Table of Contents

• Biography

Biography

Jovica Veljovic received his Masters degree in Calligraphy and Lettering at the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He now lives in Germany and teaches type design and calligraphy at the Fachhochschüle Hamburg. His typefaces include Veljovic, Esprit and Gamma for the International Typeface Corporation and the multiple master typeface Ex Ponto for Adobe Systems, Inc. He has served as a consultant on type design for Apple Computer, Inc., Linotype-Hell AG and URW Software and Type. He received the Charles Peignot Award from ATypI in 1985 for excellence in calligraphy and type design.

Category:Wood Engraving
Category:Calligraphy

Edward Johnston’s achievement in renewing the art of the scribe and the understanding of letterform sprang from the quality of his mind – his quietly insistent logic, and devotion to first principles in everything from mathematics to making toast. This was not without other consequences. In its origins the technique of wood engraving owes everything to its association with the written and printed word. From humble beginnings it attained artistic respectability in the hands of Thomas Bewick (1753–1828), and helped to create an expanding market for illustrated literature. But in service to this and to commercial demands accelerated by the Industrial Revolution, it became itself an industry, and largely a reproductive rather than a creative skill. With the advent of photographic ‘process’ engraving in the 1880s it faced a crisis of identity. A few artists began to see more personal possibilities in the medium, but their approach was confused by its reproductive heritage and by an awe of the Renaissance woodcut, technically and otherwise a different animal.

Among Edward Johnston’s earliest students were, of course, Eric Gill and Noel Rooke. In Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering some Bewick engravings are reproduced, with a note by Rooke suggesting them as possible models for a student-illuminator.¹ Elsewhere in the book Johnston commends ‘The splendid effect of Title and Initial pages engraved in wood… seen in the books of the Kelmscott Press’. Though generally favouring ‘ordinary typography’ for ordinary purposes he says ‘If special forms or arrangements of letters are required, for which type is lacking or unsuited, they are best cut in wood or metal. The engraver leaves the mark of his tool and hand upon, and so gives character to, such lettering; while, if he has some knowledge of letters, he may give fresh beauty to their forms’.² In a lecture on 30th November 1906 he said ‘I commend wood engraving to you for its simplicity & its direct educational value… you will find the wood & the graver will teach you at once things about form that are new to you & wonderful’.³ This reflects the excitement of very recent discovery; his work diary for the same year and month records:

Nov 16 Fri.  Bt. Wood Engraving matls.
17 Sat.  My 1st Wood Engraving
18 Sun.  2nd Wood Engraving
3rd Wood Engraving
20. Tues.  Gill abt. 9.pm till 2am (21st)
(trying engraving)
(EJ’s 4th wood-engraving)⁴
The latter entry matches one in Eric Gill’s diary for the same date: ‘Tried wood Engraving a little in evening’ – clearly the two sat down together that night (and characteristically into the small hours of the next morning) to share their adventure. Proofs of Johnston’s efforts survive – not masterpieces, but one is thoroughly Johnstonian in its humour. Noel Rooke had already made his own start. He had been drawing for illustration since 1900; but, dissatisfied with ‘the Zincograph Process’ which had ousted wood engraving from its purely reproductive role and ‘Inspired by the thought of Johnston’s calligraphy I started in 1905 to make wood engravings on the same basis’, i.e. Johnston’s definition of formal writing as ‘the characteristic product of a special tool’. ‘I concluded that wood-engraving offered the best means of book decoration and illustration for the future, but on condition that it was done from a new point of view. All the attempts to revive it had failed because they followed the error which had caused its destruction fifty years ago, i.e. making engraving a method of reproducing drawings, instead of making it the chance of creating designs which could not be brought into existence in any other way.’⁵ These were the principles on which wood engraving would be redeveloped in the twentieth century. Rooke was not quite alone in pursuing them – Edward Gordon Craig, Sydney Lee and one or two others were working independently on similar lines – but his claim that this was the start of a movement was essentially justified.

Johnston had been rubricating books by hand for the Doves Press, run by his Hammersmith neighbour T.J. Cobden-Sanderson. Soon both Rooke and Gill were engraving initial letters, headpieces and the like not only for the Doves Press but the German publishers Insel Verlag, through the agency of Count Harry Kessler, from Johnston’s originals. Though this was in fact reproductive engraving, both moved on quickly to work which was their own in all ways. Johnston himself engraved a Christmas card in 1913, but does not seem to have pursued the medium further after this – no doubt calligraphy as such, and teaching commitments, were proving a sufficient tax on his never-abundant energy. Gill’s engraving developed steadily into a major part of his output, especially after his and Johnston’s mutual friend Hilary Pepler had started the St Dominic’s Press at Ditchling. Though he never taught engraving formally Gill was always a powerful example, articulate in his view of the medium and encouraging to others. Noel Rooke was a tutor in book illustration at the Central School from 1905, but overcame unaccountable opposition to the teaching of wood engraving only in 1912. Two years later he became Head of Book Production, which no doubt restricted his own output but was a position from which he could exert unrivalled influence. The mark of his teachings can be seen in the work of many wood engravers who emerged over the next generation. One of the earliest and most energetic, Robert Gibbings, seems first to have mooted the idea of a group which would draw together the somewhat scattered activities of artists working in the medium. But the catalyst for its realisation was Philip Hagreen, self-taught as an engraver though his early work suggests Rooke’s influence. On the initiative of these two the Society of Wood Engravers was formed in 1920. Rooke and Gill being at once invited to membership. Hagreen’s encounter with Eric Gill transormed his artistic outlook – he worked at Ditchling Common then and much later, becoming among other things an engraver of lettering too little appreciated even now.

A further circle, as it were, was completed when Gibbings took over the Golden Cockerel Press in 1924, commissioning engravings (as well as a proprietary typeface) from Gill. The summit of their collaboration, the Four Gospels of 1931, is a supreme realisation of that ideal of ‘the Book Beautiful’ which had inspired Cobden-Sanderson, and Johnston’s association with him, years earlier. Around 1930 Johnston was working on typefaces, and Gill was engraving, for Count Kessler’s Cranach Press; both were involved in Kessler’s editions (German and English) of Hamlet with woodcuts by another pioneering figure, Gordon Craig. About this time, too, the young Reynolds Stone, fresh from Cambridge and the University Press (where Stanley Morison’s typographic authority ensured that Johnstonian principles were honoured) met Gill and was effectively launched on his own engraving career. He was to demonstrate further that, in Johnston’s words, the engraver with a knowledge of letters ‘may give fresh beauty to their forms’.

Reynolds Stone was also one of those who kept wood engraving in the public eye when the excitements of the ‘revival’ – actually of course an entirely new movement – cooled down. The principles enunciated by its founders had sometimes been carried to extremes but a body of original and vigorous work had been created. Noel Rooke taught at the Central School until 1947, being succeeded by another distinguished ex-pupil, John Farleigh, founder in the same year of the Crafts Centre of Great Britain. In a lecture shortly before his retirement Rooke foresaw the developments – changes in fashion and the uses of graphic media, in art education and printing technology – which would combine to make the future of wood engraving again problematical. Symptomatic and maybe symbolic was the decline of the Society of Wood Engravers, even to apparent extinction in the 1970s – and its rebirth in 1984 (it was good that one of its principal founders, Philip Hagreen, should have lived long enough to receive the news of this). Continuity has been maintained, new talents continue to come forward and the spirit of exploration is alive and well. In this renewed vitality there is still a fundamental debt to the perceptions of Edward Johnston and those he inspired a hundred years ago.

