The Art of Printing
As a means of livelihood the occupation of typographer came into being after the 1914-1918 war ; now there must be hundreds work- ing at it. Printing became conscious of the economic possibilities of design at much the same time as other industries producing in the mass, though printing, unlike the others, is by its nature mass production. Before 1918 design as a distinct proceeding in the making of a printed article was rare ; and it was done amateurishly, that is to say, for the love of the thing, either by an amateur or as a side-line by a person having some other function in the industry. There were publisher-typographers, author-typographers and a very few master-printer typographers. I believe it may truly be said that the few master printers who designed were amateurs, for there was little economic incentive to it. When there was no designer, the compositor followed conventional rules, written and unwritten. What little scope for fancy that was left was almost always put to bad use ; for compositors, though they are educated men, have very seldom developed into designers.
Whatever the reason, and for good or ill, the professional typo- graphers of to-day are much more often ex-amateurs than ex- journeymen. They continue the tradition of the private Presses and the scholar-printers of the previous centuries of printing. Such technical knowledge as they begin with comes from owning hand presses and from manuals, since most of the printing schools ex- clude them owing to trade-union restrictions. I suspect that one great advantage of the amateur as designer of printing is his ignor- ance of rules in matters of style. Having been told during appren- ticeship, for instance, that a certain class of matter must be set in Clarendon type, the journeyman printer is apt to regard that point as excluded from the field for intelligent criticism. Many con- ventions of display and choice of type and ornament are matters
of fashion ; so that all but the basic aesthetic principles are apt soon to be recipes for " period" flavouring.
I am sorry, therefore, that Mr. Simon's introduction should take so largely the form of a sketch for an improved code of correct style. It is too technical a beginning. It is true that the success of his own designing is intimately connected with its execution by a team of highly-skilled workmen in his Press, whom he has helped to train by establishing intelligent rules • their routine has the good manners that distinguish good applicl design. But without Mr. Simon to supply the imaginative content, the result would be good printing, but not, as I understand the word, typography. Mr. Simon was one of the first typographers, and he is now one of the two or three best known by his work. His observations on the choice of conventional solutions of the problems in book production will have, I believe, a wholesome influence on the trade ; but the book ought to have been bigger, so that he could have given his reasons. When, for example, he writes: " Use single quotation marks 0 outside and double Only for quotations within quotations," I, for one, ask : " Why? " A wide and interesting field is left for Mr. Simon, I hope, to cover in future publications.
H. G. CARTER.
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