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blatherskiteAfter finishing today's edit, my last professional responsibility of the year will be to complete a review of a book for Technical Communication: Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field (Helen Armstrong, Editor).
Interesting stuff, with an occasional outright gem, such as The crystal goblet, or why printing should be invisible, a 1930 essay by Beatrice Warde that largely captures how I feel about typography. A few telling quotes:
When I give a talk about editing, that's one of the things I always emphasize: that it's a miracle we can translate the squishy bits between my ears into something the squishy bits between your ears can comprehend. Editors make the process a little less painful than it sounds.
Warde goes on to build and elaborate upon a brilliant metaphor, the crystal goblet of the title:
Eloquent enough to require no further comment, other than to note that the same logic applies to words: if the author draws attention to the words and away from "that landscape" in their mind, they've failed as a writer.
Interesting stuff, with an occasional outright gem, such as The crystal goblet, or why printing should be invisible, a 1930 essay by Beatrice Warde that largely captures how I feel about typography. A few telling quotes:
"There is only one thing in the world that is capable of stirring and altering men's minds to the same extent [as wine], and that is the coherent expression of thought. That' s man's chief miracle, unique to man. There is no 'explanation' whatever of the fact that I can make arbitrary sounds that will lead a total stranger to think my own thoughts. It is sheer magic that I should be able to hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with an unknown person halfway across the world. Talking, broadcasting, writing, and printing are all quite literally forms of thought transference, and it is this ability and eagerness to transfer and receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for human civilization."
When I give a talk about editing, that's one of the things I always emphasize: that it's a miracle we can translate the squishy bits between my ears into something the squishy bits between your ears can comprehend. Editors make the process a little less painful than it sounds.
Warde goes on to build and elaborate upon a brilliant metaphor, the crystal goblet of the title:
Let me start my specific conclusions with book typography, because that contains all the fundamentals... The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the reader inside the room and that landscape that is the author's words. He may put up a stained-glass window of marvelous beauty, but a failure as a widow; that is, he may use some rich superb type like text Gothic that is something to be looked at, not through. Or he may work in what I call 'transparent'' or 'invisible' typography. I have a book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of Pairs. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is called 'fine printing' today, in that you are at least conscious that there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. That is not objectionable, because of a very important fact that has to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. This is that the mental eye focuses through type and not upon it. The type that, through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of 'color', gets in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type.
Eloquent enough to require no further comment, other than to note that the same logic applies to words: if the author draws attention to the words and away from "that landscape" in their mind, they've failed as a writer.