Applied Design for Printers.

by Harry Lawrence Gage.

FOREWORD

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.

It has been often written that there are no rules in Art, and equally often that the master artist (or craftsman) is he who can skillfully break all rules. It must be inevitable that the apprentice shall adhere too closely to each newly observed principle before his work can be a well-rounded embodiment of them all. To him is commended this exact procedure, recognizing, as his perception grows, that there are good reasons why traditions are emphasized here and all-embracing rules and formulae are not to be found.

Due credit must be paid to Mr. Ernest Allen Batchelder, who first devoted his pen and brush directly to the printer's problem in design, and who in turn gives honor to the influence of Mr. Denman Ross. Neither has expressed a method but has graphically a.n.a.lyzed the att.i.tude of mankind during successive epochs toward those matters which deal with beauty.

It is to be hoped that this little book may serve as a simple guide and as a stimulant toward an extended study of the larger attributes of printing which are not concerned with utility alone. H. L. G.

_Introductory_

Raw material may be made into a finished product which will have the quality of usefulness alone. Utility is the first purpose of most of the works of man. But when the maker is moved by pride in his work and a desire for beauty to make his handiwork pleasing in appearance as well as useful a second purpose is fulfilled. All civilization and most forms of savagery demand that the equipment of routine life shall be pleasing to the eye after its prime purpose of usefulness has been developed.

If an article be pleasing in appearance its making will have involved some of the elements of design. The relationship of its parts, the lines of its construction, its coloring, the manner in which it is ornamented will depend first upon its purpose, but will be guided by a group of recognized traditions which we call the _principles of design_.

Design governs the arrangement of ma.s.ses, lines, and dots to secure the qualities of beauty and fitness.

Any piece of work which is definitely arranged with consideration for its various parts and their relationship is called, in the abstract, a "design." Thus we speak of a poster, a decorated wall, a building, or a printed page as "a design."

Any successful design will have the qualities of fitness and beauty.

Fitness to purpose is largely a mechanical factor. An ugly building may protect its occupants from the weather, and an ugly printed page may be entirely legible. Beauty depends upon esthetic qualities; that is, upon the characteristics of the design which will appeal to the eye and mind through the consideration of--

Harmony (of shape, tone, color, and conception).

Balance and proportion (of ma.s.s, shape, and color).

Rhythm (of shape, line, tone, and color).

This conception of the elements of design covers all of the many things that mankind makes--buildings, or railroad trains, or sculpture, or paintings, or pottery, or furniture, or the printed page alike. In each, different though they be, the purpose of design is to relate the various surfaces, ma.s.ses, and structural lines and to decorate or ornament the finished whole. Countless materials may be used and all the varied purposes of the equipment of mankind must be satisfied, but the application of the principles of design will be similar throughout. This point is emphasized so that the student of printing may find a common ground with the workers in all the fine and useful arts.

_The Surface_

In the printed page, design is concerned with the arrangement of ma.s.ses and lines on a flat surface--the face of the sheet of paper. Hence design in printing considers two dimensions only, width and length. The third dimension, depth, which must be treated in all but flat surfaces, can only be _represented_ on the printed page and the means of showing depth is really an illusion by which the eye sees various colors and tones which convey a pictorial impression.

It is important to note that _design_ and _pictorial representation_ serve each a different purpose in printing. Yet they are similar mechanically in that each requires a printing surface (type, borders, ornaments, and engravings) which may be prepared by the same mechanical procedures. The picture exists for its own interest or as an ill.u.s.tration for the text. As such it is merely an element in the design of the page. Decoration or ornament may be used to embellish the page, as a pattern on its flat surface, and may be related to the text, but need not serve as an ill.u.s.tration to it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1. A design of flat surfaces and a realistic pen sketch of the same subject.]

As an example: Much of the material devised for the decoration of the printed page (ornaments and borders) is derived from natural forms; i. e., leaves, flowers, etc. The leaves, stems, and flowers which are adapted to form the ornament shown in Fig. 1 are a flat pattern of black and white.

