Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design

222 Pages·2003·13.2 MB·English

by  Walter Tracy

WA .LTER TR.ACY
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WALTER TRACY
L E T T E R S
i f C R E D I T
A Viewif1jpe Desi[jn
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D AviD G o DIN£
Publisher · Boston
First U.S. hardcover edition published in I 9 8 6 by
DAVID R. GoDINE, Publisher
Post Office Box 4 5o
Jaffrey, New Hampshire o 3 4 52
WWW.GODINE.COM
First published in the U.K. in I 9 8 6 by
the Gordon Fraser Gallery Ltd., London and Bedford
Copyright© r 9 8 6 by Walter Tracy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Tracy, Walter.
Letters of credit.
r. Type and type-founding-History-2oth century
2. Type and type-founding. I. Title
Z25o.A2T73 1986 686.2'24 86-9767
ISBN 1-56792-240-6
Typeset in Monophoto Saban by August Filmsetting, Haydock, St. Helens
Origination by The Westerham Press Ltd. Westerham, Kent
Designed by Peter Guy
First softcover printing, 200 3
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements 9
PART I
Aspects of type design
I The vocabulary of type I3
2 Type measure 2I
3 Types for study 26
4 Legibility and readability 30
5 The making of type 32
6 Proportion 48
7 The forms of letters 56
8 Secondary types: italic, bold face 6I
9 Numerals 67
IO Character spacing 70
II The slab-serif So
The sans-serif
I2 84
PART II
Some designers and their types
I3 The types of Jan van Krimpen IOI
I4 Some types by Frederic Goudy I2I
I 5 Three types by Rudolf Koch I 53
I6 The types of W. A. Dwiggins I74
I7 Stanley Morison's Times Roman I94
Prospec~ 2I3
List of works consulted 2I5
Index 220

TO FRANCES

Preface and acknowledgements
In my apprentice days, when I aspired to be a typographer and
was learning about type faces, I realised after a time that the
accumulation of facts about them, squirrel-fashion, was not
enough. It was necessary to acquire a sense of values and to
develop the ability to make judgements about the quality of the
type faces I was using. I was therefore grateful to Updike,
Morison, Johnson and others who, in their writings, not only
explained the history of type designs but expressed opinions
about them. If I sometimes found it difficult to accept a particular
comment I was at least pleased that the writer had made me think
about the matter. Now, after more than fifty years of involve
ment with type, it has occurred to me that, without trying to
emulate the scholarship of the writers I have mentioned, I should
set down a few thoughts of my own, in the hope that they may be
useful to a reader who is fairly new to the subject, has an interest
in type and perhaps some acquaintance with it, thinks (as I do)
that it is more important to be able to judge the quality of designs
than to have an encyclopedic knowledge of them, but does not
yet feel sufficiently equipped to make a confident assessment of
the merits of a type. I have supposed that he or she may be
bewildered by the number and variety of type faces now current,
suspicious of the high-powered promotion of some of them, and
disappointed that the journals that deal with typography do not
provide the same sort of critical analysis of type designs as is
given to new literature and the performing arts in the general
press. So I have chosen to describe some aspects of the nature of
type that have a bearing on the design of it, and then to offer a
personal appraisal of the work of four twentieth-century desig
ners, to which I have added a view of Stanley Morison's single,
but very significant, venture in the field.
The pages that follow, then, are a compound of fact and
opinion. I am sure the reader will have no difficulty in recog
nising one from the other, and would not wish me to say 'in my
opinion' every time I have a comment to make. At the same time,
I hope the reader will keep it in mind that an opinion is not an
absolute truth, a gospel from on high. To quote from John
Rothenstein's Modern English Painters:' . .. there exists no such
quality as perfect detachment. All writers worth reading have an
attitude towards their subject ... If the reader knows where a
writer stands, he will be able to make the necessary allowance for
his bias.' For my own part, I take the view that typography, like
most other sorts of designing, is essentially a means to an end;
and the end is not the self-satisfaction of the designer but the
contribution he or she makes to the effectiveness of whatever is
-ro presented to the public. The use of type is a matter of taste as well
Preface and as sense; and the fact that typographic letter forms are an inex
acknowledgements haustible source of interest and pleasure is a thing to be grateful
for.
In the course of this work I have realised again how fortunate I
have been in the people I have known. I think of James Shand,
excellent printer, adventurous publisher, and good friend, in
whose company I discerned that taste is thought, not just fancy. I
think with affection of Harry Smith, who was for many years in
charge of Linotype's type drawing office at Altrincham and had
himself drawn the production drawings of the admirable Gran
jon, Georgian and other faces under the keen eye of George W.
Jones. It was from Harry Smith that I learnt about the process of
translating a design into actual type. I think too of colleagues in
the Mergenthaler Linotype office in New York, particularly Paul
Bennett and Jackson Burke, who made me aware of people and
events in the American typographic scene.
In the preparation of this book I have had the benefit of inform
ation and material from a number of friendly people, and I am
glad to express my gratitude to them: to Abe Lerner and Kit
Currie, for practical encouragement and much kindness; to
James Mosley, for directing me to useful sources, and to the staff
of the St Bride Printing Library for their unfailing assistance; to
Matthew Carter, Sem Hartz, Ruari McLean, Vivian Ridler and
Berthold Wolpe, for reading parts of the text and offering valu
able comment; to Rollo Silver for helpful information and ad
vice; to Fiona Ross for translations; to John Dreyfus for the loan
of Nonesuch items; to Walter Greisner for the gift of Klingspor
specimen books; to Gertraude Benohr for information relating to
Jakob Erbar; to Nicholas Biddulph for informing me of the
Futura patterns; to Steve Byers of Mergenthaler New York for
specimen books and for copies of some Dwiggins items; to
Maurits Enschede for his interest and co-operation, to Joh.
Enschede en Zonen for special settings of types by Jan van Krim
pen, and to Bram de Does for supervising them; to Jerry Kelly and
A. Colish Inc. of Mount Vernon for a setting of the World Bible
Newstyle face; to D. Stempel AG for prints of digitised faces; to
the Houghton Library at Harvard for permission to quote from
WAD to RR; and to the University of Kentucky Libraries to
quote from material in their C. H. Griffith archive.
A version of the essay on the types of Jan van Krimpen was
published in Fine Print, in April and July r98r. The essay on
Dwiggins's types was the basis for a talk given at the annual
conference of the American Printing History Association in
September 1983, and the study of the Times Roman type was
drawn upon for lectures at Yale and Columbia Universities in the
same month.
W.T.
PART I
Aspects of type design