Table Of ContentA Real-World Desil'T-
Timothy Samara
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be Digital edition: 978-1-61673-590-6
reproduced in any form without written permission Softcover edition: 978-1-59253-170-7
of the copyright owners. All images in this book Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
have been reproduced with the knowledge and prior Samara, Timothy.
consent of the artists concerned, and no responsibility --Publication design workbook: a real-world design guide I Timothy
is accepted by producer, publisher, or printer for any Samara.
infringement of copyright or otherwise, arising from ---p.--cm.
the contents of this publication. Every effort has --Includes bibliographical references and index.
been made to ensure that credits accurately comply - ISBN 1-59253-170-9 (hardcover)
with information supplied. --1. Graphic design (Typography) 2. Layout (Printing) 3.
- Newsletters- Design. 4. Magazine design. 5. Newspaper layout and
- typography. I. Title.
First published in the United States of America by
- Z246.S233 2005
Rockport Publishers, a member of
- 686.2'252-dc22 2005007140
Quayside Publishing Group
CIP
33 Commercial Street
Cover and text design: Timothy Samara
Gloucester, Massachusetts 01930-5089
Cover Photograph: Allan Penn Photography
978.282.9590 Telephone
Printed in China
978.283.2742 Fax
Printed in Singapore
www.rockpub.com
INTRODUCTION
communications did in the century after they
Printing for the People
exploded in popularity upon first being produced
in the mid-I400S. But for now, the 600-year evolu
From Gutenberg to the New Millennium
tion of the printed page still trumps the blinking
pixel any day of the week.
FORTY-TWO LINES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
When historians talk about cultural paradigm
As recently as 1995, a notable graphic designer declared that print was dead: shifts- extraordinary changes in the human
the digital age! The Internet! The PDF! It seemed that the paperless vision condition- they usually include the development
of the future was upon us. A decade later now, in the early years of the twenty of printing among the top five (along with little
first century, this daring forecast appears to have been a bit premature. Walk things like the invention of the wheel). Today, it's
down a city street-large or small. Run through an airport or cruise down difficult to imagine daily life without printed
the aisle at the supermarket. At any given moment, you will encounter a rack reading material. But prior to the fifteenth century,
or ten-filled with magazines on every conceivable subject. there was little to be read in the Western world,
and not many people to read what little there was.
Fewer than 50,000 volumes of writing existed in
all of Europe, and those were accessible only to the
And not just one title in each subject, but twenty. or the other side of the world. When we flip through very wealthy. Though a growing middle class of
Never mind the countless editions of daily newspa a trendy fashion or music magazine, we're part of merchants and tradesmen- resulting from the
pers in English, Spanish, Slovak, or Tagalog. Nor the the in-crowd, elevated to the status of elite cultural collapse of feudalism and popular migration from
myriad documents published by businesses and insiders. And we understand that other people like countryside to town- were afforded the opportunity
organizations- families of brochures and reports us are reading and looking at the same things. to study in universities, resources were scarce.
and newsletters and calendars and mailers ... Though we enjoy life as individuals, we are, after In the thirteenth century, Cambridge University
Millions of impressions of ink on paper are made all, social animals- and we like to know that there boasted only I 2 2 manuscript books, inscribed by
every week, and public appetite for them seems are other individuals like ourselves. hand on vellum, sheets of dried sheepskin that
insatiable. As consumers in an increasingly global Print offers other, more physical benefits. As were enormously expensive to produce. A single
community, we not only rely on a constant stream dynamic and immediate as the Internet is, it lacks 200-page book had a value equal to a farm and
of information to tell us about the world we live in, the tactile fun of flipping through pages. Images
we relish it. Subscribing to a particular cooking online are never as sharp as those printed on paper.
magazine, picking up the paper with coffee on the The screen hurts your eyes after a while, and too
weekend, poring through an annual report to track much clicking leads to carpal tunnel syndrome. Today, it's difficult to imagine daily life
our investments, looking at housewares in a slick The technology is new and undeveloped (as ubiqui
without printed reading material. But prior
catalog- publications draw us together as part of a tous as it is, it's been around for only twenty years)
larger community, even as they cater to our indi and has a ways to go. These limitations in the digi
to the fifteenth century, there was little to
vidual lifestyles. When we read a newspaper, we're tal experience might change after another fifty or a
connecting with people on the other side of town ... hundred years, in much the same way that printed be read in the western world, and not many
people to read what little there was.
2
required four or five months for production. Still, Punch cutting, mold making,
demand for such books had been steadily rising, alloying, casting, ink mixing,
and teams of lettering specialists, illuminators and press methods used for
(experts in decorative illustration using gold leaf wine and cheese: by adjusting
and pigments), and binders tried to keep up. One and integrating these technolo
factor aiding production was the introduction of gies, Gutenberg was able to cre
papermaking to Europe from China- a 600-year ate a system for producing
process that spread from east to west through a thousands of reusable, durable,
series of invasions and migrations. The first known and extraordinarily precise let
paper mill, in Fabriano, Italy, was established in ters, and a way of transferring
I276; another, in Troyes, France, appeared in I348. their image onto paper at a remarkable speed. to communities. These sheets ultimately became
Paper provided an inexpensive and rapidly His first project, a Bible printed in I455- Set in the first newspapers. Publications on a wider variety
produced substrate to replace vellum. Along with two columns to a page, with forty-two lines per of subject matter began to emerge: practical guides
paper, the advent of wood-block printing also column- was a watershed in communication on art and mathematics; manuals for hunting and
seems to have been carried from the East, although technology that rivals the written word itself in crafts; and stories for popular entertainment. As
the history of its invention is cloudy. its importance to modem culture. The ability to the middle class grew, the spread of publications
Early manifestations of European printing disseminate enormous quantities of information, increased literacy and provided comfort after the
devotional images of saints and printed playing rapidly and affordably, meant that ideas previously grueling workday.
