Reading Responses 1

[Victoriya Baskin]

The Crystal Goblet by Beatrice Ward stresses that typography should be
invisible. She mainly talks about typography in book printing. Good
typography should not distract the reader from the text, but enhance
the image they produce in their minds. Just like a crystal goblet
enhances the color, taste, smell of a wine. Simplicity is key. The
focus should be on the text, or the wine (in this metaphor), therefore
there is no need to skew away from those things with added
embellishments. You would not want somebody to lose interest in what
they are reading (or drinking) simply because there is too much going
on.


The Enlightenment Origins by Kinross discusses the history of
typography as well as the difference between printers and
typographers. Anybody can type something up and print it, but a
typographer focuses on the details. Each word beautifully presented in
order for it to flow with the preceding word. The article also
discusses systems for typographic measurement. Before Moxton "there
was no agreement among typefounders on standard sizes for printing
type". Its crazy how we take things for granted, it seems like if you
need to create something these days, you pop the computer open, click
on a few predetermined functions, any you already have something on a
page. But somebody had to come up with these options, the fonts, the
sizes, the computer.......everything. i guess it takes an article like
this to actually make me think about the origins of these things as
well as the people that made them.