special typographic installation
WORLDS BIGGEST TYPE MAGAZINE
Type casting
Steven Brower Back to basics: Stopping sloppy typography
John D. Berry Kern your Enthusiasm: The Friendliness of Chicago
Alissa Walker December 2014
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TYPEWORLD MAGAZINE
TypeWorld
1
What Is typography all about? Alan Haley 4-5
Kern Your Enthusiasm: The Friendliness of Chicago Alissa Walker 2
6-7
About Typeface Alice Rawsthorn
Hideous Fonts May Boost
10-11
Reading Comprehension Laura Miller 8-9
Whats The Difference Between A Font And A Typeface?
Type Casting
John Brownlee
Steven Brower
12-13
14-17
Back To Basics: Stopping Sloppy Typography John D. Berry 18-21
Grooming The Font Wayne Newton 21-24
Fluid Mechanics: Typographic Design Now Ellen Lupton
Type Installation
25-27
Matt Dolby 28-30 TypeWorld
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What is Typography All About? Alan Haley Printmag.com
I
f you think about it, the craft of typography is little more than the combination of three very simple things: attention to detail, common sense and visual acuity. Sure, there are typographic rules and guidelines, but they are, for the most part, just based on what is sensible and pleasing to the eye. Learning to identify the parts of a character may increase a designer’s business vocabulary, and knowing the lineage of Garamond designs may aid in the choosing of a good modern revival of the face, but the real key to typographic success is basically just “sweating the details” and a simple coordination of mind and eye. Take, for instance, the typographic rule of avoiding all cap copy. The tenet about not setting all capitals is really based on little more than simple logic. Capital letters take up more space than lowercase letters – up to 30% more space. Headlines, subheads and pull-quotes are about setting brief blocks of copy in a relatively small space. It’s only common sense to use the most space-efficient letters: lowercase. Sure,
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there’s all that stuff about how “word shapes” (made from ascending, descending and x-height lowercase letters) might help us read faster and that all capitals only create rectangles as visual identifiers, but just the fact that the little letters can pack more information into a given piece of design real estate than capitals, ought to be enough reason to rely on them. Correcting typographic widows, orphans is also just about making things look right; as is the idea of not cluttering the right edge of a column with a bunch of hyphens. Keeping word-spacing tight and even is simply to create an inviting block of copy that doesn’t have visually disrupting white-space gaps that also slow down the reading process. Common sense and what looks good even applies to the basic issue of choosing the correct typeface. Some typefaces are better in one size than another. One may be bad for lengthy text in a book or brochure but good for short blocks of promotional copy. The best typeface for a particular occasion can
depend upon its size, weight or its position on the page. The best typefaces, however, are always those that are appropriate for the time, the reader and the situation. All one has to do to make the correct choice is look at the design and think about how it will be used. If it looks right – it probably is. Look at the headline after it has been set. Does it space well? Is it easy to read? Does it lead naturally into the text copy that follows? If it is more than two lines of copy, does the line spacing look even? Is the message enhanced by the typeface? Is the text copy inviting? Is it an even texture? If columns are set rag-right, do all the lines end in about the same place? If they are set justified, is the copy-block free from ribbons of white running through it? Are the lines short enough and is there enough line spacing so that the reader won’t read the same line twice? All are simple questions to answer – if the designer looks at the type, uses a little common sense and sweats the details. OK, an appreciation and understanding of the basis of good typography is a strong foundation to build on. But
all the typographic education in the world is of little value, if designers do not use a little common sense – and look at the work they produce. The job is not done when the headline is dropped into the layout or the text copy poured into a column. It is only complete when the designer has looked at the finished product – really looked at it – and made sure that the type looks correct, is handled consistently and makes visual sense. Points, picas, line spacing, and kerning are only the mechanics. Software applications are just tools. It takes a concentrated effort to create typography. It takes common sense and a careful eye to create communication that is inviting, makes an impact, focuses attention, organizes information and creates a mood – ultimately giving life and personality to the printed word. It also takes the time and attention necessary to ensure that the job is done right – really right. That is what typography is all about.
gemmahoskins.blogspot.com TypeWorld
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Kern Your Enthusiasm: The Friendliness of Chicago By: Alissa Walker CHICAGO | SUSAN KARE | 1983
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This is the second in a series of posts analyzing and celebrating typefaces. These posts
t was square, squat, and inherently cute. It was friendly. It was easy to use.
I’m talking about the beige box with the blue grinning face that came to live with us in 1985. But I’m also talking about the font that came with it. It was the typeface Chicago that spelled out “Welcome to Macintosh,” ushering us into a new age of personal computing. But it was also a new age for digital type. Here was a typeface created explicitly for the Macintosh, part of designer Susan Kare’s strategy to customize everything from the characters to the icons—that happy computer, the wristwatch, an actual trashcan—to make it feel more human and less machine.
Most of us couldn’t quite put
our finger on what made these letters so different. But the secret was in the spaces between the letters. Chicago was one of
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were originally published by HiLobrow. the first proportional fonts, which meant that instead of each character straining to fill up pixels in a specified rectangle, the letters were allowed to take up as much or little space as they needed. It was more like a book than a screen. For the thousands of families who brought this radical new technology into our homes, Chicago helped us feel like the Mac was already speaking our language.
Maybe it was because I was so used
to it greeting me, guiding me through every decision—chirping up in a dialogue box confirming that I did, indeed, want to shut down. But when I began writing on the computer, at age 8, Chicago was the typeface I used. I was mostly writing poems about trees during this period, and I’d bring the
“Due to its excellent readability at low resolution, Chicago was the font used on the black-and-white screen of the very first iPod.” welcome early adopters. Those of us who’d learned to type on a Mac were greeted by a familiar font on our first portable music players, cheerily guiding us as we spun the clickwheels in wonderment. text into MacPaint where I could illustrate them using Kare’s paintbrush icon, sweeping the page with basket-weave patterns and single-pixel polka dots. Sometimes I’d click over and scroll through the available typefaces—New York, Geneva, Monaco— and reject each one not only on looks, but on principle. As a kid growing up in suburban St. Louis, Chicago was the only place on the list I had been.
