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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

Design in Typography. — Lx. — Conclusion

page 149

Design in Typography.
Lx.
Conclusion.

Last, but not final, » is the suggestive title of the last chapter of a popular story. Such might appropriately be the heading of the chapter which brings this series of articles to a close. We have filled up the scheme on which we started. Beginning with the general principles of display, we went on to the consideration in detail of the material with which the typographer works. To carry out this plan it was necessary to classify, in systematic manner, the different styles of type, plain and ornamental, and the various classes of decorative material. In this latter department it became necessary to lay down the principles on which type combinations are constructed, and these were gradually developed, from the primitive elements—the right line and the border of one character—to the most complex combinations. In the whole of this investigation we were on new ground, at least so far as English trade literature is concerned. In our German trade contemporaries we have often met with articles dealing in minute detail with particular branches of the subject; but even in the voluminous technical literature of the Fatherland we know of no treatise occupying so wide a ground as we have taken. It has been our endeavor to treat this wide subject in a systematic manner; and instead of following the ordinary course, and laying down innumerable arbitrary rules of detail, to trace in all cases the general principles which should guide the intelligent workman, and which will give him a complete framework upon which he may construct his own rules. When once the habit is formed of tracing back all effects to the unalterable principles which underlie artistic design, and observance of which makes all the distinction between good work and bad, the compositor can unhesitatingly give in every case a sound reason for the line he is adopting. There is an end to chaotic and hap-hazard work, and every type inserted is used with a clear and definite object, and with due regard to the whole design. For the system of classification throughout, and the general principles developed, we are not indebted to any preceding writer. For the whole scheme of the work, and all its details, except where an authority is definitely acknowledged, the editor is responsible.

That this series of articles has in a measure filled a vacant place in craft literature has been recognized by our leading trade contemporaries, and the suggestion has been made in more than one quarter that they should be reprinted in separate form. This, for several reasons, we do not intend to do. In the first place, the chapters being written from month to month, there is not only a good deal of repetition, but an unavoidable want of proportion in the treatment of the subject; and the fact that the illustrations were taken, not from the resourses of a typefoundry or a typographic museum, but from a private printing-plant, far remote from any manufactory, also tended to unequal treatment. While, for example, eight chapters were devoted to vignettes and vignette combinations, and twelve to the ribbon and its developments—exhaustively treated and profusely illustrated, and occupying one-third of the whole work, two large fields of typographical design, the Architectural and the Renaissance, which have occupied the most gifted artists and enterprising founders for some years past, were accorded only a chapter each, and were very imperfectly illustrated. The reason, we need hardly say, is, that the subject is one which absolutely requires illustration. In the one case we had abundance of material, in the other we had not. Again, we necessarily close the series of articles with a fuller and wider knowledge of the subject than we possessed when we wrote the first chapter five years ago. Should we ever reprint the series, we would entirely re-write and very greatly extend the chapters addressed to the compositor on the general principles of design.

We may mention that we have in manuscript a considerable part of a work that, if it be completed, will embody the whole of the useful matter in these articles, as well as the complementary material contained in our monthly review of type specimens. The valuable Dictionary now being issued in the United States, and ably edited by Mr Pasko, is however, in some respects, on the same lines as our own work, and will occupy the field for years to come.

One object of these articles has been to some extent, though only imperfectly, fulfilled—the bringing about of closer relations between the printer and the typefounder. The colonial printer has been, in nearly all cases, entirely in the hands of the colonial agent. The new products of about sixty different typefoundries are regularly noted and criticised in our pages: not one-fourth of these houses are known to New Zealand or Australian printers through local agencies. Not one colonial house, so far as we know, possesses the magnificent combinations by Woellmer or Berger (now Reinhold) so often referred to in our pages—they have never even seen them. Let our readers, in proof of our contention, run through the list of a single class of combinations—the Renaissance—in our last chapter, and reckon how many come within their own knowledge: and that list is not a complete one. We are glad to know that the sample lines shown from time to time in our pages have led to business: for example, Rudhard's pretty « Fantasie » combination, shown by us last February, and which would otherwise have remained unknown to New Zealand printers, is now in a number of offices in this colony. But while our paper has thus been of service both to typefounders and colonial printers, it has not been very popular with the colonial printers' brokers, who naturally dislike direct dealings. It is the custom of some of these houses to suppress, as far as possible, the name of the manufacturers of the types and machinery they import; and with two or three creditable exceptions, they decline to advertise in our pages. It is just as well that printers and manufacturers should know the reason.

Reverting, therefore, to our text, we trust that this chapter, though « last, » is not « final. » During the past year in particular, typefounders have shown in a practical manner their recognition of Typo as a technical organ, independent of all manufacturing houses and importing agencies, and as a valuable means of bringing their novelties before the colonial trade. So that it is quite probable that in months to come, many new lines of job-letter and handsome combinations may be illustrated as well as criticised in our columns, to the advantage alike of the colonial printer and of the distant manufacturer.