Strategy & Type Specifications Reading in the era of screens
Monica Giunchi
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Content —
Strategy Grids Typography Body Text Paragraph Indicators Content Page Chapter Pages & Front Cover Expressive Typography Expressive Typography — Perforation Expressive Typography — Rotated Type Expressive Typography — Fold out Folio Dashes Underline Strikethrough Other Visual Devices Imagery Colour Paper Printing Finishing Content References
4 6 10 12 14 16 18 20 27 28 30 32 32 33 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
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Strategy
intro + aim + audience
This publication is a reflection on the way we read and how it has changed with the advent of screens and their persistent presence in our everyday life. The aim of the book is to push the reader to interrogate their reading habits as well as communicate the idea that the book and the screen are two complementary tools which should be utilised for their best potentials. The intended audience would be primarily passionate readers, but also anyone who is interested in the current state of the publishing industry and of the
Initial ideas & development
advancing digital revolution. My initial ideas revolved mainly around internet research and the randomness through which we could easily be lead in our online experience: my very first attempts were therefore a report and representation of the internet research in a book format, to highlight on one hand this concept of casual researching online but at the same time the fact that a book would not be capable of holding the content of the internet. I then developed the concept further, trying to express more clearly the complimentary relationship of the two devices.
context
Within academia and critique there is often a sharp opposition between those who are in favour of expanding the use of screen devices in schools and are enthusiast in the power of digital technologies, like Kevin Kelly, and those who are reluctant in accepting this heavy presence of screens and who are more traditional in their process of reading.
pros & cons
Indeed, as proved by many researchers, the book and printed material are easier to read and more suitable for memorizing content, because of spatial landmarks, because of the content which is fixed on the page and because of the absence of the distraction of pop-ups, push notifications and emails. At the same time the aspects of hypertext, multimediality and the limitless internet sources have excellent qualities which new media owes much to, they really have challenged the concept of narrative and in-turn that of research. Beside the reading concernings, the debate of the over use of screens rather than the printed book is very lively, especially within the design context, as
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Also considering the issue from a design point of view, instead of seeing the book and the screen as two conflicting mediums, we should regard the screen as an enrichment: so my publication was digitally designed but entirely realised with the use of old crafts and printing techniques. So the physicality of the book, the different weight of paper stocks, the powerful colours of the
design context
highlighted in the brief “Book Stills” which my publication seeks to answer.
Risograph inks, give an added value to my initial screen design.
printed page and on a screen. The structure of the content still mantains an element of dispersion, especially for the screen parts, while the book parts
content
The content of the publication shifted from the mere reproduction of internet research towards the analysis of the differences in reading on a
attempt instead to give a more solid organisation to the content. My typographic and printing choices are all built around this concept of duality and complementarity as I will explain in the type specifications in more depth. Throughout the publication the text gets bounced off between the book “format” and the screen, the first represented by traditional of screen based fonts, Verdana and Georgia, with the colour orange. These colours have been chosen because they are complementary; furthermore the orange that I printed on the Risograph is very bright which recalls the luminosity of the screen. The layout for the book content is more traditional,
design rationale
typefaces Gill Sans and Perpetua using the colour blue, the latter by a pair
while the screen content is treated in a more expressive way, pushing the boundaries of the book format. Throughout the book I have made use of visual devices to depict different aspects of our reading activity, such as skim and scan reading, but also to In conclusion, together with the content, the typography and the design contribute to promote a constructive relationship between the printed book and the screen and not a widening of the gap.
conclusion
reproduce internet based elements.
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Grid
3
4
1 5
6 2 8
6
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Page Size
Octavo book size – Scale of the American Library Association.
Octavo
The choice of a traditional book size was made to reinforce the
153 x 228 mm
polarity and completion of the traditional format of the book and
(6 x 9 inches)
the new medium of the screen.
1
Head margin
5
12 mm 2
Foot margin
38.458 mm from the top of the page 6
12 mm 3
Fore-edge margin Gutter margin 18 mm
Exclusion Line 36 mm from the bottom of the page
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12 mm 4
Hanging Line
Column width 11 mm
8
Gutter 3 mm
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Grid When technology shifts, it bends the culture The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was overthrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing into a central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the mathematics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled in society a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic (in a sentence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via authors), whose truth was as fixed and final as a book. In the West, we became people of the book. Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.
The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one; easier to listen to a song than to compose one; easier to attend a play than to produce one. But movies in particular suffer from
Truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link.
1
this user asymmetry. The intensely collaborative work needed to coddle chemically treated film and paste together its strips into movies meant that it was vastly easier to watch a movie than to make one.
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* an organized collection of information resources made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing 34
8
Information So
In the past libraries and books were Flickering through pages is not qui
links, nor scrolling down the infinit The printed book gives us a prec subdivision in chapters which gives This gives us the possibility to deci
for our research or not, but also th accross something you weren’t exp book “The Shallows”.
