The Type Personality of an Advertisement (April, 1904)

From my scans of Impressions: A Journal of Business Making Ideas (April, 1904)

Did you ever stop to think what personality meant? Did you ever stop to think what made up the personality of the men that you meet? For instance, you see a man walking along the street. As he walks he plants his heels down firmly, as if he were driving stakes with them. His head is up, his arms are swinging free, and as he walks his eyes rove from side to side of the street, darting a glance here and there. There is no mistaking that type of man, he is alive, he is seeing things constantly—nothing escapes him. If you make a proposition to that man, he doesn’t take it under consideration for a month. More than likely he will tell you in fifteen minutes whether he will take it or not, and it may be fifteen seconds. If he is not sure about it, he will say: “Come back to-morrow, or in a week. As soon as I can make proper inquiries, I will let you know.” That man is business from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. In other words he is a man of action.

Another man passes you on the street. As he shuffles along, he drags his feet, putting them down flat, the sole and heel at one time. If you look at his shoes, you will find the toes of them worn out before the heels. Probably he loiters along. He may be very neatly dressed and pay a great deal of attention to the little things. His life is narrow, contracted—he moves in a rut and a groove. Other people make laws for him to live by. He keeps so busy keeping up the appearance of gentility that he forgets to be a man.

The first man has magnetism and attracts you. The first man will master ten, yes hundreds, and possibly thousands, of the sort of men that the second man is. The second man will never know why it is that the other kind of a man gets the better salary, wields the greater influence, and when he dies leaves upon the face of things the indelible impress of his power.

The second man drops out of existence—a few tears are shed by his immediate family—he leaves no void because in nine cases out of ten he was nothing but a cipher occupying space, and when he dies it is simply the rubbing out of the rim of the cipher.

These are two extremes of personality. Between these two extremes are an infinite number of gradations and differences. Each gradation exercises its influence, negative or positive, upon men and things.

The man who has lived, who has seen things and understood them, who has heard things and known them, and who has been things and lived them, speaks out of the fullness of his own personal experience. He attracts, convinces and carries an audience with him, and so it is in advertising. It is the man who speaks powerfully who makes the powerful impression. By power I do not mean the loudness of his voice, the greatness of his adjectives or the amount of his words; but I mean the man who has the capacity to think a distinct thought, say it in words which distinctly convey that thought, and dresses his thought in such a personality that it makes a distinct impression.

What is type?

Type is simply a medium of expression.

When taken in conjunction with ink and paper, it completes the medium by which you convey a written thought to another mind.

Suppose you want to say the word “Halt!” in type. You must say it loudly, you must enunciate it clearly. You will first put it in large and black type, because large black type is emphasis, provided the rest of the type that surrounds the word is not the same size and is not as black. You want to enunciate clearly, therefore you must put it in a face of type that is clean and distinct.

This is a matter that a great many people fail to understand. To set a word or phrase to which you wish to attract people’s attention in type that while large and black, is hard to read, is like a man yelling a word at the top of his voice so indistinct in his enunciation that you cannot understand what he says. It doesn’t matter how loud you shriek a word, if people can’t understand what you say you might as well save your voice; therefore, you want plain, distinct type in all the advertisements you set up, because it is common sense to believe that people will read something easy to read more quickly than they will read something hard to read. The same law applies here as applies in every other part of advertising. You must make it easy for people to do what you want them to do.

People like to be mastered. The world is looking for its master constantly, and the man who masters it is the man who knows it best. The advertiser must be master of his trade, and the better he knows people the more he will use that knowledge to master them—to compel them to trade with him. Therefore, when you appeal to people, appealing to the particular kind of people to whom you wish to appeal, you must understand their limit of artistic and intelligent appreciation.

For instance, I see a man’s advertisement printed in large display lines, big black lines of capital letters—every other word emphasized by either black-faced type or italic. He brings out in bold relief the prices. I know at once that that man appeals to people who have very little discrimination. He is like the fakir of the country fair—everything that he sells is the best—everything that he sells is the cheapest—everything that he sells is below cost. He is not talking to the thinking, intelligent and discriminating class of the public. He is talking, however, to the man and woman who, having little money, try to get the most for that money, but after all will always buy the cheapest. He is appealing to the class who live from hand to mouth, who can’t afford to look ahead. His advertisements show these facts plainly.

When a man has a family of six besides himself to support on $10.00 a week, he buys shoes at 98¢ a pair, which he thinks will last as long as another 98¢ pair, but his limit is one of price, and he gets the best he can for that particular amount.

