THE NEWSPAPER
Although newspaper typography is. in general, characteristic of our time
and. at least in principle, shows how good typographic organization can be
there are also many examples where newspaper setting could be raised to
a level really expressive of our times.
Apart from our now much heavier headlines, modern newspapers are not
very different from those of. say, 1850. The first newspapers were like the
flysheets and pamphlets of the 17 th century. which themselves were set
like book titles and pages. Newspapers remained even until today in their
original dependence on book typography. But as the tempo of reading
became faster. greater or lesser emphasis in parts of the text became nec
essary. This is done today by varied type sizes. letter-spacing, heavier
weights of type, leading, and other uses of space. Many of these methods
are much overused, but this is not our subject here. Such methods are
based on sensible considerations with which we have no quarr el. They
make it possible today for a newspaper. whose contents are about equal to
a medium-sized book. to be "read" in a few minutes. i.e. to find and absorb
what the individual reader himself wants. This is without doubt the way of
our time.
But in the past, what all newspapers had in common was the typefaces they
used. We find. when we look at old issues. the staple type of the political
pages, the broadsheets, and advertisement pages was always fraktur. One
has to look only once at the trade part of a paper (normally set in roman).
for example the Berliner Ta geblatt, and lay it beside the political pages of
the same paper. and compare them, to see immediately how much pleasan
ter roman looks and reads. The supposed lesser legibility of roman in
German. compared with fraktur, is a national old wives' tale. All progressive
papers should take the first step and set the whole paper in roman. How
splendid, for example, the Dutch newspapers look! They use sanserif for
headlines and otherwise normal roman. Indeed the trade part of nearly all
German newspapers is set in roman; and in other parts, chiefly the more
modern parts. the technical, sport. film. and literature pages. fraktur is
being more and more pushed out by the Latin type -greatly to the pages'
advantage! It is to be hoped that soon all the remaining pages will be set
in roman -sanserif will no doubt eventually follow as the normal reading
face. For the time being we have no really suitable appropriate face. But for
headings, sanserif is outstandingly suitable. Many sect ions of the
Frankfurter Zeitung use it with excellent results. Headlines set in caps must
be avoided. they are much too hard to read. For this purpose I find that
bold sans is more suitable than semi-bold: the latter is not different enough
elle
(Elle)
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