Eventually,
Apple
retired
Chicago,
commissioning a new typeface, Charcoal, as a kind
For its newest operating system, released this
year, Apple chose Helvetica Neue. It is a choice meant to graduate us into yet another new world, of Retina displays in glassy tablets, where style wins out over substance. This world is also generic and cold. I type thousands of words into my screen every day, rarely pausing to specifically mourn the loss of Chicago. But I often wonder what happened to that smiling computer who used to greet me from the other side of the screen.
of homage to Chicago’s functionality. But I would be reunited with Chicago one last time: Due to its excellent readability at low resolution, Chicago was the font used on the black-and-white screen of the very first iPod. Once again, it was the typeface to 7
t s oo b y a n o m i s s n t e n h o e f r p s u m o o e c d g Hi n i By Laura Miller d a re Nytimes.com Comic Sans, Papyrus and other unattractive options could win the last laugh in the typeface wars
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n the subject of fonts (or, typefaces, to use the
Not so. A recent study out of Princeton, and
more technically accurate term), feelings often
brought to wider attention by Jonah Lehrer at Wired.com,
run high. People have their favorites, for reasons both
suggests that ugly, irregular fonts can boost the amount
practical and sentimental. The story of how Helvetica
of information readers retain from a text, while easy-to-
became the preeminent typeface of our times has inspired
read type is more likely to just sort of slide out of their
a documentary film, while loathing of Comic Sans has
minds. The study, titled “Fortune Favors the Bold (and
prompted what can only
the Italicized): Effects of
be called a typographical
Disfluency on Educational
jihad. A surprising number
Outcomes,�
of older authors name
people remembered more
Courier as the font they
from
prefer to write in because it
PowerPoint presentations
resembles the characters of
when they were composed
a typewriter and therefore
in a hot mess of hated fonts
found
worksheets
that
and
kindly suggests that the current draft is still available for
like Monotype Corsiva, Haettenshweiler and the dreaded
improvement. But surely everyone can agree that a good
Comic Sans Italic.
typeface is easy to read, right?
The hypothesis is that the added difficulty in
reading these texts forces more cognitive engagement, He could make the digital switch and never have to read which leads to greater comprehension. While we naturally Garamond again! think that we learn better from texts that are pleasant and
It’s safe to say that once computers made a variety of
easy to read, the opposite may be the case. For Lehrer, who fonts available to the average user, many, many more people admits to loving his Kindle but also to worrying that it were encouraged to take an interest in — and positions on makes “the act of reading a little bit too easy,” this is an — typography. The result seems to have encouraged more ominous sign.
hatred that adoration. Does anyone love, say, Palatino as
For type buffs it’s even worse. E-readers have much as they despise Comic Sans? Does anyone go on as
already obliterated the careful choices designers make long in praise of Georgia as they will rant against Papyrus or when deciding to set a novel in Minion or a history book in Bradley Hand? Caslon Old Face. As with Henry Ford’s Model T (available
The utilitarian nature of fonts means that the good
in any color you want, as long as it’s black), Kindle books are ones get used a lot and as a result seem commonplace rather invariably set in PMN Caecilia. The Nook and iBook apps than wondrous. How clever the Edwardian bookbinder on my iPad offer a choice of five and six fonts, respectively, Thomas Cobden-Sanderson was when, in order to prevent but on the off-chance that the designer of the print edition his beloved Doves Type (designed by Emery Walker and used chooses one of these, the text will still be “flowed” onto its to set the exquisite Doves Press Bible in 1902) from being digital pages in an ad hoc fashion and sized according to squandered on lesser books after his death, he threw all of the my personal preferences.
hand-cut type off the Hammersmith Bridge into the Thames
Even for a typography ignoramus such as myself River. Now the fabled Doves Type seems not just beautiful,
(a friend recently asked about the typeface my own book but also precious because of its rarity. was set in and I had to admit I’ve forgotten what it’s called),
Well, if the Princeton researchers are correct, perhaps
this seems a sad state of affairs. Only one of the dozen fonts all beautiful type will soon become rare, as readers buckle up available in the three major e-book formats makes the for bumpy rides through texts set in Arial or Brush Script list of the top 10 typefaces used by award-winning book (or both!), to optimize them for maximum information designers (that would be New Baskerville), so how good retention. In time, hideous fonts could become so familiar can they be? On the other hand, the critic and author Lev that we start to find them easy to read, and lines set in elegant Grossman might rejoice to learn this, since prize-winning New Century Schoolbook will come to seem jarring. Let’s designers seem to be partial to Garamond, a font he has hope that, in the meantime, all the typographers don’t throw reviled at length for its “empty, self-indulgent quirkiness.” themselves off the Hammersmith Bridge. TypeWorld
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About Typeface How much attention are you paying to the typeface that
By Alice Rawsthorn
these words are printed in? Probably not a lot. Typefaces
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are everywhere, yet the only time most of us notice them is
computer fonts. Typography's crown princes are a few New
when they don't work and we can't read them.
Yorkers: Christian Schwartz, who co-designed the Guardian
Not for much longer. Typefaces are becoming as
newspaper's elegant new face; and Frere-Jones, the creator of
fashionable in their own way as ChloĂŠ's white embroidered
the Interstate and Gotham fonts, and his partner, Jonathan
tunics. That's always been the case for the handful of people
Hoefler, who together have designed type for Martha Stewart
who are passionately interested in them, type designers
Living and The Wall Street Journal.
who blog away about how embarrassingly ubiquitous the
When Carter started out in the 1950's, he was one of the last
Mrs Eaves font has become, or whether Tobias Frere-Jones's
to carve letter shapes out of metal to create blocks of type.
Gotham will ever match his Interstate.
Technology changed all of that. Today, anyone armed with
To the rest of us, the world of typography has been a distant
the right software package can design a typeface, albeit not
and inscrutable place. As with all elite industries, it has its
very well. And whether or not we know it, everyone who uses
own leaders and language. The king of contemporary type
a computer has become a type consumer, simply by dint of
design is Matthew Carter, a Briton based in Cambridge,
choosing whether to print letters or post an e-mail message in
Mass., whose Verdana is one of the world's most popular
Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, Courier or any of the other typefaces
that are dished out for free with software. We novices have
century Baskerville typeface. Named after the woman who
quickly become hip to the style code. Helvetica is fine in print
was John Baskerville's housekeeper and later became his wife,
but not on-screen. Vice versa for Verdana. And only an uncool
Mrs Eaves is gloriously ornate, with the fanciful swirls and
idiot would ever use Arial.
serifs that Bauhaus-influenced designers had long considered
What we are just beginning to pick up on is that, thanks to the
verboten. Originally designed for the typography magazine
computer, trends in typography are changing as quickly as in
Emigre, it appeared on everything from junk mail to Web sites
fashion. It started in the 1990's, when softer, curvier typefaces
and unleashed the fashion for elaborate curlicue typefaces like
— like Verdana and Scala (created by the Dutch designer
those in early 2000 issues of Paris Vogue and Rolling Stone.