FOOTNOTES
1 Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering, pp 189-193.
2 Ibid, pp 328-330.
3 Lessons in Formal Writing, ed. Heather Child and Justin Howes, 1986, pp 96-7.
4 Edward Johnston’s Work Diary, held at the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham, Surrey.
5 Quoted in ‘Noel Rooke: the early years’ by Justin Howes, Matrix 3, 1983.

Category:Calligraphy
Category:Illumination

In 1899, Edward Johnston was encouraged to start a class at the Central School of Arts and Crafts by WR Lethaby. His subject was to be ‘Illuminating.’ At that time the crafts of calligraphy and illumination were almost inseparable. The characteristically British tradition of presenting illuminated addresses, patents, charters and other documents had continued unabated since the Middle Ages, preserving many of the techniques of formal writing on vellum, gilding and decoration, and often incorporating heraldry. Johnston was to play a major part in the refining and invigoration of this tradition, particularly through the publication of Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering in 1906, and his impact on illumination is still apparent a century later.

Johnston would have been well aware of the Victorian enthusiasm for illuminated manuscripts of the Gothic era, reproduced and pastiched in works ranging from the antiquarian to the popular. William Morris advocated a more original approach than his contemporaries, emulating the illuminators of the past by analysis of their tools, materials and craft processes, rather than by slavish imitation. Johnston’s own early attempts at illumination are clearly inspired by the work of Morris, in which scrolling plants and flowers encapsulate the text, and he wrote: ‘Morris, who was a writer and illuminator before he was a painter, has shown us how beautiful modern illuminated writing can be and how in every case the method is to be sought in the old work and inspiration is to be found in nature’.¹

In Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering, Johnston treats the former two subjects together in the first half of the book. He describes the application of decoration to simple lettering, progressing from coloured initials and pen-made patterns to raised gilding and more elaborate initials and borders. Three different types of illumination are distinguished: Barbaric, or geometric and abstract patterns, inspired by Romanesque and Renaissance work, Filigree or pen-made scrollwork, decorated with tiny gold leaves, and Natural or Limners’ work, using plant and animal designs inspired by nature. Like Morris he cautions against imitating medieval designs: …‘our own work is only honest when made in our own humour, time, and place…I have little doubt that an excellent modern style of illumination is quite feasible, in which the greatest possible richness of colour effect is achieved with extreme simplicity of form’.² Johnston gives methodical and practical advice on mixing gesso and applying gold leaf, much of it still relevant today, and even includes a troubleshooting guide for diagnosing why the gold won’t stick! Whilst the body of his text focuses on the decoration of manuscriptbooks, he also gives an appendix covering illuminated addresses, with guidance for their wording, layout, decoration and the order of work.
An additional appendix, ‘On Gilding’, was supplied by Johnston’s pupil and associate Graily Hewitt. Hewitt was largely responsible for reformulating the recipe for gesso (which he calls ‘the asiso’), based on the fifteenth-century writings of Cennino Cennini. Highly skilled in gilding, he devised a style of illumination based upon Italian Renaissance ‘white vine,’ in which the initials are surrounded by a dense pattern of outlined flowers and foliage, set against richly coloured backgrounds. Among his followers were Ida Henstock, Madelyn Walker and Dorothy Hutton. Of Johnston’s own pupils, Louise Powell was significant as an illuminator, completing some of Morris’s manuscriptbooks and working in the Arts and Crafts idiom well into the mid-twentieth century. The conservative craft of illumination remained almost untouched by trends in contemporary art until comparatively recently.

The Society of Scribes and Illuminators was founded by Graily Hewitt and other pupils of Johnston in 1921 and working groups were formed to investigate subjects such as gilding, the use of vellum, and heraldry in illuminated manuscripts. The Society continues to provide a forum for the exchange of technical information and the sharing of members’ work. Among present-day practitioners, Sam Somerville has made a particular contribution to the investigation of the technical aspects of gilding.

In 1931, an exhibition was mounted by the SSI, ‘Three Centuries of Illuminated Addresses, Diplomas and Honorary Freedom Scrolls’. As a result of two World Wars, many memorial books and rolls of honour were also written out and illuminated by distinguished scribes. The Royal Air Force Book of Remembrance at St Clement Danes in London (1962–4) runs to eleven volumes and was worked on by a total of thirteen scribes, directed by Alfred Fairbank. Another pupil of Johnston, Irene Wellington, carried out the Wykehamist Roll of Honour for Winchester College in 1948. Its title page cleverly draws upon the style and techniques of the Anglo-Saxon Winchester school of illumination, characteristically tempered with an almost light-hearted originality.³

In the generation which followed, comprising many of the senior scribes and illuminators of today, calligraphy developed as an art form in its own right, less utilitarian, and often independent of any decoration at all. On the other hand, the techniques of illumination have been used to create images unrelated to traditional initials and borders. For example, in the highly personal work of Ann Hechle⁴, a pupil of Irene Wellington, gilded and painted geometric motifs are often scattered amongst the complex layers of textual imagery. Her fellow pupil, Donald Jackson, has become pre-eminent in the world of illumination today, combining a respect for the techniques and materials of the past with an experimental and painterly approach. The St John’s Bible has returned illumination to its medieval roots in the decoration of sacred texts but, in line with Johnston’s precepts, it is no pastiche and the words are the starting point for the decoration.⁵ The illuminations also follow the Johnstonian progression from coloured initials to patterned borders and figurative illustrations. Donald Jackson’s techniques combine traditional craft skills with cutting-edge technology. The page layouts, pictorial images and patterns are often designed using a computer but the work is executed on calfskin vellum, using quills, gesso and powdered gold and an eclectic mix of inks, paints and pigments. With a confidence and freedom not normally associated with the work of an illuminator, Donald Jackson applies layers of paint and gesso with a brush or roller then adds further detail with quills, fine brushes or rubber stamps. He has assembled a team of craftsmen to work with him on the Bible, among whom are illuminators Sally Mae Joseph, Hazel Dolby and from the USA, Thomas Ingmire and Suzanne Moore.The decoration of conventional texts can vary enormously. Sheila Waters’s manuscriptof Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’ (completed 1978), combines elements of Celtic illumination with folk art, its intricate patterns and colouring appropriate to the language of the play.⁶ Marie Angel’s ‘The Caterpillar’ (1979) illuminates a text by Christina Rossetti, contrasting plain Roman capitals with plants and insects painted in a highly naturalistic miniaturist’s technique.⁷

The traditional work of the illuminator continues apace in presentation scrolls and ceremonial books. Joan Pilsbury, a pupil of Irene Wellington, has distinguished herself in this field, combining consistent writing with rich heraldry and subtle floral decorations in opaque colours, combining to create a calmly balanced effect on the page. An example is the Royal National Lifeboat Institute Memorial Book (completed 1974), produced in collaboration with Wendy Westover, Heather Child,Wendy Gould and Margaret Alexander.⁸ Joan Pilsbury has also made an inventive contribution to the illumination of Letters Patent for the Crown Office over many years.⁹
The initial ‘E’ for Elizabeth II is traditionally executed in raised gold and the decoration incorporates the shield and other portions of the Royal Arms. Donald Jackson uses these elements very differently, adding vigorous quill-made flourishes around the initial to give a contemporary feel. Anthony Wood, by contrast, works in a medieval-inspired heraldic idiom, and must be acknowledged for imparting the traditional skills of calligraphy, heraldry and illumination at Reigate School of Art between 1965 and 1987.¹⁰ At the College of Arms there has traditionally been a division of work between the heraldic artist and the scrivener, which in my own work I have endeavoured to reconcile in order to give a visual unity to Letters Patent granting Arms.¹¹ As Denis Brown has shown, it is possible to give an exciting modern flavour to a documentusing the traditional elements of text, initial and illumination. In The Founding of Trinity College, Dublin (2002), he contrasts a boldly coloured and gilded heading with intricate italic flourishes, incorporating medieval and Celtic features into his personal style.¹²

