Best version of Sabon?

[billtroop]

>Every reproduction in the process degraded the image

Of course you're right about that, Nick, and this is one respect where digital workflow is much cleaner, but surely it isn't (wasn't) strictly necessary to have several intermediate generations?

[Nick Shinn]

The original artwork of the typeface letters was reproduced photographically four times:

1. Original artwork of letters, from which a negative image was shot onto, for instance a glass grid (Diatronic). The original artwork had pre-emptive "ticks" to counteract image loss, however.
2. Galley made--this was a positive image exposed from the font's negative image, through a lens, onto photo paper.
3. Galley pasted onto artboard, negative film shot from artboard, through a lens.
4. Film assembly contact printed as positive image onto printing plate.

Compare with direct-to-plate digital imaging.

In theory, it was possible to make the galley directly onto negative film, and skip step 3, but I didn't know anyone who did that. One reason being that mechanical assembly artists were paid less than filmstrippers. Also more difficult to make proofs and do "author's alterations" to the copy (text).

[charles_e]

Don't forget the effects of processing silver materials -- Lith film, and "lith" repro paper did not have a 90-degree slope.

With most photocomp fonts, we "overexposed" and "overdeveloped" to get a little more gain with the fine strokes. Of course, the nature of a silver halide crystal being what it is, the heavy strokes picked up even more density (gain). The price you paid to get the fine lines from fonts not properly adjusted for the technology.

And in making the negative, the printer tended to "underexpose" to reduce the lines needing opaquing. More gain.

On Nick's skipping repro & going straight to negative material -- I believe there was one time when we ran film, as a negative, on the Linotron 202. Frightfully expensive.

On the whole matter of different masters in metal, of course. In the earlier days of photocomp, you could purchase different master sizes for a few fonts -- an 18-point, 12-point, and 8-point were the most common master sizes. Sometimes you simply used the 8-point for text, as it was the only one where the fine lines stood a chance of printing.

And I remember Richard Eckersley using a font -- Vendome(?) for the text of a book. It was only available in an 18-point master, which meant we had to play a lot of tricks to get it to work.

By in large, photocomp was pretty screwed up, but in some ways, such as different masters, it was ahead of where we are with most digital type. I see the 4- and 5-"masters" available from Adobe as a step toward recovery. Countering this is graphic designers (not type designers) falling out of love with a typeface about as fast as casual listeners fall out of love with the latest hit song, so there isn't time for us comps (end users) to fix things, even when a font has a lot of potential.

This fixing isn't just a matter for type designers. It takes the graphic designers and the comps too; nobody, no matter how clever, can create a typeface that satisfies all needs.

[ncaleffi]

"The wide roman a without which Nick says Sabon is not Sabon - - is not present in the larger sizes. (Nor is it present in the Scangraphic version which was digitized from a less familiar metal source."

Bill, you're a great source of historical information as always. I've never seen any version of Sabon by Scangraphic - and it would be interesting to see a sample.