The use of a 9 column grid gave me the possibility to organise the content in a rigorous way, and at the same time to create a more diversified layout for uses of expressive typography, especially for the screen content. For horizontal alignment I mainly used the baseline grid, apart from the hanging and exclusion line which I used as start and end points for the book content. These are based on the baseline grid.
1
Spread
3
18-19 2
Spread 32-33
Spread 34-35 2
ourcing
e the primary source of our information. ite the same as through websites and
te page of an e-book. conceived structured content, and a s us an idea of what the content will be. ide whether the content will be suitable
he magnificient possibility to stumble pecting as Nicholas Carr notice in his
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Eye movements
Difference in Eye Patterns, the book and the web Even if with saccade and fixations, our eyes generally follow a pattern that goes from left to right and then down to the next line. When we read on a web page instead, our eyes follow a different pattern, generally characterized by an F shape as observed by Jakob Nielsen. Jakob Nielsen, Danish leading web usability consultant.
35 32
33
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Typography The use of typography is conceived in harmony with the concept of the book. For both the book and the screen contents I have chosen to use a serif and a sans serif: for body text I have mainly used the serifs while for titles sans serifs. The typefaces used for the book content are Gill Sans and Perpetua, a humanist and a transitional typeface both by British typeface designer Eric Gill, which I found worked quite well together; while for the screen content I have used Verdana and Georgia, two of the earliest web fonts, by typeface designer Matthew Carter.
Gill Sans MT Pro Designer: Eric Gill Date: 1931
Perpetua Designer: Eric Gill Date: 1925-32
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ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789
Verdana Designer: Matthew Carter Date: 1996
Georgia Designer: Matthew Carter Date: 1996
ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789
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Body Text Both for the grid and for typography I tried to use consistency setting sizes in multiples of three when appropriate. However, for the body text, after trying with 9 points for both Perpetua and Georgia, I decided to use Perpetua in size 10 for the book content and Georgia in size 8 for the screen content because the x-heights of Perpetua and Georgia were quite different, since Georgia was mainly designed for being used on a screen. Although my intention was to represent the differences between the text on a book page and on a screen, I decided to give privilege to legibility and the harmony between the two typefaces used for the different kinds of content.
Test 1
Test 2
Final choice
Georgia 9pt
Georgia 9pt
Georgia 8pt
Perpetua 9pt
Perpetua 11pt
Perpetua 10pt
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1
Body Copy Book Content
2
Body Copy Screen Content
Perpetua
Georgia
Regular
Regular
10 pt / 15pt
8 pt / 15 pt
by rearranging formerly used, commonly shared ones. What we do now with words, we’ll soon do with images.
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For directors who speak this new cinematographic language, even the most photo-realistic scenes are tweaked, remade and written over frame by frame. Filmmaking is thus liberated from the stranglehold of photography. Gone is the frustrating method of trying to capture reality with one or two takes of expensive film and then creating your fantasy from whatever you get. Here reality, or fantasy, is built up one pixel at a time as an author would build a novel one word at a time. Photography champions the world as it is, whereas this new screen mode, like writing and painting, is engineered to explore the world as it might be.
But merely producing movies with ease is not enough for screen fluency, just as producing books
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with ease on Gutenberg’s press did not fully unleash text. Literacy also required a long list of innovations and techniques that permit ordinary readers and writers to manipulate text in ways that make it useful. For instance, quotation symbols make it simple to indicate where one has borrowed text from another writer. Once you have a large document, you need a table of contents to find your way through it. That requires page numbers. Somebody invented them (in the 13th century). Longer texts require an alphabetic index, devised by the Greeks and later developed for libraries of books. Footnotes, invented in about the 12th century, allow tangential information to be displayed outside the linear argument of the main text. And bibliographic citations (invented in the mid-1500s) enable scholars and skeptics to systematically consult sources. These days, of course, we have hyperlinks, which connect one piece of text to another, and tags, which categorize a selected word or phrase for later sorting. All these inventions (and more) permit any literate person to cut and paste ideas, annotate them with her own thoughts, link them to related ideas, search through vast libraries of work, browse subjects quickly, resequence texts, refind material, quote experts and sample bits of beloved artists. These tools, more than just reading, are the foundations of literacy.