The rich tradition of illuminating covers a wide spectrum of styles and techniques and features in the work of many calligraphers who it has not been possible to mention here. Following Edward Johnston’s advice and example, its greatest practitioners have used traditional skills and ideas from the past to shape their own work, reinventing it and making it relevant for their own times. The constraints of a commission within a prescribed format may be regarded as a challenge rather than a straightjacket. As Johnston wrote a century ago: ‘There is a fairly steady demand for Illuminated Addresses; but the independent craftsman would have to establish himself by useful practice, and by seizing opportunities, and by doing his work well’.¹³

Footnotes

1 Quoted by Donald Jackson in More Than Fine Writing, pp. 30-1
2 Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering, pp.196-7
3 Illustrated in More Than Fine Writing, p.98
4 p.80
5 pp.35/9
6 Commissioned by Edward Homby, illustrated in Painting for Calligraphers, p.34
7 V and A Collection, illustrated in Painting for Calligraphers, p.37
8 Illustrated here and in Painting for Calligraphers, p.99
9 p62
10 The course continued to run in an amended form until its regretful closure in 2006.
11 p47
12 p34
13 Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering, p.xxi

Bibliography

Marie Angel Painting for Calligraphers London, 1984
Christopher Calderhead Illuminating the Word; the Making of the Saint John’s Bible Collegeville, 2005
H.Child, H.Collins, A.Hechle & D.Jackson More Than Fine Writing; Irene Wellington: Calligrapher (1904-1984) London, 1986
Heather Child Calligraphy Today; Twentieth Century Tradition & Practice London, 1988
Edward Johnston Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering London, 1929 (sixteenth edition)
Joyce Irene Whalley The Art of Calligraphy; Western Europe and America London, 1980

External Links

The Edward Johnston Foundation
The Society of Scribes and Illuminators

Category:Calligraphy
Category:Brush Lettering

Many of Edward Johnston’s admirers overlook his connection with the humble craft of signwriting. Yet, as in so many other aspects of the English renaissance of lettering and typography in the early years of this century, the influence of his teaching was crucial. Almost as important (as with Gill after him) was the absence of snobbery in his approach. Although totally absorbed in the theory and practice of the broad-edged pen, and rightly perceiving it as the basis of Western lettering, he very early stressed the necessity of carrying the sound basics of this tradition into daily life, noting the inevitable (and natural) changes in letterforms that different tools and disciplines would bring about. Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering (1906) pays careful if brief attention to typography, lettering for reproduction, inscriptions on wood, metal and (written by Gill) stone - and (on p. 340) ‘Sign-Writing and Brush-Work’, where he makes the important point: ‘A suitable brush will make letters closely resembling pen letters. But the pen automatically makes letters with a uniform precision, which it is neither desirable nor possible for the brush to imitate .. .’

Implied in this approach is a definite move away from the chisel-edge and ‘one-stroke’ brushes (with their capability of producing pen-like thicks and thins) commonly used by nineteenth century signwriters, to the pointed sable ‘pencil’ producing a swelling ‘gradated’ stroke and fine serifs. The extensive scheme of inscriptional lettering designed by Johnston in 1902 for the chancel of Christ Church, Mowll Street, North Brixton, shows the definite influence of the straight-nibbed Roman capital alphabet which appears as a model in his book (on which he was working at the time), but the brush-written letters are very far in character and feeling from pen imitations. Gill (who, as one of Johnston’s first and most talented pupils, had a hand in this project) was already moving away from the pen-made model in the version of Roman caps which he was to develop for his own use as a lettering craftsman. Freeing himself from over-strict edged pen forms where minuscule and italic alphabets were concerned took longer. However, in the teaching portfolio Manuscriptand Inscription Letters issued by Johnston as a follow-up to his book, the models for ‘ordinary sign-writing’ provided by Gill were (at least by the second impression of 1911) admirable illustrations of what Johnston meant.

Gill, of course, went on to busy himself mainly with lettercarving and type design. As far as quality signwriting was concerned, the impetus provided by Johnston was carried on through the workshops set up by Percy Smith (1882–1948), who joined Johnston’s class at Camberwell in 1900, and whose lettering enterprises throughout his life included the ‘Roman Lettering Company’ (ca. 1911), the Dorian Workshop (in partnership with George Mansell, 1918–1935) and the Dorno Workshop and Studio (1936 until his death). Johnston’s influence on him was so profound as to result in his publishing, in 1908, a teaching portfolio of his own so reminiscent in some ways of his teacher’s work that Johnston viewed it as plagiarism, and a rift was caused which was not healed for nearly thirty years. Nevertheless, as can be seen in his Civic and Memorial Lettering, published only two years before his death, Smith never wavered from Johnston’s ideals, and by means of the training provided by his workshops a distinctive signwriting tradition was built up (principally in the London area) which not only survived into the sixties, but underwent a constant process of development and improvement.

Chief mover in this development was William Sharpington (1900–1973) who, after working in the Dorian Workshop from 1920 to 1935, set up his own signwriting business, run at first from his home but, from 1954, at premises offered him at the City and Guilds of London Art School, where he had already been teaching evening classes in lettering since 1930. During the forties he also taught at the Brixton School of Building. The craftsmen who worked with him (such as Bob Duvivier, who took over his City and Guilds class after his death, and Kenneth Breese and Charles Creffield) tended to be drawn from these classes, and his students at City and Guilds – of which Michael Renton was one – were able to progress from practice to actual work by going up two flights of stairs! Another fine craftsman who worked independently of these was Raffaele Staiano.

Kenneth Breese – probably the foremost representative of this tradition, and a letterer of great discrimination who improved on Sharpington’s letterforms as Sharpington improved on Smith’s – has now retired, and much of the beautiful work produced by himself and his colleagues has disappeared – rotted, thrown away, retouched by inept imitators or replaced by plastic. This can, with a certain amount of effort, be seen as a natural process of change. What’s unnatural is that the work of these men should be dismissed or ignored, as they tend to have been in surveys of lettering published over the past twenty-five years. They are as living a part of the Johnston tradition as any illuminated manuscript.

STAN KNIGHT first encountered writing, illuminating, and lettering half-a-century ago when he was a student at Leeds College of Art with Thomas Swindlehurst. (Tom himself was a student of Edward Johnston.) It has been a life-long obsession ever since, surfacing most recently in trial designs for computer fonts based on his own calligraphic forms.

While an art student, excited by Tom’s teaching, Stan became intrigued by the history of calligraphy, and he is now an acknowledged authority on the subject. In addition to his highly-acclaimed survey, Historical Scripts, he has written extensively about historical manuscripts, especially for Letter Arts Review.

Stan has been an Art College teacher for more than thirty years – enthusing his students about drawing, painting, lettering, typography, illustration, printmaking, bookbinding, and life.

Since moving way-out-west to Idaho, he has quickly developed skills with a chain saw and a toy hand gun.

