OK, let’s take a different approach.

According to the DICTIONNAIRE TYPOGRAPHIE MULTILINGUE the following are equivalent terminology for “type color/colour” in:

French — couleur typographique
German — none?
Italian — tono
Spanish — color

Surely an equivalent term for type color exists in both German and Dutch. Perhaps the original root term can be found in either of these places of type infancy.

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Yes, I’m old, but I’m very curious!

German: Grauwert (Grayscale)

—astype.de—

Thanks, Adreas.
It seems so far that color is just an unimaginative and confusing English term.

Norbert

The first book on printing, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, by Joseph Moxon, 1683–4, mentions colour.

Good Colour. Printed neither too Black or too White.

Pale Colour. If there be not Blacking enough in the Inck, or the Form be Beaten with too Lean Balls, the Work will be said to have a Pale Colour.

A note on some of these terms. The form would be the page of metal type. Ink balls were used to print with (rollers weren’t used until the early nineteenth century).

Gerald

Color me curious too.

ChrisL

Gerald, I doubt that this is talking about the same colour as Norbert is talking about. I suspect this is about the blackness of the ink, whether it is too much ink or too little ink.

The italian word tono means tone. This one seems more appropriate to describe what we refer to as colour or color in typographhy. It may be that at some point the two words—colour and tone—became interchangable.

We all know it is meant to describe the evenness of the page with respect to the type. I wonder if it was first used by printers who were pulling proofs to check impression and ink, or by punch cutters trying to determine if their fonts were balanced in stroke weights? The ink makes more sense when you refer to color but punch cutters didn’t have the luxury of instant proofing we have today to checK our type.

ChrisL

Very true, Chris.
Type and typography had always been part of the printer craft and guild. The mixing of inks, the eveness of printed impressions, the consistency of ink color and impressions from folio to folio, all this was controlled with great understanding of technique and technology.

That’s why I find the terms “color,” Grauwert or tono off-the-mark in trying to describe the subtle yet complex levels of visual effects created by adjusting letter or linespacing, point size, column widths, selection of typeface, weight of typeface, and so on and so on...

In other words, EVERYTHING that typography involves is contained within the single term color. It embodies more than just the grayness of blocks of copy, but also the texture created by the glyphs themselves, dazzle, spikeyness, flow, textura.

It just dawned on me... maybe because the “secrets” of the Guild kept the terminology obtuse because it indeed embodied all the mysteries of typography.

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Yes, I’m old, but I’m colorful!

> I suspect this is about the blackness of the ink

But that’s probably still the source of the term. In fact that was my hunch before Gerald revealed the Moxon passage. Also, you could say that when type is small enough (like for text) they really become the same thing.

hhp

I’ve always viewed the term color as referring to the intensity of the ink on the page, its definition with white space, and the residual contrast thereby formed. The relative strength and definition of that contrast is the color of the type on the printed surface.

I’ve always thought “color” was a perfect term for the overall density of the type, meaning: not just the amount of black in the letters themselves, but also that which results from the spacing and leading...because “color” in its more general definition, does not exist in typography otherwise...if you see what I mean.

So, in comparison to the range, detail, descriptive and technical terminology used by type design, typography suffers from both lack and vagueness of descriptive terminology.

This has been my main point, and also the reason why it is difficult to make graphic designers aware of the nuances and visual refinement that can be made to blocks of copy.

Typographic training rarely goes beyond basic typesetting techniques. Why? Because it is easier to describe and even easier to implement nowadays.

Pick the typeface, point size, linespacing, tracking (letterspacing) and column widths and you are done. OR open the leading, tighten the letterspacing, and pick a lighter weight of the typeface and “Oh my gosh!” I’ve changed the color.

Much of typographic terminology is really just markup and proofing notation with a little bit of type design speak. The more sophisticated levels of typography use warm-fuzzy/cold-prickly descriptions which are difficult to describe without explicit illustrations.

Pick the typeface, point size, linespacing, tracking (letterspacing) and column widths and you are done. OR open the leading, tighten the letterspacing, and pick a lighter weight of the typeface and “Oh my gosh!” I’ve changed the color.

This has been my experience, (except that I didn’t even know of the term “colour”). Likely common knowledge here, but another thing that affects the colour of a page for me are the margins; where the block of text sits in realtion to the surrounding whitespace.

pd

“The density of texture in a written or typeset page is called its color. This has nothing to do with red or green ink; it refers only to the darkness or blackness of the letterforms in mass. Once the demands of legibilty and logical order are satisfied, eveness of color is the typographer’s normal aim. And color depends on four things: the design of the type, the spacing between the letters, the spacing between the words, and the spacing between the lines. None is independent of the others.”

“Color The darkness of the type as set in mass, which is not the same as the weight of the face itself. The spacing of words and letters, the leading of lines, and the incidence of capitals, not to mention the color (i.e., darkness) of the ink and of the paper it is printed on, all affect the color of the type.”

—Robert Bringhurst
The Elements of Typographic Style

> eveness of color is the typographer’s normal aim

Wrong.

hhp

“The most important thing is for the color to be even and consistent.” James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography, p. 104

Felici is a long time type setter from the metal era on, so what he says, as well as what Bringhurst says, reflects a standard view.

