GLYPHS

TYPECASTING W/ STEVEN B R OW E R

VELO SERIF TYPEFACE REVIEW

TYPE FOUNDRIES TYPE IN 10 MINUTES

SSUE

HOW GOOD IS GOOD?

ISSUE

001

TA B L E

OF

CO N T E N TS COLUMN: BUISNESS

pg. 02

COLUMN: OPINION COLUMN: TYPEFACE

pg. 03

pg. 07

COLUMN: TIPS pg. 08

COLUMN: WEB TYPE pg. 09

TYPECASTING pg. 11

G LY P H S 02

BUISNESS

Taking Your Fonts to Market: Foundry, Reseller, or Go Solo?

Stephen Coles on November 20, 2014 Signing with a Foundry

Signing with a Reseller

Going it Alone

A foundry can be considered a font manufacturer.

Examples are Linotype, Monotype, P22, and FontFont. Foundry type can be distributed through multiple channels, such as their own web shop and the shops of their resellers. When you submit a typeface to a foundry for release it is usually an exclusive deal. They will maintain the right to sell the font according to their contract. Royalties range from 20%-50% but there is also an important distinction: most foundries pay a percentage of the wholesale price of the font. In this model, as the font goes further down the distribution chain, the designer is getting less of the retail price. Other foundries, like FontFont, give a percentage of the suggested retail price — no matter where or how the font is sold, the designer gets the same cut.

A reseller offers fonts from multiple foundries. The major type resellers are Fonts.com, FontShop, MyFonts, and Veer. Resellers sign a contract with a foundry/publisher and offer the fonts in that foundry’s library. The foundry usually receives between 40–65% of the retail price of the font. Each reseller has a different customer base and produces different kinds and quantities of promotional materials. Examine them thoroughly and ask about their marketing strategies. Some independent foundries (like ShinnType and Mark Simonson) have found success in reaching a wide audience by offering their fonts through many different resellers. Others go for a more exclusive strategy (like Porchez Typofonderie at FontShop, Jukebox at Veer) benefiting from a boost in promotion that comes when a retailer can claim they are the exclusive reseller.

Building a foundry and selling fonts exclusively on your own web shop brings you 100% of sales, of course. Exclusivity has its benefits, as Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Jeremy Tankard, and Lineto will attest.

It can give your brand a certain boost in value. But unless you are already well known, it can be a lot of very hard work to get customers to your shopfront, while lesser fonts are benefitting from broader exposure and marketing. There is also that nagging feeling that you don’t know how much more you could be selling were your fonts available elsewhere.

Advantages

§§ No business knowledge required, the foundry will handle all customer support (big!), marketing, and reseller relationships §§ Some foundries offer technical and design assistance to complete font production §§ Foundries are an advocate for your work, monitoring piracy and misuse §§ Spend less time administrating, more time drawing type

Disadvantages

§§ Very little control of where and how fonts are sold §§ Receive a portion of each sale

Questions To Ask Yourself About a Foundry

§§ Is the library a good fit for my style of type? §§ What production assistance do they offer? §§ Where are the foundry’s fonts sold and how are they marketed? §§ What is the length of the contract agreement?

Advantages

§§ Reach more customers and diverse markets §§ Maintain some control of brand, pricing, and the ability to sign with multiple resellers

Disadvantages

§§ Must be somewhat business savvy §§ Receive a portion of each sale

Questions To Ask Yourself About a Reseller

§§ Who is their clientele? §§ How is their customer service? §§ What marketing materials and other tools do they use to draw customers? §§ How many fonts and foundries are already in their shop? Do I risk getting lost among similar offerings? §§ What do they offer if I sell my fonts exclusively through them?

Advantages

§§ Full control of brand and pricing §§ Receive 100% of sales revenue §§ Maintain a relationship with every customer

Disadvantages

§§ Must be business savvy §§ Spend more time administrating, less time drawing type §§ Potential for substantial overhead (marketing, website, e-commerce costs) §§ Responsible for customer support §§ Maintain a relationship with every customer

Charting a Course to the Market So the first decision to be made with each of your fonts is whether you want to go the foundry or reseller route. If you decide to submit your fonts to a foundry, find the outfit and agreement that is right for you. If you choose to build your own foundry, decide whether you want to sell the fonts exclusively on your own, or through one or more resellers.

Success can be wrought from any of these models. Much depends on what’s important to you, the fonts you’re selling, and what kind of work you’re willing to put into distributing them.

I almost certainly neglected something in this summary and I welcome any rebuttals or filling of holes from those who are actually making a buck from drawing type. There are hundreds of you out there and many lessons to glean from your experience.

G LY P H S 03

HowGOOD

OPINION

is

GOOD?

by Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister talks about the state of current design, ethics, advertising and aesthetics.

I

n September design felt impotent and frivolous. There is nothing inherent in our profession that forces us to support worthy causes, to promote good things, to avoid visual pollution. There might be such a responsibility in us as people. In August, when thinking about my reasons for being alive, for getting out of bed in the morning, I would have written the following down.

