Research Question
How can typography reinforce the understanding of a text and amplify the authorial voice within it?
Aims and Objectives
Using recipe books as source material, this project will examine the ways that typography can be used to make a text comprehensible to the reader and how it can be used to amplify the presence of the authorial voice.
Questions that will arise along the way:
What is the best formula for presenting recipes?
How is the author’s voice best presented through typography?
What would the ideal recipe book look like?
Personal aims:
To better understand the use of graphic design within the wider field of book design.
To examine the relationship between language, text, typography and image.
To develop an understanding of the nuances of typography, particularly typographic hierarchy and the extent to which the reader can be controlled, directed or manipulated by these interventions.
Audience
Visually-literate readers: publishers, typographers and designers. And cooks!
Context
This project will use my initial research into the relationship between language, text and typography to survey the typography of recipe/cookery books but will also be a platform for thinking about graphic design in the wider sphere of book design.
Area of study:
The Visible Word: Text, type and language studies.
Book design: Typographic hierarchy; narrative; text and image; sequence.
Texts already read:
Left to Right by David Crow
Orality and Literacy by Walter J Ong
On Typographic Signification by Gerard Mermoz
Type and Image by Bridget Wilkin
A Type Primer by John Kane
Selected essays from Looking Closer 1 and 5 edited by Bierut, Drenttel and Heller
Selected essays from Texts on Type edited by Heller and Meggs
Detail in Typography by Jost Hochuli
Designing Books by Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross
Resources:
The British Library’s ‘Books for Cooks’ website is a useful resource for the history of cookbooks:
www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/booksforcooks/booksforcooks.html
The Wellcome Library has a collection of 17th century and earlier manuscripts of receipt (recipe) books. This will be a useful place to explore the relationship between recipes and medicine.
www.library.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtd043279.html
Graphic designers:
A2/SW/HK: www.a2swhk.co.uk
Katherine Gillieson: www.gillieson.co.uk
Non Format: www.non-format.com
Norm: www.norm.to
Action Plan
Ongoing/already started:
Research typographic hierarchies within early and mid Modernism, in particular, the work of Josef Müller-Brockmann, Emil Ruder and Armin Hofmann.
Look at typography by Cranbrook School of Design, Wolfgang Weingart, Rudy van der Lans, Catherine McCoy and April Greiman.
Look at recent work by practitioners such as APFEL and Marian Bantjes.
Continue to develop a series of posters that reflect on and illustrate the relationship between language, text and typography.
December onwards:
Research the history of recipe/cookbooks.
Research into libraries that have collections of cookery books.
Start to compile notes for Report.
February onwards:
Visit British Library (and others?) to view collection of cookbooks.
Visit Wellcome collection to look at receipt/recipe books.
Visit ‘Books for Cooks’ in Notting Hill.
Decide on scope of sample study of cook books.
Audit of cookbooks: Concentrating on typography, in particular how it used to create hierarchy within lists of ingredients and instructions but also looking at how graphic language is used to make visible the author’s voice.
April onwards:
Analyse typography of recipes in source material.
Begin to make visual experiments based on these findings.
Further reading as necessary.
Interviews with cook book designers/publishers?
June onwards:
Test ideas for visual experiments amongst peer group/tutors etc.
Begin designing and compiling visual audit of source material.
July onwards:
Refine visual experiments and think about final output. Possible output might be a distillation of my research: an ‘ideal’ recipe book that makes the recipes comprehensible to the reader and that attempts to make more explicit the authorial voice.
Test ideas for final output amongst peer group/tutors etc.
August onwards:
Development of final output.
Evaluate ideas/output with peer group/tutor/design professionals.
Begin compiling and designing Report.
September onwards:
Finish designing all elements for hand-in: Report, Outcome, supporting material etc.
October onwards:
All work to printers.
