Printers' Maxims & Other Notes

Carl Shank • March 23, 2024

Printers Maxims & Other Notes

Printers and typesetters can gain much wisdom from older printers. The Printers’ Handbook of Trade Recipes, Hints & Suggestions Relating to Letterpress and Lithographic Printing, Bookbinding, Stationery, Engraving, Etc., compiled by Charles Thomas Jacobi, London, 1891, gives what is called “Maxims for Printers.” These maxims and many others have guided the printing trade for many years. They distill the wisdom of centuries of printing and typography. We would do well to heed such advice.


1.   It is better to remain idle than to work at a loss.

2.   Genius is as rare in printing as in any other art.

3.   Legitimate competition is a sign of life and health.

4.   Do your work carefully, striving for constant improvement.

5.   Follow copy, provided it is good, and never copy anything bad.

6.   You cannot be a successful printer if the imprint of care and study is not upon brain and hands.

7.   Preserve all specimens of good work that come into your possession, and spend your leisure time in their study.

8.   Unless an apprentice is possessed of an ambition and determination to excel, the chances are that he will always be but a poor workman.

9.   Skill in business, a well-earned reputation for uniformly superior work, a good financial credit, promptness, honorable and liberal dealing, correct and steady personal and business habits, are absolutely necessary concomitants of success.

10. No matter how good a printer you are, you will learn something every day; and in every job you do for a customer, study how you can improve it next time. Never let a poor or carelessly executed job go out of your office, no matter even if, by mistake in “estimating,” or for any other reason, you may lose money on this particular one.

11. Study the work of first-class printers. A skilled workman has expended time, thought, and labor in its production.

12. It is not the grace or beauty of a single line that produces the result sought. The specimen must be judged as a whole.

13. Never curve a line where it would look better straight.

14. Do not crowd a job to put in a flourish or ornament.

15. Elaborate borders can only be used effectively by first-class workmen.

16. A plain rule border, with a neat corner, is more effective than a display border on a small card.

17. Ornament has to be kept strictly within the stern chasteness of taste, and permits of no extravagance of detail.

18. Ornament should always be subservient to its proper use. Any superfluity or preponderance destroys the proper effect.

19. Better do a good, plain job in black ink and one style of type, than an outrageous combination of fantastic ornaments in the glowing hues of the rainbow.

20. The use of ornaments requires a cultivated taste. They were intended to “light up,” not smother; to give an “airy grace,” not detract; to do away with “monotony,” not make a dreary waste.


Color Blindness

The land, especially during the holiday season, is flooded with abominations of tint and taste, with miserable chromos and calendars that are a disgrace to the art. When will craftsmen learn to avoid the delusions and pitfalls of color, and assert the strict taste embodied in black and white? Zebra-striped and rainbow-illuminated monstrosities will ever be a plague to the inventor, and are worthy only of some demented members of the paste-brush brigade.


Hints on Composition

Understand your take fully before leaving the foreman or copy hook. Time spent in this way is profitably invested. At least read through the outlines of the job. If pamphlet or book-work, the reading of the first page or two will be sufficient. Determine upon display lines. Spelling, style of punctuation, capitalizing and paragraphs, should be according to usage of establishment. If possible, absorb the subject of your take; it will render work more engaging.


The Origin & Use of Italic

The form of Roman now known as Italic was originally called Aldine. The first volume printed in this character had the capitals with their stems upright like those of the current round hand. These first editions were the works of Virgil, printed by Aldus Pius Manutius, in 1512, and it is known that this celebrated printer made use of a manuscript text entirely copied by Francesco Petrarca. Thus, it is said, that Manutius desiring to pay public and reverent homage to the author of the Canzoni, appropriately wished a hanging character cut in imitation of his writing, entrusting the design and the cutting to a skilled artist, one Francesco de Bologna. But the fashion of these editions in cursive italic type lasted only a short time, having been imitated by foreign printers in a careless and illegible manner. The cursive character was at that time known both in Italy and outside of the country under the name of Aldine, but later the title of cursive was given to it from the writing of the Roman Chancellery, called cursiveti seu cancellarii; a title which in Italy has superseded every other.


Other information on Italics can be found in Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style — “Early italic fonts had only modest slope and were designed to be used with upright roman capitals. There are some beautiful fifteenth-century manuscript italics with no slope whatsoever, and some excellent typographic versions, old and new, that slope as little as 2°or 3°. Yet others slope as much as 20°. Italic and roman lived quite separate lives until the middle of the sixteenth century. Before that date, books were set in either roman or italic, but not in both. In the late Renaissance, typographers began to use the two for different features in the same book. Typically, roman was used for the main text and italic for the preface, headnotes,  sidenotes and for verse or block quotations. The custom of combining italic and roman in thesame line, using italic to emphasize individual words and mark classes of information, developed late in the sixteenth century and flowered in the seventeenth.” (Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (Hartley & Marks, 1992 edition, 54)

 

Bringhurst goes on to comment on font use — "Don't use a font you don't need. The marriage of type and text requires courtesy to the in-laws, but it does not mean that all of them ought to move in, nor even that all must come to visit. Boldface roman type did not exist until the nineteenth century, and bold italic is even more recent.Generations of good typographers were quite content without such variations. Font manufacturers nevertheless now often sell these extra weights as part of a basic package, thereby encouraging typographers - beginners especially - to use bold roman and italic whether they need them or not." (Bringhurst, 52)