You can disagree with the wisdom of that received view, Hrant, but that it is the received view I don’t see how you can deny given these quotes. Can you quote one well known type designer or typographer who advocates uneveness of color?

It’s not that they don’t know what they’re doing, it’s that they’re not really in touch with what’s really going on, at least not enough to be able to discuss it properly. They need to put those pretty phrases aside and focus on truly expressing the nature of the foundation.

Totally even color is a solid gray blob - 100% unreadable. Good typography on the other hand relies on a balance of white and black, on a balance of even color and color contrast. Information comes from contrast, not a gray blob. Some people are just not sufficiently in tune with the underlying mechanics of how humans see and interpret things, and not sufficiently critical of precedent, to be able to see the shiny Modernist mantras for the claptrap that they really are; all they do is perpetuate meaningless myths that nobody really even believes in.

So: What you point out is not the received view. It’s merely the
received expressions, which in fact do not match any view at all.

hhp

The way Felici uses the word ’color’ it includes balance of black and white, not even gray. Here is more Felici:

“If there is an essential truism in typesetting, it is that a page contains no voids, only spaces between printed elements. The essence of typesetting is regulating the size of those spaces to control the balance and rhythm between black and white. This is the key to a graphically harmonious page—one with good *type color*—as well as to text that is pleasing and easy to read.”

It is an even texture, not a uniform grey that is aimed at in the idea of “even color”.

I am not saying that “color” is all that satisfactory term. As Norbert points out in the beginning of this thread, it is not very descriptive or clear. But if you are saying that “even color” doesn’t refer to something real and important in type, I think you are very off base. Typographers have known what it refers to—an important quality in type and page design and composition—even though they haven’t perhaps ever explained it well.

And it has nothing to do with modernism. I’m pretty sure the phrase ’evenness of color’ predates 20th century modernism.

The people who have been working daily to produce evenly colored pages know what they are referring to. It is not bogus. The question is how to explain it more clearly and fully.

I’m sorry, but you’re having the same problem they’re having: not managing to express what you mean. Texture, color, rhythm, all mish-mashed together. And although the intent is fine, I have to think that part of the problem is a failure to grasp the central role of unevenness in communication. And this is very much a symptom of Modernism (which goes way, way further back than the 20th century btw, it was just called other things, like “The Enlightenment” for example). Grandiose, misguided phrases.

“Color” doesn’t have to be ambiguous or confusing - it just has to be used well.
Same goes for “even”.

hhp

If I understand what you are saying, it is contrast (unevenness of colour in this context) which draws understanding from information. One could take this back to a time where seeing a silhouette on the horizon could mean dinner or death.

I agree with this view insofar as print is meant to be read and understood. But are we not talking about the aesthetic presentation of the printed page or book when we speak of colour?

I took “evenness of colour” to mean that kerning, leading, margins, type choice and size etc. all combine to deliver the look of a page in its own right. However, I assumed right away that the phrase went on to mean that consecutive pages would also adhere to the same conditions thereby ensuring a consistent looking document.

pd

Hrant

I think I understand what you are intending. (?) I agree that the “expressions” are merely acceptances of ideas or values that may have been hashed out in the not too distant past. Mainly by the early to mid twentieth century apostlehood. If you follow them to their historic roots there seems to be only an interpretation, or reinterpretation, or misinterpretation, of a long distant era.

But I am not in any way sure of what you are suggesting as other. An example?

Gerald

>not managing to express what you mean

I would say rather that you are not reading what I wrote, but some fantasy of an opponent. I said the term ’color’ is not very descriptive, but that it refers to something real, and the challenge is to explain it.

Letter forms are diverse, and obviously deliberately, so that one letter is distinguishable from others. The H and the O don’t look alike. But when you space a string of Hs and Os for a typeface, you aim at a quality that typographers and type designers have sometimes called ’even color’. In ’Letters of Credit’ Walter Tracy uses the words ’harmony’ and ’balance’ to refer to this, rather than ’even color’. Others speak of the volume of space between the letters being uniform—though what that volume is is somewhat hard to define (how far does the volume extend into the ’c’?). What is aimed at is a visual quality that practiced typographers will have a large degree of agreement on—such on what constitutes ’good’ kerning—what, yes achieves ’even color’.

’Evenness of color’ is not a phrase that denies diversity, but rather tries to express in a not very clear phrase a visual harmony and balance in a diverse group of symbols on a page.

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By the way, your view that the Enlightenment was opposed to diversity is balderdash. Before the Enlightenment Europeans were busy killing each other over which version of Christianity should be imposed on everyone. The Enlightenment supported freedom of opinion, tolerance and diversity.

I think it was Hrant who mentions on an article that word recognition in a given script depends on the unevennes of the letterforms of that word, and that is why it is more difficult to read all capital words/sentences.

If I understgand Hrant correctly, evennes in the color of type will decrease its legibility, because it will turn into grey. It is the unevennes that makes it recognizable and readable.