The Typography of Newspaper Advertisement. (Bean. £2 2s.) is a
plea by a distinguished typographer, Mr. Francis Meynell, for recognition of that new specialist in the intelligent design of printed matter—Cicero pro domo sud, in fact. The plea is effective. The plain truth is that the improvement in the art of type-designing and type arrangement of these last three decades has come mainly from outside, from the amateur. Among the most original and lively minded of these amateurs is the writer and designer of this book, which contains besides a plausible excursion into the theory and helpful notes on the modem practice of type-arrangement, examples of fifty-four well designed types of varying colour and character ; a table for calculating the number of words of any given type that go to the square inch ; and some seventy pages of displayed advertisements " for comparison and in most cases for admiration," with comments. It would, perhaps, have been better if the comments had been given in more generous measure—they seem, indeed, to have been fitted in wherever a chosen advertisement was small enough to allow space for them—which is hardly a logical principle. Here is an epitome of current advertising practice in presenta- tion and a concrete proof of the pains and brains and taste that have gone to the making of the remarkable progress of these past few years.
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