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Paragraph Indicators For the majority of the book there are two different paragraph indicators. For the book content, I used a line break and a 3 mm indent, which tries to align to the traditional way of indicating paragraph breaks. For the screen content, I blockbuster tried insteadcan to simulate the way internet pages A Hollywood take a million person-hours to produce and separates paragraphs, leaving extra leading between the paragraphs. I chose
only two hours to consume. But now, cheap and universal tools of creation (megapixel phone cameras, Photoshop, iMovie) are quickly reducing the away from the baseline grid. effort needed to create moving images. To the utter bafflement of the experts who confidently claimed that viewers would never rise from their reclining passivity, tens of millions of people have in recent years spent uncountable hours making movies of their own design. Having a ready Paragraphand Indicator reachable audience of potential millions helps, as does the choice of Line Break and 3 mm Indent multiple modes in which to create. Because of new consumer gadgets, community training, peer encouragement and fiendishly clever software, the ease of making video now approaches the ease of writing. The oral skillsThis of memorization, recitationmakes and rhetoric instilled inAsocieties a reverence is not how Hollywood films, of course. blockbuster film is for the past, thea ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was gigantic creature custom-built by hand. Like a Siberian tiger, it demands to leave an equivalent amount of leading to the normal leading, not to move
When technology shifts, 1
it bends the culture
overthrownour by technology. movable type elevated attention –Gutenberg’s but it is alsoinvention very rare.ofInmetallic 2007, 600 feature films were writing into a central position culture. By the of cheap and of perfect copies, text became the released in in thethe United States, ormeans about 1,200 hours moving images. 2
engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing journalism, science and the As a percentage of the hundreds of millions of hourscame of moving images Paragraph Indicator mathematics of libraries and law. The1,200 distribution-and-display thaterror. we call printing instilled produced annually today, hours is tiny. It is a device rounding Line Break and Extra Leading: 15 pt in society a reverence black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic We tendfor to precision think the (of tiger represents the animal kingdom, but in truth, (in a sentence), a passion for (of printed fact)ofand an allegiance to authority (via a grasshopper is aobjectivity truer statistical example an animal. The handcrafted authors), whose truth was fixed go andaway, final but as aifbook. In the wefuture became Hollywood filmaswon’t we want toWest, see the of people motionof the book.
pictures, we need to study the swarming food chain below – YouTube, Now invention againTV overthrowing dominantlip-sync media. A new distribution-and-display indieisfilms, serials andthe insect-scale mashups – and not just the technology tiny is nudging bookThe aside and catapulting images, apex ofthe tigers. bottom is where the actionand is, especially and wheremoving screen images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols literacy originates. on a screen pull away from classical notions of making monumental anddigital authority. On Anusemerging setthe of cheap tools is now it easyauthors to create the screen, video. the subjective againmore trumps The past is a rush of data streams cut and There were thanthe 10objective. billion views of video on YouTube in rearranged September. into a new mashup, truthvideos is something you assemble on your own screen The mostwhile popular were watched as manyyourself times as as you jumpany from link to link. We are noware in the middleofofexisting a second Gutenberg shift — from book blockbuster movie. Many mashups video material. fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality. Most vernacular video makers start with the tools of Movie Maker or
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The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one; easier to listen to a song than to compose one; easier
For the interviews sections instead I decided to vary the layout and the use of typography, in order to add an element of interactivity since I am representing a conversation. Therefore for the first interview I made use of an outdent, or exdent: the question is asked and the answers leads from the question.
1
Paragraph Indicator
The Value of Print the width of column and gutter. Outdent of 14 pt, equivalent to
What is Anonima Impressori?
Anonima Impressori is born from the union of two realities: one is MEAT Collettivo Grafico which is a collective of graphic designers, the other one is Attila Marcel, which is also an itinerant collective which is dedicated to calcographic printing, letterpress. From these two realities is born Anonima Impressori which is a bit of a union between the manual printing, letterpress, calcographic artistic printing with the contemporary practice of graphic design. What pushed you to undertake this activity and research of old movable typefaces?
This was started especially thanks to Luca - one of my colleagues - who since a year ago has been going around Italy to search for typefaces and materials for typography. The idea was born around 3 years ago, in an almost casual way, when during an event held in Bologna called LAB we rebuilt a little typographic laboratory in a square, where people could come and see the processes of traditional printing and take part in workshops. Obviously, like every graphic designer, we were passionate and interested in typography and our attitude has always been to pursue in graphic design a certain results, and at the same time to understand the origins of graphic design, which we can say come from typography. Therefore from this point of view our attitude pushed us to this kind of recovery of it, which is a bit
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Content Page The content page is spread between the verso and the recto, because not only it presents the list of content in a traditional book format, typically on the recto, but it also has a screen version on the verso, which tries to reproduce in the structure that of a search on a search engine on the internet. The visual devices used, which I will specify more in depth in the imagery section, consist of the page furniture which goes around the margins of the spread, which is a visual metaphor for a tab on an internet page, and a box containing the key term for the “search�. The same elements have been used for the chapter pages and for the front cover. Moreover in conjunction with the tab element, in the recto I have added another orange rectangle which forms a frame around the bounding box which therefore defines the boundaries of the book format content page. In the book format content page, the dotted line leads the reader from the headings to the numbers, easing the relation between the two.
