“In perpetual deference to the author of a book, giving every advantage of maximum readability to his message; also to the publisher, allowing him economical production, generations of scribes developed the most commonly acceptable formulas for proportions of columns, margins, spaces between the lines, etc., that have served as models in the book field to this day.
Weights and forms of the handwritten letter also passed over to the newer expediency of the printing craft and underwent little change for a hundred years.
Relief from the static square and rectangular divisions of type areas may be obtained simply by feeding the paper into the press at an angle. This would be particularly suitable for a second impression in color over a first color fed on the square.
This may seem an obviously simple device that could have been employed in the past, and this is true, but typography continued from its inception for several hundred years with type characters composed and printed in the square of the chase and press bed. Nothing was thought of except the square. Type is still locked up in the square today.”
Basic Layout Design, Tommy Thompson, 1950
