The Typography of Advertisements That Pay
Gilbert P. Farrar built this book out of his Printers' Ink series on typographical display.
What it is
Gilbert P. Farrar built this book out of his Printers' Ink series on typographical display. It teaches the mechanical dress of an ad: type, engravings, borders, hand lettering and white space. His chain runs from the advertiser's reason to spend, to a plan, to a style, and only then to type and pictures. He sorts ads into eight styles: Forceful Educational, Passive Educational, Handlettered, Poster, Character and Comic, Small Space, Mail Order and Department Store. For each he names faces, above all Cheltenham Bold headlines over Caslon Old Style body, the Saturday Evening Post pairing, and shows full specimen pages. Over a hundred real ads are argued by name: Kodak's consistent Caslon, Waltham's oversized white space, the Book of Knowledge page that tries to make everything read at once. Later chapters cover halftones, borders, emphasis and package display, and the book ends with a checklist: plan, style, type, engravings.
Why read it now
The core chain holds: the ad's job decides its format, and the format decides type and image. Farrar's rules on restraint have support. Miles Tinker's legibility tests later confirmed that long runs of italic and capitals slow reading, and Nielsen Norman Group's eye-tracking work shows readers scan headings and the first words of lines far more than body text, which fits his claim that most newspaper readers take in headlines and captions but little else. His point that one consistent face builds good will, with Kodak's Caslon as the case, anticipates what brand researchers now call distinctive assets. What has dated: the named faces and hot-metal methods, the belief that hand lettering signals age and reliability, and his reading figures, which carry no source. He also sets copy aside on purpose, so the book cannot tell you what to say. Use: write a one-page type rule for a brand, with one family, one way of adding emphasis, and headlines and captions that carry the whole message alone, then check each ad against his closing questions before it runs.
Passages worth keeping
Styles change, principles seldom change, and human nature hardly ever changes.
الأساليب الشكلية تتبدل، لكن مبادئ البناء والطبيعة البشرية ثابتة تقريبًا، ولذلك يبني الكتاب على المبادئ لا على الموضة.
If the story has merit a few strong headlines that meet the reader more than halfway will get a reading quicker than every line screaming for attention.
عناوين قليلة قوية تجذب القارئ أسرع من إعلان يصرخ كل سطر فيه، فالتأكيد على كل شيء يلغي التأكيد.
Much good will and prestige can be obtained by the wise selection and consistent use of one face or family of type.
اختيار خط واحد والالتزام به في كل الإعلانات يبني للعلامة سمعة ومكانة تتراكم مع الوقت.
About 90% of the readers of newspapers read at least 90% of the headings and inscriptions under pictures, while this same number read less than two columns of the body or story portion of the paper.
أغلب القراء يكتفون بالعناوين وتعليقات الصور، فيجب أن تصل الرسالة من النظرة الأولى، مع أن الرقم نفسه لا مصدر له في الكتاب.
But we cannot judge the selling power of an advertisement by its beauty or lack of beauty.
جمال الإعلان ليس مقياسًا لقدرته على البيع، والحكم الصحيح يكون بمدى خدمة كل عنصر فيه للخطة والرسالة.
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
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.