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1
6 7
4
3 10
8
9
11
content
5
new search
2
Content Introduction
screen reading
Preface Guide to Symbols
Introduction Preface Guide to Symbols
Becoming Screen Literate Eye Movements in Reading Information Sourcing Spatial Landmarks
The Value of Print Tablet, Ebooks and Printed Books Conclusion
Facebook A conversation with Anonima Impressori A conversation with Daniele Baschieri
6
Tab visual device
2
Text box
Georgia, Regular, 10 pt / 15 pt
1 pt stroke
Underline: weight 0.493 pt pt,
7
8
Gill Sans MT Pro, Bold, 21 pt
width 18 mm, forming a
aligned to baseline grid 9
Verdana, Regular, 9 pt, Content Page Heading 1
Sub-heading 2 Gill Sans MT Pro, Regular, 11 pt / 15 pt
11
Verdana, Bold, 21 pt,
Leader Underline: weight 0.55 pt,
aligned to baseline grid Chapter Heading 1
Chapter Heading 2 Gill Sans MT Pro, Regular, 12 pt / 15 pt
10
sitting on the head margin
6
Content Page Heading 2
Rectangle
conjunction with the tab device
5
Sub-heading 1
offset 3 pt
Georgia 9 pt, aligned centre
4
offset 1.1 pt, dotted 12
Page Numbers
Georgia, Bold, 10 pt / 15 pt
Gill Sans MT Pro, Regular,
Underline: weight 0.596 pt,
11 pt / 15 pt, Small Caps
offset 3 pt, solid
50 54 57
7
1
bounding box for the recto, in
16 30 34 46
Chapter 2
Information Sourcing Spatial Landmarks
within the text box
10 11
Chapter 1
Screen Reading Becoming Screen Literate Eye Movements in Reading
3
12
17
Chapter Pages and Front Cover The chapter pages follow the same layout and design of the content page. The basis is again the visual device of the tab, conjuncted with the rectangle in the recto, while the title is divided between book and screen metaphor. So Gill Sans in blue for the word “reading�, an orange wavy line which defines a blurry division to the rest of the title, which is in Verdana and Georgia, of orange colour. The device of the text in a orange box imitating the internet search engine is used again as visual metaphor. For the cover the same layout and design is used apart from the frame which is a shade from orange into a blue, to introduce at first look the central message of the publication: a joint use of the screen and the book.
reading
1
in the era
2
of screens
3
1
18
1
2
3
new search
INTRODUCTION new search reading
8
9
1
Gill Sans MT Pro, Bold, 21 pt, sitting on the baseline grid
2
Verdana, Bold, 21 pt, sitting on the baseline grid
3
Text box 1 pt stroke Georgia 9 pt, aligned centre within the text box
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Expressive Typography Throughout the book it has been made a quite consistent use of expressive typography, especially to represent the screen content. I tried in most cases to follow the grid, while in a few cases the text has been treated independently. The leading of expressive typography is often extreme, especially when using visual devices in conjunction with the typeface. In the example 3, the extreme leading allows a clearer representation of the eye movements and allows more interaction between the visual device and the text.
1 Page 13 1.a Georgia, Regular, 39 pt / 45 pt, aligned centre 1.b Verdana, Regular, 1
8 pt / 15 pt, aligned left
Technology has changed the way we read and the way we interact with text and images
1.a
Links and pop-ups tend to deviate our
1.b
reading and lead our eyes and attention to something else. In an internet page there is more of a visual mash-up, in comparison to the linearity and consistency in a book.
13
20
2.a 2
When technology shifts, it bends the culture The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was overthrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing into a central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the mathematics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled in society a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic (in a sentence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via authors), whose truth was as fixed and final as a book. In the West, we became people of the book. Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.
The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one; easier to listen to a song than to compose one; easier to attend a play than to produce one. But movies in particular suffer from this user asymmetry. The intensely collaborative work needed to coddle
Truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link.
chemically treated film and paste together its strips into movies meant that it was vastly easier to watch a movie than to make one.
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19
2.b 3 2 Pages 18 - 19 2.a Georgia, Regular, 27 pt / 45 pt, aligned left 2.b Georgia, Regular, 39 pt / 45 pt, aligned left 3 Page 31 Gill Sans MT Pro, Medium, 39 pt / 60 pt, aligned left
This is how our eyes generally move throughout the page of a book.
31
21
Expressive Typography 1 Page 34
* an organized collection of
34
22
1
Georgia, Regular, 39 pt / 60 pt, aligned left. —
information
Asterisk placed outside of the
resources made
flow of the text, aligned to the
accessible
—
text box not to disrupt the left right of the adjacent column.
to a defined
The overlaying of the two
community for
“formats” of the book and
colours, and of the two
reference or
the screen, is to create more
borrowing
the formats and to symbolize
substantial connection between the prolific relationship between the two.
