Text CompositionChapter 6

Composition History Composition

Refers to the production and organization of all images to be printed

Setting type or words, not line art or photographs Typesetter or Compositor

Person who sets the type Hand composition- 1400’s to early 1900’s Machine methods- end of the 1800’s Photographic setting- late 1960’s Personal computer- 1980’s

Primary method of composition

Relief Composition Printing on a raised surface

(letterpress) Raised surface is covered with ink

and pressed against paper or other substrate

First done on carved wooden blocks Movable type- mid 1400’s, Gutenberg

Metal blocks that could be taken apart and reassembled into different words

Materials: wood, metal, rubber, plastic

Image carrier: 1st and 2nd generation

Setting TypeFoundry type

Individually pieces of metal type

assembled in various combinations, sorted and reused

Job case Storage drawer where

compositor stores individual letters

Holds one full font of type- one point size

Composing stick holds hand-set type in determined line length Positioned left to right, upside

down Filled to 2/3 full and transferred

to a galleyType is transferred to a chase

Metal frame with wood or metal spacers (furniture) arranged around block of type, positioning if for printing

Metal relief characters need to uniform height

Linecasting machines Hot metal typesetting machines

Faster, more efficient Produced entire lines of type (slugs)

Linotype- matrices were formed into lines, cast in metal, distributed back for reuse

Ludlow- larger point sizes for display type

Monotype- individual cast letters

Review Questions

1. Letterpress is another name used for ____________ printing

2. The person who sets type is called a _______3. ________ type is an assortment of individually

cast, metal characters used for relief printing4. The ________ is the common method for

storing foundry type5. What is furniture?

Cold Type Composition

Hand composition methods Hand lettering

pens and brushes are used to create oversize lettering Templates

Guide of a desired shape or letter Dry transfer type

Burnishing letters to transfer to base sheet

Strike-on composition Simple and rapid way of generating camera ready text Typewriters

Photocomposition Generation of type using photographic paper or film

exposed to light A negative is exposed to a bright light source Projection method

Light is projected through transparent image onto light sensitive material

Allows enlargement or reduction of a single typeface to provide a wide range of point sizes

Cathode ray tube method Computer controls an electron beam that makes pixels

glow in patterns related to materials be typeset onto light sensitive paper

Sets large amounts of type quickly Phototypesetting paper and Processor

Why?

Traditional cold type composition has declined steadily in recent years

Hot metal composition has almost disappeared from commercial printing

Phototypesetting has almost been replaced

Review Questions

6. __________ methods involve using a pen, brush, lettering template, clip art, or transfer letters to manually generate copy

7. _________ is the generation of type using photographic paper or film exposed to light

8. What was the advantage of the projection type of phototypesetting?

Electronic Composition Computer (hardware) and specialized programs (software)

are known as an Electronic Imaging System Process and store information in a digital form

Binary system of 1s and 0s Input

Keyboard, Mouse, Digital Tablet, Modem, Scanner, Digital Cameras

Processing Hard Drive, CD-ROM Drive, Zip Drive

Output Monitor, Printer- dot matrix, ink jet, laser, Imagesetter

Output

Monitors “what you see is what you get” RGB (additive color theory)

Printers CMYK (subtractive color theory) 100 dpi – 1200 dpi

Imagesetters High resolution Raster Image Processor (RIP) converts page elements

to bitmapped imaged at resolution selected

Review Questions9. List the three basic functions of a computer system10. The term _____ refers to the way a computer

processes and stores information as a series of 1s and 0s (or on-off states)

11. What do the letters WYSIWYG represent?12. The colors cyan, magenta, yellow and black are

represented in the _______ color system used for printing

13. The computer monitor is a(n) ______ device.14. Computer equipment is referred to as ______, while

programs are described as _________

SoftwareText Preparation

Word processing software- creates and edits textGraphics Preparation

Object-oriented images- line art, draw program Bitmapped images- graphics made of a map of pixels,

paint program Image editing- changes bitmapped images into

photographs by using halftone dots, edits scanned images, Photoshop

Page Composition Assembles text and images into a final page,

PageMaker, QuarkXPress

Proofreading

Checking for typesetting errors, marking for correction Proof is a copy that is checked before going into print

Proofreader Checks spelling, hyphenation, style, size, layout, etc Marks

Caret (^) is placed below an error

Spell-check programs Helpful in production speed and quality Proofreader must still go over copy

Review Questions

15. Which type of images would normally be edited with an image editor program?

16. The process of checking typeset material for errors in spelling, hyphenation and other areas is called ________

17. The ______ is an upside-down v symbol used to mark the location of an error when proofreading copy

18. T/F Spellcheckers that are part of the word processing programs eliminate the need for proofreading