Brian Keeble is a book designer and a publisher. He founded Golgonooza Press over thirty years ago with the aim of publishing works that explore the arts and crafts in their relationship to the sacred traditions. He has edited the writings of Eric Gill, Cecil Collins and Kathleen Raine among others and has written a book in collaboration with the composer Sir John Tavener.
Brian Keeble is also an occasional lecturer and is the author of many articles as well as the book Art, For Whom and For What? which has chapters on Eric Gill, David Jones and Michael Cardew and the philosophy of the crafts. His Conversing with Paradise (studies in poetry and traditions) will has recently been published
With Kathleen Raine, Philip Sherrard and Keith Critchlow he founded the journal Temenos. He was a founder member of and is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy and currently serves on its Council.

Category:Calligraphy

The purpose of this article is to provide a method of constructing letters which is rooted in calligraphic principles, and is suitable for a wide range of uses, e.g. signwriting, letter carving, other forms of letter engraving, type design, etc. By calligraphy or calligraphic I shall mean throughout the influence of the formal broad-nibbed pen. The problem with using calligraphic forms as a basis for letter design is the tendency for them sometimes to retain too strong a calligraphic image with the resulting associations ‘of some pleasing archaeological reconstruction’1, interesting in itself but with little relevance to contemporary needs. In contrast one need only instance the typography of Jan Tschichold or the type designs of Hermann Zapf to show that a thorough grounding in calligraphy, far from being an over- riding influence, can in fact make available a far wider range of options in the design and use of letterform.

Most contemporary lettering is a product of drawing and nearly all of the lettering around us will have originally been produced in this way. ‘Today the pencil is the universal lettering tool’.2

Unfortunately, the pencil on its own provides us with no information as to how a letter is formed. Edward Johnston, writing in Formal Penmanship and commenting on ‘the value and uses of the formal pen’ states: ‘The broad nib was the principal formative tool in the development of writing. From early stylus- made skeleton letters, it produced the conventional finished shapes and varieties which we now use (familiar to most of us mainly in print). The finished shape-and- structure of the common alphabet is, in fact, bound up with the shape and action of our pen’.3 This suggests, and suggests strongly, that a thorough working knowledge of these calligraphic prototypes would greatly enhance our appraisal of modern adaptations and give our own adaptations a greater authority.

It is not possible to consider a wide range of letterforms here so I have used only Roman capitals. ‘Nearly every type of letter with which we are familiar is derived from the Roman Capitals’4 and these capitals form an excellent basis to demonstrate certain visual principles. These principles combined with a thorough understanding of freehand