2 Pages 38 - 39 This spread is also a combination of screen and book, in format and content. In fact it display the dictionary entry for the word “hyperlink” as found on a web etymology dictionary, which is a great feature of the internet that you couldn’t instead have available if you were reading on a book. The content is however portrayed as book content, because dictionaries have born in a book format. The orange text stands for another link available, while the arrow shading from orange to blue which connects the word “hypertext” to the body text in the adjacent page, leads to an extract from a book always on the topic, symbolising the fact that to have a more deep comprehension on a subject, books are still the most reliable tools. — 2.a Georgia, Regular,
2.b Perpetua, Bold,
60 pt, aligned left, sitting on the
12 pt / 15 pt, aligned left
baseline grid. Underline: weight
2.c Perpetua, Regular,
3 pt, offset 4 pt, solid
10 pt / 15 pt, aligned left
2.a
2
hypertext 2.b 2.c
hyper-
text-
word-forming element meaning "over, above, beyond, exceedingly, to excess," from Greek hyper (prep. and adv.) "over, beyond, overmuch, above measure," from PIE super- "over" (see super-)
late 14c., “wording of anything written,” from Old French texte, Old North French tixte (12c.), from Medieval Latin textus “the Scriptures, text, treatise,” in Late Latin “written account, content, characters used in a document,” from Latin textus “style or texture of a work,” literally “thing woven,” from pp. stem of texere “to weave,” from PIE root *tek“to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”
2.c
Hypertext narrative clearly takes a wide range of forms best understood in terms of a number of axes, including those formed by degrees or ratios of reader choice, intervention, and empowerment, inclusion of extralinguistic texts (images, motion, sound), complexity of network structure, and degrees of multiplicity and variation in literary elements, such as plot, characterization, setting, and so forth.
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39
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Expressive Typography Page 41 This page aims to typographically reproduce sounds and the multimediality of digital devices. The text and the use of typography is a recall to Marinetti’s sound poem “Zang Tumb Tumb” (1914) and to the Experimental Jetset readaptation of the same, “Zang! Tumb Tumb” (2003). — 1 Verdana, Regular, 81 pt,
4 Minion Pro*, Regular, 300 pt —
45 rotated 2 Verdana, Regular, 72 pt, - 45 rotated
*Oversight: Text should have been set in Georgia.
3 Verdana, Regular, 51 pt,
GH
3
!
4
b m b tu m tu
2
za n
1
g
aligned centre
rrrrrsshhhhh 41
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In the pages below other important aspects of the internet are shown through expressive typography. The first one depicts the attention spam of an internet user, according to Jakob Nielsen, and the use of the strikethrough over the 80% of the text remarks what is affirmed in the sentence. The second reproduces the movement of the text on a web page. — 5 Verdana, Regular, 10 pt / 12 pt 6 Verdana, Regular, 10 pt / 12 pt, Strikethrough: weight 2 pt,
7 Georgia, Regular, 21 pt, aligned centre, sitting on the baseline grid
offset 3 pt, dashed
5 6
Web users at most have the time to read little more than 20% of the words on a webpage during an average visit. Web users at most have the time to read little more than 20% of the words on a webpage during an average visit. Web users at most have the time to read little more than 20% of the words on a webpage during an average visit. Web users at most have the time to read little more than 20% of the words on a webpage during an average visit. Web users at most have the time to read little more than 20% of the words on a webpage during an average visit.
43
7
Text on the screen is unfixed. 25
Expressive Typography
1 Georgia, Regular, 33 pt / 45 pt 2 Georgia*, Regular, 33 pt / 45 pt — The text is laid out in an optical contrast. *Oversights: Text should be set in Perpetua according to the book “format”. 1
There is no need to troop from one side or the other
26
2
They’re both excellent devices
of the content (the one at the back of the
page) gets lost, because either way the
presence of ads moves our attention away
from our research.
The text is in capitals because it aims to
attract attention as adverts do.
1 Georgia, Bold, 11 pt / 13.2 pt, —
capitals.
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the effects of old age. Forth, the presence of dictionaries: reading in other languages often involves some difficulties which make the experience painful more than pleasant. They remove all the joy of reading; how many times we
son: being able to variate the font size the page number varies in relation to this as it strictly depends on it. We will be at page 15 if the font size is 5 points but we could be at page 50 if
The differences between an e-book reader and
a tablet is huge, not only in the technologies
they will be able to continue reading despite page number, this because of a very simple rea-
page number. Not all the devices offer the exact
would be an allegory to the act of closing
What are the differences between an ebook reader and a tablet?
expressive typography. It represents a
Ebooks, Tablets & Printed Books
The usage of perforation links with
SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER
Expressive Typography — Perforation 1
pop-up ad: Pulling off the piece of paper Information Sourcing
the window of the pop-up. However part
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27
28
54
Instead with just a touch we can know the
meaning of that word and proceed immediately
in continuing reading. Finally, ecologically:
trees shouldn’t be cut down to produce more
consumption of raw materials. However, it also
brings not negligible disadvantages:
• There still isn’t an easy way to open books in a
non-indexed way. Opening a book at a specific
more than one page.
How has reading changed from a printed format to a digital one?
Regarding the changes in reading from a digi-
tal format and a paper format, in my opinion
the reading in itself hasn’t changed at all. It has
however substantially changed the experience
of reading: if on one hand many nostalgics may
still be on the side of the printed and physical
book, the digital version offers on almost any
point of view enormous advantages.
these devices, we realize that ebook readers use
an e-ink screen. Or electronic ink. There are
gy. But for simplicity we will say that screens
are composed of black and white microbeads.
