Font Bureau Type 101 | Mike Parker’s Story of Type: Plantin, de Sanlecque, & Le Bé
The Printing Press of the Royal Irish Rifles
From the February 19th, 1897 publication of The Navy and Army Illustrated, a remarkable photo by J. Thompson of a military field print shop. The following copy accompanied the photo: “The above is a capital illustration of a regimental printing press, as used by the Irish Royal Rifles. As will be seen by a glance at the picture, it contains all the necessary requisites for printing, with none of the drawbacks usually pertaining to that industry. The surroundings differ somewhat from the usual run of “Printing Offices,” by which high-sounding title the little tent in which it stands is named. In a good many regiments a monthly newspaper is published, and it is chiefly for this purpose that these printing presses are used in the army. This paper, as a rule, gives the result of regimental football or cricket matches, as well as reports of theatricals, dances, suppers, notices of promotions in the regiment, or medals earned, a record of the marches,with the various stopping places, and official regimental notices. The possession of a press by the 1st Royal Irish Rifles gives evidence of the up-to-date, go-ahead spirit which prevails in the corps.”
The Printing Press of the Royal Irish Rifles (by typesticker)
Moby Dick, the Arion Press edition
A masterpiece of American book design and literature, as reprinted for a general audience by University of California Press (via Fonts In Use – Moby Dick, the Arion Press edition)
Only the ‘Time Flies’ chronological section is fully updated. There are well over 1,000 covers in the archive. I keep adding to the collection, but can only ever represent a fraction of what’s out there.
This archive is about graphic design. I’ve attempted to label each cover with a date and, where possible, a designer (or design firm). The designs are the publisher’s property, and are here as an educational tool and as things to be enjoyed.
The Penguin Shakespeare: 1947 & 1949, in a Flickr set dedicated to Penguin books, designed by Jan Tschichold for the most part.
The Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire, an experimental layout by Hans Schmoller (posted by David Pearson)
![typographisme:
“This is a quotation from William Morris as drawn by Jean Larcher in 1993. [Courtesy of Letter Exchange Magazine, issue number 6.]”Something for the weekend – William Morris « ALL ABOUT LETTERING](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ld7m9eRBhB1qei29so1_500.jpg)
“This is a quotation from William Morris as drawn by Jean Larcher in 1993. [Courtesy of Letter Exchange Magazine, issue number 6.]”
Something for the weekend – William Morris « ALL ABOUT LETTERING
![I took this picture at the letterpress workshop I’ll be attending weekly from now on. These cases are a tiny sample of all the fonts available.
[Elzévir (by Mitternacht)]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9651xy4pA1qd0nivo1_500.jpg)
I took this picture at the letterpress workshop I’ll be attending weekly from now on. These cases are a tiny sample of all the fonts available.
[Elzévir (by Mitternacht)]
Though William Morris’ attempts to go back to the early days of printing to create the “ideal book” did not bear many fruits, anyone interested in typography, printing or Arts & Craft movement will surely enjoy the few essays collected in The Art and Craft of Printing. If I had to sum up Morris’ contribution to typography, I would say that he had actually identified the flaws of the typography of his time, but, driven by aesthetics more than by a deep-down study of the early printers, the solutions he proposed were more based on copying the old way than on a real understanding of its laws—and that he was far too influenced by his experience as a textile designer (but that’s just my opinion). William Morris’ books were the exact opposite of the later modernists’ ideal of economic design—large books, with dark pages and heavy ornamentation. But I would be unfair if I didn’t mention, on the other hand, that he contributed to the revival of early types, paid extreme attention to word-spacing (words tended to be too widely spaced at the time) and researched the best ways to improve legibility with some success. In any case, something had to be done at the time, and though his way was not followed by many he did a very necessary job. For a sample of Morris’ production and details about his Golden Type, I posted the first page of The Nature of Gothic some time ago.
In three essays—“A note on founding the Kelmscott Press”, “The ideal book” and “An essay on printing”—William Morris explains how he came to define the rules he used at the Kelmscott Press, covering every aspect of printing, including type (he ended creating his own revival of a 15th century type), spacing, composition, margins, illustrations and borders, page size and paper. As his work has a clear historical orientation, he goes through the history of printing since Gutenberg’s Forty-two line Bible with a grave, undisguised bias in favor of the early printers—according to Morris, the decline of the art of printing started as soon as early 16th century. The degradation went apace until printing could not be worsened, at which point the quality of paper began to decline, too. For Morris, typography and printing were an absolute disaster at his time. Though he clearly has a point here, as late 19th century was definitely not the best period of these arts, the way Morris rejects practically everything that was done after the end of the Incunabula era will certainly put a smile on any modern reader’s face:
The Italian, Bodoni, and the Frenchman, Didot, were the leaders in this luckless change, though our own Baskerville, who was at work some years before them, went much on the same lines; but his letters, though uninteresting and poor, are not nearly so gross and vulgar of either the Italian or the Frenchman.
It seems to me that in this utter rejection lies the reason why his work lead to a dead-end; regenerating typography required more than trusting his own taste—or disgust—and implied a careful study of all the avatars of typography in order to uncover the logic behind the “grossness” and “vulgarity” of Didot’s and Bodoni’s characters. Also, his heavy use of borders and illustrations inspired from medieval manuscripts, as beautiful as they may be, prevented his vision of typography from acquiring the universality which is necessary to set long-term bases.
The Art and Craft of Printing is now in public domain and can be freely downloaded in various formats from Project Gutenberg (pick a version with images).
To know more about the various facets of the man (who was also a textile designer, a writer, an artist and a socialist): William Morris page on the Wikipedia.
“This primer of design is an earnest effort to make intelligible to the apprentice student certain fundamental principles of arrangement and of ornamentation whose use is instinctive to the accomplished typographer.”
—Harry L. Gage, Applied Design for Printers, a handbook of the principles of arrangement, with brief comments on the periods of design which have most strongly influenced printing,, 1920, Committee on Education, United Typothea of America.
This short handbook gathers a few sound design principles, described in simple and systematic terms, dealing with balance, rhythm, symmetry (or lack of) and use of ornament, all illustrated by many useful graphics. But from a historical perspective (never forget when the book was written while reading), this manual is also a first-hand look into what typography became over the course of 19th century, and what the design issues were in the United States in 1920. A very pleasant way to spend an evening.
The book is now in public domain and can be freely downloaded in various formats from Project Gutenberg. Pick a version with images, otherwise you will miss 60% of the book.