Category:Edward Johnston

During the many hours I have spent in conversation with calligraphers and lettercutters over the years, I have always been struck by the way in which the practicalities of achieving the ‘perfect’ letterform and its appropriate spacing in a given context is at the root of their preoccupation and effort. No doubt this is as it should be. What scribe or lettercutter worth his salt would take up this exacting craft and not be haunted and challenged by the idea of perfection.
But what one rarely comes across, if at all, is a serious consideration of where the notion of perfection comes from. For it has also been my experience that calligraphers and lettercutters, whilst pursuing their craft as if some notion of perfection was at least tacitly motivating them, are all too ready to deny that the perfect letterform exists.
What I would like to attempt here, then, is an exploration of the idea that the perfect letterform must be a reality, since if it were not, then it would not have the power to inspire the hand, the eye and the mind of the craftsman as often as it obviously does. Perhaps it would be better to say that the perfect letterform has a reality, even if it is never manifest in a material substance, such as ink or stone. To use more scholastic terms, that it has being even if it does not exist. But to make this distinction between being and existence presupposes that reality is much more complex and multi-layered than our everyday consciousness reveals to us.
You may be familiar with the old adage that ‘to work is to pray’, which saying gives some indication of the fact that the crafts were traditionally practised as if they possessed a spiritual dimension and that they acted as a support for contemplation. I believe the writings of Edward Johnston indicate that he exercised his vocation as if this was still a possibility. Even though Johnston’s practical example has inspired inummerable scribes to take up calligraphy and lettering, so far as I know, no one has previously examined this aspect of his work. If it is time to re-examine the legacy of Johnston, then this rather more ‘hidden’ aspect ought to be fundamental to that re-examination.
If calligraphy is to be understood and practised as if it were more than a skillful game of shape-forming – albeit a very sophisticated game – then we might look to the example of Johnston to learn more of the depths of this ancient, universal skill. Johnston’s was an example that prompted one of his pupils to claim of his inspirational teaching that it came as if out of ‘eternity and infinity’. ()
That is a very pointed description by someone carefully choosing his words. Speaking of the ultimate objective of his craft Johnston himself said: ‘Life is the thing we all want and it is the desire for life that is behind all religion and all art…. Our aim should be…to make letters live…that men themselves may have more life’. () Again, we note the carefully chosen words. This does not sound like someone advocating the practice of ‘art for art’s sake’, or even ‘craft for craft’s sake’.
If you look at your copy of Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering, that is if you have an earlier edition, you will find three quotations given prominence on a page facing the Author’s Preface. (I have a copy of the rd edition of this book in which this page was still included. At some later date it was quietly dropped.)
Now from all that we know of him we can certainly agree with Eric Gill’s assessment that Johnston was ‘deliberate of speech and equally deliberate of thought’. We know that Johnston was a deeply religious man, and it is therefore impossible to believe that he lived his life keeping his vocation as a calligrapher and his religious experience in separate compartments. So we must believe that these quotations were chosen with great deliberation by a man who claimed that the ‘one thing I care most about’ is ‘to search out and live the truth’ (). We must also remember that Johnston thought sufficiently of the following passage to writeit out at least twice in , one of these for presentation to no less a master craftsman than Alfred Fairbank. Of this Johnston said ‘in many ways the  is yet my best’. () The last of the three quotations reads as follows:
…in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become a friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.’ (x)
This extraordinary passage, taken from Plato’s Symposium and given such prominence by Johnston, needs to be examined carefully. I say extraordinary because it is by no means representative of the habits of mind and thought that have shaped and which energise the modern world, referring as it does to the intelligible realm of archetypal Ideas. Indeed, it is precisely because Johnston placed at the head of his treatise a quotation that does not underwritemodern assumptions about the nature of reality and the mind that makes it necessary we look at the quotation in some detail.
The passage occurs in Plato’s dialogue at a section where Diotima is speaking to Socrates in the context of her teaching that Love is ‘a great spirit between divine and mortal’ (as Johnston annotates it in his footnotes to the inscription). Diotima is speaking about the possibility of men gazing on Beauty’s very self, unsullied and in the words of Johnston’s notes, ‘not dogged with the pollution of mortality and all the colours and varieties of human life. Diotima insists that, only when men discern heavenly beauty itself – face to face – through what makes it visible will they have hold of the true.
The quotation begins, ‘in that communion’ – that is to say, in the mind’s contemplation of beauty, and continues, ‘beholding beauty with the eye of the mind’. When he speaks of mind here, Plato means not, as might be assumed, the rational mind – that part of our common-sense consciousness that makes a reasoned judgement about things on the basis of empirical observation and logical calculation. And the ‘eye’ referred to is not the eye of sensible apprehension – for Plato, like Heraclitus before him, held that the senses are unreliable witnesses of what is unchangingly true. The ‘eye of the mind’ is an intuitive faculty of the soul, capable of grasping metaphysical and spiritual realities that are not subject to change, as is every reality conditioned in whatever way by time and space. ‘To bring forth’ means to grasp and hold with unwavering stability a truth of the mind beyond the world of the senses. It is to grasp ‘a reality’ as opposed to ‘an image’ (or representation) of beauty, as the passage continues. Plato is pointing out that external appearances, because they are the very fabric from which transient reality is woven, have something illusory or deceptive about them. He is making the distinction between things that possess true, permanent Being as opposed to things that are subject to change and which are only in the mind as mental abstractions. So, when he speaks of ‘bringing forth and nourishing’ he is referring to the archetypal truths that enter into one’s very being and become part of our identity, rather than truths of a more ephemeral nature that are temporarily registered in the imagination through the senses. When the contemplator is truly absorbed into these archetypal truths or Ideas, he or she becomes, as the quotation continues, ‘the friend of God and be immortal’. That is to say, assumes or takes on the identity of the archetypal, to identify oneself with the Divine within in the measure the contemplator is able to shed the grosser demands and predilictions of the empirical ego.
We might take it as an indication that Johnston was familiar early on with the idea that an approach to the Divine within entails the sacrifice of one’s ego, that in , at the age of , he wrote on a parchment, ‘The best way to see Divine Light is to put out your own candle’. ()
Now, all this may seem a far cry from the practice of calligraphy, but that it was important to Johnston we cannot doubt. What we must keep in the forefront of our minds is that this contemplation of, and entering into objective beauty, is the grasping of a reality that is never materially embodied. It is an intuitive, unanalysable experience that is known directly without the intervention of mediate, mental activity – that is without any sort of mental calculation that effectively puts a distance between or makes a distinction of the knower and the known. It may be difficult for the modern mind, with its rational and materialist training and bias, to see that such archetypal Ideas are more true and more real than the products of mental calculation on the one hand and physical realities on the other. But Johnston’s belief that this is so becomes evident from a careful reading of the relevant passages of his writings. That he was more a Platonist than a modernist also goes a long way to explain why he was increasingly at odds with the progressive, industrial world that surrounded him.
To help us get an idea of how this archetypal reality might apply to letterforms we can turn to a passage in Johnston’s Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering. He says: ‘the mere taking to pieces, or analysing, followed by ‘putting together’, is only a means of becoming acquainted with the mechanism of construction, and will not reproduce the original beauty of a thing’. (wxix) In other words, that part of the mind that calculates, measures and co-ordinates what the interaction of the hand, the eye and the mind must apply in the making of a letterform does not go deep enough in its self to touch upon the ‘original beauty’ of the perfect letterform that is none the less sought, whether implicitly of explicitly, in the craftsman’s pursuit of excellence. This impalpable, archetypal letter (as we might call it), experienced intuitively in the deep recesses of the ‘eye of the mind’, is what actually underpins the perfect unity of that physical and mental action required to shape palpably beautiful letters in whatever substance. When a manifestly beautiful letter is fully realised by the craftsman, then the archetype is, as it were, sounded so that what results is a letterform whose beauty reduces the observer to silence, unable to describe or quantify in what its perfection consists. I would suggest that whenever we look at a letter that appears insufficient in some way, even though all its elements are ‘correctly’ present, then in that experience of impoverishment we are sensing intuitively the absence of any reverberation of the archetypal ‘original beauty’ Johnston refers to.
Here, in parenthesis, it is interesting to note that in a Report on Art Schools that W.R. Lethaby prepared for the L.C.C. in , a few months before meeting Johnston, he wrote: ‘Lettering of all kinds is almost without exception bad. Such students as endeavour to apply lettering harmoniously to their designs seem to endeavour to invent new and contorted forms out of their heads. Of all things the form of letters has been shaped by tradition and in most cases the effort to be original is an effort to be bad’. ()
Lethaby is surely noting that such bad letterforms arise from the use only of that superficial part of the rational mind (if that!) that takes to pieces, analyses and puts together the basic elements of letters on the basis of personal preference. And in saying that the forms of letters have been shaped by tradition – with the implication that such forms are ‘good’ and ‘beautiful’ – it would surely be in bad logic to interpret Lethaby as meaning that such forms are arrived at simply on the basis of habits of past precedent. An ugly or bad letterform does not acquire beauty or legitimacy in the process of being copied and repeated, for however long. Beauty is of another order than the mere passage of time.
Johnston himself, early in his career defined ‘Beauty’,as ‘obedience made manifest to the Laws of Truth’ () – we note the use of capitals on the words Beauty, Laws and Truth. He did not significantly change his mind in later life, even though he went on to investigate those laws exactingly , testing them again and again against vigorous thought and assiduous practice. He never lost sight either of the earthly/heavenly axis along which, traditionally, the practice of any craft proceeds. Speaking of the old scribes at their work, he remarked that even more than their skill and the speed with which they wrote – as if writing an ordinary letter – and even though they were ‘engaged on serious work’ and were not concerned with ‘art’ as we think of it, ‘they had in their hearts a kind of dream of divine beauty that they were seeking …[and] …note how much that dream was fulfilled’(). Let us look a little closer at this ‘dream’.
All that we know of Johnston presents us with a picture of an entirely practical man. There was nothing ‘abstract’ or ‘airy-fairy’ about him, nothing ‘arty’. Indeed, we might doubt whether there was anything about him that was superficial. ‘Preoccupied’, certainly, as the notice he made for his study door proclaimed, aimed at repelling unwelcome visitors. His daughter Priscilla said of him: ‘for all his lassitude he was extremely forceful, indeed dominant. It was not an active forcefulness of vitality but a kind of latent forcefulness of character’.()
But his was no utilitarian practicality. Johnston’s vision of his craft begins at the beginning. Literally the beginning of all things – his testing of his ideas took him that far. Noel Rooke reports of him that ‘he related his subject to everything in heaven and earth’ because he saw it as essentially part of a whole. Even when it came to describing a single element of letter formation – ­that of contrast – he took the comprehensive view: ‘contrast is at the very root of formal penmanship. So is harmony. That is why our work, when well done, is so sparkling. It has that unique possession, the best of both sides; the idea of Heaven and Earth is there, harmony and contrast.’ ()
And Priscilla Johnston relates that her father once spoke to her of his taking a class, ‘of how he was able to give (the students) the feeling that it really was worth doing and a little of his vision, also, the spirit of it, over and above the technical side. He quoted Man shall not live by bread alone and spoke of the excitement of the vision’. () Can we not sense in this passage Johnston’s desire to communicate the idea that the perfection of work which is the aim of the true craftsman must involve more that the mastery of practical skills, if indeed the craftsman is to become ‘a friend of God’ as the quotation from Plato puts it?
Since man is created in the Divine Image (as Johnston believed), it follows that in the exercise of his vocation the craftsman, by analogy, shares in the actions of the making of the world by its Creator. Johnston thought of the process of creation as involving three stages: ‘embodying , animating and inspiring’. The three stages must be understood and actualised in the context of man’s origin and place in the fabric of the Creation; ‘in a book for craftsmen’, Johnston wrote, ‘the primary order is Genesis :: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’. () Also, in connection with man’s being created in the Divine Image Johnston asks us to consider Genesis :, of how God formed every beast and bird and how Adam named every living creature. That is to say, the word by which each thing is named establishes the unique and permanent reality of that thing. In the naming by Adam of each thing inheres the archetypal essence or Idea of that thing as it exists in the mind of God: as it exists in the Word, that is, the logos – the eternal reason of things. The scribe, in making in manifest form, true and beautiful words, recapitulates the Adamic action of giving each thing God’s signature. Thus, named things and meaning co-inhere. And in this co-inherence is the very ligature that binds man to Truth itself. Johnston, with life-long insistence that the scribe pay attention to the meanings of the words he writes, is reported as having worn out his Dictionary.
How Adam’s giving God’s signature to each thing is, in Johnston’s mind, an analogy of the scribe’s action is clearly seen in the following passage:
All his [the craftsman’s]works express Idea [note the Platonic capital, denoting a pre-existing, immaterial potentiality]..by substance brought to [material] life – like Adam made of Earth. Each of his [man’s] work – like every son of Adam – bears a human touch and is seen to be unique. All things are unique, but the craftsman’s works show this –each one [each manuscriptof ours] is an autograph. ()
As each man bears the signature of God in his deiformity so each work from the hand of the scribe bears the signature of its creator. Thus, each work is, infallibly and authentically, a thing brought materially to life from a pre-existing idea in the mind. This analogical wisdom is surely what resonates in Johnston’s assertion that the proper task of the scribe is ‘to make letters live…that men themselves may have more life’ ().
Finally, in a letter quoted by Priscilla Johnston, Johnston himself spoke of the final creative act as one in which God saw of the Creation that it was Good –‘in fact, a thing is not completely created until it has been appreciated…I believe it’. () Here Johnston is at his most profound, for he is drawing upon the idea that the final justification for the Creation of the world by God is in the realisation of the necessity that it is completed by being known.
It is the responsibility of the craftsman’s share in the Divine Creation to see that his work is good, that it is true, for it is the Truth, ‘both immanent and transcendent’ () that prevails. And of Truth, Johnston wrote: ‘its other names are goodness and beauty, the way and the Life, the Light (of the world), the Word, and many more.’ Which brings us to the question of beauty.
We can only correctly understand Johnston’s view of Beauty if we keep it in the context he himself placed it in: Beauty is approached and found indirectly in the search for Truth, through the discipline of a proper utility of human needs. Priscilla Johnston reports her father as holding: ‘Beauty is an ultimate Grace which will be conferred upon the craftsman’s work if it be well done. If Truth…has been served, the result will be Beauty’. ()
Can any one look at the best of Johnston’s works and not see that it is beautiful? However that may be, it perhaps takes a more trained eye to see that the beauty of his forms arises out of their construction. It remained axiomatic for Johnston that ‘unless the design arises out of the actual construction of a thing it is reduced to the level of extraneous ornamentation. Design is inherent rather than applied…’.()
In connection with this principle we might incidentally note that Johnston’s reluctance to have his work reproduced was precisely because of the resulting inauthenticity in this respect. As he pointed out, ‘nothing is reproduced, something different is produced’. ()
As with design, so with the ‘original Beauty’ of a thing. It is not a surface application but comes out of workmanship honestly and straightforwardly undertaken. What, then, does such workmanshop entail?’
Like Gill, Johnston anchors his answer to all questions that have to do with the validity of the craftsman’s activity by going back to the nature of the agent doing the work. What is man? Man is a creature, a body – ‘the flesh is a sine qua non for the spirit of man’ () – who looks to God for the answers to the primary questions: What, How and Why. Why should one, why ought one, why must one, make a thing? And by a ‘thing’ Johnston meant both ‘what we make and what we do’.() Moreover ‘things are His [God’s] will’. () In asking these questions man is searching for Truth and by asking he is tacitly proposing that an answer can be found. Other names for Truth are Goodness and Beauty. And Truth ‘is that against which we sin’. () (This thought – that the workman can sin in his actions – may go some way to account for Johnston’s lassitude.)
In making a thing, the scribe ‘works in substances …with special tools and special methods. He also thinks in substances and in things, and in methods…, which direct the tools and form the thing out of the substance’. The ‘prime purpose of writing is to be read’. ‘His direct objective is to writewell’ so that the work produced is useful. In his primary duty to the author ‘the words are of the first importance’ and with this in mind the scribe aims at a presentation that is beautiful. Such beauty for formal penmanship is achieved by ‘Sharpness, Unity and Freedom’. In this, his direct purpose, ‘the scribe keeps the idea of usefulness constantly before him’.
‘Usefulness in this context, consists in legibility, fitness for purpose and perfect presentation. The scribe follows after usefulness since, in the final analysis, the ultimate objective of usefulness is beauty. (–)
So, given that the scribe has mastered all the necessary practical skills, this alone will not suffice to achieve the ‘original beauty’ that must be sought by indirect means. ‘Original beauty’ comes intuitively through concentration upon and contemplation of the archetypal Ideas that letterforms embody. The fact that Johnston wrote little on the subject of beauty is itself an indication of the fact that, by its very nature, it is a subject all but unteachable in any direct sense. The pursuit of beauty in isolation from its necessary alignment with truth and legitimate human needs has always been recognised by the wisest minds as being liable to lead men astray, into folly and self-indulgence. Nevertheless, something of what is involved in achieving the original beauty of living letters can be glimpsed in words Johnston addressed to an audience in Dresden in . The passage occurs in the context touched upon earlier regarding the scribe’s aim to ‘make letters live’. The relevant words are: ‘I think I can claim that, poor as they are, the letters on the blackboard are alive: that is not due to myself – I am only a superior kind of motor or engine – it is due to the pen (which brings life to letters)’. () It is ‘not due to myself’ – this attributing his achievement in giving life to letters to a higher agency, gives a hint, I believe, of what is meant, in the passage from Plato’s Symposium, by ‘nourishing true virtue to become a friend of God’.
So, to come back to Johnston’s ‘dream’ and to end with a question. Priscilla Johnston, in her memoir of her father, quotes him as saying: ‘I see no successor who will put his life and heart into the work I love. There are plenty of good scribes to whom it is an occupation and a profession but apparently not a preoccupation and a dream’, () our emphasis. His daughter was inclined to dismiss this remark, but given its pointed wording can we be so sure? Does not another interpretation offer itself? To any one with a deep religious conviction such as Johnston possessed the scribe’s vocation must be more than an entertaining and diversionary activity of mere shape-making, however sophisticated. The whole man must be engaged. Could it be that Johnston found no one willing to attempt, through the craft of the pen, that degree of contemplation, beyond the empirical ego, that engages those ‘realities’ – and not their semblances – that enable the craftsman to ‘bring forth and nourish true virtue’; that coincidence of being and knowing that is a gazing upon the heavenly beauty face to face in so far as ‘mortal man may’?


