Re: Does the Crystal Goblet apply?

On Wed, 2014-01-01 at 19:58 +0000, Tony Graham wrote:
> I received a copy of the 1937 pamphlet of "Printing Should Be
> Invisible" by Beatrice Warde [1] yesterday.  I got it to see how well
> it lived up to the ideals of its text.  Based on the title alone, it
> should have been 12 blank pages.
Hah! And a wineglass should be empty? I don't think that's the right
idea :-)

>   Based on what is says in the text, I
> shouldn't be able to remember anything about the formatting, only the
> words, but the placement of the page numbers struck me as odd on first
> reading (though I've since come up with a rationalisation for their
> position). 

Does your copy have the original formatting? The essay was widely
reprinted. I don't remember where the page numbers were now, it's been
too long :)

> So what?  I don't think that we should recast the 'CG' in 'PPL CG' as
> 'Crystal Gobletiers', but to what extent should we be about the
> practice of typography rather than be just about the mechanics of
> making it possible to practice typography?  Should be we aware of the
> three types of window that Warde describes?
> 
>    The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the
>    reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author's
>    words.

It's useful to understand how typography fits in to graphic design, and
how a good design takes the content and intent of the text into account.

But for my part i don't see a W3C CG being a useful Style Police
Agency :-)

Emigre Magazine issue 30 (Cult of the Ugly) is a good read in the same
vein, ranting about deconstruction in graphic design; I've used
(misused) the term mannerist to refer to graphic design that wants to be
noticed, like the stained glass window, wants you to see how the design
was put together and to think about it - Carson's designes for Ray Gun
Magazine were controversial examples. Ray Gun style had baselines at
slight angles and overlapping text, in places to the point where no-one
could read a paragraph, it was just a solid lump of black representing
the teen angst of the reader.

Any book typographer ought to strive to be able to format text so that
the formatting is invisible, I think, at the very least to understand
how the design works so they can then do something different.

Any computer system for serious typography needs to support those
designs, which seems to me to be where a CG does come into play.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml

Received on Wednesday, 1 January 2014 21:42:33 UTC