Martin Majoor and used in Wallpaper's earliest incarnation) —
Since then, type, like fashion, has sobered up. Just as Lanvin
began to supplant the classic sans-serifs Helvetica and Futura.
and Rochas are making contemporary clothes seem as
(Translation: sans-serif type has none of those squiggly bits at
precious and lovingly made as vintage pieces by combining
the ends of the letters.) Verdana and Scala are the typographic
modern materials and finishes with old techniques, so too
equivalent of the soft modernism of Prada's neat little 1990's
are type designers using their computers to modernize
coatdresses and Christian Liaigre's beige-on-beige interiors at
classic typefaces like Bodoni and Bembo. Take the Guardian's
the Mercer Hotel.
Egyptian typeface, designed by Schwartz with Paul Barnes, or
By the end of the 90's, just as fashionistas were growing bored of
Schwartz's new Farnham typeface in the art magazine Frieze.
global branding and started rummaging around vintage stores
Simpler and more sedate than Mrs Eaves, these faces blend
for quirky alternatives, type designers turned to their history
the crispness of digitally created type with a nod to history
books, too. The designer Zuzana Licko, based in Berkeley,
in their neat serifs. Type purists might wince at the analogy,
Calif., led the way with Mrs Eaves, her reinvention of the 18th-
but Guardian Egyptian and Farnham are the typographic equivalents of the sleek Lanvin shirtdress that I've set my heart on wearing this summer. So, what's next in type? The design historian Emily King suspects it will be the trend to digitize obscure historic faces, like Carter's beautiful title letter for this magazine. Carter redesigned the T from the current New York Times nameplate, which was inspired by early-16th-century German black-letter type. But you may have already guessed that, if you've been paying attention. TypeWorld
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What's The Difference Between A Font And A Typeface? By John Brownlee
O
AND DOES THE DISTINCTION EVEN MATTER ANYMORE? WE ASK DESIGN EXPERTS GARY HUSTWIT, EDDIE OPARA, AND TOBIAS FREREJONES TO WEIGH IN.
ne of the major traps, when talking about type,
different blocks for every different size (10 point, 12
is mixing up fonts with typefaces or treating
point, 14 point, and so on) and weight (bold, light,
them as synonymous. Many a typographic expert
medium).
has haughtily corrected a beginner for mistakenly
using the word font when he or she should have
font. In the example above, Garamond would be the
said typeface. To those of us who think about fonts
typeface: It described all of the thousands of metal
only when choosing one in Microsoft Word, the
blocks a printer might have on hand and which had
distinction between the terms can seem confusing,
been designed with the same basic design principles.
esoteric, and even arcane.
But a font was something else entirely. A font
In brief: A font is what you use, a typeface is what
described a subset of blocks in that very typeface—
you see.
but each font embodied a particular size and weight.
FONT VS. TYPEFACE
This is where we get the terms typeface and
For example, bolded Garamond in 12 point was
Back in the good old days of analog printing,
considered a different font than normal Garamond in
every page was laboriously set out in frames with
8 point, and italicized Times New Roman at 24 point
metal letters. That was rolled in ink, and then it was
would be considered a different font than italicized
pressed down onto a clean piece of paper. That was
Times New Roman at 28 point.
a page layout. Printers needed thousands of physical
metal blocks, each with the character it was meant
the processes they encapsulated, got muddied with
to represent set out in relief (the type face). If you
the rise of desktop publishing. Fonts were no longer
wanted to print Garamond, for example, you needed
thousands of tiny blocks of movable type; they became
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The distinction between the two terms, and
digital computer files that scaled themselves up or
down dynamically to whatever size or weight users
"Most people other than type designers just say
wanted. So the distinction between process and
'font,'" Hustwit says. "Among graphic designers,
end result disappeared in a puff of binary magic for
though, I'd say it's a generational thing. A lot of
most people.
the older designers I've met, like Massimo Vignelli,
Open up Microsoft Word
and you're asked to choose a font, not a typeface. From the perspective of Microsoft's designers, this makes perfect sense. At any given time, after
Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica, agrees.
“In brief: A font is what you use, a typeface is what you see.”
all, you're working in a specific size
always say 'typeface.'"
And
Pentagram's
Eddie
Opara puts it even more succinctly: "I think it's the latter, a distinction for experts," he says. "I know it certainly pisses experts off." IN A NUTSHELL
and weight of a typeface. This is the proper term. But from the perspective
Even type experts agree: Typeface
of millions of computer users who have never given
and font can be used interchangeably at this point.
a thought to type—outside of deciding what they
But if you come across an annoying pedant who
want to use for their email signature or homemade
cares deeply about maintaining the distinction
birthday card—the word font has come to represent
for the masses, just remember this: The difference
the look, not the mechanism.
between a font and a typeface is the same as that
DOES IT EVEN MATTER ANYMORE?
Even among type professionals, there's a
between songs and an album. The former makes up the latter. Remember that and you're good to go.
growing acceptance that for most people, the terms font and typeface can be used interchangeably. Only experts really need to worry about it.