Other commitments during 2011:
Madrid, 15-20 May
Pa/per View Book Fair, Brussels, 21-24 April
Holiday – I week August
Miss Read Book Fair, Berlin, 2-4 September
London Art Book Fair, 22-27 September
Frankfurt Book Fair, 12-16 October
New York Art Book Fair, 4-6 November
Bibliography
Bierut, Michael, Drenttel, William & Heller, Steven (editors) (1994) Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, New York, Allworth Press
Bierut, Michael, Drenttel, William & Heller, Steven (editors) (2006) Looking Closer Five: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, New York, Allworth Press
Crow, David (2006) Left to Right: The Cultural Shift from Words to Pictures, Lausanne, AVA Publishers
Crow, David (2003) Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics, Lausanne, AVA Publishers
Heller, Steven & Meggs, Phillip B (editors) (2001) Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography, New York, Allworth Press
Hochuli, Jost (2008) Detail in Typography, London, Hyphen Press
Hochuli, Jost & Kinross, Robin (1996) Designing Books; Practice and Theory, London, Hyphen Press
Kane, John (2002) A Type Primer, London, Laurence King
Ong, Walter J (1982) Orality and Literacy, London, Routledge
Ruder, Emile (1967) Typographie, Basel, Niggli
Schmid, Helmut (2003) Typography Today, Tokyo, Seibundo Shinkosha Publishing Co. Ltd
Language and Text
The history of letterforms is intertwined with the history of language. To understand this relationship better I read Orality and Literacy by Walter J Ong. This book outlines the relationship between speech, writing and print with specific reference to the differences between oral and literate cultures. The book is absolutely fascinating and offered me insights into how thought is manifested in non-writing cultures. Ong argues that abstract, conceptual thinking does not happen in oral cultures; simple ideas such as the names of shapes (circle, square, triangle etc) do not exist, these geometrical figures are identified with the names of objects (moon, door, mountain): “They (oral subjects) never dealt with abstract circles or squares but rather with concrete objects. Teachers’ school students on the other hand, moderately literate, identified geometrical figures by categorical geometric names: circles, squares, triangles and so on. They had been trained to give school-room answers not real-life responses.”[1]
Ong goes on to consider the massive changes that print and the shift from hearing dominance to sight dominance have precipitated. Ong talks about how “alphabetic writing broke up the word into spatial equivalents of phonemic units (in principle though the letters never quite worked out as totally phonemic indicators). But the letters used in writing do not exist before the text in which tey occur. With alphabetic letterpress print it is otherwise. Words are made out of units (types) which pre-exist as units before the words which they will constitute. Print suggests that words are far things far more than writing ever did.”[2]
In A type primer, John Kane talks about the ‘authorial voice’, an idea that occurs in many books about typography and how meaning is understood by the reader. Kane suggests that typographic hierarchy is one way in which the reader can be directed to understanding a text.
“Obviously there is no single way to express hierarchy within text; in fact, the possibilities are virtually limitless. Once clarity has been established, the typographer can – and should – establish a palette of weights and styles that best suits the material at hand and the voice of the author.”[3]
Ong has an interesting section on the residual effects of hearing culture and how that presents itself within the typographic hierarchy of the printed page in sixteenth century title pages:
“Inconsequential words may be set in huge type faces: on the title page shown here the initial ‘THE’ is by far the most prominent word of all. The result is often aesthetically pleasing as a visual design but it plays havoc with our present sense of textuality. Yet this practice, not our practice, is the original practice from which our present practice has deviated. Our attitudes are the ones that have changed, and thus that need to be explained. Why does the original, presumably more ‘natural’ procedure seem wrong to us? Because we feel the printed words before us as visual units (even though we sound them at least in the imagination when we read). Evidently, in processing text for meaning, the sixteenth century was concentrating less on the sight of the word and more on the sound than we do. All text involves sight and sound. But whereas we feel reading as a visual activity cueing in sounds for us, the early age of print still felt it as primarily a listening process, simply set in motion by sight. If you felt yourself as reader to be listening to words, what difference did it make if the visible text went its own visually aesthetic way? It will be recalled that pre-print manuscripts commonly ran words together or kept spaces between them minimal.”[4]
Ong goes on to consider the massive changes that print and the shift from hearing dominance to sight dominance have precipitated. Ong talks about how “alphabetic writing broke up the word into spatial equivalents of phonemic units (in principle though the letters never quite worked out as totally phonemic indicators). But the letters used in writing do not exist before the text in which tey occur. With alphabetic letterpress print it is otherwise. Words are made out of units (types) which pre-exist as units before the words which they will constitute. Print suggests that words are far things far more than writing ever did.”[2]
In A type primer, John Kane talks about the ‘authorial voice’, an idea that occurs in many books about typography and how meaning is understood by the reader. Kane suggests that typographic hierarchy is one way in which the reader can be directed to understanding a text.
