Lettering for Commercial Purposes
A 1918 trade instruction book by sign and show card writer Wm. Hugh Gordon, published in Cincinnati by The Signs of the Times Publishing Co., publisher of a display advertising journal.
What it is
A 1918 trade instruction book by sign and show card writer Wm. Hugh Gordon, published in Cincinnati by The Signs of the Times Publishing Co., publisher of a display advertising journal. Across 22 chapters and more than 180 plates of his own everyday shop work, Gordon teaches hand lettering as a paid trade. He sorts all letters into four families (Gothic, Roman, Text, Italic), then covers brushes, pens and colours, card layout and balance, letter anatomy, numerals, single-stroke methods and speed. Every lesson is judged by four tests set out in the foreword: simple form, least effort in least time, effective arrangement, and a letter style that suits the subject. Later chapters describe the department store card writer's working day, flat poster-style drawing for cards, and how Los Angeles card shops letter film titles. The closing plates show finished commercial cards, including a Winton motor car notice.
Why read it now
Read it for the argument, not the brush drills. Three of Gordon's points still hold. Arrangement beats perfect letters: he says a clever layout gets noticed where fine lettering, badly arranged, is passed by, which is what designers now teach as visual hierarchy. Bold, plain letters beat thin hairline styles at a distance, and research on processing fluency agrees: easy-to-read type makes a claim seem more true (Reber and Schwarz, 1999) and a task seem easier (Song and Schwarz, 2008). Lettering should suit the product, light for jewellery and heavy for steel, and Doyle and Bottomley's studies in the 2000s found people choose a brand more often when its typeface fits the category. What has dated: the hand-lettering trade itself, his claim that no new alphabet can be designed, and his scorn for artists. Use: for shelf talkers, window cards and offer signs in a Gulf store, set a time budget per sign, pick one heavy, open Arabic face that suits the product, spend the effort on layout, and read each sign from three metres away before it goes up.
Passages worth keeping
Likewise you can lead a brush to a pot of paint, but you can't make it work.
الأداة وحدها لا تصنع العمل؛ على الخطاط أن يختار الفرشاة التي تناسب نوع الحرف حتى تخرج الضربة بأقل جهد.
However, no matter what your individual capabilities are as a letterer, if your arrangement is clever the work will instantly command attention where good lettering, indifferently arranged, will be passed by without comment.
الترتيب الذكي للعناصر يجذب الانتباه فورًا، أما الحروف الجميلة الموضوعة بلا تخطيط فيتجاهلها الناس.
Lettering, as well as illustrative matter, should always be in harmony with the subject.
شكل الحرف جزء من الرسالة، فيجب أن يوافق طبيعة المنتج كما توافقه الصورة.
Design implies invention, and no one can invent that which already exists.
يرى غوردون أن الأبجديات الجديدة ليست إلا تعديلًا على القديمة، فالتجديد الممكن هو في المعالجة لا في شكل الحرف الأصلي.
A poster is a picture, but a picture is not a poster.
الرسم الإعلاني غير اللوحة الفنية؛ المطلوب كتل لونية بسيطة تُنجز بسرعة وتُفهم من نظرة.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.