TYPOGRAPHY OF CENTENNIAL SURVEYS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 44, 26 April 1940, Page 34

TYPOGRAPHY OF CENTENNIAL SURVEYS

The Editor, "The Listener" Sir,-It is so unusual and so pleasant to have a book published in New Zealand criticised on typographical grounds that 1 feel impelled to make some explanation on the two points objected to by the writer of the review of Dr. Simpson’s Women of New Zealand (The Listener, April 12). (1) Your reviewer deplores the title-page, which in essentials is the same as that of the other volumes of :the Centennial Surveys. So do I. The difficulty here is one of balance. If the frontispiece is covered with a blank sheet, you will find that the title-page doesn’t look so bad after all-perhaps a little toc restrained, but not so bad. Unfortunately the unit in book printing is not the single page but the two-page opening; and in these surveys the frontispiece badly overweights the title-page. The obvious remedy is to make the title-page heavier-i.e., to use bigger type on it. But. at present we have no bigger type of the right sort--Monotype Aldine Bemboto use on this page; though it has been on order for more than three months. Why not use a different sort of type then? Because a whole book should also be regarded as a typographical unity, and we have, I think, no type that would fit in well with Bembo. That remedy would be worse than the disease. Furthermore, this whole series is also to be regarded as a general typographical unity, so we can’t make violent experiments. We can only watch and pray for the arrival of the right sizes of type. Till then;alas! (2) Your reviewer regards untrimmed bottom edges of a book, in a machine-age, as indefensible. Here I differ from him-though courteously, I hope. The existence of a machine for slicing off bits of books ‘doesn’t necessarily convince me that we should use it, This is a negative argument. There are two positive ones. First, the slight irregularity in the length of page at the bottom, as it is a natural irregularity, is in itself, I feel, not unpleasant. Secondly,

the dignity of a double-page of type-the extent to which it becomes really pleasing-depends on its margins, and particularly on this bottom margin. In placing the right amount of type on this page, it seemed essential to me to have the maximum margin at the bottom, and not to take off an arbitrary quarter-inch (say) for the sake of mechanical regularity. This, by the way, is quite a standard practice in book production, May I add that the more criticism these books get the better. We are just beginning in New Zealand to produce books of tolerable appearance, and there is no reason why in a matter that demands craftsmanship and taste rather than genius we should not reach a relatively high standard. But to become complacent at this stage, to lavish indiscriminate

praise, would be disastrous. I hope therefore that those of your readers who are interested in typography will regard these Centennial books as a starting-point, not as a final achievement. Yours, etc.,

J. C.

BEAGLEHOLE

Wellington, April 15, 1940,