■ .The reference throughout to a perfect letterform is more a matter of convenience that a dogmatic assertion. This same perfection is operative in a whole collection of letters that, cumulatively, have an organic unity, each single letter being in some way modified in accommodation of the whole context of its presence
■ .The abbreviations used throughout are an initial followed by the page number of the following books by Johnston: =Lessons in Formal Writing edited by Heather Child and Justin Howes (London), ; =Formal Penmanship and other papers, edited by Heather Child (London), ; =Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering (London), , but reprinted many times; =Priscilla Johnston, Edward Johnston (London), second edition .
■ . It might be noted that Robert Speaight, in his biography of Eric Gill, records Johnston reading Plato aloud to Gill in his workshop when they were close neighbours in Hammersmith.

Category:Typography

Table of Contents

• First Meeting with Johnston
• Times They Are A-Changing
• Daunting Task
• Getting into Trouble
• Getting out of Trouble
• How many Weights?
• Height-to-Weight Ratio
• Plastic Surgery
• Justified
• Unjustified
• Which Way to Go Now?
• External Links

First Meeting with Johnston

Every year, half a million Japanese tourists visit London as it is evidently their favourite city in Europe. Almost thirty years ago, I was among them visiting London for the first time. I still recall that the ‘Roundel’ symbol for red buses and tube trains was a great help for getting round; the direct and simple design was easy to remember, and easy to recognise in the busy streets of London.