“Obviously there is no single way to express hierarchy within text; in fact, the possibilities are virtually limitless. Once clarity has been established, the typographer can – and should – establish a palette of weights and styles that best suits the material at hand and the voice of the author.”[3]
Ong has an interesting section on the residual effects of hearing culture and how that presents itself within the typographic hierarchy of the printed page in sixteenth century title pages:
“Inconsequential words may be set in huge type faces: on the title page shown here the initial ‘THE’ is by far the most prominent word of all. The result is often aesthetically pleasing as a visual design but it plays havoc with our present sense of textuality. Yet this practice, not our practice, is the original practice from which our present practice has deviated. Our attitudes are the ones that have changed, and thus that need to be explained. Why does the original, presumably more ‘natural’ procedure seem wrong to us? Because we feel the printed words before us as visual units (even though we sound them at least in the imagination when we read). Evidently, in processing text for meaning, the sixteenth century was concentrating less on the sight of the word and more on the sound than we do. All text involves sight and sound. But whereas we feel reading as a visual activity cueing in sounds for us, the early age of print still felt it as primarily a listening process, simply set in motion by sight. If you felt yourself as reader to be listening to words, what difference did it make if the visible text went its own visually aesthetic way? It will be recalled that pre-print manuscripts commonly ran words together or kept spaces between them minimal.”[4]
The Grid System
"Made popular by the International Typographic Style movement and pioneered by legends like Josef Müller-Brockmann and Wim Crouwel, the grid is the foundation of any solid design. The Grid System is an ever-growing resource where graphic designers can learn about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids."
www.thegridsystem.org
www.thegridsystem.org
Josef Müller-Brockmann 2
“The grid system is an aid, not a guarantee. It permits a number of possible uses and each designer can look for a solution appropriate to his personal style. But one must learn how to use the grid; it is an art that requires practice.”
Josef Müller-Brockmann
See more
Josef Müller-Brockmann 1
"Order was always wishful thinking for me. For 60 years I have produced disorder in files, correspondence and books. In my work, however, I have always aspired to a distinct arrangement of typographic and pictorial elements, the clear identification of priorities. The formal organisation of the surface by means of the grid, a knowledge of the rules that govern legibility (lines length, word and letter spacing and so on) and the meaningful use of colour are among the tools a designer must master in order to complete his or her task in a rational and economic matter."
Josef Müller-Brockmann
Read more
Typographic Hierarchy 1
Further development of posters for Unit 2.3 Design and Rhetoric. With this set of posters I attempted to make work which was much 'calmer' than the previous set and which established typographic hierarchy with a limited set of variables.
The work was informed by a reading of Typography by Emil Ruder and A type primer by John Kane.
See also Typographic Hierarchy 2 & 3.
Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse
"Nothing pulls you into the territory between art and science quite as quickly as design. It is the borderline where contradictions and tensions exist between the quantifiable and the poetic. It is the field between desire and necessity. Designers thrive in those conditions, moving between land and water. A typical critique at Cranbrook can easily move in a matter of minutes between a discussion of the object as a validation of being to the precise mechanical proposal for actuating the object. The discussion moves from Heidegger to the "strange material of the week" or from Lyotard to printing technologies without missing a beat. The free flow of ideas, and the leaps from the technical to the mythical, stem from the attempt to maintain a studio platform that supports each student's search to find his or her own voice as a designer. The studio is a hothouse that enables students and faculty to encounter their own visions of the world and act on them-- a process that is at times chaotic, conflicting, and occasionally inspiring."