I do know that bad design can harm our lives. From the problems this little piece of bad typography caused in Florida to unnecessary junk mail and overproduced packaging, bad design makes the world a more difficult place to live in.

1. Strive for happiness 2. Don’t hurt anybody 3. Help, others achieve the same

At the same time, strong design for bad causes or products can hurt us even more.

Now I would change that priority:

Good design + bad cause = bad

1. Help others 2. Don’t hurt anybody 3. Strive for happiness My studio was engaged in cool projects, things designers like to do, like designing a cover for David Byrne. We had a good time designing them, and since the products and events these pieces promoted were fine, I don’t think we hurt anybody who bought them.

One of the many things I learned in my year without clients, a year I had put aside for experiments only, was that I’d like a part of my studio to move from creating cool things to significant things.

The 80s in graphic design were dominated by questions about the layout, by life style magazines, with Neville Brody’s Face seen as the big event. The 90s were dominated by questions about typography, readability, layering, with David Carson emerging as the dominant figure.

With prominent figures like Peter Saville recently talking about the crisis of the unnecessary and lamenting about the fact that our contemporary culture is monthly, there might now finally be room for content, for questions about what we do and for whom we are doing it. The incredible impact the First Things First manifesto had on my profession would certainly point in that direction.

The first sentence on page 1 of Victor Papanek’s “Design for the Real World” reads: “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier: Advertising design. In persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others that don’t care, it is probably the phoniest field in existence today.”

Just consider this age old and powerful symbol symbol and its transformation into a very successful identity program by the Nazis.

Context is all-important: The Christian cross had one meaning in 16th century Europe and another one in 20th century India.

Bad design + good cause = good?

On the other hand, bad design for a good cause can still be a good thing. We designed the logo for The Concert for New York, a huge charity event for the fire and policeman in Madison Square Garden, involving among others Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, The Who. From a design point of view, the statue of liberty playing a guitar is a trite cliché. I am not suggesting that the logo had much to do with the over $ 20 million raised for the Robin Hood Foundation, well, actually, a tiny portion was raised through the logo in the from of merchandize sales.

“At the same time,

strong design

bad causes or products can hurt for

us even more.”

G LY P H S 04

How to be good?

Well, does help by definition have to be selfless? Am I allowed to get something out of myself? If I do help, am I permitted to have fun while doing so?

I read an interview with an art director in England discussing his award winning campaign ad campaign for an association for the blind, featuring a striking image of a guide dog with human eyes stripped in. He mentioned that he knew that a picture of a cute puppy would have raised more donations for the association, but was more interested in winning awards. He had no problems with this attitude.

When GE gives 10 million to the WTC victim families, is it ok for them to look good for doing so?

Or, a more extreme case: Is it ok for Philip Morris to go and give 60 million to help out various charities and then spend another 108 million promoting this good deed in magazine ads?

If you are homeless and you just got a hot meal from St. Johns in Brooklyn, one of the organizations the money went to, you don’t really give a shit if the people who gave it to you tout their own horn afterwards.

Even though it really is a ridiculous case, isn’t it still preferable to blowing the entire 168 million on a regular ad budget?

And: Why are so many celebrities involved in charities? Five years ago, my feeling was they just wanted to promote their careers. Now I am somewhat less cynical. It is conceivable that many simply came to realize the pursuit of money/ fame/success does not hold the contentment it promised and are on the lookout for more significance.

Poor Sting practically ruined his career with all his do gooding, transforming himself from the cool leader of the Police to just another sappy rain forest bard.

Where do the critics come in? If I make fun of Sting, do I keep other celebrities from following his lead and therefore somehow contribute to the destruction of the rainforest? If I do criticize Sting, do I have to have a better idea to help the world?

When philosopher Edward DeBono talks about values, he puts them into four equally important sections: §§ Me-values: ego and pleasure §§ Mates-values: belonging to a group, not letting it down §§ Moral-values: religious values, general law, general values of a particular culture §§ Mankind-values: human rights, ecology I often make the mistake of concentrating on just a couple of these values in my life. We all have heard of the philanthropist who gave away millions to charity and was a genuine asshole to all his friends. Or the guy who is totally devoted to his family and friends but hates himself, drives a Suburban and works for a Nuclear Missile Plant. Or Mr. Bin Laden himself: I am sure he is totally devoted to his religious values as well as to the values of his own culture, but does not really care about human rights much.

For a full life I would have to be involved in all four.

I do think there is a role for everyone. It does not really matter if I am the Mayor of New York, or if I design the tourist brochures for New York or if I sweep the streets in New York. There is always room to be nice to a co-worker, to send a sweet letter to Mom, to love Anni.

Of course there are different degrees of separation. The rescue worker down at Ground Zero is directly involved, when I design a pin to raise money to help the rescue worker, I’m a couple of degrees further removed. But I might just function twice as effective as a designer than I would as a rescue worker.