These beads are placed in a magnetic field,
which according to its polarization brings to
the surface the balls of a particular color. This
process consumes power only when you want
to polarize the screen. During the rest of the
time (ie when the page remains static) there is
and in any situation. Third, the possibility to
change font and the font size: many complain
though some hybrids are about to be launched
in the market.
ok reader. Being able to change the font size
it is possible to read from the bed, on the bus
we still don’t have tablets with e-ink screens al-
nation I would definitely recommend an ebo-
reading. On the contrary, thanks to an ereader
reading a book and little else. For this reason
be visually impaired, apart from an eye exami-
unhandy and it requires an adequate place for
it to perform different functions other than for
le of book, the chapter, the body text and the
big volumes like 1000 pages books is often
is slow, and unfortunately this does not allow
in the majority of the cases they don’t know to
2000 books. Second, the weight: reading some
page. The process of polarization of the screen
same layout as a printed book including the tit-
ourselves an entire library. I speak of about
eyes at all, because it looks just like the printed
about migraines and difficulties in reading, and
than a 300 pages book) allows us to bring with
addition, this type of screen does not tire the
The sensation in holding an ebook reader is
a tool which with only 300 grams (a bit more
dampening power consumption drastically. In
you, and it offers in the majority of cases the
on holiday, at home, at work, in the office: It is
vides a substantial immortality to the battery
the same as having a printed paper in front of
First, the usability of contents, travelling,
new technology.
about despite the numerous advantages of this
volumes is something which is hard to forget
idea of a beautiful home library with some old
passionate readers is hard to root out and the
• The pleasure of the paper enjoyed by many
to have an A4 ebook reader.
on an ereader. In this sense it would be easier
textbook is easier on a printed book rather than
formats for these devices and often studying a
• The A4 pdf formats and similar are not native
printed book and going through the pages.
the page number, so it’s not like just opening a
page is often a long process, you have to write
one ebook reader for many years, reducing the
ebook readers too, but the hope is to have only
discern 1
no consumption of electric current. This pro-
re are many variations of this same technolo-
many articles about this technology and the-
books. Industrial materials are used to produce
17
Going indepth into the technologies used in
page number so we will remain on “page 5” for
on google and similar.
the font size can be varied it doesn’t change the
ction but it performs it in the best way.
a long-standing research with the dictionary or
In the example 10%. Another is giving the page
an abstract concept, for example even though
pers has been giving a percentage of the book.
as versatile since it has only one primary fun-
don’t understand a word and we are forced to
it is 10 points. A solution adopted by develo-
ctions just as effectively, an ebook-reader is not
ve all the joy of reading; how many times we
size is 5 points but we could be at page 50 if
reader which can perform many other fun-
rience painful more than pleasant. They remo-
depends on it. We will be at page 15 if the font
they offer. If a tablet can be considered a book
involves some difficulties which make the expe-
number varies in relation to this as it strictly
used in these devices but also in the functions
dictionaries: reading in other languages often
son: being able to variate the font size the page
a tablet is huge, not only in the technologies
the effects of old age. Forth, the presence of
page number, this because of a very simple rea-
The differences between an e-book reader and
they will be able to continue reading despite
page number. Not all the devices offer the exact
Ebooks, Tablets & Printed Books
What are the differences between an ebook reader and a tablet?
Expressive Typography — Rotated Type In different occasions I made use of rotated typography in the screen “format”,
in order to represent the multilateral approach to research offered by the
internet and screen devices while also to add an element of interactivity to the
book, so that the reader is pushed to turn and engage with the book. 1 Page 17 Georgia, Regular, 60 pt,
sitting on the outside margin,
2 Page 54 - 55
aligned centre
Georgia, Regular, 8 pt / 15 pt,
justified with the last line
aligned left.
—
The reason for the justification is because
the left alignment did not read very
well with a simple left alignment when
rotated of 90 degrees. This also suits the
diversification of layout and typography
which you would find on the internet. 2
Information Sourcing
55
A
R
internet
Y
T S 3
4
3 Page 44 - 45
metatext
Georgia, Regular, 136 pt, cap height aligned to the columns of the grid 4 Page 45
6
Verdana, Bold Italic, 36 pt,
rotated 0, 90, 0, 270,
content
metatext
Georgia, Regular, 12 pt,
5 metatext
aligned to columns 5 Page 56
aligned to boundary box 6 Page 56 Perpetua, Regular, 60 pt, centred in the boundary box
56
metatext
29
Expressive Typography — Fold out On page 37, to reinforce the element of interactivity of rotated text I have made use of a fold out page, of a slightly smaller size of the double of the page. * — *Oversight: The dimension of the fold out hasn’t been considered well enough, and a few millimiters of the inside margin had to be cut to make the fold out more easily openable.
Information Sourcing
revolutioned the way we source our information, they permit us to research from many different sources, and to have a wider choice of information. The internet is often proclamed as a promoter of democracy. The advent of digital media and the internet has been rather impactful on the whole of our cultural background, on the way we gather our information, and on how we perceive and interact with the world itself. It is doubtlessly a powerful tools of communication and of information passing. Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo! and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information.
