Between 1947 and 1949 the famous German typographer Jan Tschichold worked at Penguin Books, standardizing the cover design of Penguin’s books and developing a set of rules to ensure consistency in typography across Penguin’s output. The result of the latter was a four page leaflet, Penguin Composition Rules.
Files:
penguinrules.tex,
penguinrules.pdf.
Glossary from ‘Introduction to Typography’ by Oliver Simon (1963 edition):
Files:
Glossary63.tex,
Glossary63.pdf.
The \entry macro used in Glossary63.tex is from p. 443 of ‘A Plain TeX Primer’ by Malcolm Clark. The colon in \def\entry#1:#2 serves as a delimiter between the italic of the head word and the roman of the definition.
I made another version of this glossary to show how \mark can be used with \headline to put reference marks in the header. I put the \marks close to the middle of their pages, because when I originally put them at the ends of their page beside the \entry that they got their name from, the \mark in the header usually ended up on the wrong page. This is probably because until TeX outputs the page, it is fuzzy about where the page boundaries will be.
Files:
Glossary63m.tex,
Glossary63m.pdf.
Some more modern glossaries:
A typography primer from Adobe: →
A collection of links from TypeCulture: →
One Typeface, many fonts by W.F. Adams: → from the TeX Showcase. →
A glossary from Harper Collins: →
Type books:
Oliver Simon, Introduction to Typography
John Kane, A Type Primer
Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style
Erik Spiekermann, Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works
Joep Pohlen, Letter Fountain
Jost Hochuli, Detail in Typography
Hart’s Rules (39th ed.)
Mitchell & Wightman, Typographic Style Handbook
Some specimen books and machine manuals:
The ATF (American Type Founders Company) Specimen Book:
1923 Edition →
1912 Edition →
Lanston Monotype Specimen Book of Typefaces, 1922: →
Stephenson Blake Specimen, 1908: →
Barnhart & Spindler Specimen, 1907: →
MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Specimen Books: 1885 → 1892 →
Specimen Book of the Bauersche Giesserei, 1900: →
V. & J. Figgins, 1845. Some Porson Greek types, supplied with upright or slanting capitals. Also Saxon, Gaelic, Hebrew, Syriac, Persian Arabic, and Bengali fonts (page 111 and ff.): →
Fry Specimen, 1816: →
Binny & Ronaldson Specimen, 1812 (the first type specimen printed in North America): →
Caslon Specimen Books:
1785 →
1798 →
1841 →
1915 →
William Caslon I’s 1734 Specimen: →
In the 1798 Specimen the long s (ſ) has disappeared, and some of the types come with lining figures; see Figures on p. 127.
The Egenolff-Berner specimen (1592), showing Claude Garamond’s roman types and Robert Granjon’s italics: →
The Manual of Linotype Typography (1923): →
Linotype machine manual (1892): →
The Mechanism of the Linotype (1902): →
Linotype Keyboard Practice (1947): →
The Monotype system: a book for owners & operators of Monotypes (1912)
→
A list of metal Monotype typefaces in alphabetical order →, and
numerical order →, from the website of Alembic Press. →
Printers’ Rulers
Some rulers that you can download and print out: →,
→,
→.
See also ‘The TeX ruler’ → (search your TeX Live or MiKTeX installation for ‘ruler’, you will find the source file of the PDF), and ‘pointruler’, a printer’s ruler done in LaTeX: →.
Videos
Some videos about typesetting and printing that I found on Youtube.
Hand setting (1959): →
A short film about the Linotype machine from TypeCulture. →
A longer film (35 mins) from c. 1960 that describes the working of the Linotype machine in detail. →
See also ‘Linotype: The Film’ (2012).
A short film about the Monotype system from TypeCulture. →
Videos from the National Print Museum of Ireland showing the operation of the Keyboard → and Caster. → This channel also has videos about hand setting, Linotype, Ludlow (another kind of hot metal typesetting system), Wharfdale, Heidelberg and Albion presses and other things.
The Monotype Vault: →
A film from 1947 showing the complete process of turning an author’s manuscript into a book. The material is first typeset on a Linotype machine and locked up in a small forme. Then, because hot metal type is softer than foundry type and tends to wear out over long print runs, a copper plate is formed from a wax mould of this forme by the electrotype process. The copper plates are cut up into individual pages and imposed on the bed of the printing press. After the printing is done, the large sheets are folded into signatures, collated and stitched, then the book block is trimmed and finally the cover is put on →.
Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu: the end of hot metal typesetting at the New York Times and its replacement by phototypesetting. Phototypesetting had a brief heyday between the 1950s and its own replacement by desktop publishing in the mid 1980s.
→
Offset lithography, how most books are printed nowadays: →, →.
Film from Edwards Brothers Malloy showing the modern process of book printing and binding: →. This is the 21st century equivalent of the film from 1947 linked to above.
Donald Knuth explaining why he decided to create his own typesetting program: → and following videos. Lots of other interesting videos on this channel.
Backround image: The Doves Type →