Well, while pondering those questions half a year ago, I got invited to participate in a media design exhibition in Vienna, Austria. One of the perks that came with the exhibit was a free, full-page ad in Austria’s best newspaper, space I was free to fill with whatever I liked.

It’s an idea for a packaging that might be applied in zones of large catastrophes, earthquakes and such. At the time I was naively thinking of far away locations, India or Africa, not for a second conceiving that my hometown New York itself might be turned into the largest catastrophe zone.

It is basically a large, hollow Lego like block containing basic foods like milk powder, water, dried fish, rice. After the food has been consumed, the empty packaging can be filled with sand or dirt and used as an interlocking brick to build a shelter.

In the ad I explained the idea and asked other designers, packaging manufacturers and aid organizations to contribute.

Responses came into my laptop immediately. Many from students who just wanted to help, some from Austrian packaging companies interested in participating and many from designers and architects offering ideas.

Also, it was an opportunity to feel and look good myself: The caring designer.

G LY P H S 05

OPINION

Among all the positive responses was also a violently negative one; - the writer stating that this is the absolute worst idea he ever saw in this context, that it’s a case of designing poverty, just plain ignorant and stupid.

I got really nervous. I am just not used to having my work hated that much.

Maybe I should have stuck to CD covers.

The e-mail did prompt me to get quickly in contact with aid organizations and I had subsequently a discussion with the Director of Emergency Preparedness at CARE, the largest of them all.

It turns out that in emergency cases, Care tends to buy food whenever possible locally in bulk: That way they don’t have to package, there is less garbage, they avoid shipping problems and the food will be compatible with local tastes.

And similar thinking applies for shelter: It’s to everybody’s advantage to use as much local building material as possible. Care just supplies some additional resource materials like rolls of plastic or corrugated metal sheets and utilizes the ingenuity of the population. This results in sturdier, better-built shelter.

It turns out, my e-mail writer was right: This is a stupid idea.

SO: I have to be part of an organization, part of a problem to be able to come up with a solution. Do-gooding from afar, as a tourist, won’t do.

In the meantime in New York I was also at the center of a disaster, I was not tourist anymore. One of the tasks at hand was the creation of a symbol that could also work as a fundraiser for various charities hit hard by current events.

Our idea was a pin, made of the rubble of the World trade Center, a piece of metal that refused to be destroyed. After the WTC disaster over 1 000 000 tons of rubble was removed from the site and brought by truck and barge to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.

The plan here is to make this into a large-scale project. We can raise $ 1.5 million per 100 000 pins sold.

Good Design +Good Cause Most of current graphic design done by professional design companies is used to promote or sell, which is fine, but design can also do so much more.

=Good

G LY P H S 06

§§ Design can unify Francis Hopkinson, a writer, artist and a signatory of the declaration of independence designed the American Flag (never got paid for it though). §§ Design can help us remember The towers of light by Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda, at this moment proposed as a temporary memorial down at Ground Zero, are a beautiful emotional response. They are ghost limbs; we can feel them even though they are not there anymore. §§ Design can simplify our lives Everybody who had to buy tokens in the New York subway system would agree that the Metro card eased the way we go around the city. §§ Design can make someone feel better After we designed the CD cover for the Rolling Stones there was quite some press interest in Europe and a number of Austrian and German TV stations came to New York for an interview. This was just around the time my Mom was celebrating her 70 Birthday. I made a T-shirt saying “Dear Mom! Have a great Birthday” and wore it during the interview. The Austrian station agreed to air the interviews exactly on her Birthday. Mom felt better. §§ Design can make the world a safer place Cipro comes with a complicated, difficult to understand information pamphlet.

It could also inform quickly and efficiently about when and how to take it as well as side effects. §§ Design can help people rally behind a cause

Robbie Canals poster series wheat pasted all over New York in the 80-ies probably spoke to the already converted, but showed me there are other people out there who are not happy with the administration. I guess I picked these posters over the hundreds or thousands of posters designers created that would qualify as an example because I saw those actually pasted on the street. There is this entire subsection in design, the peace or environmental poster, where only hundreds are actually printed, only dozens go up in the street and the rest is distributed to design competitions. This of course does NOT help people rally behind a cause, it only helps the ego of the designer. §§ Design can inform and teach From the abstract geometric signs and animals of the cave paintings to the graphs in the New York Times, designers give us a better understanding of the issues. §§ Design can raise money

As a stand in for all the promotions and ads that raised money for Non-Profit organizations I am showing here the Breast Cancer symbol which made a an impressive amount of money for cancer research. §§ Design can make us more tolerant Russian designer Andrey Logvin simple poster called Troika speaks for itself.

Winter Sorbeck, design teacher and fictional main character in Chip Kidd’s new novel The Cheese Monkeys, says at one point: Uncle Sam is Commercial Art, the American Flag is graphic design. Commercial Art makes you BUY things, graphic Design GIVES you ideas.

