Newspaper Headings Composed Direct from the Keyboard in Sizes from 6 to 60 Point
A 1919 specimen book from the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, itself set on the Linotype and printed from its slugs, that tells newspaper publishers to set every headline from the keyboard, up to 60 point, instead of by hand.
What it is
A 1919 specimen book from the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, itself set on the Linotype and printed from its slugs, that tells newspaper publishers to set every headline from the keyboard, up to 60 point, instead of by hand. The preface makes the case: big heads are now "straight matter" on the new models, display is getting smaller, and machine setting saves time and advertising space. The first half is a catalogue of head-letter faces, each shown with the same test line, "Big heads are quickly composed on Linotype", in Antique, Bodoni, Caslon, Century, Cheltenham, Gothic and many condensed cuts. The second half shows full front pages and news columns set with real stories from 1917 and 1918, such as Hoover enlisting housewives for food conservation, then Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic headings, and ends with magazine channel tables and keyboard diagrams.
Why read it now
This is a specimen that sells a production method, not only a set of faces. Its strongest move is to show every face at work: whole pages with real headlines and body matter, so a publisher judges the look of his own paper instead of an abstract alphabet. Its advice to cut a column from your own paper and lay it over each heading is still the right way to choose type: test it in context, at real size, beside the material it must live with. Modern type selection works the same way, in live layouts and on real screens. Its forecast that display would shrink held over the next decades, as papers dropped stacked decks for simpler heads. What has dated: hot metal, magazine channels and keyboard layouts are history. The Arabic page, a short note on setting initial, medial and final letter forms by machine, records a problem Arabic digital fonts still handle. Use: when choosing a brand typeface or headline style, set three real pages with live copy in each option and decide from those, not from a sample sheet.
Passages worth keeping
These large sizes have become just so much straight matter for the models specially built to handle them. The trend is toward reduction in the sizes of display.
العناوين الكبيرة صارت تُصف بسهولة النص العادي على الآلات المصممة لها، والاتجاه العام هو تصغير أحجام العناوين.
You can select faces from any one of them with the assurance that they will dress your page quite as attractively as they have dressed these pages of ours.
الكتاب نفسه هو الدليل: الخطوط التي أعطت صفحاته هذا المظهر ستعطي صحيفتك المظهر نفسه.
Cut out a two-inch column section from your paper and lay it over first one and then another of these headings, until you find the one best suited to the dress of your paper.
لا تختر العنوان من العينة وحدها، بل قص جزءًا من صحيفتك وجرّب كل عنوان فوقه حتى تجد ما يناسب شكلها.
From Among Many Attractive Linotype Faces These Italic Headings Are Effective in Arresting the Attention Without Over Emphasizing the Display
العناوين المائلة تلفت النظر دون أن تبالغ في الإبراز، أي أن الانتباه لا يحتاج دائمًا إلى أكبر حجم وأثقل خط.
The Linotype is used successfully in sixty different countries, and has been adapted to the use of more than forty different languages.
تقدم الشركة انتشار آلتها في ستين بلدًا وأكثر من أربعين لغة دليلًا على موثوقيتها وخدمتها.
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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