"For most people in most situations, those
terms can swap around without any trouble," Tobias Frere-Jones tells Co.Design. "The distinction would matter in type design, obviously, but also contexts which involve engineering, like app development or web design." Image: Metal type via Flickr user Malene Hald
TypeWorld
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Type Casting Steven Brower My first job in book design was at New American Library, A publisher of mass- market 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 measured approximately 4”x 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 then 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,
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that sports a paperbound cover. Trade paperbacks usually utilize the same interior printing as the hardcover, and are roughly the same size (generally, 6”x9”). 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 myriad of special effects (i.e., gold or silver foil, embossing and de-bossing, spot lamination, die cut, 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. What I Learned So, when I made my entry into the elite world of literature, I began in the “bullpen” of 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 then I ever dreamed possible. There, type was always condensed or stretched so the height would be greater in a small format. The problem was 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 and extend it by hand, which created less distortion but still oddlooking faces. Once, I was instructed by the art director to cut the serifs off a face, to suit his whim. It’s a good ting 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 | Genre Square serif Western Script and cursive Romance LED faces Science Fiction Nueland African (in spite of the Fact that the Typeface is of German origin) Latin Mystery Fat, round serif faces Children’s San serif Nonfiction Hand scrawl Horror 1950s bouncy type Humor/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 still knew little of and had little confidence in, typography. However, by this time, I knew little about typography. My solution, therefore, was to create images that contained 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. 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, selfcontained 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 letter spacing became paramount. Finding the right combination of a serif and sanserif face to evoke the mood of the material within TypeWorld
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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. The Rules 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 solution 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 Cheltenham Garamond San Serif Franklin Gothic Futura Gill Sans New Gothic Trade Gothic 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 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
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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 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 car. Also, as I noted, much care should be given to letterspaceing 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. 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 to clip art. Viewers know they have seen it before. Rather than being evocative, it mainly evokes the program it was created in. Hard drop shadows, ones that are 100 percent of a color, are easily achieved in Quark and placed behind the main text. This method is generally employed when the main text is not reading against the background, because of a neutral tone or an image that varies in tone from dark to light. The handed-down 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 sold 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, causing 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 texts look 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. Another thing is to consider the point size and width of body copy. The tendency in recent times is to make type smaller and smaller, regardless of the intended audience. However, the whole purpose of text is that it be read. A magazine covering contemporary music is different from the magazine for The American Association of Retired Persons. 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-byphrase. A consensus favors and average of ten to twelve words per line. 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 on line ends and another begins. The audience should always be paramount in the designers 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 apiece is read. As
Eric Gill said in 1931, “A book is primarily a thing to be read.” 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. 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 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 selfpromotion piece, I questioned why he chose a face that has 1950’s 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 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.” Breaking the rules 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 broadside-style type solution, a style that has developed with the wood type 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 typeface that is so badly designed that it could not be handsomely and effectively used in the hands of the right…designer.” 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 Émigré, concurs: “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 good general rule of what not to do .•
“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.”
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Back to Basics: Stopping Sloppy Typography John D. Berry
T
here’s a billboard along the freeway in San Francisco
disconcertingly, a single “typewriter quote,” a straight up-
that’s entirely typographic, and very simple. Against
and-down line with a rounded top and a teardrop tail at
a bright blue background, white letters spell out a single
the bottom.
short line, set in quotation marks: “Are you lookin’ at me?”
The style of the letters is traditional, with serifs; it looks
letters, whether they know the terms of typesetting or
like a line of dialogue, which is exactly what it’s supposed
not, this straight apostrophe is like a fart in a symphony—
to look like. Since this is a billboard, and the text is the
boorish, crude, out of place, and distracting. The normal
entire message of the billboard, it’s a witty comment on
quotation marks at the beginning and end of the sentence
the fact that you are looking at “me”—that is, the message
just serve to make the loud “blat!” of the apostrophe stand
on the billboard—as you drive past.
out. If that had been the purpose of the billboard, it would
But, as my partner and I drove past and spotted this
have been very effective. But unless the billboards along
billboard for the first time, we both simultaneously voiced
Highway 101 have become the scene of an exercise in
the same response: “No, I’m looking at your apostrophe!”
typographic irony, it’s just a big ol’ mistake. Really big, and
right out there in plain sight.
The quotation marks around the sentence are
To anyone with any sensitivity to the shapes of
real quotation marks, which blend in with the style of the
The Devil Is in the Details
lettering—“typographers’ quotes,” as they’re sometimes
This may be a particularly large-scale example, but it’s not
called—but the apostrophe at the end of “lookin’” is, 18
unusual. Too much of the signage and printed matter that
we read—and that we, if we’re designers or typographers,
lot of examples recently of text where the double quotation
create—is riddled with mistakes like this. It seems that
marks are correct but the apostrophes are straight.) But
an amazing number of people responsible for creating
those same automatic typesetting routines have created
graphic matter are incapable of noticing when they get
another almost universal mistake: where an apostrophe
the type wrong.
at the beginning of a word appears backwards, as a single
This should not be so. These fine points ought to
open quotation mark. You see this in abbreviated dates
be covered in every basic class in typography, and basic
(’99, ’01) and in colloquial spellings, like ‘em for them.
typography ought to be part of the education of every
The program can turn straight quotes into typographers’
graphic designer. But clearly, this isn’t the case—or else
quotes automatically, making any quotation mark at the
a lot of designers skipped that part of the class, or have
end of a word into a closed quote, but it has no way of
simply forgotten what they have once learned about type.
telling that the apostrophe at the beginning of ‘em isn’t
Or, they naively believe the software they use will do the
supposed to be a single open quote, so it changes it into
job for them.
one.
Maybe
it’s
time
for
a
nationwide—no,
The only way to catch this is to make the
worldwide—program of remedial courses in using type. Automated Errors As my own small gesture toward improvement, I’ll point out a couple of the more obvious problems—in the hope that maybe, maybe, they’ll become slightly less commonplace,
correction by hand—every time.
“Don’t trust the defaults of any program you use. Look at good typesetting and figure out how it was done, then do it yourself. Don’t be sloppy. Aim for the best.”
at least for awhile.
Typewriter quotes and straight apostrophes
Anemic Type The other rude noise that has become common in the symphony hall is fake small caps. Small caps are a wonderful thing, very useful and sometimes elegant; fake small caps are a distraction and an abomination.
Fake caps are what you get when you use
are actually on the wane, thanks to word-processing
a program’s “small caps” command. The software
programs and page-layout programs that offer the option
just shrinks the full-size capital letters down by a
of automatically changing them to typographers’ quotes
predetermined percentage—which gives you a bunch
on the fly. (I’m not sure what has made the phenomenon
of small, spindle-looking caps all huddled together in
I spotted on that billboard so common, but I’ve noticed a
the middle of the text. If the design calls for caps and TypeWorld
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small caps—that is, small caps for the word but a full
them slightly loose, the same way you would (or at least
cap for the first letter—it’s even worse, since the full-size
should) with a word in all caps; it makes the word much
caps draw attention to themselves because they look
more readable.
so much heavier than the smaller caps next to them. (If
Pay Attention, Now
you’re using caps and small caps to spell out an acronym,
There are plenty of other bits of remedial typesetting that
this might make sense; in that case, you might want the
we ought to study, but those will do for now. The obvious
initial caps to stand out. Otherwise, it’s silly. (And—here
corollary to all this is, to produce well-typeset words,
comes that word again—distracting.)