 

“Some of what a typographer must set, like some of what any musician must play, is simply passage work. Even an edition of Plato or Shakespeare will contain a certain amount of routine text: page numbers,scene numbers, textual notes, the copyright claim, the publisher's name and address, and the hyperbole onthe jacket, not to mention the passage work or background writing that is implicit in the text itself. Butjust as a good musician can make a heart-wrenching ballad from a few banal words and a trivial tune, so thetypographer can make poignant and lovely typography from bibliographical paraphernalia and textual chaff.The ability to do so rests on respect for the text as a whole, and on respect for the letters themselves. Perhaps the rule should read: Give full typographical attention especially to incidental details.” (Robert Bringhurst, 24)


Successful Layout & Design

Advances in Typography: A Historical Sketch (Part 2)

By Carl Shank • November 20, 2025
Industrial Revolution and Display Typography (1800–1870) I have recently viewed the broadcasts of Great Canal Journeys, a narrated insight into Britain’s canals and waterways by two married and retired actors. They have been responsible for the restoration of a number of Britain’s canal systems. They noted that the Industrial Revolution in that country brought about the almost demise of the canals for moving products across the continent. The railroads took over much of the movement of goods from one place to another. In much the same way, typography and printing were forever transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Britannica notes that “the Industrial Revolution changed the course of printing and typography not only by mechanizing a handicraft but also by greatly increasing the market for its wares. Inventors in the nineteenth century, in order to produce enough reading matter for a constantly growing and ever more literate population, had to solve a series of problems in paper production, composition, printing, and binding.”

Advances in Typography (1500–1900): A Historical Sketch (Part 1)

By Carl Shank • November 18, 2025
Advances in Typography (1500–1900) A Historical Sketch (Part 1) Early Renaissance (1500–1550) We had noted in the Blog “What Happened After Gutenberg: 1460–1640” (November 8, 2025) that movable type spread across Europe beyond its German roots. Gothic Blackletter type, though still used for religious and legal documents, began to give way to Venetian old style humanist faces. Influenced by humanist handwriting and calligraphy, Aldus Manutius and Francesco Griffo developed italic type for compact books. National printing centers became established in Venice, Italy, Paris and Lyon, France, Basel, Germany and Antwerp in the Netherlands The transition from Gothic to Italic typefaces was part of the broader evolution of typography that took place during the Renaissance period, driven by shifts in cultural, aesthetic, and technological factors. The Renaissance, beginning in Italy in the fourteenth century, marked a revival of classical antiquity and a move toward humanism. This brought a renewed interest in the legible, flowing scripts of Roman and Greek antiquity, which were more readable and aesthetically simple compared to Gothic lettering. The development of the printing press (ca. 1440) by Johannes Gutenberg created a need for more versatile and legible typefaces. The emerging humanist values aligned with a preference for typefaces that resembled the clear, round, and graceful writing of ancient Roman scripts.\ The Italic typeface was introduced by Aldus Manutius in Venice around 1501. Italic type is a cursive font based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with Blackletter (See Blog Jan 16, 2025 Blackletter Type and Universities) and roman type, italic has served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Italics takes notable influences from hand drawn calligraphy, with italic letters normally slanted slightly to the right. Upper case letters may have typographic swashes, flourishes inspired by ornate calligraphy. The name “italic” comes from their Italian use, to replace documents traditionally written in a hand-written style called chancery hand. Notice also the small “end point bowls” on some of the letters, where the ink pen stopped for a second. While modern italics are often more condensed than roman types, historian Harry Carter describes Manutius' italic as about the same width as roman type. To replicate handwriting, Griffo cut at least sixty-five tied letters (ligatures) in the Aldine Dante and Virgil of 1501. Italic typefaces of the following century used varying but reduced numbers of ligatures. Manutius sought to create more compressed elegant typefaces that could fit more text on a page, catering to the rising demand for smaller, portable books. Italic was based on the handwriting of Niccolò de’ Niccoli, a Renaissance scholar and calligrapher. Italic typefaces are defined by their slanted, cursive-like appearance, with letters that have a flowing, dynamic quality. It allowed for more text to be fitted on the page and mimicked the handwriting style of humanist scholars, like the handwriting of Petrarch. The common italic “slope” was introduced in the sixteenth century — “The first printer known to have used them was Johann or Johannes Singriener in Vienna in 1524, and the practice spread to Germany, France and Belgium. Particularly influential in the switch to sloped capitals as a general practice was Robert Granjon, a prolific and extremely precise French punchcutter particularly renowned for his skill in cutting italics. Vervliet comments that among punchcutters in France "the main name associated with the change is Granjon's.” (Wikipedia on Italic Type) The insertion of an italic typeface alongside a roman face would wait until later to distinguish portions of a book not properly belonging to the work, such as introductions, prefaces, indexes, and notes; the text itself being in Roman. Later, it was used in the text for quotations ; and finally served the double part of emphasizing certain words. Italic type was not only more elegant than the Gothic but also more efficient in terms of space. It became the preferred choice for printed texts that emphasized classical learning, philosophy, poetry, and humanist literature. Italic was initially used for entire texts but later became more common for emphasis alongside Roman type.
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