On the other hand, I see the advertisement of a merchant whose type display is plain. He makes one point in his display lines, sets his advertisement so that it is easily read. There is an air of refinement about it because he has a singleness of purpose in it. He is not trying to strike everybody who reads that paper, but he has a certain fixed idea in each advertisement. He knows that the certain kind of man or woman he is going to reach is one who wants truth and quality and candor; therefore, he keeps his black display lines down to almost nothing.

He doesn’t appear over-anxious about it. He knows that to educate the quality-loving public, he must advertise for along time—that it is a slow process, but in the end he knows he will get the trade, because the class of people to whom he appeals will read some of his advertisements all the time.

Go into a high grade store and you will note that the clerks and salesmen never betray an anxiety to sell.

Go into a store that appeals to a lower grade of customers and you will note that the salesmen follow you around, asking you to buy, trying to convince you and arguing with you that you ought to buy—because it is cheap, “the greatest bargain of the day.”

These two attitudes are displayed in the relative advertising of these two stores. In the first there are few, if any, display lines, because display is nothing but insistence and emphasis, and insistence and emphasis are always the mark of anxiety. The cool, calm way of doing business which is one of the distinguishing traits of the first store is displayed in the lack of display lines and the lack, therefore, of emphasis.

Each line of advertising has its use because it reflects the kind of a particular store which it represents, and each store has its certain kind of trade.

You will find that between these two extremes in advertising taste, just as between the two types of men that I spoke of in the fore part of this lecture, there are hundreds of combinations of these two principles, and it will be your duty as an advertising man to carefully study the particular people to whom you are appealing. You must remember one thing, when you appeal to people to whom price is the main point (and I must tell you now that price is the great lever by which you will get the big returns), that you are appealing to what might be fittingly termed the grosser instincts of trade, and therefore you want to bring out price bold and sharp—you want to drive it home with big display, comparatively speaking, but when quality comes, it is the refinement of business to be able to make quality the cornerstone of your success. You are appealing to a refined class of people; you must appeal to them in a refined way.

There are several little points that betray an advertiser. For instance, an advertiser uses what is known as a condensed face of type. This is poor policy. It stands to reason that a letter is readable when it has width instead of height.

A condensed letter takes up less space across the column though it may be the same height as the ordinary letter of the same size. Now, given a letter, we will say, that is an inch high and a half inch wide—that is very easy to read. Take the same kind of a letter, or as we call it in typography, the same “face” of a letter, and make it a quarter of an inch wide and an inch high and the lines of the letter are less distinct to the eye. A great many advertisers, however, have fallen into the habit of using a condensed letter because it saves space. Of a letter that is an inch high and a half inch wide, you can get but five letters across the column. The advertiser, reasoning this out, says: “Inasmuch as I have to pay for the space down the column I will put my advertisements in condensed type and I can get bigger letters in the space, because I can get more of them on a line,” but he has made the advertisement harder to read. That advertiser advertises, not his liberality, but his meanness, in using space. You would say of a man who put up a house eight stories high and one room deep that he hadn’t good sense, wouldn’t you, because he tried to make a “big front,” as the boys say. If that man put up a house two stories high and four rooms deep, you would say that he was more substantial and he deserved more faith and confidence.

Do not advertise yourself by your economies. Be plain and open and above board in statement, and the man who puts advertisement in type which is easy to read, plain and open, obtains credit for frankness in the minds of his readers.

You must understand that while people do not reason these things out as you and I are doing, at the same time the feeling is there, and it is these little things we are talking about now that are suggested to the minds of readers and govern their beliefs and prejudices without their knowing the reason.

It is not necessary for a man to know how to play the piano or the violin, or any other musical instrument for that matter, in order for him to thoroughly enjoy it and in many ways be a capable critic, so it is not necessary for a man to be able to give you the technical reason for a thing when he is governed by the feeling suggested by what you do.

Some advertisements impress you as being hard and cold and stiff, because they are laid out just so. There is none of the lack of precision of human nature in the way they are laid out. You see here a little box and there a little box, both the same size, and the man writes the advertisement and puts so many words in this box and so many in that. He is not trying to say all about each one but he just gives a little thought about each one. Never lay out an advertisement like that. Say what you have got to say and then fix the space about it afterward. Tell your story, exhaust that point, and if it takes more space than to exhaust the point about another article, why, give to each article what is necessary to give it.