If I’m able to do that, to give ideas, that WOULD be a good reason to get out of bed in the morning.

About Sagmeister: Address 206 West 23rd Street Floor 4 New York, NY 10011 US Company Name Sagmeister & Walsh.

Website http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com/ Telephone (212) 647-1789 Graphic designer and typographer Stefan Sagmeister is known for upsetting norms, tricking the senses through design, typography, environmental art, conceptual exhibitions and video. His diverse client list includes the Rolling Stones, HBO and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Sagmeister’s work has earned him accolades from all realms of art and design, including the American Institute of Graphic Arts Medal, the National Design Award from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, as well as two Grammy Awards for package designs for albums by the Talking Heads and Brian Eno and David Byrne. Solo shows with Sagmeister’s work have been exhibited throughout the U.S. and around the world, including shows in Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Prague and Seoul, among others. He is the author of “Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far,” an eclectic mix of visual audacity and sound advice that blends Sagmeister’s personal revelations, art and design.

A native of Austria, he received his M.F.A. from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and earned a master’s degree from Pratt Institute, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He resides in New York City where his firm, Sagmesiter & Walsh, is based.

G LY P H S 07

TYPEFACE REVIEW:

VELO SERIF

T Y P E FAC E

Reviewed by Indra Kupferschmid on March 19, 2015

V

Designer Ben Kiel, Christian Schwartz, Mitja Miklavčič Foundry House Industries Classification Serif Slab Serif Featured in Typefaces of 2014 Elsewhere Velo in use

elo Serif won my heart four seconds after hitting my inbox with seductive gifs and a big ‘ä’. No one was surprised. I have a super-soft spot for squarish serifs. I love Zapf Book, not Palatino, I collect Old Hamcherry, have researched Corvini, and stare at Antikva Margaret in awe. Velo Serif brings several of these loves together in one contemporary retro type family, but avoids becoming too gimmicky 1970s (e.g., by resisting the obvious temptation for ball terminals).

The first features that spring to your eye are the ridiculously large x-height and the wide super-elliptic forms of the lowercase. They are capital without being majuscule. Where other display serifs go for delicacy and long extenders, Velo rides the opposite way. The bolder styles get so wide that they feel more at home in packaging and advertising than headlines.

Alongside the main act, the twelve display styles, there are four text styles available, which — contrary to the classic display/text-relationship — have a lower x-height and narrower shapes. This makes them less obtrusive in running text and easier to read (a generous x-height doesn’t improve legibility infinitely). However, the boxy shapes and large counters still make the glyphs rather uniform and monotonous, especially in the Regular Italic. The bold weight of the text styles with its higher stroke contrast is the most readable one to me.

But Velo Serif is not charted for long novels anyway. The overexcited display styles prompt big splendid uses (the text styles may assist here and there): sparkling large words in the almost monoline* Thin Italic, cigarette packages in Regular, and please, please, please, a tear-off calendar in the Black style that uses the lovely curvy alternate figures.

In short:

Attack design doldrums with stylistic souplesse. Fashionable figures break away from the populist peloton. Comprehensive characters for culturally correct creations. Sturdy serifs nimbly negotiate any typographic terrain.

Not only have the House team and Ben Kiel, Mitja Miklavčič, and Christian Schwartz won “Best Super Elliptical Squarish Serif of 2014” in my book, they’ve also scooped “Most Eloquently Worded Typeface Descriptions and Promo Blurbs of the Decade”.

* I hesitate to call Velo Serif a slab serif. The Thin styles become almost monoline, yes, but the bracketed serifs are notably thinner than the stems. I admit that Ye Olde Classification System has no good drawer for these kinds of squarish serifs (and even that term is inadequate; I only use it because I don’t know a better one, yet).

Obsessed with topics such as the history of sans-serifs, font rendering, and the classification of typefaces, Indra Kupferschmid is a German typographer, teacher, and traveling activist for the good cause of good type.

G LY P H S

TIPS

Ty p o g r a p h y in Ten Minutes

The typographic quality of your This is a bold claim, document is determined largely by how the body text looks.

Stephen Coles on November 20, 2014

but I stand behind it: if you learn and follow these five typography rules, you will be a better typographer than 95% of professional writers and 70% of professional designers. (The rest of this book will raise you to the 99th percentile in both categories.)

All it takes is ten minutes five minutes to read these rules once, then five minutes to read them again.

Ready? Go. 1.

The typographic quality of your document is determined largely by how the body text looks. Why? Because there’s more body text than anything else. So start every project by making the body text look good, then worry about the rest.

In turn, the appearance of the body text is determined primarily by these four typographic choices:

2.

3.

4.

Point size is the size of the letters. In print, the most comfortable range for body text is 10–12 point. On the web, the range is 15–25 pixels. Not every font appears equally large at a given point size, so be prepared to adjust as necessary.

