The Practice of Typography: A Treatise on Title-Pages
Theodore Low De Vinne's 1902 volume in his Practice of Typography series, published by the Century Co. and printed at his own De Vinne Press.
What it is
Theodore Low De Vinne's 1902 volume in his Practice of Typography series, published by the Century Co. and printed at his own De Vinne Press. It has three parts. The historical part follows the title-page from the colophon at the back of early books through printers' devices, engraved borders, bastard titles, black-letter, ornamented titles and condensed types. The practical part covers planning a modern title, choosing faces, display, blank space and leading, red lines and punctuation, and remodels real titles to show that a few sizes of roman type are enough. The critical part reviews the Pickering and squared titles, the chap-book and Bradley styles, William Morris's Kelmscott types, French titles and decorative lettering, and ends with ten versions of one title set by Charles T. Jacobi of the Chiswick Press. Reduced facsimiles of old and new title-pages carry the argument.
Why read it now
The core lessons still hold. Give one line, the name of the work, strong display; keep related words together; separate divisions with white space rather than rules; and accept that crowding hurts reading. De Vinne's line that compactness makes confusion matches what legibility and eye-tracking studies report about cluttered layouts. His sharpest point for marketers is the difference between an advertisement, which fights its neighbours for attention, and a title page, which is read alone. The same split exists today between an ad in a feed and the landing page after the click, and many landing pages still shout like ads. What has dated: the hot-metal detail on leads and quadrats, his remarks about effeminate modern type, and his forecast that roman type would not be displaced, made a generation before sans serifs took over much display work. Arabic has no capital letters, so his rules on capitals need translating into weight and size. Use: ask the designer for several versions of one cover or landing page, each with a single display line, and compare them before choosing.
Passages worth keeping
he should never forget that in all standard books, and even in many ordinary pamphlets, the general preference is for the title-page of severe simplicity.
قد يحتاج الطابع أحيانًا إلى تصميم غريب، لكن القراء يفضلون في الكتب الجادة صفحة عنوان شديدة البساطة.
The difference between any advertisement and a title-page is radical.
الإعلان يحتاج إلى البروز لأنه ينافس ما حوله، أما صفحة العنوان فتُقرأ وحدها، فلا تحتاج إلى الصخب نفسه.
When many lines of different types are put together closely, the title-page is not so readable as a paragraph of the text. Compactness makes confusion.
حشر السطور بحروف مختلفة يجعل الصفحة أصعب قراءة من النص العادي، فالتكدس يولد الفوضى.
large types in huddled words and lines are not so readable as smaller types arranged with a proper relief of white space.
الحرف الكبير المحشور أقل وضوحًا من حرف أصغر حوله مساحة بيضاء كافية، وهذا خطأ شائع في الإعلانات المزدحمة.
The modern book, like the modern house, dress, or decoration, should be the outgrowth of its own time
الكتاب الحديث يجب أن يعبر عن زمنه، لا أن يقلد أساليب قديمة لمجرد غرابتها.
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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