Specimen Book and Catalogue, 1923
The 1923 specimen book of American Type Founders, 1,148 numbered pages printed in 60,000 copies directly from type and brass rule at its Jersey City plant, at a stated cost of about $300,000.
What it is
The 1923 specimen book of American Type Founders, 1,148 numbered pages printed in 60,000 copies directly from type and brass rule at its Jersey City plant, at a stated cost of about $300,000. A long preface argues that ATF's type families, among them Cheltenham, Century, Bodoni, Cloister, Goudy, Caslon and Garamond, made printing more profitable because clients learned to ask for them by name. It credits the type designing department founded in 1897, complains that composing-machine makers copied its designs without paying, and promotes the Kelly automatic press, the Cut-Cost plant equipment and an efficiency department. The body shows faces in graded sizes with sample lines, then scripts, society printing, classified advertising faces, borders, brass rule, presses and composing-room furniture. The book is credited to Wadsworth A. Parker, manager of specimen printing.
Why read it now
The preface is an early, explicit case of ingredient branding. ATF sold to printers but aimed its argument at their clients: once a customer said "Set it in Bodoni", the printer's work carried a name the client valued. That logic still holds in co-branding and in B2B firms that market to their customer's customer. Its claim that one type family gives an advertisement more influence than a medley of display faces matches current design practice, where a small, consistent type system is the norm. The efficiency pages turn saved minutes into dollars per man per week and per year, a working model for any return-on-investment pitch. What has dated: most superlatives are asserted rather than measured, and the long complaint about copiers reads as grievance, not proof. The stronger evidence is the Kelly press claim that nearly 50 percent of users placed repeat orders. One use: when you sell through an intermediary, write the page their buyers will read.
Passages worth keeping
A reputation for quality is the best basis for increase of business.
السمعة المبنية على الجودة هي الأساس الأمتن لنمو المبيعات، قبل الآلات والأسعار.
The client perceived that a catalogue or advertisement set in one type family had more influence with his customers than if its message to the public were confused by a medley of display types.
اكتشف العميل أن الإعلان المصفوف بعائلة خط واحدة يؤثر في جمهوره أكثر من إعلان تتزاحم فيه خطوط كثيرة، فالاتساق البصري يخدم الرسالة.
The wiser printers now see that in selling their product they must think in terms of results to their customers
الطابع الأذكى يبيع النتيجة التي يحققها لعميله، لا الساعات والحبر والورق التي استهلكها في العمل.
Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.
إذا وفّرت الدقائق الصغيرة في العمل اليومي تراكمت الساعات من تلقاء نفسها، وهي الحجة التي بنى عليها الكتاب حساب الأرباح.
REPEAT ORDERS are the most convincing and the most conclusive evidence of the efficiency of all printing machinery.
أقوى دليل على جودة الآلة أن يعود من اشتراها ليشتري مرة أخرى، لا ما يقوله البائع عنها.
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
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