Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design
Walter Tracy
Language: English
Pages: 219
ISBN: 0879236361
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
THE REVOLUTION in typesetting - a revolution that over the past two decades has eliminated a five-hundred-year-old system of hot metal production and replaced it with one of photo-generated and computer-driven composition - shows no sign of winding down. This book, more than any other we know, traces the steps that went into that revolution and simultaneously makes the argument that the letter forms themselves are in process of evolution. Tracy argues that, whether they are of the sixteenth or the twentieth century, the forms that comprise our alphabet are subject to the same rules of good taste, proportion, and clarity that have always obtained. But what we face today is vastly different from fifty years ago. For the first time, new technology has made the proliferation (and, as some would maintain, debasement) of letter forms fast and easy (or quick and dirty.)
With fifty years of professional experience on both sides of the Atlantic (including thirty years as head of type design for the British Linotype Company), Tracy is in a unique position to make this argument and arrive at his sad conclusion: the design of distinguished, contemporary typefaces is far outnumbered by the mediocre and downright bad. Part of the reason for this deplorable deterioration is a lack of critical analysis of the particular esthetics involved. This step-by-step examination of type-design esthetics is precisely what Tracy provides here, while avoiding both the promoter's hype and the manufacturer's claims. Here are the gut issues of what makes type good or bad, legible or unreadable. Extensively illustrated with both typefaces and line drawings, this book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in thehistory of letters or in the artistry and peculiar problems that lie behind their production.
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Determined by the uniform design characteristics of all letters in the alphabet. However, this alone does not determine the standard of the type face and the quality of composition set with it. The appearance Linotype Ionic was the progenitor of several faces, including Textype, shown here. The type size is the same, and there is hardly any change in the size of the capitals. The distinct difference in appearance is due to the lowercase x-height. -srProportion SIMONE HATS are extremely unusual.
Easy because they did not have to keep making new sets of drawings; it was relaxing to be able to escape from the desk and drawing board to the restful company of the solitary craftsman and sit there for hours at a time, talking as creative artist to executant; it was stimulating because the type-cutter's technical questions forced the designer to become aware of and to formulate his motives, intentions and perceptions, so that perhaps ideas also came to him more easily than when he judged the.
Years AgoourFathersbrought Goudy Open. structure. The chief significance of Goudy Open now is that it was the foundation of one of Goudy's best-known types, his Goudy Modern, which will be examined on a later page. The last of the advertising types selected for notice here is one of Goudy's best designs: the Goudy Heavy Face of 1925. The Cooper Black which had been introduced by the Barnhart -rJI- Some types by Frederic Goudy -132Some designers and their types Brothers foundry not long.
At all true; on the contrary, I do my best to avoid such expressionism. Only I am not always successful. Even in this case I have not succeeded.' (Whether or not that was a bad thing remains to be seen.) It is my impression that the Kabel sans-serif type - for it was that that Koch was referring to- was not the outcome of a long-held personal desire to add ruler and compass to his familiar lettering pens and woodcutting knives (how could such an artist, or anyone else, for that matter, develop.
Redesigning of the type, not a straight recutting of the nineteenthcentury original, as Morison appeared to think. However, he was certainly right to dismiss Ionic as unsuited to the particular character of The Times. In November I930 he submitted a memorandum in which the argument for the revision of the typography of The Times was set out against a background of the history and nature of type designs and recent studies in legibility. It referred to, but did not describe, an experimental type.