Logotype Schemes

1. Fine Distinctions

The notion that one can speed hand typesetting by casting short common words or fragments of words as single types dates back to at least the early 19th century. Many schemes for this have been proposed, and some have even entered limited production. They have never really lived up to their inventors' expectations.

Logotypes as the term is used here are multiple-letter combinations cast as individual types for the purpose of speeding hand composition. In such systems, the resulting printed text would look identical to the text if printed without the use of these logotypes; they are purely a compositional aid.

They are distinct from other kinds of multiple-letter single types used for other purposes:

• "ligatures" usually involving two or at most three connected letters (typically connecting more or less regularly spaced letters, and deriving ultimately from scribal conventions; examples: the 'ct' and 'st' ligatures)
• "ligatures" usually involving two or at most three connected letters (typically allowing the letters to be set tighter than their bodies would ordinarily allow, without the cutting of kerns; examples: the 'fi' and 'ffl' ligatures)
• various more or less ornamental individual words or abbreviations called (with no accepted terminology)
  • "Catch Words"
  • "Card Logotypes"
  • "Billhead Logotypes"
  • "Commercial Logotypes"

I'll call these other things "combination types" (this isn't a standard term (there is no standard term) - I just made it up.) In each of these cases the characteristic which distinguishes them from "logotypes" as defined above is that this combination is done for visual or aesthetic reasons. The resulting printed text does not look the same when printed with these (vs. plain single-letter types).

See Non-Logotype "Combination Types" for a discussion of these.

Logotypes themselves are just pieces of type, but there have been several proposed machines to aid in composition with logotypes (which is why I'm considering them all here, within a set of notebooks on Noncasting Type Composing Machinery).

Note: Both logotypes and "combination types" (in the senses used here) are distinct from:

• Logotype Keyboards
• The Mergenthaler-Lawrenz Logotype Casting Machine

2. Logotype Schemes Involving Machines

[NOT DONE; see Huss]

3. Logotype Schemes Not Involving Machines