whether in a single phrase on a billboard or several pages
If it weren’t for a single exception, I’d advise
of text, you have to pay attention. Proofread. Proofread
everyone to just forget about the “small caps”
again. Don’t trust the defaults of any program you use.
command—forget it ever existed, and never, ever, touch
Look at good typesetting and figure out how it was done,
it again. (The exception is Adobe InDesign, which is
then do it yourself. Don’t be sloppy. Aim for the best.
smart enough to find the real small caps in an OpenType
font that includes them, and use them when the “small
to set type by. •
caps” command is invoked. Unfortunately, InDesign isn’t smart enough, or independent enough, to say, “No, thanks,” when you invoke “small caps” in a font that doesn’t actually have any. It just goes ahead and makes those familiar old fake small caps.) You don’t really need small caps at all, inmost typesetting situations; small caps are a typographic refinement, not a crutch. If you’re going to use them, use real small caps: properly designed letters with the form of caps, but usually a little wider, only as tall as the x-height or a litter taller, and with stroke weights that math the weight of the lowercase and the full caps of the same typeface. Make sure you’re using a typeface that has true small caps, if you want small caps. Letterspace them a little, and set
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Words to live by, I suppose. And, certainly, words
By Wayne Newton
TypeWorld
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W
riting begins with the making of meaningful marks. That is to say, leaving the traces of meaningful gestures. Typography begins with arranging meaningful marks that are already made. In that respect, the practice of typography is like playing the piano – an instrument quite different from the human voice. On the piano, the notes are already fixed, although their order, duration and amplitude are not. The notes are fixed but they can be endlessly rearranged, into meaningful music or meaningless noise. Pianos, however, need to be tuned. The same is true of fonts. To put this in more literary terms, fonts need to be edited just as carefully as texts do – and may need to be re-edited, like texts, when their circumstances change. The editing of fonts, like the editing of texts, begins before their birth and never ends. You may prefer to entrust the editing of your fonts, like the tuning of your piano, to a professional. If you are the editor of a magazine or the manager of a publishing house, that is probably the best way to proceed. But devoted typographers, like lutenists and guitarists, often feel that they themselves must tune the instruments they play. 10.1 Legal Considerations 10.1.1 Check the license before tuning a digital font. Digital fonts are usually licensed to the user, not sold outright, and the license terms may vary. Some manufacturers claim to believe that improving a font produced by them is an infringement of their rights. No one believes that tuning a piano or pumping up the tires of a car infringes on the rights of the manufacturer – and this is true no matter whether the car or the piano has been rented, leased or purchased. Printing type was treated the same way from Bi Sheng’s time until the 1980s. Generally speaking, metal type and phototype are treated that way still. In the digital realm, where the font is wholly intangible, those older notions of ownership are under pressure to change. The Linotype Library’s standard font license says that “You may modify the Font’ Software to satisfy your design requirements.” FontShop’s standard license has a similar provision: “You do have the right to modify and alter Font Software for your customary personal and business use, but not for resale or further distribution.” Adobe’s and Agfa Monotype’s licenses contain no such provision. Monotype’s says instead that “You my not alter Font Software for the purpose of adding any functionality.... You agree not to adapt, modify, alter, translate, convert, or otherwise change the Font Software….” If your license forbids improving the font itself, the only legal way to tune it is through a software override. For example, you can use an external kerning editor to override the kerning table built into the font. This is the least elegant way to do it, but a multitude of errors in fitting and kerning can be masked, if need be, by this means. 10.2 Ethical and Aesthetic Considerations 10.2.1 If it ain’t broke…. Any part of the font can be tuned – lettershapes, character set, character encoding, fitting and sidebearings, kerning table, hinting, and, in an OpenType font, the rules governing character sub-situation. What doesn’t need tuning or fixing shouldn’t be touched. If you want to revise the font just for the sake of revising it, you might do better to design your own instead. And if you hack up someone else’s font for practice, like a biology student
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cutting up a frog, you might cremate or bury the results. 10.2.2 If the font is out of tune, fix it once and for all. One way to refine the typography of a text is to work your way through it like by line, putting space in here, removing it there, and repositioning errant characters one by one. But if these refinements are made to the font itself, you will never need to make them again. They are done for good. 10.2.3 Respect the text first of all, the letterforms second, the type designer third, the foundry fourth. The needs of the text should take precedence over the layout of the font, the integrity of the letterforms over the ego of the designer, the artistic sensibility of the designer over the foundry’s desire for profit, and the founder’s craft over a good deal else. 10.2.4 Keep on fixing. Check every text you set to see where improvements can be made. Then return to the font and make them. Little by little, you and the instrument – the font, that is – will fuse, and the type you set will start to sing. Remember, though, this process never ends. There is no such thing as a perfect font. 10.3 Honing The Character Set 10.3.1 If there are defective glyphs, mend them. If the basic lettershapes of your font are poorly drawn, it is probably better to abandon it rather than edit it. But many fonts combine superb basic letterforms with alien or sloppy supplementary characters. Where this is the case, you can usually rest assured that the basic letterforms are the work of a real designer, whose craftsmanship merits respect, and that the supplementary characters were added by an inattentive foundry employee. The latter’s errors should be remedied at once. You may find for example that analphabetic characters such as @ + ± × = - − © are too big or too small, too light or too dark, too high, or too low, or are otherwise out of tune with the basic alphabet. You may also find that diacritics in glyphs such as XXXXXX are poorly drawn, poorly positioned, or out of scale with the letterforms. 10.3.2 If text figures, ligatures or other glyphs you need on a regular basis don’t reside on the base font, move them. For readable text, you almost always need figures, but most digital fonts are sold with titling figures instead. Most digital fonts also include the ligatures fi and fl but not ff, ffi, ffl, fj or ffj. You may find at least some of the missing glyphs on a supplementary font (an ‘expert font’), but that is not enough. Put all the basic glyphs
together on the base font. If, like a good Renaissance typographer, you use only upright parentheses and brackets (XXX), copy the upright forms from the roman to the italic font. Only then can they be kerned and spaced correctly without fuss. 10.3.3 If glyphs you need are missing altogether, make them. Standard ISO digital text fonts (PostScript or TrueType) have 256 slots and carry a basic set of Western European characters. Eastern European characters such as ą ć đ ė ğ ħ ī ň ő ŗ ș ť ů are usually missing. So are the Welsh sorts ŵ and ŷ, and a host of characters needed for African, Asian and Native American languages. The components required to make these characters may be present on the font, and assembling the pieces is not hard, but you need a place to put whatever character you make. If you need only a few and do not care about system compatibility, you can place them in wasted slots – e.g., the ^ < > \ | ~ ` positions, which are accessible directly from the keyboard, or slots such as ¢ ÷ X X X ™ ☐ X X, which can be reached through insertion utilities or by typing character codes or by customizing the keyboard. If you need to add many such characters, you will need to make a supplementary font or, better yet, an enlarged font (TrueType or OpenType). If these are for your own use only the extra characters can be placed wherever you wish. If the fonts are too be shared, every new glyph should be labeled with its PostScript name and Unicode number. 10.3.4 Check and correct sidebearings. The spacing of letters is part of the essence of their design. A wellmade font should need little adjustment, except for refining the kerning. Remember, however, that kerning tables exist for the sake of problematical sequences such as ƒ*, gy, “A, To, Va and 74. If you find that simple pairs such as oo or oe require kerning, this is a sign that the letters are poorly fitted. It is better to correct the sidebearings than to write a bloated kerning table. The spacing of many analphabetics, however, has as much to do with editorial style as with typographic design. Unless your fonts are custom made, neither the type designer nor the founder can know what you need or prefer. I habitually increase the left sidebearing of semicolon, colon, question and exclamation marks, and the inner bearings of guillemets and parentheses, in search of a kind of Channel Island compromise: neither the tight fitting preferred by most anglophone editors nor the wide-open spacing customary in France. If I worked in French all the time, I might increase these sidebearings further.