Now, there is not in the highest grade of business but one personality that appeals to the highest grade of trade. You must remember that Rembrandt, Corot, Millais and Rousseau were all great painters. They all painted in a different way and they all appealed to lovers of art, but they were all different. So when I tell you there is a personality in type, I do not mean that you must never use but one face of type or one method of display, but there are certain canons of accepted artistic display appealing to certain kinds of people that you must always follow. There are hundreds of different faces of type and there are thousands of combinations of these faces, and it is this very possibility that calls for the exercise of great discretion and the expression of good taste in handling them. I give you a few simple rules to follow relative to display, laid down by Mr. Theodore L. DeVinne, head of the great DeVinne Press of New York, printers of the Century Magazine and of the Century Dictionary, and probably the highest authority on printing in America. These few points were laid down by Mr. DeVinne in an address delivered to advertising men and printers:

The object of an advertisement is to be read. Every other consideration should give way to this. An advertisement may be set up in faultless manner and yet be so monotonous that it will not attract any more attention than one grain of rice among thousands of other grains about it. How, then, can an advertiser attract this attention?

First. His type must be plain. Ornamented or obscure type must be rigidly excluded.

Second. The style should be plain. Fantastic methods, such as are shown in curved, diagonal and perpendicular lines, are of doubtful value. Now and then one may make a hit by some audacious arrangement, but where one succeeds ten fail. Some very good advertisements are made by calling attention to the subject by displaying some inconsequential word which arrests attention and leads the reader to examine the whole paragraph. But this is also a difficult style to manage; a failure makes the advertiser ridiculous, and really defeats his purpose.

Engravings or process cuts, in the hands of a skilful designer, can make very attractive advertisements. The success of such an advertisement depends largely on the invention of the designer; if he is really inventive, he can make an advertisement more attractive than can ever be done by type. If he is not inventive, if he draws badly, then his engraving is not as good as a composition in type.

The quality of engraving must be adapted to the quality of the printing. The outline style can be printed well on any kind of paper, or with any kind of ink. To order for an advertisement a finished engraving with many graduated tints of light and shade is to throw money away to no purpose. It cannot be well printed on the ordinary news paper. All engravings should be cut or etched with deep counters. If extra care is not given by the photoengraver to a deep routing out of counters, and to a cleaning up of lines, the best open engraving will be marred in printing by muddy spots.

Another point: All engravings made for any press which stereotypes or electrotypes its forms should be on solid metal bodies. The wood body, which is barely good enough for letterpress work, cannot be used at all under an electrotyper’s moulding press with any hope of making a good plate for a newspaper. In a stereotyped form, the extra cost of the metal body will be more than repaid in the improvement of the appearance of presswork.

The art of displaying types is not to be taught in one or even a dozen lessons. The novice will get the skill he wants largely from the study of his own failures and those of other compositors. These hints may be of value; the same rule which forbids the use of ornamented type should also shut out extra condensed type. Many a display line of long words is often crowded in one obscure extra condensed line, when it would be more readable in two lines, which will occupy no more space on the paper.

Too many faces of type are used in miscellaneous display. If one has a thoroughly well-graded assortment of different sizes and different widths of Gothic, running from pearl to four-line, with appropriate lower case, he has enough to make effective display. If the compositor is equipped with a full series of this face he has no need of Antique, Titles, Clarendon, or any other plain face. The greater variety of faces he puts on a page, the worse he makes that page look. If he does not like Gothic, let him use Antique or Clarendon, or any other form of letter; but having selected one style, let him stick to it. He will find that his customers, however much they may object in the beginning to this simplicity of style, will ultimately like it better than the use of mixed styles.

Borders judiciously used are a grace, but these borders must be plain, black and white, and not too fine. The gray-tinted and profusely ornamented borders with which our specimen books abound are very unsuitable for advertisements.

Signs and emblems can be very effectively used; the simpler they are, the better. Here, again, one can find but little of value in the specimen book. The more striking ones can be made by an engraver in a very few minutes. The bold-face section mark or paragraph mark, an ivy leaf, a shamrock leaf, or any simpler form in this style can be effectively cut by any clever stereotype finisher.

What Mr. DeVinne says about display in newspaper and magazine advertisements apply as general rules to the display in booklets, catalogues and folders, and any other printed matter. Above all things, study simplicity. If I were you, when it comes to displaying newspaper advertisements, I should insist upon having a distinct face of type, and different from all other advertisers in the paper. It will pay you to buy this type for your own use. Use it in the booklets, catalogues and folders that you issue. Make it plain and simple, and your advertisements will be read, and they will have that distinct personality which arises from the distinctive quality of the type you use.