36
30
The internet
On the other hand, the internet, apps and all these screen devices have
1 Page 37 Georgia, Regular, 60 pt / 72 pt, 90 rotated
allows a multilateral approach in researching information
1
31
ation, setting, and so forth.
Folio A Hollywood blockbuster can take a million person-hours to produce and only two hours to consume. But now, cheap and universal tools of creation (megapixel phone cameras, Photoshop, iMovie) are quickly reducing the effort needed to create moving images. To the utter bafflement of the
When technology shifts,
experts who confidently claimed that viewers would never rise from their reclining passivity, tens of millions of people have in recent years spent 38 39 uncountable hours making movies of their own design. Having a ready and reachable audience of potential millions helps, as does the choice of
it bends the culture
multiple modes in which to create. Because of new consumer gadgets, 2 Recto community training, peer encouragementGill andSans fiendishly clever software, Gill Sans MT Pro, Book, Small MT Pro, Book, Small the ease of10making video the ease10ofpt,writing. Capitals, pt, aligned left, now approachesCapitals, aligned right, ral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for placed just under boundary makes films, placed just under the boundary film is This is not howtheHollywood of course. A blockbuster 1 Verso
st, the ambiguous, the 500 yearsorange ago, orality was box;ornate colour and blue the subjective. Then, about box; colour
a gigantic creature custom-built by hand. Like a Siberian tiger, it demands our attention – but it is also very rare. In 2007, 600 feature films were central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the released in the United States, or about 1,200 hours of moving images. e of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the As a percentage of the hundreds of millions of hours of moving images
hrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing
Dashes
matics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled
produced annually today, 1,200 hours is tiny. It is a rounding error. We tend to think the tiger represents the animal kingdom, but in truth, entence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via use of dashes onlystatistical been made example in few cases, reporting a The grasshopper is ahas truer of for an example animal.in The handcrafted
iety a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic
rs), whose truth wasthe asarticle fixed by and finalKelly. as a book. In the West, we became people of the book. Kevin
Hollywood film won’t go away, but if we want to see the future of motion pictures, we need to study the swarming food chain below – YouTube,
nvention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display
indie films, TV serials and insect-scale lip-sync mashups – and not just the tiny apex of tigers. The bottom is where the action is, and where screen nter of the culture. We areonly* becoming of theare screen. The fluid fleeting symbols I have used Enpeople dashes which traditionally usedand in British typography. literacy originates. — the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On creen pull us away from An emerging set of is the nowEmmaking it easy to create digital *Oversight: On page 18cheap I didn’ttools change dash, more typical in
ology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to
reen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and
American typography, which was10 in billion the article by Kevin Kelly.on YouTube in video. There were more than views of video September. The most popular videos were watched as many times as jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book any blockbuster movie. Many are mashups of existing video material. y to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality. Most vernacular video makers start with the tools of Movie Maker or
nged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen
The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one; easier to listen to a song than to compose one; easier 20 to attend a play than to produce one. But movies in particular suffer from 32 this user asymmetry. The intensely collaborative work needed to coddle chemically treated film and paste together its strips into movies meant that
Underline
new search
The use of underline has only been made in few cases to indicate a link on a web page.
screen reading
Introduction Preface Guide to Symbols
1
Screen Reading Page 31 Becoming Screen Literate Georgia, Regular and Bold, in Reading 10 ptEye / 15 Movements pt Information Sourcing Underline: weight 0.596 pt, offsetSpatial 3 pt, solid Landmarks
hypertext hyper-
text-
word-forming element meaning "over, above, beyond, exceedingly, to excess," from Greek hyper (prep. and adv.) "over, beyond, overmuch, above measure," from PIE super- "over" (see super-)
late 14c., “wording of anything written,” from Old French texte, Old North French tixte (12c.), from Medieval Latin textus “the Scriptures, text, treatise,” in Late Latin “written account, content, characters used in a document,” from Latin textus “style or texture of a work,” literally “thing woven,” from pp. stem of texere “to weave,” from PIE root *tek“to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”
2 page 38
Georgia, Regular, 60 pt, Underline: weight 3 pt, offset 4 pt, solid
Symbols
Facebook A conversation with Anonima Impressori Strikethrough A conversation with Daniele Baschieri Strikethroughs have been frequently used as visual devices throughout the book. As explained in the Symbols section at the38start of the book, the blue strikethrough represents scanningskim reading on web pages.
text text
skimming
Page 11
pop up Georgia, Regular, 8 pt / 15 pt Strikethrough: weight 3 pt, link offset 2 pt, dashed
6 33
Other visual devices 1 Dashed Stroke (4 and 4), 1 pt
4 Vector drawn line, different pt
2 See page 33
sizes, start Bar, end SimpleWide,
3 Vector drawn rectangle.
linear gradient 180
Drop shadow: distance 3mm,
5 Vector drawn illustration
angle 44, X Offset -2.158 mm,
representing the tab of a web
Y Offset 2.084 mm, mode
processor
multiply, opacity 75%
Symbols scanning
1 text text
skimming
2 pop up
3
link
4
Information Sourcing
34
5
11
Imagery
2
3
1
2
1 Vector drawn illustrations 2 Gradient created on InDesign
1 Every image has been converted to 300 dpi and Greyscale, and
then made into halftones on
then coloured with a blue or
Photoshop, because of the
orange tint in InDesign.
risk of getting a solid spot colour when printing on the Risograph.
