Handy Specimen Book: Specimens of Type, Borders and Ornaments, Brass Rule, Wood Type
A 740-page trade catalogue from the Buffalo branch of American Type Founders Company.
What it is
A 740-page trade catalogue from the Buffalo branch of American Type Founders Company. The preface claims its selection beats the complete output of other foundries and credits the durability of its Copper Alloy Type Metal. Front matter gives a price list of body type, the American point system with a table of the old body names (Brilliant, Diamond, Pearl, Agate), and time-saving tables such as standard newspaper sizes. The bulk shows face after face, De Vinne, Ronaldson, Satanick, Bradley, Columbus and hundreds more, each size set in invented headlines such as 'CRIMSON CLOUDS Moving Swiftly Northward', with the font count and dollar price on the same line. Then come borders, ornaments and stock cuts, wood type priced by the letter, a catalogue of cabinets and presses starting with the Army Press, imposition diagrams, and Ramaley's price list for printing and binding.
Why read it now
The book shows how to sell a large range of near-identical variants: show each one doing the buyer's job, at every size he can buy, with the price inside the demonstration. The invented specimen lines, such as 'SHOCKING MODESTY Enormous Masculine Bloomers', make the eye read letterforms as display copy instead of skimming one repeated sentence, and they show each face in a real advertising register. The point-system pages hold a sharper lesson. ATF argues that the old non-uniform type bodies served founders by tying printers to one supplier, and that the shared standard's advantages are all for the printer. That is the case made today for open standards and interoperable products, and here it comes from the firm that merged most American foundries in 1892, so the claim is also a sales position. What has dated: metal type, per-font pricing, and the preface's unproven superlatives about world standards of excellence. Use: for a product line with many SKUs, give every variant the same page layout, show it in use at each tier, put price and quantity on the same line, and close with a short buyer's reference section.
Passages worth keeping
Specimen Books usually show all that a Type foundry makes, but an examination of the contents of this book will convince the Printer that our selection excels the complete product of other Type foundries
الشركة تجعل الانتقاء نفسه ميزة: لا نعرض كل شيء، بل الأفضل فقط، وهذا وحده يتفوق على كل ما تنتجه المسابك الأخرى.
if the design of the Type is inartistic and inferior the work will fail to be satisfactory.
المقدمة تربط جودة التصميم برضا العميل النهائي، فالمهارة والورق والحبر لا تعوض خطًا رديئًا.
was and is in the interests of the type founder, as it practically compelled the printer to select the standard of one type foundry and to adhere to it
غياب المعيار الموحد كان يحبس المطبعة عند مورد واحد، والشركة تقدم المعيار المشترك على أنه تحرير للمشتري.
CRIMSON CLOUDS Moving Swiftly Northward
سطر عينة مخترع يعرض الخط في عنوان يشبه الإعلانات الحقيقية، فيرى المشتري كيف سيبدو الخط في عمله.
This is the lowest-priced press on which a newspaper of small circulation can be printed.
الوصف يحدد المشتري بدقة، صاحب صحيفة صغيرة، ويقدم الآلة على أنها أرخص طريق للدخول إلى السوق.
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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