The symbol was accompanied with a simple, elegant, slightly old-fashioned alphabet. At first, I thought it was Gill Sans; it wasn’t Futura, and definitely not my then favourite, Helvetica. In the 1970s and 80s, Helvetica was rampant in Japan as in Europe and the USA. I was already interested in the roman alphabet typefaces, which was a good reason for deciding to study typography in London as a solution to my mid-career crisis.
I started a graphic design course at the London College of Printing in September 1974, and then came to know who originally designed the Underground map, and who did the alphabet. In 1916, Edward Johnston completed an alphabet design for the London Underground. This elegant display type became known as the first humanistic sans serif, in direct contrast to the ubiquitous, over-weight, heavy-handed, tortured-looking Victorian grotesque sans. With ‘Johnston Sans’ and the Roundel symbol, London Transport’s corporate identity had achieved world fame by the 1930s.
Edward Johnston’s well-known total commitment to legibility ensured that his finished design was easy to read as well as innovative. Johnston also attached great importance to the shape and proportion of his letters; his capital letters are recognisably inspired by the Roman inscriptions. Johnston’s calligraphic influence may be seen in many lower case letters such as the hooked ‘l’ and the diamond shape dots on the ‘i’ and ‘j’. Johnston Sans is privately owned by London Transport and is therefore not available for use by any other body. Nevertheless it has had a great impact on other typeface designers all over the world since its origination.

Times They Are A-Changing

By the 1970s, the old letterpress and metal type era was almost gone, and the new photo-composition technology and modern publicity design created an increasing flow of new type styles, sizes and weights. The original Johnston Sans had only two weights, Ordinary (Regular or Medium equivalent) and Heavy (Bold equivalent). These were only available in metal or wood types which were already forgotten heroes, uncared for and tired looking. As well-trained letterpress compositors/printers were becoming scarcer, Johnston Sans was unfairly made to look worse by badly executed letter-spacing; too wide and uneven. It was hard for London Transport’s Publicity Department to produce striking and effective information posters and notices whilst maintaining their policy of using Johnston Sans to reinforce the London Transport identity. The outside agencies commissioned by London Transport to design marketing and advertising posters recommended and used alternative typefaces, such as Univers Bold or News Gothic Bold Condensed, readily available in different styles and weights. Unfortunately this damaged the integrity of the Johnston house style.
Something had to be done. London Transport consulted specialists like Berthold Wolpe, Walter Tracy, the Design Research Unit and Banks and Miles. The answer was clear and obvious; the Johnston Typeface family needed to be fitter and stronger, taking full advantage of the latest photo composition systems, more easily available in film and later in digital forms too. It needed more weights (light, medium and bold), more styles (upright, italic and condensed), more versatility in small text sizes as well as display sizes. Making new fonts for photo-typesetting systems was still costly and time consuming, though not as bad as making metal types. Even so, no major work had been undertaken by 1979.

Daunting Task

Monday 2nd July 1979, straight after five years of student life in the UK, was my first day at Banks and Miles, a London based graphic design company. That morning was a bit of a shock. I was given a few large broadsheets with litho printed Johnston type. I was definitely confounded by being asked straightaway to design a new Johnston family with three weights – Light, Medium and Bold – within a month or two. It felt like my first arrival at London Heathrow Airport, worrying about which way to go. Colin Banks, an external assessor for the LCP, had asked me if I would be interested in redesigning a typeface. I was grateful for the job because it would enable me to stay in the UK a bit longer, but the prospect was daunting because I had no experience in type design and very little English language. There had been no serious typeface design project in my design school days, and I expected that in the office there would be at least a kind of preliminary training or guidance for a novice designer ‒ what drawing tools to be used, what size the original artwork should be, how to typeset with newly drawn letters. I remembered one college day in 1975 when our tutor took us to the drawing office of the Monotype Corporation in Salfords. They had impressive purpose-built drawing equipment, precision machines and many skilled draughtsmen and women. In contrast, my tools were very basic: pencils, felt tip pens, a Rotring pen with 0.1 mm nib, Winsor & Newton’s fine brushes and some photographic equipment in the darkroom.

Getting into Trouble

The broadsheets had a rather authoritative title:‘Johnston Sans Serif Type – London Transport Executive’, showing Johnston Sans in two weights, Ordinary (upper & lowercases) and Heavy (uppercase only), printed in display type size called ‘line’; 6 line delineating one inch cap-height, 12 line for two inches, 12 line for two and half inches, etc. I found that the 12 line size was most manageable for drawing a letter by hand, not too big, not too small, and that a landscape A3 size sheet could accommodate all A to Z in four rows; or all a to z; or all a to z plus some essential characters, such as &, £, (), !, ?, etc. In each row I drew a set of thin pencil lines to indicate 48mm cap-height, 32mm x-height, baseline and 16mm descender-depth.
Since lowercase Heavy did not exist, I was the creator, as far as I knew! First, drawing outlines with a pencil by fattening up the lowercase Ordinary, next going over the pencil lines with a rotring pen, and filling in with a black felt tip pen. Then photographing the A3 a to z sheet, making many duplicates in half or quarter the size, cutting individual letters with a 10A scalpel, pasting them up, using a pair of tweezers and 3M Spray Mount, onto a blank sheet to make lines of text. Then photographing the text, retouching it, photographing it again, and retouching it again. By the time I was getting a clean looking sample setting, the images often became fuzzy and inaccurate. The whole thing was extremely tiring and boring, but I thought it would pay the rent, as long as I could stand it!

Getting out of Trouble

In order to save time and limit exhaustion, I asked my old friends to send me some optical tools from Japan (I used to work for an optical company in Tokyo before I came to Britain); one was a small concave lens to see drawings and specimens in much reduced image sizes, and one was a small microscope (x20 magnification with 1/100mm scale) to see small printed type specimens and text in much enlarged image sizes. Another good tool was a PMT (photo-mechanical transfer) camera which was introduced around that time by Agfa and Kodak. They were relatively cheap, easy to operate, capable of reproducing extremely accurate bromide or film copies, and quickly became the essential tool for every design practice in this country, the USA and Japan in the s and s. It was the era before the advent of the Mac and the PC.
I had first used the camera at the University of Texas Press for designing book covers and jackets, and later for a type legibility research project with David Kindersley’s letter-spacing theory at the Royal College of Art. So I insisted on getting one when the first New Johnston Medium prototype was successfully presented at the end of July. Equipped with cartridge A pads, tracing pads, draw film pads, a concave lens, a soft microscope, and a PMT camera, I proceeded to make the initial upright in three weights, Medium, Light and Bold, and two other styles, Medium and Bold Condensed, by the end of September . Each font for the presentation consisted of about one hundred characters, slightly less than the ASCII character set.
Guidelines for the preparation of artwork were provided by Alphatype Corporation, a US manufacturer of the up-and-coming digital photo-typesetters. Ascender/Descender Height (overall character height) was required to be confined within just over  inches (say,  mm). Since my original drawings on A sheets happened to have the ascender/descender height as  mm or so, all that was needed was simply to enlarge every A sheet by %; that is, equal to A or a set of four A sheets bearing mm ascender/descender height.
Cleaning up ragged edges of enlarged letters and many speckles was a nightmare. I was introduced to Robert Norton, the most innovative expert in font making for any new typesetting systems, as well as being a lover of good food, wines and spirits. He taught me how to make clean artwork and extra letters very efficiently: cutting a film letter in pieces, sticking them together by Scotch tape onto a blank film sheet, making a new contact, and retouching it by a thin black Magic marker, with a nice drink as extra. I was continuously making more textsetting samples for posters, notices, panels, and even small timetables by Norton’s cut-and-paste and the darkroom techniques, moving onto design of the Italic and Condensed, completing all the eight different fonts towards the end of .

