type museum
davis...@gmail.com
museum. Any suggestions as far as things to include or font
exhibitions of interest?
Dick Margulis
Is this a real project? That is, is something actually going to be
constructed? Is there a client? Or is this a design project for a class,
with some sort of rendering being the final deliverable?
In the former case, tell us more about what the client has charged you
with: Is the focus the historical development of letterforms or the
here-and-now availability of such a wide range? Is the interest
primarily in book texts or in advertising and commerce? Print or
electronic media?
In the latter case, is your main focus on traffic flow and museum
design, and you just need a few ideas for sample exhibits to throw up on
the walls, or is you main focus on the curatorial aspects of exhibit design?
Armadillo
> museum. Any suggestions as far as things to include or font
> exhibitions of interest?
Type is for communication and cannot live by itself. If the exhibition is just about character forms and typesetting technology it would be boring even for a type nerd like me.
Development of type as well as printing technology always has a connection to politics, culture, etc. so historical connection is vital.
By the way, get the terminology right. Font for example is a container which usually includes a typeface. It can be a box full of metal type or it can be a computer file but it is NOT a design.
Jukka
JC Dill
> By the way, get the terminology right. Font for example is a
> container which usually includes a typeface.
That certainly explains why this group is called comp.typeface.
jc
Character
Well, to pick a nit or two, most of the discussions here really talk
about computer FILES, which are the contemporary containers for
typefaces.
Of course there has been a reversal of sorts (pun intended) in that a
single typeface used to require many physically unique fonts, while
today a single font file contains an almost infinite variety of sizes.
- Character
timtype
wrote:
> I'm an interior architecture grad student designing a typeface
> museum. Any suggestions as far as things to include or font
> exhibitions of interest?
Firstly a very interesting and timely project. Did you think this one
up or has your cohort all been set this as a project and if so
congratulate your tutor. We would be very interested to see the
results of your project.
One of the key problems in saving the worlds best Type Museum from
closure and archiving is a clear plan for its need, for a new home and
what it might cost to achieve, underpinned by a clear vision and
articulation of what it will offer, why its important and to whom.
I am the convenor of the type museum society trying to save the
enormous and unique Type Museum collections in London and get them
made available again to student, communication professionals and the
public. see http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/typemuseum/
You might like to browse our campaign forums for observations on the
importance of this project.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/TypeMuseumSociety
and some background documents at
http://typemuseumsociety.pbwiki.com/ (especially the reading list and
"Type Museum Prospects" document)
and see James Mosley's authorative blog page on "The materials of
typefounding"
http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/01/materials-of-typefounding.html
There has yet to be a full implementation anywhere in the world, or
online, of a Museum of Communication which presents the history and
developement, art craft science and technology of Mankinds principal
innovation ie Language, Communication and Publishing and its impacts
on civilisation.
Type was preceded by the story of languages, scripts, writing and
calligraphy, symbols and signage (linguistics and semiology). Type is
a mystery unless you can clearly present this preceding material. How
else can you explain choosing an appropriate typeface by reference to
tone of voice, dialect, historical cultural and geographical context.
Type was one of the key breakthroughs in communication and represented
a revolution or step change particularly in literacy and knowledge and
represents a 1/2 millenium epoch in the story. Digital communications
and the internet is a comparable shift which we are just beginning to
see presaging a new renaissance in human creativity and productivity.
This is one seemless story. Type (the forms of communication of
visible language) underlies a large part of current developments in
communication.
Read for instance: Simon LOXLEY's Type: The secret history of
lettering, and Richard SOUTHALL's Printer's type in the twentieth
century: Manufacturing and design methods.
What has often been lost, as tons of letterpress technology has been
skipped (often along with it's history and business models and
methods): is the continuing living legacy handed down through the work
of Donald Knuth's Metafont project, Adobe's PostScript technology and
Apple's respect for design and typography in its systems (not just the
exemplary packaging). Apple and Adobe standardised the point as 1/72nd
of an inch. (Even for fans of the Japanese "q" (1/4 of a mm). Even
Microsoft has had a positive role in commisioning high quality
typography and attempting to maintain quality within the limitaions of
current display technologies - Ink on paper is still astonishingly
high resolution, long lasting and versatile.
