sssh! this is a working library.

Macro- versus microtypography:

While macrotypography – the typographic layout – is concerned with the format of the printed matter, with the size and position of the columns of text and illustrations, with the organization of the hierarchy of headings, subheadings and captions, detail typography is concerned with the individual components – letters, letterspacing, words, wordspacing, lines and linespacing, columns of text. These are the components that graphic or typographic designers like to neglect, as they fall outside the area that is normally regarded as ‘creative.’ Hochuli, Detail in typography (7)

A well-designed text will seem weightless after a time; the initial feel of the book fades away as the mind becomes engrossed in the words. Any shiver in the page – a bad break, a too-long measure, a space too wide or narrow – and the book will press into the reader’s hand and tug at the lids of her eyes. It takes a designer who is also a reader to be be attentive to the ways by which the page becomes a burden to the words.

Criticism for the new grotesques:

Both Univers and Helvetica came in for some criticism from Karl Gerstner: as being too smooth and producing too even a colour. If this was a ‘graphic’ advantage, it was not a ‘functional’ one: ‘what has ocular clarity may appear monotonous when read’. Kinross, Modern Typography (155)

This is an irrelevant criticism when addressed towards display faces, but a book face that doesn’t serve the reader is a failure. Adrian Shaughnessy’s book (How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul) is beautifully set in Akzidenz Grotesk, but fuck if my eyes weren’t bleeding while I read it.

On the “science” of typography (regarding the design of Adrian Frutiger’s Univers):

If all this gave off an air of scientificity, attractive to typographers interested in possibilities of logically determined design, the considerable sophistications of Univers depended on old-fashioned drawing skills and patient small adjustments: it was an exemplary product of the Swiss craft tradition. Though it anticipated the possibilities of computer-aided typeface design, this was done quite innocently. Kinross, Modern Typography (154)

It’s a common fallacy to observe the trappings of science in a work or text and assume that the process of science lies underneath. Similarly, many people read Pynchon’s novels and assume a familiarity with physics far beyond what he actually possesses (his physics education didn’t persist past his sophomore year); in the preface to Slow Learner, he confesses:

For a while all I worried about was that I’d set things up in terms of temperature and not energy. As I read more about the subject later, I came to see that this had not been such a bad tactic. But do not underestimate the shallowness of my understanding. For instance, I chose 37 degrees Fahrenheit for an equilibrium point because 37 degrees Celsius is the temperature of the human body. Cute, huh? Pynchon, Slow Learner (13)

It’s the equivalent of a literary or artistic viceroy, in which the appearance of a scientific justification is enough to suggest the existence of the real thing.

Tschichold arguing against Swiss design:

He suggested that a preoccupation with the arrangement of blocks of text led to the reduction of words to mere colour and a denial of their meaning. … In a series of objections to the cult of sanserif, he asserted that it was not the duty of letterforms to correspond to the spirit of the age, nor to its newest material products (skyscrapers or car bodies); rather ‘typography must be itself. It must be adapted to our eyes, and to their well-being.’ Kinross, Modern Typography (152)

Much lamentable book design is a result of disregard for the well-being of our eyes.

An interesting description of the way in which modern typography was adopted (and adapted) in America:

Designers were to become as Toscanini to the Beethoven of the writer, arranging and re-scoring and inevitably leaving very evident signs of their involvement, for example in the complete integration of text and image. This was an opposite from the traditionalist ideals of invisibility and unity of materials. … In the USA, modern typography now had no independent existence; it had been dissolved into something larger and more worldly. ‘The vastly expanded resource available to the book designer indicate a fundamental change in his function. He is essentially an art director …’ Kinross, Modern Typography (134)

I wonder also if this modernizing and essentially authorial approach to book design described herein was a reflection of the very American attitude of colonizing new territory. American artists are often loathe to accept the boundaries of the discipline as they are presented to them; that typographers should be no different is no surprise.

Sandberg’s typography suggested a way out of the modernist impasse of perfect technique. Conditioned at first by sheer material scarcity, his typography seized the opportunities offered by ordinary materials: characteristically, paper or board normally reserved for wrapping or packaging. Roughness and chance were prime qualities of his work, … but Sandberg also stuck to DIN formats and to a limited and mundane selection of typefaces. He was also an early user of text set with equal word-spaces (unjustified). This mode of setting synthesized the two aspects: open to exact specification and thus more rational than the approximations of justified setting; but also ‘ragged’ and informal in appearance. Sandberg’s was a typography of open, democratic dialogue, and a continuation of the spirit of resistance into the post-war world. Kinross, Modern Typography (125)

On the question of what is literature:

John M. Ellis has argued that the term ‘literature’ operates rather like the word ‘weed’: weeds are not particular kinds of plant, but just any kind of plant which for some reason or another a gardener does not want around. Perhaps ‘literature’ means something like the opposite: any kind of writing which for some reason or another somebody values highly. Eagleton, Literary Theory (8)

Similarly:

New typography thus resisted the idea that literature should enjoy a separate, special status: it was another design problem. And perhaps more interesting than ‘literature’ for new typographers were industrial catalogues and other texts with complex problems of ordering and configuration to be resolved. Kinross, Modern Typography (117)

Of course, what you value reveals a lot about who you are – and what you want of the world around you.

