Typography

Some material relating to Typography and Typesetting in general.

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:

One Typeface, many fonts by W.F. Adams: from the TeX Showcase.

A glossary from Harper Collins:


Type books

Oliver Simon, Introduction to Typography

Ruari McLean, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography (1980, 1992)

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 freely available type books

(If archive.org is blocked by your ISP for some reason, try using a VPN or TOR browser)

Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, 3rd edn.

Printing Processes (Ladybird How It Works Series 654), 1971

The Story Of Printing (A Ladybird achievements book Series 601), 1970

The Monotype Recorder:
Autumn 1968, on Stanley Morison
Winter 1956, Setting Mathematics
(more: https://metaltype.co.uk/wpress/library/monotype-recorder/)

A. F. Johnson, Type Designs: Their History and Development, 2nd edn., 1959

Ruari McLean, Modern Book Design, 1958

Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design, 1st edn., 1956

Harold Curwen, Printing [Puffin Picture Book 70], 1948

Jan Tschichold, An Illustrated History Of Writing And Lettering, 1946

David Thomas, Type for print, 1939

Bernard Newdigate, The art of the book, 1938

Stanley Morison, Holbrook Jackson, A Brief Survey of Printing History and Practice, 1923

The Fleuron: a journal of typography, 1923

Lucien Alphonse Legros and John Cameron Grant, Typographical Printing-Surfaces: The Technology and Mechanism of their Production, 1916

Edward Johnston, Writing & illuminating, & lettering, 1906

Theodore Low De Vinne, The Practice of Typography:
Plain Printing Types, 1900 (vol. 1)
Correct Composition, 1901 (vol. 2)
A Treatise on Title-Pages, 1902 (vol. 3)
Modern Methods of Book Composition, 1904 (vol. 4)

Pierre-Simon Fournier, Manuel typographique, 1764
vol. I or
vol. II or

Joseph Moxon, Mechanick exercises, or, The doctrine of handy-works: applied to the art of printing: the second volumne, 1683 1896


Specimen books

Specimen Book of ‘Monotype’ Printing Types (1971?)
Volume One
Volume Two

Specimen Book of Linotype Faces, 1939

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: 1892 1885

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
In the 1798 Specimen the long s (ſ) has disappeared, and some of the types come with lining figures; see Figures on p. 127.

Fournier, Les caractères de l'imprimerie, 1764: or

Baskerville Specimen, 1762:

William Caslon I’s 1734 Specimen:

The Egenolff-Berner specimen (1592), showing Claude Garamond’s roman types and Robert Granjon’s italics:

Erhard Ratdolt’s Type Specimen of 1486:


Machine manuals

John W. Seybold, Fundamentals of modern photo-composition, 1979

Linofilm System, photocomposition

The Intertype, its function, care, operation and adjustment, 1929

Linotype Keyboard Practice, 1947:

The Manual of Linotype Typography, 1923:

Linotype machine manual, 1892:

The Mechanism of the Linotype, 1902:

Linotype Manual, by F. H. McCall

A Picture Book of ‘Monotype’ Composing and Casting Machines

A ‘Monotype’ Keyboard Explanations & Diagrams

The Monotype system: a book for owners & operators of Monotypes, 1916

A list of metal Monotype typefaces in alphabetical order →, and numerical order , from the website of Alembic Press.

More about letterpress printing:
https://britishletterpress.co.uk/
https://metaltype.co.uk/wpress/


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