American Line Type Book: Borders, Ornaments, Price List of Printing Material and Machinery
The 1906 specimen and price book of the American Type Founders Company, which called itself the largest type founder in the world and listed selling houses in 22 cities from Boston to Los Angeles and Vancouver.
What it is
The 1906 specimen and price book of the American Type Founders Company, which called itself the largest type founder in the world and listed selling houses in 22 cities from Boston to Los Angeles and Vancouver. It opens with a note to the buying printer, the American Lining System (every face cast to a common baseline, so sizes and styles line up with point leads), a classified index and pricing by the pound. Then come more than 900 pages of faces: body types set in the text of the Declaration of Independence, a section of faces for circulars and invitations, typewriter faces for printing imitation typewritten letters, and the display families ATF was pushing: Cheltenham in eight versions, Florentine, Globe Gothic, Century, Bookman, Franklin Gothic, Copperplate Gothic, Alternate Gothic and the Post family. It ends with brass rule, mail-list type, calendar and advertising figures, borders, ornaments and stock cuts.
Why read it now
Three things here still teach. First, the family: ATF sold Cheltenham as one design in eight weights and widths so a printer could set a whole job in one voice, which is how brand type systems work today; one family used everywhere is cheaper to run and easier to recognise than a new face per ad. Second, the book shows faces inside realistic jobs, such as a Boston real estate circular, and not only as alphabets, because buyers judge type in context. Third, the typewriter pages sell printers a service, not a product: letters printed to look typewritten, with ribbons matched to fill in each name, the ancestor of mail-merge and personalised email. That pitch works for any supplier: show the customer the business your product opens for them. What has dated: prices by the pound, hot-metal detail, and the stock cuts and novelty faces that fix a layout in its decade. Fake personal letters also lose force once readers learn to spot them. Use: before choosing a brand typeface, test one family in a mock of a real ad, from headline to small print.
Passages worth keeping
Every face on Common Line will line at the bottom with all faces cast on the same body and line
كل الحروف المصبوبة على الخط الموحد تستقر على قاعدة واحدة، فيمكن خلط الأنواع في سطر واحد دون عناء في الضبط.
The Largest Type Family Ever Brought Out
تقدّم الشركة تشلتنهام على أنه أكبر عائلة حروف صدرت حتى ذلك الوقت، بنسخ عادية ومائلة وثقيلة ومضغوطة وعريضة.
You have a fine office already, but you want to keep up with the times and give your patrons the best the type founder can invent.
حتى نص العينة كُتب حوارًا بيعيًا يقنع الطابع بأن مواكبة الجديد جزء من خدمة عملائه.
Fac-simile letters are more extensively used in business each year, and the printer who develops this specialty is wise in his day.
الرسائل المطبوعة التي تحاكي الرسائل الشخصية يزداد طلب الشركات عليها، والطابع الذي يتخصص فيها يكسب سوقًا جديدة.
The printer will readily see the advantage in using ornaments cast only on the point system. Do you "see the point?"
الزخارف المصبوبة على نظام النقاط تسهّل ضبط السطور، والشركة تختم الفكرة بتورية خفيفة على كلمة النقطة.
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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