3
35
Colour As previously mentioned I have chosen to use blue and orange because they are complementary colours as are the book and the screen. For what I intended to represent as book content I used blue, while for the screen I used orange, also because the ink of the Risograph was very bright it reminded me of the luminosity of the screen. For some visual devices which I used on top of the text I inverted the colours in order not to overlay the same colour but also to create a visual connections between the two mediums represented.
Settings 2 Spot Colours, Separations on.
Blue S-2743
Orange S-4405E
36
Paper The paper used is a classical Book Wove, uncoated, used in three different weights for the inside pages, and the cover. The paper has been purchased from Arboreta Papers, Bristol. Woodland Wove
Woodland Wove
Woodland Wove
220 gsm
100 gsm
80 gsm
(cover)
(inside pages)
(first and last page, and fold out page)
37
Printing The process of printing on a Risograph printer has been fundamental to the completion of the general meaning of my book for many different reasons. I have chosen to print on a Risograph primarily inasmuch pre-screen printing technique, but yet creating very interesting results in terms of colours. At the same time, from a different perspective, the imprecision of the registration exemplifies the medium of the screen and its content, which is flexible, dynamic and unpredictable. In fact, the 5 copies I printed are all slightly different because of registration issues, but yet all powerful. Moreover, as explained in the Strategy, from a design point of view screenbased design and the printed book complete each other: the physicality of the book, the different weight paper stocks, the powerful colours of the risograph inks, give an added value to my initial screen design, reinforcing the prolific relationship that screen and print can hold. Finally the process of printing, which took about 15 hours over 3 days, informed the concept of fully appreciating the pleasure of reading and digesting information: whether you are using a book or a screen it requires devotion and time. — A printing problem I encountered, which I only realised when cutting the pages down to size, was that on one side the prints came out compressed. So for the inside pages which I printed onto A4 sheets, the width was right but the height was about 2.5 mm smaller then it was supposed to be; the opposite happened for cover and fold outs which were printed onto A3: right height and smaller width. Fortunately the compression didn’t visibly affect the design and there was enough bleed (10 mm) to solve the issue by binding the book and only cut down to bleed size (apart from the inside margin obviously) and then finally box-cutting it down with the industrial guillotine.
Black and White copy printed on hp LaserJet 4200tn Final book printed on Risograph GR3770
38
Finishing The finishings have all be hand-made apart from the final trimming with the guillotine. Because of registration problems I had to choose page by page which registration marks to follow. For the binding I used a reinforced perfect binding, following an online tutorial by Sage Reynolds. This consisted of: •
Inserting the pages in the book press together with 2 pieces of thick cardboard which helped with lining up the pages.
•
Scoring the pages at the spine with a cutter diagonally so that the paper absorbed better the glue.
•
Cutting with a saw 5 grooves of 1mm in order to insert sawn-in cords in the spine.
•
Applying a first layer of PVA.
•
Inserting the cords in the grooves.
•
Applying another layer of glue.
•
Putting a mull to the spine.
•
Let it dry.
•
Apply another layer of glue and stick the scored cover to it.
39
Content References Direct referencing — •
New York Times, 2008. Kelly, K. Becoming Screen Literate http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23wwlnfuture-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
•
Wikipedia
•
Landow, G. P. (2006). Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press
Research — Books •
Nielsen, J. (1995). Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann
•
Lupton, E. (2004). Thinking with Type: A critical guide for designers, writers, editors & students. New York: Princeton Architectural Press
Articles •
Eye Magazine, 2009. Murphy, S. The Form of the Book http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/the-form-of-thebook-4
•
Presseurope, 2012. Schirrmacher, F. THE PRESS IN EUROPE (3/5): Newspapers will not die in Silicon Valley http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/3180031newspapers-will-not-die-silicon-valley
•
Time, 2012. Szalavitz , M. Do E-Books Make It Harder to Remember What You Just Read? http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/14/do-e-books-impairmemory/
•
Time, 2011. Murphy Paul, A. Digital Literacy Will Never Replace The Traditional Kind http://ideas.time.com/2011/10/26/why-digital-literacy-willnever-replace-the-traditional-kind/
•
Time, 2011. Murphy Paul, A. In Praise of Tinkering http://ideas.time.com/2011/10/19/in-praise-of-tinkering-2/
•
The Guardian, 2010. Kingsley, P. The Art of Slow Reading http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/15/slow-reading
Websites • 40
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/