ABSTRACT

For most of the nineteenth century, letterpress design in Britain followed conventions established in the pre-industrial era, paying little attention to matters of colour, form, and display. Decorative typefaces competed with a profusion of type ornaments, leaving job printing, especially, with no visual logic in its composition. In the final decades of the century, however, some Victorian printers began to search for aesthetic principles that could do two things: reform letterpress design, and teach the public to embrace this new style of composition. Their search led printers to the tenets of design reform, popularized by Henry Cole and his coterie of artists and designers at mid-century. While design reformers discussed printing solely in terms of factory-produced commodities on which designs were stamped (fabrics, wallpapers, tiles, etc.), the principles guiding their notions of morally- and economically-uplifting visual display were well-suited for adaptation to letterpress design. Key to the dissemination of these ideas throughout the printing trade became a globe-spanning project called the Printers’ International Specimen Exchange. For nearly twenty years, reform-minded printers near and far exchanged letterpress specimens with each other via the PISE. This effort united participants in a global fraternity of fellow-tradesmen, popularized new technologies and printing techniques, and spread the gospel of design reform. In this way, the PISE became a nineteenth-century grammar of typography, a sourcebook of design principles and exemplary practices that turned letterpress printers toward the horizon of professional graphic design.

摘要

在 19 世纪的大部分时间里，英国的凸版印刷设计遵循前工业时代确立的惯例，很少关注颜色、形式和展示的问题。装饰性字体与大量的字体装饰相竞争，留下了工作印刷，尤其是在其组成中没有视觉逻辑。然而，在本世纪的最后几十年，一些维多利亚时代的印刷商开始寻找可以做两件事的美学原则：改革凸版印刷设计，并教导公众接受这种新的构图风格。他们的搜索将印刷商引向了设计改革的原则，亨利科尔和他的艺术家和设计师小圈子在本世纪中叶推广了这一原则。虽然设计改革者仅根据印有设计的工厂生产的商品（织物、壁纸、瓷砖等）来讨论印刷，指导他们在道德和经济上提升视觉展示概念的原则非常适合用于凸版印刷设计。在整个印刷行业传播这些想法的关键变成了一个全球性的项目，称为印刷商的国际标本交换。近二十年来，具有改革思想的印刷商通过PISE相互交换凸版印刷样本。这一努力将参与者团结在全球同行中，普及新技术和印刷技术，传播设计改革的福音。通过这种方式，PISE成为了 19 世纪的排版语法、设计原则和示范性实践的原始资料，将凸版印刷机推向了专业平面设计的视野。