The Scotch Series, Together with a Showing of Initials, Ornaments and Selected Decorative Material
A Linotype specimen booklet for one type family, Scotch, and the initials, ornaments and borders drawn for it. It opens with a two-page essay on the face: full, sturdy capitals, crisp serifs, even color on the page, and a disputed origin.
What it is
A Linotype specimen booklet for one type family, Scotch, and the initials, ornaments and borders drawn for it. It opens with a two-page essay on the face: full, sturdy capitals, crisp serifs, even color on the page, and a disputed origin. It quotes the De Vinne Press book of type faces, which credits the Ballantyne printing house of Edinburgh in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and Edmund G. Gress of The American Printer, who traces the face to 1796 and a modernized Caslon. The specimen pages set one paragraph of Linotype house copy in sizes from 6 to 30 point, roman and italic. Later pages show electrotype initials in 132 and 72 point, headbands, a page panel, and matrix slides for rules and borders "Appropriate with Scotch Face", each with an order number. It ends with a list of Linotype agencies from Brooklyn to Toronto and London.
Why read it now
The booklet shows a sound way to sell one product: give it its own document, explain why it is good, show it in use at every size, then list the add-ons and how to order them. The essay persuades with history and plain description instead of adjectives, and it admits the face's origin is disputed, which makes the rest easier to trust. Its claim that Scotch reads easily because nothing in it is exaggerated fits later legibility research, from Miles Tinker onward: familiar, regular letterforms read faster than decorative ones, though the gaps between ordinary text faces are small. What has dated is the scope. The specimens repeat a paragraph of machine-company copy, so the reader never sees the face in a real ad, menu or book page, and the electrotype order codes mean nothing now. The lesson for a marketer is structural. When one product gets lost in a big catalogue, give it a short piece of its own: a page of reasons, a page of proof at real sizes, a page of add-ons with codes.
Passages worth keeping
Among the plain modern faces of type, Scotch stands in a class by itself.
يضع الكتيّب خط «سكوتش» في مرتبة خاصة بين الخطوط الحديثة البسيطة، ويبني بقية حجته على هذا الحكم.
Only a type designed and cut on basically sound principles could achieve this record.
بقاء الخط محبوبًا قرابة قرن دليل على سلامة تصميمه، فالشعبية الطويلة تُستعمل هنا برهانًا على الجودة.
The firm, incisive downstrokes, beautifully turned serifs and general crispness are all definite features that make themselves felt but do not obtrude.
مزايا الخط يشعر بها القارئ لكنها لا تلفت الانتباه إلى نفسها، ولهذا يصلح للنصوص الطويلة.
It has no eccentricity save the almost unnoticeable flat top to the lower case ‘t’.
الغرابة الوحيدة في الخط تفصيل صغير في رأس حرف t، أي أنه خط هادئ لا يشتت القارئ.
It eliminates unsparingly all that is incongruous and wrong, but without limiting full variety and latitude of choice by narrow canons of cold art.
نص العينة نفسه دعاية لنظام لينوتايب: يزيل ما لا ينسجم دون أن يقيّد حرية الطابع في الاختيار.
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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