Printing: An Essay by William Morris and Emery Walker
A short essay on the design of printed books, taken from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society's collected essays and reprinted here as a 16-page book, set in Village Type by Fred.
What it is
A short essay on the design of printed books, taken from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society's collected essays and reprinted here as a 16-page book, set in Village Type by Fred. W. Goudy and Will H. Ransom at the Village Press, Park Ridge, Illinois, in August 1903, in 231 copies. Morris and Walker open with history as evidence: the Gutenberg Bible of about 1455, Schoeffer's dated Bible of 1462, Sweynheim and Pannartz at Subiaco, and Jenson at Venice as the high point of roman type, then decline through Aldus, Caslon, Bodoni and Didot. They then diagnose the modern page and prescribe remedies: letters drawn wide rather than narrowed, larger type with less leading, close and even word spacing without rivers, margins planned for the two-page opening, thin, tough, opaque paper, and ornament that belongs to the page.
Why read it now
This is the source of much of what designers still say about readable print, and most of it holds. Legibility first, figures that cannot be confused, a comfortable type size, even spacing and designing for the spread are all current practice, and reading research such as Gordon Legge's work on critical print size finds that reading slows sharply once type falls below a certain size. The claim that a beautiful letter costs no more to cast or print than an ugly one is the essay's strongest move: it removes the price objection before arguing taste. What has dated: the verdicts on Bodoni, Didot and Baskerville are taste, not evidence, and fashion magazines and luxury brands have used high-contrast Didone type well for a century. The attack on narrowed letters also ignores that condensed type saves space on posters and small screens. The line on padding a thin book with thick paper, a device that deceives nobody, fits padded reports and decks today. Use: before a price list, invoice or offer card goes out, print it at real size and check that every figure reads at a glance.
Passages worth keeping
it is of the first importance that the letter used should be fine in form; especially as no more time is occupied, or cost incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters than in the same operations with ugly ones.
الحرف الجميل لا يستهلك وقتًا أو مالًا في الصب والصف والطباعة أكثر من الحرف القبيح، فلا عذر تجاريًا لاختيار القبيح.
In no characters is the contrast between the ugly and vulgar illegibility of the modern type & the elegance and legibility of the ancient more striking than in the Arabic numerals.
الأرقام في الحروف الحديثة يشبه بعضها بعضًا فتصعب قراءتها، أما في الطباعة القديمة فلكل رقم شكل مستقل لا يُخلط بغيره.
One fruitful source of badness in paper is the habit that publishers have of eking out a thin volume by printing it on thick paper almost of the substance of cardboard, a device which deceives nobody, & makes a book very unpleasant to read.
طباعة كتاب قليل الصفحات على ورق سميك ليبدو أكبر حيلة لا تخدع أحدًا، وكل ما تفعله أنها تجعل القراءة أثقل.
The essential point to be remembered is that the ornament, whatever it is, whether picture or pattern-work, should form part of the page, should be a part of the whole scheme of the book.
الزخرفة أو الصورة يجب أن تكون جزءًا من تصميم الصفحة والكتاب كله، لا عنصرًا يوضع بجانب النص دون علاقة به.
printed books might once again illustrate to the full the position of our Society that a work of utility might be also a work of art, if we cared to make it so.
الغاية أن يكون الشيء النافع جميلًا أيضًا، وهذا ممكن متى أردنا ذلك واعتنينا به.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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