cards- demonstrated the potential for previously known only to a few could be disseminated to Once the industrial revolution of the late I700S
inaccessible things to become readily available thousands. Printing helped standardize languages mechanized the printing process, demand and
to the mainstream, illiterate culture: card games, and unite regions of culturally similar people supply fed each other in an endless cycle of produc
once the sole province of nobility, could now be where, earlier, dialects and usage could vary wildly tion. The standard of living improved as a result A sample of one of the
early shop types-a printer's
enjoyed by farmers as well. In the late I 300S and within even short geographical ranges. of wage labor in factories; as wages were spent
textura face derived from
early I400S, block books printed from single wood Although Gutenberg's fortunes fell and rose on material goods and more comfortable housing, Sweyheim's and Pannartz's
carvings containing both text and image became the financial burden of loans for research and the manufacturers of these goods employed double alphabet of the
1460s-prevalent in Europe
available on a wider basis. Eventually, a quest for development cost him custody of his first works more people to meet the demand. As early as
following Gutenberg's
quicker production methods was undertaken the effect of his discovery was profound. Within the I820S, catalogs for products began to appear. now-famous experiment
notably in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and thirty years, presses had sprung up throughout journals of poetry and philosophy circulated of 1455.
France. Woodworkers, as well as goldsmiths Europe and publishing had become a major indus among urban populations, the progenitors of the
and other tradesmen, experimented with cutting try in Mainz, Ulm, Venice, London, and other cities. modem magazine.
the wood blocks apart to reuse the letters Along with moveable type, the invention of metal In I826, joseph Niepce, a lithographer in France,
2
or cutting individual letters from steel or iron. engraving added illustration to the typographic sought a way to transfer images directly to a printing
How time flies! This web
But most historical evidence credits a German page. Broadsides- single sheets printed on one plate; in an experiment, he exposed an emulsified
offset press (the web is
inventor and goldsmith, johann Gensfleisch zum side- joined books as popular publications, initially sheet of pewter to light and captured an image.
the continuous stream of
Gutenberg, with adapting several technologies spreading religious information but eventually Photography brought a new tonal dimension to the paper fed off the enormous
roll in the foreground)
to make the leap to functional, movable type. evolving to include information of local interest printed page, offering not only a means of showing
pounds out up to 50,000
impressions every hour,
a far cry from the weeks
needed to produce twenty
editions of a book in 1500.
I I
Publication Design Workbook Printing for the People 6 7
INTRODUCTION
The aspect of print that has saved it from its early death
foretold is its archaic physical presence: the fact that
playful promotional spirit of American advertising
it exists. The care that print designers take in crafting
in publications such as Art Direction magazine
and magazines and annual reports for IBM and Yale
the printed object results in materials that will likely
University. Alexey Brodovitch, a Russian emigre
stay around for a while. Designers who work in print are working in New York, revolutionized editorial lay
out in magazines like Harper's Bazaar, uniting type
making something. and photography in seamless, expressive, elegant,
No longer simply reportage
and aggressive combinations that leapt from the
or entertainment, print
pages. In Switzerland in the 1950S, the idea of a net publications embody the
aspirational aspects of
work of related geometric spaces to organize lay
our culture, seen here in
outs- a grid- gained momentum in the work of
this classically stylish
designers such as Joseph Muller-Brockmann and magazine page for an
upscale shopping center.
Richard Lohse, among others. Oddly, the opposing
products in catalogs as they really appeared, but Crane of England, and Koloman Moser and Peter idea of composition that could be free of such
Kendall Ross
also of recording and reproducing images from Behrens of Germany, began to conceive of the organization would also gain prominence in
Seattle (WA), USA
travel and other experiences. Through the end of printed page as a space to be architecturally mod Switzerland some years later, in the kinetic design
the nineteenth century and into the early twenti eled around the information it contained. of a young German transplant named Wolfgang
eth, publications of all kinds became a ubiquitous Spatial organization, contrast, and asymmetry Weingart. The rise of corporate branding culture
feature of everyday life. became hallmarks of twentieth-century design in the 1970S and 1980s, and media consumption in
The evolution of printing and imaging technol in Europe and, later, in America. In the 1930S, general- commercial advertising and cable prolifer
ogy encouraged exploration of design ideas, just as Paul Rand, sometimes called the grandfather of ation creating additional, supporting demand for
designers influenced strategies for developing pub American graphic design, merged the dynamic print- exploded the volume of publication output
lication content and production. Lettering types abstract sensibility of European design with the to unprecedented levels.
became more and more rational and precise in
their drawing. Tn the late 1460s, two German print
ers, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz,
developed a double alphabet of capital and minis
cule forms, basing their drawings on rediscovered
Roman manuscripts written in Carolingian script.
These Roman faces became the models for modem
alphabet development. Further refined by designers
~--
such as John Baskerville in the r 600s and Francois
Didot and Giambattista Bodoni in the 1700S,
increasingly light, geometric, and brightly contrast
ing serif type forms became prevalent. Early
modernists of the Arts and Crafts movement and
Jugendstil, such as William Morris and Walter