Line spacing is the vertical distance between lines. It should be 120–145% of the point size. In word processors, use the “Exact” line-spacing option to achieve this. The default single-line option is too tight; the 1½-line option is too loose. In CSS, use line-height.

Line length is the horizontal width of the text block. Line length should be an average of 45–90 characters per line (use your word-count function) or 2–3 lowercase alphabets, like so: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcd In a printed document, this usually means page margins larger than the traditional one inch. On a web page, it usually means not allowing the text to flow to the edges of the browser window

5.

And finally, font choice. The fastest, easiest, and most visible improvement you can make to your typography is to ignore the fonts that came free with your computer (known as system fonts) and buy a professional font (like my fonts Equity and Concourse, or others found in font recommendations). A professional font gives you the benefit of a professional designer’s skills without having to hire one.

If that’s impossible, you can still make good typography with system fonts.

But choose wisely. And never choose Times New Roman or Arial, as those fonts are favored only by the apathetic and sloppy. Not by typographers.

Not by you.

That’s it. As you put these five rules to work, you’ll notice your documents starting to look more like pro-fessionally published material.

If you’re ready for a little more, try the summary of key rules: Summary of key rules 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

The four most important typographic choices you make in any document are point size, line spac-ing, line length, and font (pas¬sim), because those choices de¬ter¬mine how thebody text looks. point size should be 10–12 points in printed documents, 15-25 pixels on the web. line spacing should be 120–145% of the point size.

The average line length should be 45–90 characters (including spaces).

The easiest and most visible improvement you can make to your typography is to use a professional font, like those found in font recommendations.

Avoid goofy fonts, monospaced fonts, and system fonts, especially times new roman and Arial.

Use curly quotation marks, not straight ones (see straight and curly quotes).

Put only one space between sentences.

Don’t use multiple word spaces or other white-space characters in a row.

Never use underlining, unless it’s a hyperlink.

Use centered text sparingly.

Use bold or italic as little as possible. all caps are fine for less than one line of text.

If you don’t have real small caps, don’t use them at all.

Use 5–12% extra letterspacing with all caps and small caps. kerning should always be turned on.

Use first-line indents that are one to four times the point size of the text, or use 4–10 points of space between paragraphs. But don’t use both.

If you use justified text, also turn on hyphenation.

Don’t confuse hyphens and dashes, and don’t use multiple hyphens as a dash.

Use ampersands sparingly, unless included in a proper name.

In a document longer than three pages, one exclamation point is plenty (see question marks and exclamation points).

Use proper trademark and copyright symbols not alphabetic approximations.

Put a non-breaking space after paragraph and section marks.

Make ellipses using the proper character, not periods andspaces.

Make sure apostrophes point downward.

Make sure foot and inch marks are straight, not curly.

08

G LY P H S 09

Abandon 5

WEB TYPE

Obselete Habits

Mike Butterick on April 16, 2015

I

f Leo Tolstoy were alive and working in San Francisco as a web developer, he might tell us that poorly designed websites are all alike; each well designed website is well designed in its own way. And, having watched the web evolve over its first 20 years, I would agree.

We’ve seen how typewriter habits have maintained a peculiar influence on the typography of today’s documents (e.g., research papers). These habits arose from the mechanical limitations of the typewriter. When the typewriter disappeared, so did the limitations. But the habits remained. Detached from their original justification, they’ve become pointless obstructions.

Likewise, the web-design habits of the mid-’90s continue to influence today’s web. These habits also arose from the technological limitations of a previous era. The limitations are obsolete. But the habits are still with us. Five have been especially tenacious: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Tiny point sizes for body text. This practice was made necessary by small displays, which otherwise couldn’t fit much text. But today’s displays are large.

Huge point sizes for headings. These arose from the elephantine default styling of HTML heading tags in old browsers. But today’s CSS allows finer control.

Reliance on a small handful of system fonts, like Arial, Georgia, and Verdana. This arose from a lack of technology for downloadable fonts. But today, we have webfonts.

Page edges crammed with inscrutable wads of navigational links. These emerged on the early web because content was so sparse. Links gave readers something else to do—click and move. (Hence the idiom became surfing the web, not reading the web.) But today, getting content onto the web is relatively easy, and navigational confusion tends to be a greater risk than boredom.

Layouts built with large blocks of color. These were made necessary by the bandwidth limitations of the early web. (They also filled space on those contentdeprived web pages.) But today, high-speed connections are common, even on mobile devices.

Having outlived their original rationale, these habits are no more justifiable for today’s web than typewriter habits like underlining are for today’s printed documents.

Yet not only are these habits still with us, they’ve hardened into entrenched web-design idioms. Don’t take my word for it. Go to any major website with this checklist. You’ll count at least four. These habits are everywhere.

But bad habits don’t become good habits through repetition. We know this to be true of spelling, grammar, and usage in American English. Sure, our language changes. But slowly. Not by popular vote. Certainly not by popular error.

So it is with typography.

