The print media has long been the way that advertisers, newspaper proprietors and the general public have communicated with each other. Printing is only the end product of this continuing process. The pre-press area of printing is really the preparation and design part before an page has "been put to bed" and before it comes anywhere near a printing press.
I mentioned the print media in my first paragraph. This has become a slightly overworked and generalised term, but with the advent of the internet and other electronic forms of communication, the title is, in fact, reasonably accurate.
The attraction of a page of type is obviously determined by what is on it. This usually takes the form of typefaces - collectively known as fonts - they used to be called founts in their early days - and images (pictures). The design of these usually determines how much the page is going to be read. Though it probably isn't something the reader thinks about consciously, the designer most certainly would.
Fonts broadly fall into two categories, serif and sans serif. Serif typefaces are the fonts that have the squiggly bits, a good example of these are the typefaces which are usually used to produce wedding invitations and the like. Sans serif typefaces mean "without serifs" the French word for without being "sans". We used to call this "block writing" in schooldays if memory serves me correctly! Enough of the history lesson, let¡¯s move on!!
To make a page look attractive, it is responsibility of the person composing the page to use the correct balance of typefaces. This person, in years gone by, was called a Compositor. Because of his training, he was skilled in the craft of composing types to look attractive in the printed word. I think today we call them either typographers or graphic designers - the principle is still the same though.
Fonts were made in type foundries - in the lead era of printing - for centuries. One of the major influences in type design was the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s. They made an incredible contribution to all forms of design at that time - including wallpaper design. One of the more famous typefaces of that era was Gill Sans - a quite beautiful non-serif font.
The age of digital fonts is with us now and there are many fonts which are just as beautiful as their old-style counterparts. Digitised fonts in my opinion though, do tend to carry too much space to the left of the figures, particularly the figure one. This tends to unbalance the look of a page. There are differing styles of fonts, which seem to stretch both horizontally and vertically whichever takes your fancy. Naturally, all these type of fonts may be changed and altered electronically with the software available through the design industry nowadays.
Our target, whether two hundred or two years ago is still the printing press and, although we appear to have revolutionised the way we prepare our pages, the methods in their time and place, were equally practical. It is a matter of opinion - depending on your age group - which you think is the more efficient.
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Printing