Another lovely example of etymology used well:

But more importantly, this work is an essay in that it ‘essays’ or ‘attempts’. This is perhaps better conveyed by the German word ‘ein Versuch’: an essay, but, in its primary meaning, an ‘attempt’ or ‘experiment’. What is attempted here is a shift of orientation for the history of typography, and so also for it’s practice. Kinross, Modern Typography (8)

It’s a feature of the modern (or postmodern, depending on how you perceive the boundaries) to be self-conscious about your intellectual endeavors, in part because the act of declaring anything to be “true” becomes precarious, but also because the process becomes just as interesting – if not more so – than the end result.

Printing becomes modern with the spread of knowledge about printing itself: with the published descriptions of its practices; with the classification of its materials and processes; with the co-ordination of dimensions of materials, enabling their exchange and better conjunction; with the establishment of a record of its history. These things, which one begins to see in the late seventeenth century in (especially) England and France, are realizations of the implications of printing to discuss that process itself. Kinross, Modern Typography (16)

A self-conscious experiment

Any intellectual endeavor is bound to be more interesting if it is unsure of itself. A supremely confident effort will only reach as far as necessary to confirm its assumptions; it will go no further, and it will not question its reasons for existing. By contrast, an insecure process will act out its doubt by exploring, looking for the ways in which it may prove to be incorrect or incomplete or even irrelevant. Instead of searching for tautologies that prove its own effectiveness, it will seek out every plausible way to be discredited and dissect them, one by one.

It’s an exercise in discomfort, but one which can be fruitful if you’re persistent.

I was intentionally abstract about the purpose and methods at work on this site when I started it, knowing that if I prescribed a path from the beginning it would be easier but less engaging. Now, a little more than a month later, some of that purpose is coming into relief – a few edges of a path that is still being carved. This act of tracking and responding to books – collecting the texts that strike me as holding some truth – is an attempt to sketch out the foundations of a personal critical approach, the first step of which is to define the shape of my own beliefs; from there, I can better explore and question them.

The critical approach questions: and it questions its own assumptions as part of a refusal to take anything unquestioned. There are no beliefs – not of a golden age, nor of transparent communication – that can stand free of these questions and doubts. In this way the critical approach will always live on, never quite satisfied. It is coloured by dissatisfaction, even melancholy: it lives in the contexts with which it finds itself, but questions the terms of those contexts and is often unhappy with them. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (361)

So, the process I now find myself involved in is one of definition (seeking out the source of my beliefs in the books I’ve read and reread) and simultaneous questioning (following these beliefs from book to book to see if they become clearer or merely dilute, turning them inside out as they pass through different writers) all the while paying attention to the language itself, cognizant (and accepting) of my prejudice for ideas that are articulated with beautiful prose.

I am also beginning to think more clearly about the relationship between design and criticism, whether it be of a criticism that itself addresses design, or of a critical approach that is communicated through design. When developing any critical method, you must consider why it needs to exist in the first place: what are we to learn from it? How will it reshape what we already know (or think we know)? Who does it benefit?

The reproduction and distribution of text is part of the life-blood of social-critical dialogue. The argument for openness and clarity in typography is made, most importantly, for this reason. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (362)

This part of the path is still woody and overgrown, but I can just make out an opening ahead: if typography is the means by which criticism is distributed, then criticism owes much of its existence to typography. And typography – when executed in such a way as to serve the text and not compete with it – is a participant in that criticism. It is the parameters of that participation that I am keenly interested in.

That, it seems, is the direction I’m headed; and I’m happy to say, I don’t know where I’ll be when I get there.

Regarding the “new” typography:

First, and so obvious that one sometimes neglects to mention it: the materials of printing played a part. Red has been the traditional second colour of printing since Gutenberg.…In the context of socialist revolution, it could take on new meanings. Similarly, ‘bars’ had been familiar to printers since at least the early nineteenth century. Now they were seen freshly, through constructivist spectacles, as elemental forms. Much of the energy of Bauhaus and modernist typography comes from this process of old or already available materials being seen in a new light. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (250)

Which is, of course, what creativity is all about: an adjustment to one’s perception, a new context for an existing observation. If creativity demanded that we bring into existence that which is completely foreign, the end result would be so unfathomable it would spill over the limits of our perception. An original design (or text) must have enough of the old and familiar within it for us to recognize its originality.

