⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 2–3 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Please allow 2–3 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

William Hugh Gordon practically invented the modern lettering textbook — and his 1918 Lettering for Commercial Purposes shows why his name stayed on the bench for decades. Across 182 pages, this vintage commercial lettering manual teaches the alphabets and techniques that sold goods in the golden age of advertising: pen and brush letterforms for show cards, newspaper ads, window signs, and display work.

Gordon — co-author of the famous Speedball textbooks — understood that commercial lettering is lettering with a job to do. His instruction covers single-stroke and shaded alphabets, spacing and layout for legibility at distance, and the adaptation of classic Roman and Gothic forms to the quick-turn world of retail advertising. Every lesson is aimed at the working letterer producing finished, salable work.

For today's sign painters, hand letterers, and vintage-advertising collectors, this 1918 manual is both a practical workbook and a time capsule. The alphabets copy cleanly for period reproduction jobs; the layout principles read as fresh now as they did a century ago. Pair it with Gordon's One Hundred Loose Leaf Lessons for a complete self-study course from one of the trade's great teachers.

Whether you're restoring a 1920s storefront, lettering show cards by hand, or building a library of antique sign painting books, Gordon's Lettering for Commercial Purposes is a cornerstone. 182 pages of trade-tested instruction from a master of the craft.

Details: 6×9" paperback, 182 pages, black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1918 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1918 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1918 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.