any case. some of the Japanese advertisements are remarkable for their
typographic design. The many-thousand-year-old collective mental attitude
of the East reveals itself in the astonishing similarity of this typography to
our own. The Japanese. for long masters in the use of space. have also in
this area much to teach us. In a book Japanische Reklame in der
Ta geszeitung (Japanese advertising in daily papers) Dr Anna Berliner has
written extremely well about this.
THE PERIODICAL
Whoever reads and has to work with many periodicals knows well their
main failing: the lack of any unity in their formats. Since until recently no
standard existed for them, they could be produced in any size. Everyone
knows how inconvenient this is for their stonng and arrangement.
The German Standards Committee has now provided standards for periodi
cals and published the relevant details in Standard 826 (reproduced on
p. 204 overleaf)
The format is A4: it fits in with the format of business letters. advertising
matter. illustrations. etc. From this come advantages for distribution. stor
ing, and cataloguing.
In addition. type areas and block sizes are standardized. This makes it pos
sible to move entire articles from one periodical to another. And special
inserts have a unified appearance and can be collected together and put in
order. Blocks in standard sizes can be moved to different positions without
trouble. The exchange of illustrations is simplified.
There are advantages. in the standardization of column widths and type
areas. for all the firms who advertise in several periodicals.
While in the past d1fferent block sizes were required for every periodical.
now only one is needed, which will fit all standard periodical pages. This
represents an often considerable economy in costs. The often-desired indi
viduality of appearance in a particular periodical. seen from a higher point
of view. is now undesirable. Standardization in periodicals is an important
and necessary step on the way to a higher economy in intellectual work.
A large number of all technical periodicals have already gone over to stan
dardization. All industrial booklets and technical literature should finally
decide to follow.
The objection to be expected here. that the format will be too small, is not
based on fact. The Deutsche Drucker and the Typographische Jahrbucher
are both in approximate DIN sizes; similarly, the American Printers Ink and
Western Advertising, and the English Commercial Art (London). are very
nearly the same. All five have frequent supplements and large illustrations.