72

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TYPE IN

THE NEWS

In 1894, as prob

ably three hundred

hand typesetters were

given pink slips, news- i

paper management I

had something to crow

about. Sixty years later,

newsboys might have

shouted, "Extra! Extra!

Enquirer gets set of

Rapidographs...will

revolutionize drafting

department."

esting in art and design was born between
1880 and 1910. By 1965 they were mostly all
dead. The great printing firms, run by men
who had learned the art of printing from the
ground up and who cared about it passion¬
ately, were, by the early 1960s, left to the care
of the sons: These coddled rich kids graduat¬
ed from Eastern colleges—an advantage
their fathers never had—and now these
brats, having discovered that you can't really
earn a living as a second-string tennis pro,
reluctantly took over their fathers' printing
firms. Things started to go downhill fast from

PULLING PROOF. Unidentified hand, above, pulls a "proof,"
or an inked sample copy, from a solid metal block of text
that would have been the end product of the Linotype or sim¬
ilar typesetting machine. For more than seventy years, heavy
metal reigned in the world of type.

LOGO, FONT a LETTERING BIBLE

there. Exact color registration became a thing
of the past. I mean, how annoying is it to
have to tweak a press for registration?! The
sons couldn't care less. They were not con¬
cerned with art, just profit, and were sure
their fathers had done it all wrong.

The actual guys running the presses, I
always assumed, must have been the ones
with those bumper stickers on their pickups
that read, "I'd rather be sailing." Printers
became uncannily expert at making excuses
for their sloth. The problem was always
"ghosting," or "offset," or "too much ink cover¬
age on the left side screwing up the right," or
"Kodalith always goes too red.. . ."

Color separations and halftones were pho¬
tographed once, never corrected. I know it was
possible to have a halftone made correctly
because when I could stand there and make a
guy do it—using a brief secondary "flash"
exposure to blow out the highlights—my
halftones came out gloriously. But most of the
time, halftones turned out like mud with little
tonal range.

It was completely beyond the ken of print¬
ers to retain middle gray tones in a halftone of
a wash painting while still keeping the white
parts of the drawing absolutely white. In the
days of metal plates there
were guys with routers and
engraving tools who'd ex¬
pertly cut out or etch white
highlights into halftones
that were muddy, but by
the time offset lithography
moved to flexible metal
plates, there was no one
willing to pay the costs of
etching, and hardly anyone
left who knew how to do it.

X-ACTO KNIFE. Jim had the Bowie, Lizzie had the axe, and
we designers have the X-Acto with which we would paste up
our mechanical layouts. The X-Acto is also a dangerous
weapon, as many designers have inadvertently discovered.
Once, one rolled off my desk and stood straight up in my big
toe. X-Acto Rx: When I plunged this very X-Acto knife, right,
into my thigh the other day (I was cutting a paint roller in
half), I was able to quell the bleeding instantly by shaking
cayenne pepper liberally into the gash. Try cayenne yourself!

industry never applied to the most expensive
printing firms, which always turned out quali¬
ty work, and of course, they never appUed to
European and Asian printers, who never lost
the work ethic that many American printers
scoffed at.

A

П

11 this has turned around. Thanks to
ithe Macintosh computer, we designers
lhave now taken over the jobs of the type¬
setters, photoengravers and film strippers.
We can now make our scans of art and pho¬
tography as they should always have been,
and we can "dot etch" and "opaque" and strip
photos into hairline rules (that used to
require double burning) and do all the other
things printers used to complain about and

overcharge for.

text continues on page 77

10 pt. AKZIDENZ GROTESK REGULAR

Machine Version of Standard Regular
(approximates 12 pt. hand-set)

1 pt. Leaded (Cannot be set Solid)

73

Oxidized area
of blade indicates
depth of my most
recent X-Acto
wound.

Many of the criticisms
I've leveled at the printing

PRINTED PROOF. Right, a showing
of a new type specimen on green-
backed galley paper from Robert L
Leslie's famous Manhattan typeset¬
ting shop, the Composing Room.

This type is set on the machine. It is "Akzidenz Grotesk" the ma¬
chine version of Standard Regular. It is 10 pt., and approximates
the 12 pt. in the hand-set type. Please note the perfect fit of the
characters and the fine alignment. Standard has been a much
wanted face but due to the fact that It had to be hand-set it could
be used only In a limited way. Now that it is available at Th<
Composing Room on the machine it can be used for all kinds
typography and have the beauty of hand-set Standard and
economy of machine composition. We have the latest de-
on our linotypes for centering and quadding, for the elinr
of hairlines, for an improved face on the slug thus giving v
crisp and even-toned Reproduction Proofs, Acetate Pr
Color Proofs. The Composing Room is always lookin

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THE COMPOSING ROOM, INC • 130 W. 46

5666