But this legacy is alive and well - if not understood and fully
utilised, in everyone's desktop, laptop and even web browser.
One project idea could be a "tron/csi" like sequence diving into the
"matrix" to show the rich traces, origins, meanings, in the history
contained in the typeface files residing in everyones fonts folders.
(On the way making a history of the fonts who owns them, who designed
them, what models they were based on, what have been their most famous/
frequent uses etc why where they chosen?)
If you want to see the most important of what is publicly on show
visit:
Gutenburg Museum Mainz, The Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, The
Hamilton Wood Type Museum in USA, St Brides Library in London. Fight
to get to see inside the currently closed Type Museum - make a
personal approach as a serious researcher with institutional backing!
Part of the problem in making a breakthrough in this area has been the
previous approach shown in many Museums of simply nostalgic
preservation of craft traditions which appear to have been superceded
my a series of technological changes in type production. Old tradition
versus modernity binary view.
What has often been missed is that the fastest way for each new
generation of designers and communicators to grasp the essentials for
new creative work is to be able to gain a synoptic overview of the
stages in types evolution and the way in which each period or method
of production has left discernable traces in the designs and useage of
type that has become part of the foundation and currency of our rich
visual culture. None of this past history is obsolete or redundant on
the contrary it gives us a greater range of articulation and a
richness of choice to communicate with increasing power and subtelty
across languages and traditions.
Some suggested stages to walk your visitors through:
Manuscript Book production and calligraphy and scripts for records and
communication. (A scriptorum "a la" "The Name of The Rose" or one of
the forgotten 800 monastic libraries destroyed by Henry VIII)
Hand founding and hand composition of metal type for letterpress (eg
Gutenburg/Plantin Moretus)
Matrix founding and Machine composition for book and newspaper
production and commercial use worldwide and in all languages. (The
Type Museum: Stephenson Blake, Monotype, DeLittle etc)
Wood Type for display and advertising typography (basically anything
highly decorated and bigger than 1" before filmsetting) (Hamilton Type
Museum, DeLittle Collection - see Rob Roy KELLY's American Wood Type)
Film and photoset type developments: (See SOUTHALL and for instance
Christopher BURKE's recent "Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and the
New Typography")
Digital typesetting and Desktop Publishing. Xerox, Adobe, Apple,
Linotype, Microsoft, with Aldus, PostScipt, Pagemaker, Quark,
Fontographer, OpenType etc
Web typography and digital publishing - "what's in your .pdf"?
OpenFont technology(60,000 character limits in a fontfile rather than
256), and CSS stylesheets and XML XHTML (formal process separation of
design and style decisions from data (as has been done in the
publishing industry manually and by division of labour for ever - few
authors were ever their own scribes!) and online translation services
provides the technical and organisational basis for a new generations
of linguistically and culturally "skinned" online documentation that
can be viewed by future generations looking at a single information
source - but in their own mother tongue/language/familiar letterforms.
This holds out the possibility of bringing down the walls of
linguistic bariers which have only ever been attempted before at huge
cost ath the UN HQ and in the EC political bureaucracy.
PS in any discussions please can you ask for support for the future of
the London Type Museum's collections - which need a new home.
PPS We once pitched for inclusion in the Battersea Power Station
development which could have been a dream home - looking for around
60,000 sq ft on four floors. cf. current Type Museum 16,000 sq ft with
much of the collections packed on storage racks in its vaults and very
little exhibition space.
PPPS Line up sponsorship/endowments from the digital corporations who
have profited from riding the crest of this history and whose
technologies have appeared to make their ancestors redundant - they
all know the debt they owe to the historical material - let them help
preserve it and make it available as an inspiration to the next
generation. (see above)
Best wishes & good luck
and keep us posted how your project goes!
Tim Martin