10.3.5 Refine the kerning table. Digital type can be printed in three dimensions, using zinc or polymer plates, and metal type can be printed flat, from photos or scans of the letterpress proofs. Usually, however, metal type is printed in three dimensions and digital type is printed in two. Two-dimensional type can be printed more cleanly and sharply than three-dimensional type, but the gain in sharpness rarely equals what is lost in depth and texture. A digital page is therefor apt to look aenemic next to a page printed directly from handset metal. This imbalance can be addressed by going deeper into two dimensions. Digital type is capable of refinements of spacing and kerning beyond those attainable in metal, and the primary means of achieving this refinement is the kerning table. Always check the sidebearings of figures and letters before you edit the kerning table. Sidebearings can be checked, quickly for errors by disabling kerning and setting characters, at ample size, in pairs: 11223344 … qqwweerrttyy…. If the spacing within the pairs appears to vary, or if it appears consistently cramped or loose, the sidebearings probably need to be changed. The function of a kerning table is to achieve what perfect sidebearings cannot. A thorough check of the kerning table therefore involves checking all feasible permutations of characters: 1213141516 … qwqeqrqtqyquqiqoqp …(a(s(d(f(g(h(j(k(l … )a) s)d)f)g … -1-2-3-4-5 … TqTwTeTrTtTyTuTiToTp … and so on. This will take several hours for a standard ISO font. For a full pan-European font, it will take several days. Class-based kerning (now a standard capability of font editing software) can be used to speed the process. In class-based kerning, similar letters, such as a á â ä à å ã ă ā ą are treated as one kerned alike. This is an excellent way to begin when you are kerning a large font, but not a way to finish. The combination Ta and Tä, Ti and Tï, il and íl, i) and ï), are likely to require different treatment. Kerning sequences such as Tp, Tt and f( may seem to you absurd, but they can and do occur in legitimate text. (Tpig is the name of a town in the mountains of Dagestan, near the southern tip of Russian Federation; Ttanuu is an important historical site on the British Columbia coast; sequences such as y = ƒ(x) occur routinely in mathematics.) If you know what texts you wish to set with a given font, and know that combinations such as these will never occur, you can certainly omit them from the table. But if you are preparing a font for general use, even in a single language, remember that it should accommodate the TypeWorld
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occasional foreign phrase and the names of real and fictional people, places and things. These can involve some unusual combinations. (A few addition examples: McTavish, FitzWilliam, O’Quinn, dogfish, jock o’-lantern, hallowe’en.) It is also wise to check the font by running a test file – a specially written text designed to hunt out missing or malformed characters and kerning pairs that are either too tight or too loose. It is nothing unusual for a well-groomed ISO font (which might contain around two hundred working characters) to have a kerning table listing a thousand pairs. Kerning instructions for large OpenType fonts are usually stored in a different form, but if converted to tabular form, the kerning data for a pan-European Latin font may easily reach 30,000 pairs. Remember, though, that the number isn’t what counts. What matters is the intelligence and style of the kerning. Remember too that there is no such thing as a font whose kerning cannot be improved. 10.3.6 Check the kerning of the word space. The word space – that invisible blank box – is the most common character in almost every text. It is normally kerned against sloping and undercut glyphs: quotation marks, apostrophe, the letters A, T, V, W, Y, and often to the numerals 1, 3, 5. It is not, however, normally kerned more than a hair either to or away from a preceding lowercase ƒ in either roman or italic. A cautionary example. Most of the Monotype digital revivals I have tested over the years have serious flaws in the kerning tables. One problem in particular recurs in Monotype Baskerville, Centaur and Arrighi, Dante, Fournier, Gills Sans, Poliphilus and Baldo, Van Dijck and other masterworks in the Monotype collection. These are well-tried faces of suberb design – yet in defiance of tradition, the maker’s kerning tables call for a large space (as much as M/4) to be added whenever the ƒ is followed by a word space. The result is a large white blotch after every word ending in ƒ unless a mark of punctuation intervenes. Professional typographer may argue about whether the added space should be zero, or ten, or even 25 thousandths of an em. But there is no professional dispute about whether it should be on the order of an eighth or a quarter of an em. An extra space that large is a prefabricated typographic error – one that would bring snorts of disbelief and instantaneous correction from Stanley Morison, Bruce Rogers, Jan van Krimpen, Eric Gill and others on whose expertise and genius the Monotype heritage is built. But it is an easy error to fix for anyone equipped with the requisite tool: a digital font editor. 10.4 Hinting 10.4.1 If the font looks poor at low resolutions, check the hinting. Digital hints are important chiefly for the sake of how the type will look on screen. Broadly speaking, hints are of two kinds: generic hints that apply to the font as a whole and specific hints applicable only to individual characters. Many fonts are sold unhinted, and few fonts indeed are sold with hints that cannot be improved. Manual hinting is tedious in the extreme, but any good font editor of recent vintage will include routines for automated hinting. These routines are usually enough to make a poorly hinted text font more legible on screen. (in the long run, the solution is high-resolution screens, making the hinting of fonts irrelevant except at tiny sizes.) 10.5 Naming Conventions The presumption of common law is that inherited designs, like inherited texts, belong in the public domain. New designs (or in the USA, the software in which they are enshrined) are protected for a certain term by copyright; the names of the designs are also normally protected by trademark legislation. The names are often better protected, in fact, because infringements on the rights conferred by a trademark are often much easier to prove than infringements of copyright. Nevertheless there are times when a typographer must tinker with the names manufacturers give to their digital fonts. Text fonts are generally sold in families, which may include smorgasbord of weights and variations. Most editing and typesetting software takes a narrower, more stereotypical view. It recognizes only the nuclear family of roman, italic, bold and bold italic. Keyboard shortcuts make it easy to switch from one to another of these, and the switch codes employed are generic. Instead of saying “Switch to such and such a font at such and such a size,” they say, for instance, “Switch to this font’s italic counterpart, whatever that may be.” This convention makes the instructions transferable. You can change the face and size of a whole paragraph or file and the roman, italic and bold should all convert correctly. The slightest inconsistency in font names can prevent this trick from working – and not all manufacturers name their fonts according to the same conventions. For the fonts to be linked, their family names must be identical and the font names must abide by rules known to the operating system and software in use. If, for example, you install Martin Majoor’s Scala or Scala Sans (issued by FontShop) on a PC, you will find that the italic and the roman are unlinked. These are superbly designed fonts, handsomely kerned and fully equipped with the requisite text figures and small caps – almost everything a digital font should be – but the PC version must be placed in a font editor and renamed in order to make them work as expected. •
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Fluid Mechanics: Typographic Design Now A poetically theoretical take on the fluid state of type, design and the vernacular in digital form as they relate to language and contemporary culture.
