The result of book designing should be a book harmonious in its proportions and with some relation in its looks to its subject matter, this irrespective of whether it is produced by hand by a private press, or composed on a machine in a commercial printing office.

The first designers of books were, of course, the printers themselves, but quite early in the history of printing, the publisher-printer appeared on the scene, and the distribution and financing of books gradually became divorced from their actual production. The various processes connected with bookmaking, e.g. binding, and the engraving of plates were done by specialist firms. Perhaps this is the reason why the nineteenth century was not a happy time for the art of the book, and perhaps the success in beauty, if not in money, of the earliest private presses and the revival of printing in the 90's derived from the fact that these presses were small enough to be supervised by one man. The typographic designer, the man who plans all details of the book before actual production begins is, however, only now entering his prime. Smaller houses have their publications planned by the publisher himself, and for some of the great publishers planning has been associated with expensive, private press books. One, if not the largest, of all publishing concerns in the United Kingdom: H.M.S.O., has only within recent years appointed Sir Francis Meynell as typographic adviser and, of course, with salutary results. Stanley Morison has been typographic adviser for various publishers for the last twenty to thirty years.

A prerequisite for a typographic adviser is a knowledge of the various processes of printing and illustration, down to their last detail, and then to combine them in the right way, not too startling to divert attention from the reading matter of the book - for which the design is only the body, after all - but not excluding some novel and pleasing details.