Tools, techniques, and innovation (in typographic design)

A lecture on the relationship of tools and technique in type- and typographic design.

Transcript

1. Tools, techniques, 
 and innovation 
 (in typographic design) ! Gerry Leonidas
2. What is easier to talk about, 
 or sounds more fascinating, 
 or appears obvious, may not be the most 
 useful thing to consider.
3. “Doing design” is three discreet aspects: > how people think about stuff, > how they make decisions, > and how they make that stuff.
4. Some ideas from yesterday’s talks: > loss of (or emphasis on) materiality 
 (via, not only, Richard Hollis’ “physicality 
 of graphic design”) > imposed frameworks of interpretation
 (via the tyranny of Excel’s matrix)
5. > the “designers, learn to code” mantra > tension between form-making
 and encoding > the overlapping roles of people > design as a process to create meaning 
 and enable understanding
6. These are all aspects of the same thing. ! Like Berger’s “Ways of seeing”, 
 we want to make making visible.
7. Four routes into this: 1. effects of dematerialisation* 2. language of describing and specifying 3. tension between models and encodings and… * not “immaterial”, because the physical paradigms survive
8. (the elephant in the room) 4. the space for innovation and invention
9. An example:
10. Typecon 2013, Portland ! Kevin Larson & Matthew Carter report 
 on reading tests comparing Sitka with Georgia, Swift, and Paperback
11. Sitka looks like this Georgia looks like this Swift looks like this (Paperback does not look like this)
12. “We were not able to find 
 any statistically significant 
 difference between them” ! ! Which means that…
13. …at a line- and paragraph level, ! Well-designed typefaces are not
 distinguished by performance

14. ! ! but by identity and association, 
 which are extrinsic to the “visible”
 encoding of the design.
15. Therefore, the key question is: ! “Is this typeface well designed?”
16. Or, better: ! “How can we talk about the design of 
 typefaces in a way that helps people
 make more well-designed typefaces?”
17. This is one of the key challenges 
 in teaching typeface design. ! ! ! And most common in a type crit, like…
18. type crit on the MATD wall, image by Ben Mitchell
19. [the objective is:] to help the student become conscious
 of how they absorb influences and 
 make decisions, through the narrow 
 medium of typefaces
20. This is more difficult when our ways 
 of talking about typefaces are unfamiliar 
 to the designers, like in the…
21. Type crit in ATypI Amsterdam image from porchez.com
22. Here, the objective is: To give feedback 
 > without imposing your style or taste,
 > equally across projects, and
 > consistently across sessions.
23. ! ! ! ! So here are some pointers 
 for typeface reviews:
24. Pointers for typeface reviews (1/3): > fit of typeset text within the brief > key dimensions within the body > stroke thickness range > balance of key strokes and space 
 within and between letters
25. Pointers for typeface reviews (2/3): > stroke modulation > in/out stroke recipes > alignments in H and V axes > transitions between letter elements
26. Pointers for typeface reviews (3/3): > relating of inner and outer strokes > letter shapes within key patterns > integration of exceptions
27. ! No part of this discussion needs 
 to rely on language derived from
 the technology of type-making.
28. Ways of looking at typographic design: 1. objectives 2. tools 3. language 4. evidence
29. ! 1. through the way a brief are expressed 2. through the means of realising the brief 3. through our discussions with peers 4. through the records that connect the
 results to other acts of designing
30. 1. objectives !
31. [an axiom:] Each new technology answers the 
 problems of the one it replaces
32. ! Each new technology answers the 
 problems of the one it replaces so, what we want is expressed in the 
 parameters of the older environment
33. The initial brief here is: “make me something that looks close 
 enough to a book on a small screen” (and not: “what is the act of reading 
 on a portable digital device?” ) [next slide]
35. The initial brief here is: “make me something that looks close 
 enough to a desktop pasteboard” (and not: “what decisions does the act 
 of document composition involve?” ) [next slide]
37. The initial brief here is: “make me something that looks close 
 enough to a familiar word processor” (and not: “how do we enable text 
 composition for an online platform?” ) [next slide]
39. ! How many user-cycles does it take 
 for new uses to be imagined? ! and the use of a technology to 
 migrate to native paradigms?
40. [next slide example] Typecast makes text hierarchies
 visible during authoring
42. [next slide example] Kindle’s X-Ray indexes and 
 cross-references the text you 
 are reading
44. [next slide example] Readmill shows shared highlights 
 and enables local comments
46. [next slide example] Medium, Quartz, and the Guardian 
 allow comments at a paragraph level
49. 2. tools !
50. ! What is the impact of type-making 
 and typesetting technologies on
 decisions about typography and 
 the forms of letters?
51. [next slide example: on our way of 
 thinking about things] Ikarus, FontStudio, Fontographer, 
 Glyphs, Robofont, FontForge: 
 what is the best way to represent
 a character complement?
53. [next slide comment] Given how many of these glyphs are 
 derivatives (components or automatically
 generated), does this arrangement mislead 
 as to the design problems in the typeface?
55. Which design decisions (or the setup 
 to make decisions) can be automated?
56. In other words: 
 To what degree, if at all, are meaningful 
 decisions (the ones that matter for users) 
 possible to systematise?
57. [next slide example] Accents that are consistent within 
 a typeface may take very different forms
 across typefaces. What is topologically “correct”
58. across letters, within a typeface, and across typefaces within a letter: àààà áááá ââââ åååå èèèè éééé êêêê ěěěě
59. [previous slide example] What is topologically “correct” and 
 well-encoded in its outlines, may be 
 stylistically inappropriate, or even 
 culturally wrong.
60. ! Decisions on shapes and space 
 can always be “well-formed” technically.

