Alphabets Old and New, for the Use of Craftsmen (second edition)
The second edition, revised and enlarged, of Lewis F. Day's collection of alphabets for working craftsmen, published by B. T. Batsford in London and Charles Scribner's Sons in New York, with a preface dated December 1905.
What it is
The second edition, revised and enlarged, of Lewis F. Day's collection of alphabets for working craftsmen, published by B. T. Batsford in London and Charles Scribner's Sons in New York, with a preface dated December 1905. It has three parts. A Descriptive List of Illustrations dates and sources each plate and notes how the tool shaped the letter, down to the holes Greek engravers bored at stroke ends. An essay, Art in the Alphabet, traces the Roman alphabet from Egyptian and Phoenician signs through Greek, Coptic, Roman, uncial, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic and Lombardic forms. Then come about 220 plates, one alphabet to a page, grouped by period and by medium: cut in stone, cast in bronze, painted on majolica, carved, embroidered, inlaid. Modern alphabets by Day, Otto Hupp, Walter Crane, Mucha and others follow, then ampersands and numerals by century. Day admits he supplied letters missing from the old sources.
Why read it now
The part a marketer can use is Day's pair of tests for changing letters: a change must make reading smoother and must please the eye, and neither may be bought at the cost of the other. Legibility research since agrees that distinct, familiar letter shapes read faster, which is his case for stressing whatever makes each letter unmistakable. His warning against inventing new alphabets, because readers will not follow, is a good brake on over-styled logotypes and display type. His rule to design for the medium, since a pen letter looks wrong carved in wood, carries over to lettering for screens, shop signs and embroidered uniforms. What has dated: the scorn for printed type as a makeshift and the romantic case for handwork, which a century of type design has answered. The history is a 1905 summary, and some origins are told differently today. The plates are Latin letters only, so Arabic lettering needs its own sources, though the method transfers. Use: before approving a custom wordmark, test it at small size and in its real material, and redraw any letter a reader could mistake for another.
Passages worth keeping
whatever he does ought, in the first place, to make reading run smoother, and, in the second, to make writing satisfactory to the eye.
لا يحق للمصمم أن يغير شكل الحروف إلا إذا جعل القراءة أيسر وجعل المكتوب مريحًا للعين.
Beauty does not imply elaboration or ornament.
الجمال في الحرف لا يعني كثرة الزخرفة، بل البساطة والشخصية الواضحة.
We get so much more out of our tools by going with them, that it is rather stupid to strive against them.
كل أداة تعطي أفضل ما عندها حين نجاريها، فلا معنى لإجبار القلم على شكل صُنع للإزميل.
It is of no use trying to evolve brand-new alphabets out of our inner consciousness. No one would understand us, and we want to be read.
اختراع حروف جديدة من الخيال وحده لا يفيد، لأن الغاية أن يُقرأ ما نكتب، والقارئ لا يفهم إلا ما يعرفه.
I have not scrupled to supply letters missing from them.
يعترف المؤلف بأنه أكمل الحروف الناقصة في الأبجديات القديمة، لأن الحرفي يحتاج نموذجًا كاملًا يعمل 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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