For designing is not creation out of nothing (as in the idea of the genius-artist, conjuring unexplainable beauties from a void). Rather it is a matter of working, usually with given materials, constrained by many interconnected and often pressing factors. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (314)

On the origins of the designer:

The familiar account, which I think has much truth in it, is that out of the Arts & Crafts rebellion emerged the figure that we call the designer – the typographic designer, the book designer. This person attempted to order the processes of production in printing, and attempted to reinfuse the aesthetic element, the dimension of material and visual surplus – pleasure – which printers could no longer provide as an inbuilt part of what they were printing. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (187)

Refreshing to hear someone admit that design is first and foremost about pleasure, a point that is easy to lose sight of in the corporate environment.

A reminder about the collaboration required to produce a beautiful book:

Within the best book competition, we need an award for good editing. And it would be interesting to test the thesis that good design is only possible with books of substance, their material intelligently sorted out. The only fetishistic books would then be books that are actually about fetishism. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (213)

I don’t need a test to prove this; a book design can be attractive regardless of the substance of the text, but it can’t be beautiful. A beautiful design occurs at the intersection of great design and great writing.

Typographic disorder inevitably follows from disorder in construction; and, equally, typography by itself (if it could be ‘by itself’) cannot be effective with bad copy. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (228)

Kinross on Tschichold’s turn towards the traditional:

This astonishing change came to dog Tschichold’s career. When, in 1946, he first explained it publicly (in a highly-charged exchange with Max Bill), his reasons were of two kinds: that his modern typography had been authoritarian and militaristic and so imbued with the spirit that also drove German National-Socialism; and that modernism in typography was limited to publicity work (as opposed to book design), could not properly articulate content, could be practised only by an uninitiated élite. These arguments – a tangle of true perceptions and ingenuous special pleading – inform what may be the only decent attempt at postmodernism in typography, done for the most serious moral-political reasons. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (175)

Yet today much book design has gone the way of “publicity” work, has relinquished the love affair it had with texts. Which is not to say there aren’t any beautifully designed books being published, but they are increasingly difficult to find. Serious readers are forced to contend with incompetently designed and poorly composed texts if they are to read at all.

On not judging a book by its cover:

For a typographer, reading books can be difficult. If the page numbers are clumsily positioned, then the story has to be very good – to soak up the constant irritation of this mishandled detail. There is a special pleasure that comes with a book that is good in both content and typography. And I think you can often judge a book by the space between its lines. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (184)

On the democracy of letters:

Even in a largely secular community, we still hesitate to set ‘god’ (a concept that can be disbelieved) and not ‘God’ (an undisputed primary being). Kinross, Unjustified Texts (133)

I have always written “god” and not “God” (which reveals something about my beliefs), and yet I still feel that hesitation that Kinross speaks of, knowing it runs contrary to the prevailing typographic/ideological currents and that even a small decision in typesetting can cause offense:

An editorial statement in the special issue [of Typographische Mitteilungen] concluded: ‘write small! no letters with powdered wigs and class-coronets / democracy in orthography too!’ So lowercase was adopted by people who felt that egalitarian principles should extend to letters. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (139)

It’s a lovely image to consider: the lowercase letterforms demanding a democratically arranged constitution (read: alphabet), fighting off the tyranny of the capitals.

I am evidently in good company when it comes to being self-conscious about metaphor:

Despite the seemingly fortuitous, purely English-language nature of the connection between type ‘faces’ and human ones it is hard to resist some attempt to follow the implied analogy. It might be that a typeface is made up of elements (its letters or characters) which are like the parts of a human visage: ears, eyes, nose, mouth and perhaps finer sub-divisions. The parts have their own expected formal properties: we know what a mouth is, and – taking an enormous leap into the particular – we know what her mouth is like. And, so the analogy would go, we know what a ‘g’ is like and – again jumping to the particular – we know what a Baskerville ‘g’ is like. This analogy could be pushed a little further. The parts, though formally different, should fit together: the ‘g’ should look as though it belongs with every other character; her mouth sorts with every element of her face, becoming part of a whole that is unique (thus the photograph on her passport, or in her lover’s wallet). At this point, one introduces ideas of value and perhaps beauty. Do some mouths fit their faces better than others?…At this level of direct comparison the analogy soon becomes absurd.…Anthropomorphism has its uses and its pleasures, but has severe limits too: letters are made by human beings, but are not human outgrowths. Kinross, Unjustified Texts (116)

No analogy holds when followed to the ends of the earth; it’s a tool whose power lies in suggestion – a fleeting kiss instead of a lifelong partnership.