61. ! Decisions on shapes and space 
 can always be “well-formed” technically.
 
 They are good or bad, appropriate or not, 
 for a specific context only.
62. 3. language !
63. [next slide comment] A 1952 drawing for a Linotype Metro Black 
 letter: a snapshot at the end of a series of
 design decisions, that on its own tells us 
 little about the qualities of the design.
65. ! Is the definition of shapes and the specification of behaviour enough?
66. [next slide comment] Here’s a proof of a –redacted– typeface, 
 with just one set of comments surrounding 
 the letters: We can learn more from these 
 comments than any “production-ready” encodings for making the typeface.
68. [next slide comment] But how well does our “niche” language 
 support design decisions? Frank Chimero’s example from a recent 
 blog post is telling.
69. Frank Chimero: 
 code as temporary substitute for language ! frankchimero.com / what-screens-want
72. [next slide comment] This reminded me of Ewan Clayton’s 
 descriptions of writing motions to the 
 MATD students, a couple of weeks
 earlier:
73. Ewan Clayton !
74. Ewan Clayton using 
 Rudolf Laban’s 
 dance notation
75. [next slide comment] So, when we attempt to describe typefaces 
 as disparate as Formal, Fenland, and 
 Enquire, individual shapes may be 
 described with precision, but the style is 
 captured by metaphor and association.
76. adhesion for rugby adhesions for rugby adhesions for rugby
77. 4. evidence
79. [previous slide comment] Going back to the comparison of foundry
 and screen type from earlier, we may ask:
80. ! Which decisions add value to the object?
81. ! How are people, places, and conditions
 of document-making captured?

82. [next slide comment] And, a comment on the statement we 
 heard that “everything we need to learn 
 is on Google”. Data and some information, 
 yes; but rarely the tools to create knowledge 
 and understanding. For example:
84. [previous slide comment] Monotype’s Drawing Office Image: raises 
 questions of traceability, collaboration, 
 institutional memory, industrial relations, 
 gender bias… None of these aspects are 
 embedded in the image itself.
85. ! Typography and typeface design are interesting because they reflect the tension between tradition 
 and modernity.
86. [next slide comment] A spread from Octavo on its own does 
 not tell you much about technological 
 shifts, the typographic context within which 
 this was groundbreaking, why it generated
 discussion, or what the arguments were.
88. [next slide comment] Today an equivalent discussion about 
 innovation is taking place in the rethinking 
 of typefaces, in width (character sets), in 
 depth (family variants) and in richness 
 (the relationship between styles).

90. ! ! ! ! ! [in conclusion:]
91. Design matters because it forms the way we perceive and interact with our environment.
92. And if we don’t consciously talk about
 design interpretations and decisions, then the most obvious substitute, 
 the narrower language of making 
 will define the range of our expression.
93. ! Thank you
 
 @gerryleonidas @typefacedesign