The same material is rendered pictorially in the pen sketch accompanying the ornament. It will be observed that the flat treatment of the ornament depends upon arrangement of interesting flat ma.s.ses for its significance. The pen sketch not only conveys an impression of the form of the natural objects, but it also suggests depth. A photograph of the natural objects, reproduced by a printing plate, would be still more realistic.

The preceding points have been given emphasis as a warning against a tendency to use pictures, however pleasing, as decorative material; or to allow design in printing to be concerned with a representation of depth. The same ma.s.ses of shadow and light which express roundness or depth in a picture may be formed into decorative flat ma.s.ses and thus embodied in the design of the page. In Fig. 2, A is a picture which might be used as an ill.u.s.tration or for its own interest. B is a flat rendering whose arrangement of ma.s.ses suggests the pictorial interest of A without denying the flat surface upon which it is printed.

_The Materials of Design_

Since design is a matter of arrangement, its materials are the _ma.s.ses_, _lines_, and _dots_ which make up the whole form.

A dot theoretically has no dimensions. And a line (being the path of a dot in motion) theoretically has length but no width. While if a line be moved sideways it produces a _ma.s.s_ which has area and shape.

Practically, a dot may be larger than a pin point and may have definite shape--a square dot or a round dot. Also in the common terms of design a line may have width (often called weight). Thus we speak of a narrow or light line as contrasted with a wide or heavy line.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2, A. Halftone engraving from a photograph, retaining full pictorial effect of depth, expressed in various gray tones and soft edges. This is an ill.u.s.tration.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2, B. Decorative pen drawing from the same subject, telling the story of the photograph in flat surfaces of black and white.

Suitable to decorate a type page.]

A ma.s.s will have shape, which is the impression conveyed to the eye by its general contour. It will have size or measure, which will be its actual or relative area. It will further have tone or color, its general relation in appearance to black and white or to the colors of the spectrum. Embodying these terms in an example: We may specify a ma.s.s square in shape, having an area of four square inches, and being gray in tone. These three characteristics, then, will identify and describe any ma.s.s.

In printing, the successive lines of type which form a paragraph, block, or connected series of paragraphs or blocks, are considered as a ma.s.s.

An initial letter may be another ma.s.s; a head-band still another; and ornaments or ill.u.s.trations may form other ma.s.ses. All must be considered as ma.s.s elements in the design of the page, with rule borders as surrounding lines, or heavier designed borders as surrounding ma.s.ses.

Thus all the component parts of the printed page are reduced to elements or materials of design, and with these materials an arrangement is to be made, for the sake of beauty, which will have the qualities of harmony, balance, proportion, and rhythm.

_The Qualities of Design_

The dictionary defines _harmony_, in art, as "a normal state of completeness in the relation of things to each other." This "state of completeness" in a harmonious scheme is such that we have no desire to change or modify any detail or characteristic.

_Balance_ is defined as "the state of being in equilibrium." In design this refers to the equilibrium or balance of attraction to the eye between the various ma.s.ses.

_Proportion_ is "the comparative relation of one thing to another" with respect to size.

_Rhythm_, in design, "is a movement characterized by regular recurrence of accent."

Let us discover the embodiment of these qualities of design with a simple experiment. Cut from black, dark gray, and light gray cover paper a miscellaneous a.s.sortment of small pieces as shown in Fig. 3. This group of squares, oblongs, triangles, diamonds, circles, and whatnot has none of the qualities of design as it appears in Fig. 3.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3. A group of miscellaneous ma.s.ses having various measures, shapes, and tones. Arranged without thought of design.]

Choose from Fig. 3 certain pieces which seem to have a definite similarity of shape. Combine them with another rectangle, as in Fig. 4, and the result is certainly more orderly and pleasing than the unrelated tangle in Fig. 3. In Fig. 4 we have developed the quality of _shape harmony_.

But we note that in spite of the harmony of shapes in Fig. 4 some of the pieces of paper seem unduly prominent because of their blackness. They do not seem harmonious with the gray tone of the others. If we replace them with other pieces gray in color, as in Fig. 5, the result will be a more pleasing relationship of tone throughout the design. Thus we have made a simple demonstration of _tone harmony_.