The American Printer, Franklin Bi-Centennial Number, January 20, 1923
A 288-page special issue of The American Printer, the twice-monthly business paper of the American printing trade, from the Oswald Publishing Company of New York, sold for one dollar instead of the usual 20 cents.
What it is
A 288-page special issue of The American Printer, the twice-monthly business paper of the American printing trade, from the Oswald Publishing Company of New York, sold for one dollar instead of the usual 20 cents. It marks 200 years since Benjamin Franklin's name first appeared as publisher of the New England Courant in February 1723. Articles cover the portraits of Franklin, children's ABC plates bearing his maxims, his brother's Courant, English printers of his day by Charles T. Jacobi of the Chiswick Press, census figures showing fewer plants but far higher costs from 1914 to 1919, and a comic life by Earl H. Emmons. The core is a Graphic Arts and Crafts Section of 74 inserts from about a hundred artists, typographers and printers in the US, Canada and England, among them Goudy, Dwiggins, John Henry Nash and the Oxford University Press. Supplier ads fill the rest.
Why read it now
This is a design and trade record more than an argument, and it pays a marketer in three places. First, the insert section treats one subject 74 ways: portrait, event, quotation, tribute; type alone, type with decoration, full-colour illustration. Edmund Gress even counts the processes, from four-colour halftone on nine inserts to one linoleum cut. That is a ready brief for any campaign where many contributors share one theme. Second, the special-number model still works: a public anniversary as the hook drew 77 accepted contributions and a thick run of paid ads, the same logic as a sector report or a Founding Day issue now. Third, the ads show suppliers bending their copy to the theme, as Cline Electric opens on Franklin and electricity. What has dated: the hero worship, the Emmons humour, which includes a slur against Native Americans, and every process described. Use: before a national occasion, fix one theme and a short list of categories, then invite partners to fill them, as Gress did.
Passages worth keeping
not only the greatest tribute ever paid to any American by a periodical but the most notable collection of graphic arts specimens ever gathered between two covers.
يصف المحرر قسم الملحقات بأنه أكبر تكريم قدمته مجلة لشخصية أمريكية، وأهم مجموعة من نماذج الفنون الطباعية جمعت في مجلد واحد.
That it is possible to produce a fine piece of printing by typography alone is proved by the Carr, Nash, Goudy, Grabhorn, Rollins, Baker, Eskew, Geist and McMurtrie inserts.
بعض الملحقات تثبت أن ترتيب الحروف وحده، دون صور أو زخارف، يكفي لإخراج قطعة مطبوعة جميلة.
There seems to be one common ground, however, on which all can meet in estimate of Franklin and that is that he was the most versatile man who ever lived.
يختلف الناس في تقدير عظمة فرانكلين، لكن المحرر يرى أنهم يتفقون على تعدد مواهبه واتساع مجالات عمله.
It required sixty per cent more money to run ninety-seven plants in 1919 than it did to operate one hundred five years before
بين 1914 و1919 قل عدد المطابع وارتفعت تكاليف تشغيلها بنحو 60 في المئة، فالقطاع نجا لكنه صار أغلى كلفة.
In reviewing the notable typography of the year it is interesting to observe the extent to which Linotype Typography has supplanted the more expensive methods in the production of fine printing.
إعلان الشركة يقدم آلتها بوصفها البديل الأرخص الذي حل محل الطرق المكلفة في الطباعة الراقية، أي أنه يبيع القيادة في السوق لا المواصفات وحدها.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
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