How many Weights?

Back to the early designing stage in the summer of . I was making lowercase letters for Heavy first. A big question was in my mind. Does the family of New Johnston (or revised Johnston as first called) need three weights; Light, Medium and Bold? Would the existing two weights, Ordinary and Heavy be sufficient, or not?
Looking at some type specimen catalogues, I assured myself that a minimum of three weights are common and necessary for a sans serif family, whereas two weights are adequate for a serif family. In this case, should I make a new Light, regarding the existing Ordinary and Heavy as Medium and Bold; or should I make a new Bold, regarding the existing two as Light and Medium? I made sketches of lighter than the Ordinary and sketches of heavier than the Heavy, only to confirm my belief that the uppercases of original Ordinary and Heavy were so well proportioned. How could one ever touch them? But, would they work in textsetting with upper and lowercase together?
I examined details of other typefaces by using the microscope; height ratio of upper and lowercase letters, weight ratio of vertical and horizontal strokes, wedges (crotches), etc. I decided to use Helvetica and Gill Sans as benchmarks because they were at that time the most popular and successful sans serif typefaces in both text and display composition. Compared with these two, Johnston Ordinary was lighter in weight, had a smaller x-height and had wider default letter-space. I began to see why Johnston Ordinary did not work well in small text sizes compared with Helvetica Regular (and Medium) and Gill Sans Medium. I could see that Johnston Ordinary would need more weight, larger x-height, and tighter spacing, otherwise it would look meek and feeble in text setting and display setting in upper and lowercase.
I made sketches of lowercase letters in various degrees of weight and x-height which were between those of the original Johnston Ordinary and Heavy. As these elements were adjusted or distorted to a certain degree, Johnston would still look like him or become someone else. At last, I felt that I had a reason to make Johnston Medium. The next question was: how much weight could be tolerated?

Height-to-Weight Ratio

Edward Johnston adhered to a rule that the height-to-weight ratio of cap height to stem thickness should be  to . I measured text sizes of Helvetica Regular, Univers Medium, Gill Sans Medium and Johnston Ordinary: they all had  to  ratio, and Helvetica Medium had  to . It was obvious that Helvetica Medium as opposed to Helvetica Regular had stronger visual impact in large display sizes and was more durable (legible) in very small text sizes. The height ratio of upper and lowercase was another decisive factor for visual impact and legibility.
To begin with, I thought that New Johnston Medium could have the height-to-weight ratio of  to , and New Johnston Light the ratio  to . The problem was that Johnston Heavy had the ratio . to  which was too close to the ratio  to , resulting in almost no weight difference between Medium and Bold. Ratio  to  looked too close to  to . Finally New Johnston Medium looked OK with the ratio . to , helped by the larger x-height giving a slightly lighter impression than with smaller x-height because of the larger counters. I increased the original x-height .% on average. Too much increase of x-height (say, more than .%) would make any typeface look like the ITC fonts in the good old days.

Comparison of height-to-weight ratio (cap-height : stem-thickness = x : )
Helvetica Univers Gill Sans Original J’ston New J’ston
Bold . ExtBold . ExtBold  .......  Bold .
Medium  Bold . Bold  Heavy . Medium.
Regular  Medium  Medium  Ordinary  Light 
Light . Light . Light . .......  .......

Comparison of x-height/CAP-height of mm:
./ / ./ ./ /

Plastic Surgery

The original Johnston Sans was designed for display setting, so inevitably its letter spacing would be too wide for text setting. The strong vertical axis and circular curve (as against oval) made the original Johnston difficult to set tight. To make it more suitable for narrower/tighter spacing for setting text in smaller sizes, some lower case letters had to be modified. In fact, some lower case letters of the original Johnston Ordinary had already been replaced with ones redrawn by Walter Tracy in the mid s: for example, ‘a’ was given a wider counter and wider width; the bottom of ‘g’ was made lighter; the tail of ‘l’ was shortened; the top of ‘y’ was narrowed to blend better with other letters.
These modifications provided a valuable guide: I did not feel uncomfortable about making stroke endings (terminals) shorter, such as those of ‘l’ and ‘r’; narrowing the characteristically wide counters of ‘h, m, n, u, w and y’, but not too much so as not to make them look like Helvetica or Univers. The lower case ‘o’ could not be made narrower (or upright elliptical shapes) because its visually perfect circle was one of Johnston’s key characteristics. Because of this roundedness, the lower case letters, b, d, p, q were bound to have awkward joins where bowls and strokes met. It was very difficult to make the join thinner without losing Johnston’s circular and mono-line characteristics.

Justified

New Johnston Medium proved to be extremely legible in small sizes. Tim Demuth of the London Transport Publicity Office was thrilled that even  pt worked so well for timetables (useful for small print of disclaimers, or maybe not?!), and looked strong and confident in display sizes.
I spent up to six months or so on all the required eight different fonts: New Johnston Light, Medium, Bold, Light Italic, Medium Italic, Bold Italic, Medium Condensed and Bold Condensed. Much finer adjustments were necessary for the preparation of artwork ready to be digitised for photo-composition, which took me a further twelve months to complete at the end of . If the project had happened in the s, I would have used the Mac or PC with Fontographer or FontLab to finish it within six months easily… perhaps.

Unjustified

Japanese tourists still come to London. I feel very glad to have had the opportunity to contribute to the continuing life of New Johnston alongside the original Johnston (still lots of old enamel signs, etc) for London Transport. I think that the difference between the old and new is subtle enough. I was pretty certain that no Japanese tourists would see any difference. However, my friend, Naoaki Sakamoto (aka. Paper Nao), a Japanese artist with a keen eye, saw the difference straightaway. He preferred the old one because it had more flavour, so he said. I defended myself by saying that the old one was the original masterpiece whereas the new one provided up-to-date functionality. We saw a dictionary definition cut in slate at the Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge saying, ‘manufacture, man-û-fakt’yar, v.t. to make, originally by hand, now usu. by machinery: to produce unintelligently in quantity’. This made him more convinced that the original was better than the new. I understand that, but it was rather annoying!
To appreciate such a subtle difference, ‘taste’ may be a useful word, as Matthew Carter gave his answer to my question some time ago. Having lived in England for long enough, I think I know the taste of lukewarm beer at a drizzling football pitch. I also enjoy seeing a can with ‘real draught bitter’ printed on it.

Which Way to Go Now?

Finally, I would like to come back to my big question once again. How many weights does the New Johnston family really need? I think that New Johnston needs Extra Light and Extra Bold. I am sure that the total of five weights would make New Johnston much more functional… provided they were manufactured by the right hands!

External Links

The Edward Johnston Foundation

Eiichi Kono began his working life in the photo optical industry in Japan, and became fascinated by the universality of the Latin alphabet. This brought him, in 1974, to study at the London College of Printing and on to the Royal College of Art for Information Graphics, linked with the Readability Print Research Unit. His first paid job was a White Paper diagram for the London Clearing Banks! Then the redesign of Johnston Underground, known as New Johnston for text setting as well as display use, and the BT telephone directory space saving and legibility feasibility study. He has taught typography at Middlesex, and been engaged in much graphic design work, corporate identity, publishing design (Pearson, The Economist). He is currently directing a team developing optimal legibility for Japanese onscreen fonts, for Microsoft.