Text Composition

1. Text Composition Chapter 6

2. 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

3. 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

4. Setting Type • Foundry 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

5. 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 galley • Type 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

6. 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

7. Review Questions • Letterpress is another name used for ____________ printing • The person who sets type is called a _______ • ________ type is an assortment of individually cast, metal characters used for relief printing • The ________ is the common method for storing foundry type • What is furniture?

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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?

12. 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

13. 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

14. Review Questions 9. List the three basic functions of a computer system 10. 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 _________

15. Software • Text Preparation • Word processing software- creates and edits text • Graphics 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

16. 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

17. 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