L
iquidity, saturation, and overflow are words that describe the information surplus that besets us at the start of the twenty-first century. Images proliferate in this media-rich environment, and so too does the written word. Far from diminishing in influence, text has continued to expand its power and pervasiveness. The visual expression of language has grown increasingly diverse, as new fonts and formats evolve to accommodate the relentless display of the word. Typography is the art of designing letterforms and arranging them in space and time. Since its invention during the Renaissance, typography has been animated by the conflict between fixed architectural elementssuch as the page and its margins-and the fluid substance of written words. Evolutions in the life of the letter arise from dialogs between wet and dry, soft and hard, slack and taut, amorphous and geometric, ragged and flush, planned and unpredicted. With unprecedented force, these conflicts are driving typographic innovation today. Typography is going under water as designers submerge themselves in the textures and transitions that bond letter, word, and surface. As rigid formats become open and pliant, the architectural hardware of typographic systems is melting down.
by Ellen Lupton
The flush, full page of the classical book is dominated by a single block of justified text, its characters mechanically spaced to completely occupy the designated volume. The page is like a glass into which text is poured, spilling over from one leaf to the next. By the early twentieth century, the classical page had given way to the multicolumned, mixed-media structures of the modern newspaper, magazine, and illustrated book. Today, the simultaneity of diverse content streams is a given. Alongside the archetype of the printed page, the new digital archetype of the window has taken hold. The window is a scrolling surface of unlimited length, whose width adjusts at the will of reader or writer. In both print and digital media, graphic designers devise ways to navigate bodies of information by exploring the structural possibilities of pages and windows, boxes and frames, edges and margins. In 1978, Nicholas Negroponte and Muriel Cooper, working at MITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Media Lab, published a seminal essay on the notion of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;soft copy,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; the linguistic raw material of the digital age. The bastard offspring of hard copy, soft text lacks a fixed typographic identity. Owing allegiance to no font or format, it is willingly pasted, pirated, output, or repurposed in countless contexts. It is the ubiquitous medium of wordTypeWorld
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processing, desktop publishing, e-mail, and the Internet. The burgeoning of soft copy had an enormous impact on graphic design in the 1980s and 1990s. In design for print, soft copy largely eliminated the mediation of the typesetter, the technician previously charged with converting the manuscript-which had been painstakingly marked up by hand with instructions from the designer-into galleys, or formal pages of type. Soft copy flows directly to designers in digital form from authors and editors. The designer is free to directly manipulate the text-without relying on the typesetter-and to adjust typographic details up to the final moments of production. The soft copy revolution led designers to plunge from an objective aerial view into the moving waters of text, where they shape it from within. Digital media enable both users and producers, readers and writers, to regulate the flow of language. As with design for print, the goal of interactive typography is to create ‘architectural’ structures that accommodate the organic stream of text. But in the digital realm, these structuresand the content they support-have the possibility of continuous transformation. In their essay about soft copy, Negroponte and Cooper predicted the evolution of digital interfaces that would allow typography to transform its size, shape, and color. Muriel Cooper (19251994) went on to develop the idea of the three-dimensional ‘information landscape,’ a model that breaks through the window frames that dominate electronic interfaces. Viewed from a distance, a field of text is a block of gray. But when one comes in close to read, the individual characters predominate over the field. Text is a body of separate objects that move together as a mass, like cars in a flow of traffic or individuals in a crowd. Text is a fluid made from the hard, dry crystals of 26
the alphabet. Typeface designs in the Renaissance reflected the curving lines of handwriting, formed by ink flowing from the rigid nib of a pen. The cast metal types used for printing converted these organic sources into fixed, reproducible artifacts. As the printed book became the world’s dominant information medium, the design of typefaces grew ever more abstract and formalized, distanced from the liquid hand. Today, designers look back at the systematic, abstracting tendencies of modern letter design and both celebrate and challenge that rationalizing impulse. They have exchanged the anthracite deposits of the classical letter for lines of text that quiver and bleed like living things. The distinctive use of type, which can endow a long or complex document with a sense of unified personality or behavior, also builds the identity of brands and institutions. Bruce Mau has described identity design as a ‘life problem,’ arguing that the visual expression of a company or product should appear like a frame taken from a system in motion. The flat opacity of the printed page has been challenged by graphic designers who use image manipulation software to embed the word within the surface of the photographic image. A pioneer of such effects in the digital realm was P. Scott Makela (19601999). In the early 1990s, he began using PhotoShop, a software tool that had just been introduced, as a creative medium. In his designs for print and multimedia, type and image merge in dizzying swells and eddies as letters bulge, buckle, and morph. The techniques he helped forge have become part of the fundamental language of graphic design. The linear forms of typography have become planar surfaces, skimming across and below the pixelated
skin of the image. The alphabet is an ancient form that is deeply embedded in the mental hardware of readers. Graphic designers always ground their work, to some degree, in historic precedent, tapping the familiarity of existing symbols and styles even as they invent new idioms. While some designers pay their toll to history with reluctance, others dive eagerly into the reservoirs of pop culture. Tibor Kalman (1949–1999) led the graphic design world’s reclamation of visual detritus, borrowing from the commonplace vernacular of mail-order stationery and do-it-yourself signage. Designers now frankly embrace the humor and directness of everyday artifacts. In the aesthetic realm as in the economic one, pollution is a natural resource-one that is expanding rather than shrinking away. Thirty years ago, progressive designers often described their mission as ‘problem-solving’. They aimed to identify the functional requirements of a project and then discover the appropriate means to satisfy the brief. Today, it is more illuminating to speak of solvents than solutions. Design is often an attack on structure, or an attempt to create edifices that can withstand and engage the corrosive assault of content. The clean, smooth surfaces of modernism proved an unsound fortress against popular culture, which is now invited inside to fuel the creation of new work. Image and text eat away at the vessels that would seal them shut. Forms that are hard and sharp now appear only temporarily so, ready to melt, like ice, in response to small environmental changes. All systems leak, and all waters are contaminated, not only with foreign matter but with bits of structure itself. A fluid, by definition, is a substance that conforms to the outline of its container. Today, containers reconfigure in response to the matter they hold. •
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Type Installation 28
Meghan, Danny, Matt •Creative solution seeker: Meghan •Persistent hard worker: Danny •Problem solver: Matt
Project Brief Situation: Turn an open space in down town St. Augustine into large-scale type. Creating three-foot letters made from Q-tips. Approximately seven thousand five hundred will be used to spell out the world clarity. This word will stretch across and open space directly in front of the Flagler college library.
