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TO THE PROGRESSIVE PRINTER
The contents of the American Specimen Book of Type Styles represent
the fruits of the constant policy of the American Type Founders Company
to design and manufacture Type Faces and Decorative Materials which
broaden the printers' field of profits by thoroughly satisfying the buyers
of printing and increasing the use and popularity of printed salesmanship.
THE DECISIVE CRITICS OF TYPE FACES
It may not be proper that we praise the beauty, symmetry, dignity, at-
tractiveness and serviceability of the type designs of the American Type
eA'   H Founders Company; such praise may be suspected of bias, and adds no
value to the type faces; but both the American Type Founders Comn-
pany and the printers must defer to the opinions of the ultimate, decisive
critics of type faces the customers of the printers. The verdict of the
buyers ofprinting is indicated by the almost exclusive use in the better
class of commercial and periodical printing of type faces originated by
the American Type Founmders Company. To say that any printed work
1414  or advertisement is excellent and attractive is usually equivalent to saying
1.   that it is set in type made by the American Type Founders Company.
PROFITABLE vs. UNPROFITABLE TYPES
This Specimen Book contains no item which has outlived its useful-
ness and profitableness. Another specimen book as big as this one might
be compiled of type faces which were in regular demand a few years ago,
but w hich cannot now be used profitably. Not the least service the
American Type Founders Company has rendered to the printers is that
of discarding hundreds of series of type faces which do not conform to
the present higher standard of typographic taste which has been created N
and fostered by the "Originator of Type Fashions."
If original and good type designs do not attract new business to the
N4   printer it is waste of time to produce them. If printers were restricted
to the use of the old-fashioned type faces current at the beginning
of this century the buyers of printing would now, as they did then,
restrict their expenditulres to the obviously necessary kinds of printing.
The great expansion of the printing business began when printed sales-
manship was made attractive and dignified and convincing by the original
type designs of the American Type Founders Company. The commercial
world took up the use of the great dominating type designs with the
( same alacrity with which it welcomed the telephone as a substitute for the N
imessenger boy, and for the same reasons, better results and more profits.
The narrow, old-fashioned superstition that the buyers of printing should
be kept in ignorance of type faces is rapidly being superseded by
a policy of advertising the printers' chief business-producing asset,
well-selected type faces. To buy new type faces for the purpose of re-
tainig, attracting and increasing business is as obviously necessary in
the printing plant as a new stock of wares is necessary to maintain the
prestige of any other dealer in merchandise. The printer who uses type
faces maIe by the American Type Founders Company ranges
himself with a great majority of the successful printers.
sOh N-                   k-  B  -lIIi Itahe
T--  Poit H-rder No, 44
Verstile H,6,e