Web design: neither here nor there And that’s the odd wrinkle we have to overcome when we talk about the web. Because to convince you to abandon the typewriter habits in printed documents, I’m able to cite a persuasive body of evidence: namely, the professional typographic practices of the last 500 years, as reflected in the books, newspapers, and magazines we read daily.

The web, however, has no equivalent tradition. We can’t fill this gap merely by holding the web to print traditions. That would be limiting and illogical. But it’s equally illogical to refuse to compare the web to any benchmark on the grounds that it’s sui generis (because it’s not the web is primarily a typographic medium), or that it’s new technology (because it’s not the web is 20 years old), or that it’s still evolving (because that’s true of every technology, including print).

Nevertheless, we’ve kept web design hovering in an odd state of neither here nor there. How? Like the poor worker of proverb by blaming the tools. If you ask a web designer “why aren’t we doing better with web typography?” you’re likely to hear either “we can’t, because such-and-such won’t work in the old browsers” or “we can’t, until such-and-such works in the new browsers.” The culture of web design en-courages us to rely on the past and the future as excuses for why we can’t take accountability for the present. These excuses keep today’s web design in a bubble, conveniently impervious to criticism.

For more about web-design inertia, see my talk “The Bomb in the Garden.”

But impervious to criticism also means impervious to progress. When expectations are held artificially low, there’s no incentive to do better. Thus next year’s websites end up looking much like last year’s. And the inertia sustains itself indefinitely. Again, don’t take my word for it the ongoing ubiquity of obsolete web-design habits is the proof.

Therefore, my typographic advice for websites is more a principle than a prescription.

We can disagree about what design excellence will eventually mean on the web.

In fact, we should dis-agree, because that’s what stimulates experimentation and discovery. Doing it wrong is a prerequisite to doing it right.

G LY P H S 10

But with the web, we can’t have it both ways. We can’t accept the benefits of web technology without raising the bar for ourselves. We can’t use the web for 20 years as a design medium yet exempt it from design criticism. We can’t blame the tools for our failure to overcome our own inertia. And we can’t expect the web to grow up while we cling to juvenile and obsolete habits.

We must set these habits aside. Especially the five listed above. Anyone who is still relying on those habits is either lazy or careless. You are neither.

Before: 1.

Small point size for body text (that doesn’t change with window size)

2.

Enormous headings, redundantly highlighted with gray.

3.

All fonts are system fonts Arial, Trebuchet, and Courier.

4.

Navigation links dominate the foreground; body text relegated to the background.

5.

Layout filled with colored rectangles the large green rectangle at left, and farther down the page, rectangles of pink, green, gray, yellow, and two shades of purple.

After: 1.

Bigger point size for body text (that changes to suit the window size)

2.

Head¬ings that are smaller while still being distinct.

3.

Better fonts (Equity, Concourse, and Triplicate).

4.

Navigation less prominent and integrated into the body text.

5.

Colored rectangles used sparingly to denote special sections.

6.

Liberal use of white space.

What we get from technology tends to be a matter of expectations, not patience. So we should expect more of the web. Because when we do, we necessarily expect more of ourselves. And when we expect more of ourselves, we expand possibilities for everyone.

Let’s not settle for less.

We

can’t

b l a m e the

tools

for

our

failure to overcome our

own

inertia

G LY P H S 11

G LY P H S 12

TYPE

CASTING

Steven Brower

M

y first job in book design was at New American Library, a publisher of massmarket books. I was thrilled to be hired. It was exactly where I wanted to be. I love the written word, and viewed this as my entrance into a world I wanted to participate in. Little did I suspect at the time that mass-market books, also known as “pocket” books (they measure approximately 4” ⋅ 7”, although I have yet to wear a pocket they fit comfortably into), were viewed in the design world as the tawdry stepchild of true literature and design, gaudy and unsophisticated. I came to understand that this was due to the fact that massmarket books, sold extensively in super- markets and convenience stores, had more in common with soap detergent and cereal boxes than with their much more dignified older brother, the hardcover first edition book. Indeed, the level of design of paperbacks was as slow to evolve as a box of Cheerios.

On the other hand, hardcover books, as if dressed in evening attire, wore elegant and sophisticated jackets. Next in line in terms of standing, in both the literary and design worlds, was the trade paper edition, a misnomer that does not refer to a specific

audience within an area of work, but, rather, to the second edition of the hardcover, or first edition, that sports a paperbound cover. Trade paperbacks usually utilize the same interior printing as the hardcover, and are roughly the same size (generally, 6” ⋅ 9”).

Mass-market books were not so lucky. The interior pages of the original edition were shrunk down, with no regard for the final type size or the eyes of the viewer. The interiors tended to be printed on cheap paper stock, prone to yellowing over time. The edges were often dyed to mask the different grades of paper used. The covers were usually quite loud, treated with a myriad of special effects (i.e., gold or silver foil, embossing and debossing, spot lamination, die cuts, metallic and Day-Glo pantone colors, thermography, and even holography), all designed to jump out at you and into your shopping cart as you walk down the aisle.

