Printing of Today

“…the quality of the form does not directly affect the quality of the substance. The sonnets of Shakespeare remain the sonnets of Shakespeare even in the most abominable edition. Nor can the finest printing improve their quality. The poetical substance exists independently of the visible form in which it is presented to the world. But though, in this case, the letter is powerless to make or mar the spirit which is symbolizes, it is nor for that reason to be despised as mere letter, mere form, mere negligible outside. Every outside has a corresponding inwardness. The inwardness of letters does not happen to be literature; but that is not to say that they have no inwardness at all. Good printing cannot make a bad book good, nor bad printing ruin a good book. But good printing can create a valuable spiritual state in the reader, bed printing a certain spiritual discomfort. The inwardness of letters is the inwardness of any piece of visual art regarded simply as a thing of beauty.

…For our sensations, our feelings and ideas do not exist independently of one another, but form, as it were, the constituent notes of what is either a discord or a harmony. The state of mind produced by the sigh of beautiful letters is in harmony with that created by the reading of good literature. Their beauty can even compensate us, in some degree, for what we suffer from bad literature. They can give us intense pleasure, as I discovered in China, even when we do not understand what they signify….The letters have a value of their own apart from what signify, a private inwardness of graphic beauty. The Chinese themselves, for whom the Fish-and-Chips significance is no secret, are the most ardent admires of this graphic beauty. Fine writing is valued by them as highly as fine painting. The writer is an artist as much respected as the sculptor or the potter.

Writing is dead in Europe; and even when it flourished, it was never such a finely subtle art as among the Chinese. Our alphabet has only six and twenty letters, and when we write, the same forms must constantly be repeated. The result is, inevitably, a certain monotonousness in the aspect of the page – a monotonousness enhanced by the fact the forms themselves are, fundamentally, extremely simple. In Chinese writing, on the other hand, the ideographs are numbered by thousands and have none of the rigid, geometrical simplicity that characterizes European letters. The rich flowing brushwork is built up into elaborate forms, each form the symbol of a word, distinct and different. Chinese writing is almost the artistic image of thought itself, free, various, unmonotonous. Even in the age of handwriting, the European could never hope to create, by means of his few and simple signs, an art of calligraphy comparable to the Chinese. Printing has rendered the Chinese beauty yet more unrealizable. Where the Chinese freely painted we must be content with reproducing geometrical patterns. Pattern making is a poorer less subtle art than painting. But it is still an art. By someone who understands his business the printed page can be composed into patterns almost as satisfyingly beautiful as those of the carpet or the brocade.

…There have been numerous attempts in recent years to improve the quality of printing. But of these attempts too many have been made in the wrong spirit. Instead of trying to exploit modern machinery, many artistic printers have rejected it altogether and reverted to the primitive methods of an earlier age. Instead of trying to create new forms of type and decoration, they have imitated the styles of the pas. This prejudice in favor of handwork and ancient decorative forms was the result of an inevitable reaction against beastliness. It was only natural that sensitive men should have wished to abandon the use of machines and to return to the artistic conventions in vogue before the development of machinery. It has become obvious that the machine is here to stay. Whole armies of William Morrises and Tolstoys could not now expel it….The sensible thing to do is not to revolt against the inevitable, but to use and modify it, to make it serve your purposes. Machines exist; let us then exploit them to create beauty – a modern beauty, while we are about it. For we live in the twentieth century; let us frankly admit it an not pretend that we live in the fifteenth. The work of the backward-looking hand-printers may be excellent in its way; but its way is not the contemporary way. Their books are often beautiful, but with a borrowed beauty expressive of nothing in the world in which we happen to live. They are also, as it happens, so expensive, that only the very rich can afford to buy them. The printer who makes a fetish of handwork and medieval craftsmanship, who refuses to tolerate the machine or to make any effort to improve the quality of this output, thereby condemns the ordinary reader to a perpetuity of ugly printing. As an ordinary reader, who cannot afford to buy handmade books, I object to the archaizing printer. It is only from the man with the machine that I can hope for my amelioration of my lot as a reader.

…But the truth is that Typography is an art in which violent revolutions can scarcely, in the nature of things, hope to be successful…We read, he argues, too easily. Our eyes slide over the words, and the words, in consequence, mean nothing to us. An illegible type makes us take trouble. It compels us to dwell on each separate word: we have time, while we are deciphering it, to suck out its whole significance…It is the author’s business to make reading less facile, not the printer’s. If the author concentrated more matter into the same number of sentences, his readers would have to read more carefully than they do at present. An illegible type cannot permanently achieve the same result, for the simple reason that it does not permanently remain illegible type will come to be perfectly legible. In practice, however, we are reluctant to make this effort. We demand that typographical beauty shall be combined with immediate legibility. Now, in order that it may be immediately legible, a type must be similar to the types with which we are familiar. Hence, the practical printer, who has to live by selling his wares to large public, is debarred from making revolutionary innovations in the designs of his type. He must content himself with refining on the ordinary, accepted types of commerce. If he has great typographical reforms in view, he must proceed towards them by degrees, modifying the currently accepted designs gradually, so as not to repel the ordinary lazy reader, who is frightened by the idea of making any unnecessary effort. In other arts, where form and substance are directly associated, revolution is possible, may even be necessary. But the outward form of literature is not typography…The reason for this is obvious. People buy books for the sake of the literature obtained in them and not, primarily, as specimens of graphic art. They demand of the typography that is shall be beautiful, yes; but also that it shall give them immediate an unhampered access to the literature with which it is sell no books, they are compelled by the force of circumstances to adopt a cautious policy of gradual reform. The Communist must either turn Liberal or retire from business.”

Aldous Huxley, (1928)