Investigation:
Our research started with figuring out exactly what word to use that could express typography in seven letters or more. St. Augustine needed to notice that their was type all around them but it seemed elusive because its so over used and ran into the ground. Something beautiful and legible for everyone to read and enjoy that wasn’t trying to push something onto them or even persuade them into anything. Just a single word that would make them stop and for the time they are looking at the word they are thinking about that word and what is it’s purpose. When people walk up close and notice it’s made of q-tips I want them to also wonder why. As a group voting on a pixel that would work well with our word was key. After coming to a conclusion on a word and a pixel for this a spot still had to be chosen. Knowing it was going to be very large finding a spot that had a good traffic of people walking, cars, and as well as students was important. After looking at a few different locations it was hard to find a spot that everyone liked. Insight: The word clarity was picked because it expresses typography very well and would work well with any of the pixels chosen. After a vote an agreement was met, that smaller pixels in a larger quantity would look overall better close up and far away as compared to larger pixels in less quantity. Idea: In the beginning a lot of words were chosen that just didn’t seem to clearly represent what typography was really about. The word clarity was chosen.. As a group it was challenging to decide on what pixel to use that could be very easy to read with a transparent background and also look really cool from up close. Deciding on whether or not to hang the word or stake it into the ground was also something we had to sample with our word in illustrator. TypeWorld
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Since our word is in a unique typeface and has decenders it seemed like a better idea to let it sit up off the ground. Budget As this was a class project, I was responsible for any money spent to create the deliverables. • Q-tips: $35 • Paper and printing: $25 • Plastic wrap: $10 • Fishing line: $15 • Tape: $5 • Hot glue/guns: $15 • Labor: Pro bono Research When we were scouting out or location and deciding on our word and pixel it was something we did as a group. It was very interesting and fun to listen to everyone else’s ideas and outputs as to how to approach this project. Looking into this projects past I remember seeing other students work and how they approached it. We all wanted to do something different that maybe hasn’t been done yet. While looking for a spot we knew that our total size for the word clarity was going to be about six foot tall by thirteen feet wide. The tallest letters would be the L and the T. The original spots we chose to do this project probably would have been to small and forced us to cram our letters. Fortunately the location was changed last minute for a perfect fit. Strategy Once we layed out our word in illustrator we were able to size it correctly to get a guess of how may q-tips we would need. Printing out our word in a tile format allowed us to place the letters together one 11x17 piece of paper at a time. Overall it was about four hundred sheets. We taped them all together front and back so it would be very sturdy. Then we laid our plastic wrap over the paper printouts of the letters. The plastic wrap got pulled flat and tight allowing the letters underneath to be seen very clearly. Placing one by on the Q-tips on the letters mending them with hot glue the word clarity began to take shape. Once all our letters were made we cut them out leaving the thin layer of plastic on the back of the letter. This will help keep it together better. Using three rows of fishing line pulled tight the letters will be tied to the string holding them in place and level. Challenges Throughout the whole project there were endless challenges. There were a lot of things we came across that we never really thought about for example how we would hang the word, or how to get all the Qtips to stay in place. Early on it was a struggle getting the layout of the word down. 415 11x17 sheets of paper printed out randomly that needed to be pieced together to form the letters. We printed them out with all the letters being black and it was so hard to tell what line went with what letter because they all looked the same. If we made each letter a different color before we printed, it would’ve been a lot faster to get the letters laid out and taped together. Once the qtips were laid out on all the letters we used a thick clear tape and applied it generously to the back of all the letters to make them stronger. Another issue was that we underestimated how heavy the whole word would be so we needed a lot more than three lines of fishing line. We had to tie the line extremely tight to the trees because it was hard to get the line to be tight and it was making the letters sag. The installation was the trickiest part overall. We used that clear tape to tape the back of the letters to the ine to make them hold. When the wind blew the word had some sort of motin and flow and it looked amazing. Effectiveness This project was a huge success overall. Everyone walking by was shocked to find out that the word was constructed from qtips. It was truly an awesome feeling to see our work hanging up and seeing people admire it. So many people would stop in their cars to take pictures of the word and to ask us questions about it. I also saw so many people took pictures of our word and put it on social medias like Facebook, twitter, and instagram. We didn’t think it would be that popular but everyone truly loved it. Overall we couldn’t be happier with the finished work and seeing everyone just as excited about it as we were was just an amazing feeling. Additional information This project really pushed the group as individuals to see how hard we could actually work on this. Being a very tedious project it took a long time to create. Everyone is very excited with how the final word turned out. Thankfully everything worked as planned and we had no huge problems with the installation. • 30
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