The tradition of mass-market covers had more in common with, and, perhaps, for the most part is the descendant of, pulp magazine covers of earlier decades, with their colorful titles and over-the-top illustrations, than that of its more stylish, larger, and more expensive cousins.

G LY P H S 13

What I Learned So, when I made my entry into the elite world of literature, I began in the “bullpen” of a mass-market house. I believed I would be afforded a good opportunity to learn something about type and image. Indeed, in my short tenure there, I employed more display typefaces in a year and a half than I will in the rest of my lifetime. And, I abused type more than I ever dreamed possible.

There, type was always condensed or stretched so the height would be greater in a small format. The problem was that the face itself became distorted, as if it was put on the inquisitionist rack, with the horizontals remaining “thick” and the verticals thinning out. Back then, when type was “spec’d” and sent out to a typesetter, there was a standing order at the type house to condense all type for our company 20 percent. Sometimes, we would cut the type and extend it by hand, which created less distortion but still odd-looking faces. Once, I was instructed by the art director to cut the serifs off a face, to suit his whim. It’s a good thing there is no criminal prosecution for type abuse.

The art director usually commissioned the art for these titles. Therefore, the job of the designers was to find the “appropriate” type solution that worked with these illustrations to create the package. It was here that I learned my earliest lessons in the clichés of typography. Mass- market paperbacks are divided into different genres, distinct categories that define their audience and subject matter.

Though they were unspoken rules, handed down from generation to generation, here is what I learned about type during my employ: Typefaces: • Square serif • Script and cursive • LED faces • Nueland • Latin • Fat, round serif faces • Sans serif • Hand scrawl • 1950s bouncy type

Genre: • Western • Romance • Science Fiction • African (in spite of the fact that the typeface is of German origin) • Mystery • Children’s • Nonfiction • Horror • Human/Teen titles

And so it went. Every month, we were given five to six titles we were responsible for, and every month, new variations on old themes hung up on the wall. For a brief period I was assigned all the romance titles, which, themselves, were divided into subgenres (historical, regency, contemporary, etc). I made the conscious decision to create the very best romance covers around. Sure, I would use script and cursive type, but I would use better script and cursive type, so distinctive, elegant, and beautiful that I, or anyone else, would recognize the difference immediately. (When, six months after I left the job, I went to view my achievements at the local K-Mart, I could not pick out any of my designs from all the rest on the bookracks.)

Soon after, I graduated to art director of a small publishing house. The problem was, I 11still knew

G LY P H S 14

little of and had little confidence in, typography. However, by this time, I knew I knew little about typography. My solution, therefore, was to create images that contained the type as an integral part of the image, in a play on vernacular design, thereby avoiding the issue entirely. Thus began a series of collaborations with talented illustrators and photographers, in which the typography of the jacket was incorporated as part of the illustration. (find an image to support this text) Mystery books especially lent themselves well to this endeavor. A nice thing about this approach is that it has a certain informality and familiarity with the audience. It also made my job easier, because I did not have to paste up much type for the cover (as one had to do back in the days of t-squares and wax), since it was, for the most part, self-contained within the illustration. This may seem like laziness on my part, but hey, I was busy.

Eventually, my eye began to develop, and my awareness and appreciation of good typography increased. I soon learned the pitfalls that most novice designers fall into, like utilizing a quirky novelty face does not equal creativity and usually calls attention to the wrong aspects of the solution. The importance of good letterspacing became paramount. Finding the right combination of a serif and sans serif face to evoke the mood of the material within was now my primary concern.

The beauty of a classically rendered letterform now moved me, to quote Eric Gill, as much “as any sculpture or painted picture.” I developed an appreciation for the rules of typography.

As I’ve said, it is a common mistake among young designers to think a quirky novelty face equals creativity. Of course, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. If anything, for the viewer, it has the opposite of the intended effect. Rather than being the total sum of individual expression, it simply calls attention to itself, detracting from, rather than adding to, the content of the piece. It is no substitute for a well-reasoned conceptual solu- tion to the design problem at hand.

As a general rule, no more than two faces should be utilized in any given design, usually the combination of a serif face and a sans serif face. There are thousands to choose from, but I find I have reduced the list to five or six in each category that I have used as body text throughout my career:

Serif

Bodoni Caslon

Garamond Sans Serif

Franklin Gothic

Futura

Gill Sans

G LY P H S 15

You should never condense or extend type. As I stated, this leads to unwanted distortions. Much care and consideration went into the design of these faces, and they should be treated with respect. There are thousands of condensed faces to choose from without resorting to the horizontal and vertical scale functions.

Do not use text type as display. Even though the computer will enlarge the top beyond the type designer’s intention, this may result in distortions.

Do not use display type as text. Often, display type that looks great large can be difficult to read when small.

Do not stack type. The result is odd-looking spacing that looks as if it is about to tumble on top of itself.

