Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New
Walter Crane, the Arts and Crafts designer and illustrator, grew this book from three Cantor Lectures at the Society of Arts in 1889; this is the third revised edition (George Bell and Sons, 1905) in the Ex-Libris Series.
What it is
Walter Crane, the Arts and Crafts designer and illustrator, grew this book from three Cantor Lectures at the Society of Arts in 1889; this is the third revised edition (George Bell and Sons, 1905) in the Ex-Libris Series. The preface sets his test: he treats only illustrations that are also book ornaments, designed with the type and the page, not pictures dropped in. Five chapters run from illuminated manuscripts, through the woodcut books of Ulm, Augsburg and Venice and the work of Dürer and Holbein, to a decline he blames on copper plate and classical pedantry, then the revival led by Morris's Kelmscott Press of 1891, Ricketts, Beardsley and Anning Bell, with Japanese prints as a strong influence. The last chapter gives working rules for endpapers, title pages, borders, headpieces, tailpieces and lettering. Facsimile plates, each captioned with school, printer, city and date, carry the argument.
Why read it now
Crane's core rule still holds: an image should be designed for the space and the type it sits with, not pasted onto them. That is the logic of every layout grid, and Nielsen Norman Group's eye-tracking studies of web pages found that readers ignore images that look like filler and look closely at images that carry information. His chapter on sequence reads like onboarding advice: the endpaper should give the reader a reason to go on into the book, and the title page should hint at the book's secret, not tell it. His warning that a new technique can dislocate design, as copper plate did to the woodcut page, fits each new production tool since, including generated images. What has dated: the medievalism, the dismissal of photographic reproduction, which went on to carry most advertising, and his taste verdicts on French posters. Use: before briefing a carousel, report or landing page, fix the typeface first, then ask for images sized to the type's weight and the grid, and plan the first screen as a doorway, not a summary.
Passages worth keeping
My purpose has been to treat of illustrations which are also book-ornaments, so that purely graphic design, as such, unrelated to the type, and the conditions of the page, does not come within my scope.
كرين لا يهتم بالصورة المستقلة، بل بالرسم الذي يُصمم مع الحروف وحدود الصفحة حتى يصير جزءًا من الكتاب.
A new invention often has a dislocating effect upon design.
التقنية الجديدة تُعتمد عادة لميزة واحدة فيها، فتغير علاقة عناصر التصميم كلها دون أن ينتبه أحد.
The poster-artist, to whom one would think, being essential to his work, the value of lettering in good forms would appeal, generally tears the roman alphabet to tatters, or uses extremely debased and ugly varieties.
رسام الملصقات يعتمد على الحروف في عمله، ومع ذلك يشوهها أو يختار أسوأ أشكالها، وهذا عيب يلاحظه كرين في زمنه.
We are not intended to linger long here, but ought to get some hint or encouragement to go on into the book.
أوراق البطانة في أول الكتاب ليست مكانًا للبقاء، بل مدخل يعطي القارئ إشارة تدفعه إلى الدخول.
Even here, though, the whole secret of the book should not be let out, but rather played with or suggested in a symbolic way
صفحة العنوان لا تكشف كل ما في الكتاب، بل تلمّح إليه برمز يثير فضول القارئ.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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