Reading Responses

[May Meyers]

Response to The Crystal Goblet

In The Crystal Goblet, Beatrice Ward uses the wineglass metaphor to
emphasize how modernist typography is simply a vehicle, transporting a
concept from the mind of the designer to that of the viewer. Type
should convey content, as opposed to being used for purely aesthetic
reasons; “not ‘How should it look?’ but ‘What must it do?’” Ward
further supports this theory with a second metaphor, that of the
public speaker who may be more audible by his volume but less
successful in his transmission of ideas than someone with a less
obtrusive speaking voice. She discusses book typography and how we
can lose focus if type isn’t set with comfortable spacing between
letters and lines, proper margins and appropriately “invisible”
typefaces. She claims that such errors are even more pronounced in
advertising, where the need for a clear, succinct message to the
viewer should determine the space allowed for type.
Reading Ward’s article, I found myself wishing I’d read it a long time
ago; it probably could have saved me from some personal typographic
failures, due to a preference for decorative typefaces that I always
felt were more expressive of myself as an artist. As a visual person
(most of us are) I was drawn to typefaces that looked more like
images. I found simpler typefaces boring and harder to work with,
another reason I used to avoid them. The Crystal Goblet helped me to
view type differently, which takes away a lot of the pressure I felt
to make type an art piece.
Good type (though often visually simplistic to the artist who wants to
be unique or self expressive) is successful because it is quiet enough
to give center stage to the idea it is intended to express.

Response to Enlightenment Origins

Robin Kinross’ Enlightenment Origins begins by differentiating between
“printing” and “typography” with the original definition of a
typographer, someone proficient in all aspects and direction of the
printing process from start to finish (though early so called
“printers” were often involved in more than just the physical printing
of type). She refers to Moxon’s Mechanik exercises, which introduced
some history of printing, providing a background of the trade for
printers in addition to being a hands-on guide. As in Ward’s article,
the word modernity is used to describe typography that conveys an
impulse or idea without style overbearing rationality. Kinross
compares Moxon’s work-based writings to the later-published printing
manual by Fertel which focused largely on book printing and text
organization. Enlightenment Origins describes the origin of point
systems developed by Fournier. Despite completing only two of his
proposed four typography manuals before his death, Fournier’s work
contributed to the development of rational modern typography. The
current meaning of the term “modern” in the English language is
explained; the word has come to be used as a way of categorizing type
designs, based on the stroke, serifs and stress of the letterforms.
Developments in the engraving process also factored into the evolution
of modern type due to more accuracy in printing and smoother paper
which resulted in thinner strokes. Fournier’s work was furthered by
Didot, who adopted his point system and modified it to the standard
French measurement system of the time. Despite later changes in the
United States, Didot’s revisions stood the test of time outside of the
English-speaking world. Didot’s work was challenged later on by the
French printer Sobry. Type founder Gille had his students compare
Didot’s characters with the more traditional characters of Garamond.
Sobry commended Gille’s experiment and revealed that the students had
found the Garamond characters considerably more legible from a greater
distance, and were therefore more successful as a rationality-based
typeface with a forward thinking focus on function rather than style.
While I appreciated the historical background on modern typography and
comparing the ideas presented in Enlightenment Origins to those in The
Crystal Goblet, I found Kinross much more difficult to digest and had
to reread several parts in order to understand them. Essentially, the
main point of both articles was the same (and I completely agree with
type as a vehicle rather than a visual), but I felt Ward’s was much
more relatable. Terms in Enlightenment Origins were a bit more vague
and hard to follow.