The thinness of the letter I is no match for the heft of an O sitting on top of it. As always, there are ways to achieve stacking successfully, but this requires care. Also, as I noted, much care should be given to letterspacing the characters of each word. This is not as simple as it seems. The computer settings for type are rife with inconsistencies that need to be corrected optically. Certain combinations of letterforms are more difficult to adjust than others.

It is paramount that even optical (as opposed to actual) spacing is achieved, regardless of the openness or closeness of the kerning. It helps if you view the setting upside down, or backwards on a light box or sun-filled window, or squint at the copy to achieve satisfactory spacing.

Be careful with drop shadows. I would caution you in the judicious use of drop shadows. Shadows these days can be rendered easily in programs such as Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator, and convincingly, too. The problem is, it is so easily done that it is overdone. Thus, the wholesale usage of soft drop shadows has become the typographic equivalent of clip art. Viewers know they have seen it before. Rather than being evocative, it mainly evokes the program it was created in. The handeddown wisdom is: If you need a drop shadow to make it read, the piece isn’t working. These solid drop shadows always look artificial, since, in reality, there is no such thing as a solid drop shadow. There should be a better solution to readability. Perhaps the background or the color of the type can be adjusted. Perhaps the type should be paneled or outlined. There are an infinite number of possible variations.

If you must use a solid drop shadow, it should never be a color. Have you ever seen a shadow in life that is blue, yellow, or green? It should certainly never be white. Why would a shadow be 100 percent lighter than what is, in theory, casting the shadow?

White shadows create a hole in the background, and draw the eye to the shadow, and not where you want it to go: the text.

Justified text looks more formal than flush left, rag right. Most books are set justified, while magazines are often flush left, rag right. Centered copy will appear more relaxed than asymmetrical copy. Large blocks of centered type can create odd-looking shapes that detract from the copy contained within.

Column width. It is also common today to see very wide columns of text, with the copy set at a small point size. The problem is that a very wide column is hard to read because it forces the eye to move back and forth, tiring the reader. On the other hand, a very narrow measure also is objectionable, because the phrases and words are too cut up, with the eye jumping from line to line. We, as readers, do not read letter by letter, or even word by word, but, rather, phrase by phrase. A consensus favors an average of ten to twelve words per line.1 Don’t forget to adjust leading. Lastly, too much leading between lines also makes the reader work too hard jumping from line to line, while too little leading makes it hard for the reader to discern where one line ends and another begins.

The audience should always be paramount in the designer’s approach, and it is the audience—not the whim of the designer, or even the client—that defines the level of difficulty and ease with which a piece is read. As Eric Gill said in 1931, “A book is primarily a thing to be read.”2 Type size. A final consideration is the size of the type. As a rule of thumb, mass-market books tend to be 8 point for reasons of space. A clothbound book, magazine, or newspaper usually falls into the 9.5 point to 12 point range. Oversized art books employ larger sizes—generally, 14 point to 18 point or more.

Use the right type. Choosing the right typeface for your design can be time-consuming. There are thousands to choose from. Questions abound. Is the face legible at the setting I want? Does it evoke

G LY P H S 16

what I want it to evoke? Is it appropriate to the subject matter? There are no easy answers. When a student of mine used Clarendon in a self-promotion piece, I questioned why he chose a face that has 1950s connotations, mainly in connection with Reid Miles’ Blue Note album covers. He answered, “Because I thought it was cool.” I lectured him profusely on selecting type simply based on its “coolness.” Later, I relayed the incident to Seymour Chwast, of the legendary Pushpin Group (formerly Pushpin Studios). He observed that Clarendon is actually a Victorian face, which he and his peers revived as young designers in the 1950s. When I asked him why they chose to bring this arcane face back to life, he replied, “Because we thought it was cool.”

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules.

An infinite number of faces can be used within one design, particularly when you employ a broadsidestyle type solution, a style that developed with the woodtype settings of the nineteenth century.

Another style, utilizing a myriad of faces, is that influenced by the Futurist and Dada movements of the early twentieth century. As Robert N. Jones stated in an article in the May 1960 issue of Print magazine: “It is my belief that there has never been a type- face that is so badly designed that it could not be handsomely and effectively used in the hands of the right . . . designer.”3 Of course, this was before the novelty type explosion that took place later that decade, and, again, after the advent of the Macintosh computer. Still, Jeffery Keedy, a contemporary type designer whose work appears regularly in Emigre, con- curs: “Good designers can make use of almost anything. The typeface is the point of departure, not the destination.” Note the caveat “almost.” Still, bad use of good type is much less desirable than good use of bad type. When I first began in publishing, a coworker decided to let me in on the “secrets” of picking the appropriate face. “If you get a book on Lincoln to design,” he advised, “look up an appropriate typeface in the index of the type specimen book.” He proceeded to do so. “Ah, here we go—‘Log Cabin!’” While, on the extremely rare occasion, I have found this to be a useful method, it’s a good general rule of what not to do.

APRIL 2015