number of hours per day and
days per year. He is not the one with the most skilled craftsmen.
In such a world, where the executive's function is to feed the machine
and the workman's is to tend it, the human spirit begins to cry out
for the fun in work which I have called the amateur satisfaction. It
is true that today's shorter working hours--which the machine makes
possible--permit people to have more outside fun; permit the manager to
play more golf, and the workman to play more softball (or more pinball)
in the late afternoon; it is true that more people now see more beer
advertised on more television programs, and may even drink more of it,
in the evenings. But managers and workmen alike turn so avidly to such
kinds of fun because they no longer get fun out of their daily work. It
is becoming harder and harder for people to equate work and happiness.
Now I do not set myself up as a social reformer dedicated to the dream
that all people should be happy in their work. Nor do I propose as a
step to this end that we revert, smash the wonderful machines, and go
back to the good old days when everyone really _did_ work with his
hands--usually from dawn to dark, six days a week. There was no pinball
or television then, but _still_ I do not wish to go back! Nor do I
suggest that the solution is the promised thirty-hour week, with all
the workmen driving their own Buicks home at two each afternoon, and
taking out the wife and kiddies to Braves Field or the Gardner Museum.
But I do suggest that some of you people who really love printing, but
are too involved with the nine-to-five daily business of it to enjoy
it much, should enrich your lives by becoming amateur printers in your
spare time. You will have fun.
* * * * *
I yield to no man in my boredom with vegetables and salads. I see
green at every meal save breakfast. I have eaten enough stringbeans
to stretch--if they were straightened out and laid end to end--from
Fordhook Nurseries in Delaware to the city of Burbank, California. If
you could see all the lettuce leaves I have consumed in my lifetime,
piled leaf on leaf and dripping in their oils, their vinegar, their
mayonnaise, and their roquefort dressings, you would be absolutely
appalled. But, bored as I am with green things on the table--bored
because despite their goodness they have been too plentiful and too
easily come by--I am not bored on those occasions when, like Candide,
I cultivate my garden, get my hands into the dirt, and smell God's
good fragrance in the loam. To watch the power of living things like
salad greens and stringbeans pushing their way out of the seed, up
through the earth, reaching down for water and up for sunlight with
an irresistible drive, is to realize afresh the power of life on
this planet. It is a reinvigorating and religious experience. It is
impossible to watch seeds grow into plants and flowers and fruit and
still to believe cynically in a mere mechanistic explanation for such
a life drive. To get back to the seed, the earth, and the root is to
re-experience the fun and meaning of life.
In the same way that I have become bored with salad, we have all
become bored with words, printed words. We have seen too many of
them, we have read too many of them, we have measured, or proofread,
or edited, or sold, too many of them. We have forgotten their primal
power, their irresistible living urge. We have forgotten that sincere
authors have not put them down on paper because of two cents a word or
10 per cent of the retail gross--that they have been written (in the
best cases) out of human necessity, human ebullience, human passion,
human sympathy, or human understanding. The industrial book-printing
world cannot ever think of words in that way. It must always think of
them as areas of type 22 by 28 picas, as numbers of pages which do or
do not make up a multiple of thirty-two, as units of sale at $3.00 less
40 per cent.
To go back to nature and become an amateur printer in such an
industrialized book world is like working in the garden when you
are bored with salad. You really get back to the roots of words.
If you are a genuine amateur printer, and set the type and print
the pages yourself, you actually can share in the creative agonies
and satisfactions of the author. For you put down his words, letter
for letter in your type-stick, just as he did with his quill or his
battered Remington. The best way on earth to appreciate an author and
his creative spirit (or for that matter to realize more quickly the
faults in him) is to pick him up letter by letter from a California
case. An even more acid test is to distribute the type after printing
him. In such a case you pick up half a dozen lines of type at once and
work backwards, distributing the last word of the last line first. It
is a revelation how the hollowness of an author can show up under this
treatment. It is especially cruel to poets, for every word which is not
really necessary, which is there just for padding or for a rhythm or
a rhyme, becomes as noticeable as the well-known sore thumb. But the
genuine, sincere author with a pure style stands up beautifully under
such treatment, and has his reward in your pleasure at this discovery.
After you have set your author's type you must make up his pages,
choose his decorations or illustrations, and set his headings. You must
decide whether to stretch him to twenty-four pages or condense him to
sixteen. You must buy his paper, lock up his pages in your chase, make
him ready, curse your press which is printing him, apply your ink to
his words, and impress him for posterity. Perhaps you will thereafter
fold him, sew him, and encase him in boards.
In so doing, you become, to the extent of sixteen or twenty-four
pages, in an edition of one hundred or three hundred copies, God. You
have created something which did not exist before, and which would not
have existed save for your thinking brain and tired back and dirty
hands. True, you have not created Heaven and Earth, and you have
undoubtedly worked at your creation for more than the original quota of
six days. But anyway you have given the world something which was at
first only words you loved, and is now a whole, real book, which you
love all the more because it is your book, your child, your embodiment
of those words. That is the fun and satisfaction of being an amateur.
In our printing world there is no other satisfaction equal to it.
* * * * *
Good old Ralph Waldo Emerson was mortally right when he wrote down his
doctrine of Compensation. His doctrine of Compensation says that every
pleasure carries some penalty, every gain some kind of loss. Every duty
accepted gives you a satisfaction, and every satisfaction received
involves you in a duty. Thus far I have written of the satisfaction of
your being an amateur printer. Now I wish to write of your duty and
obligation.
The amateur book printer has a duty which, if he will accept it, will
in the long run return to him the greatest satisfaction. This duty is
to teach the professional, by example, about the outer cultural world,
and to experiment for him in matters of printing style. Now this is
directly contrary to what ninety out of one hundred current amateurs
would seem to think, and I must therefore beg their ninety pardons if I
disturb their habits of mind.
Most amateurs either don't trouble their minds about problems of
printing style at all, or else they fall too easily into the habit
of working in the Colonial style, or Venetian style, or some other
historical style, rather than in a contemporary one. Maybe they do so
for psychological reasons. And maybe not. I am too set in my diction
to learn the trick of talking in psychological terms. I would express
their case like this: Amateurs who work in historical styles do so
because they are romantics, romantics who turn away from the impersonal
machine world of the present for a breath of the more human and
glamorous-seeming past. I sympathize with such an instinct, and hold
myself ready to defend any man who seeks to re-inject a human element
into the printing craft.