Read more
Word and Image
In The Alphabet versus the Goddess, Leonard Shlain comments on a return to image-based communication:
“To perceive things such as trees and buildings through images delivered to the eye, the brain uses wholeness, simultaneity, and synthesis. To ferret out the meaning of alphabetic writing, the brain relies instead on sequence, analysis and abstraction.”[1]
Similarly, in Left to Right by David Crow, the author looks at the cultural shift from word to image. Crow examines the evolution of image-based fonts which were developed alongside shifts in graphic design production and software. Now, typing a letter on a keyboard could bring up a symbol that was entirely different from the one we might expect. Although the fonts followed the convention of the Roman alphabet (and the interface of the computer keyboard) the result was a collection of symbols that was unreadable in the conventional sense but that, nevertheless, could be considered a language or dialect.
What I find particularly interesting about these symbol fonts is the relationship that they have to mark-making in painting or drawing. For Fuse 10 an interactive disk and poster package, founded in 1990 by Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft, Brody created ‘Freeform' a symbol-based font, which he used to generate works that were genuinely experimental, pushing typography – and the purpose of typography - to extremes. Brody said of 'Freeform':
“The basic idea behind freeform typography is that the computer keyboard can also be used as a musical instrument or a painter’s palette. It can be used as a way to redefine the representation of digital language.”[2]
Fuse 10 generated a huge amount of negative criticism: the main one being that freeform typography was a contradiction in terms. The critics of Fuse claimed that the only purpose of letters is to transmit meaning. When letters are abstracted to the point that they stop performing this function, then they no longer can be letters nor, by extension, typography.
Jon Wozencroft defended their position:
“Conveying meaning is not the sole function of letters/symbols/pictograms. It is also communicating feelings and vision. Fuse 10 – Freeform did not aim to don the mantle of Art, nor to throw ourselves into absolute chaos. We wanted to explore and question typographic shapes and motives, to emphasize the essence of communication: to reach out, not to recede. Paradoxically, Freeform is more an artistic statement than a fixed message.”[3]
“To perceive things such as trees and buildings through images delivered to the eye, the brain uses wholeness, simultaneity, and synthesis. To ferret out the meaning of alphabetic writing, the brain relies instead on sequence, analysis and abstraction.”[1]
Similarly, in Left to Right by David Crow, the author looks at the cultural shift from word to image. Crow examines the evolution of image-based fonts which were developed alongside shifts in graphic design production and software. Now, typing a letter on a keyboard could bring up a symbol that was entirely different from the one we might expect. Although the fonts followed the convention of the Roman alphabet (and the interface of the computer keyboard) the result was a collection of symbols that was unreadable in the conventional sense but that, nevertheless, could be considered a language or dialect.
What I find particularly interesting about these symbol fonts is the relationship that they have to mark-making in painting or drawing. For Fuse 10 an interactive disk and poster package, founded in 1990 by Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft, Brody created ‘Freeform' a symbol-based font, which he used to generate works that were genuinely experimental, pushing typography – and the purpose of typography - to extremes. Brody said of 'Freeform':
“The basic idea behind freeform typography is that the computer keyboard can also be used as a musical instrument or a painter’s palette. It can be used as a way to redefine the representation of digital language.”[2]
Fuse 10 generated a huge amount of negative criticism: the main one being that freeform typography was a contradiction in terms. The critics of Fuse claimed that the only purpose of letters is to transmit meaning. When letters are abstracted to the point that they stop performing this function, then they no longer can be letters nor, by extension, typography.
Jon Wozencroft defended their position:
“Conveying meaning is not the sole function of letters/symbols/pictograms. It is also communicating feelings and vision. Fuse 10 – Freeform did not aim to don the mantle of Art, nor to throw ourselves into absolute chaos. We wanted to explore and question typographic shapes and motives, to emphasize the essence of communication: to reach out, not to recede. Paradoxically, Freeform is more an artistic statement than a fixed message.”[3]
Elective A Visual Storytelling 3
I thought I'd try to reconfigure the Dracula book as a poster:
I like the idea of the text becoming one continuous text, almost like a page from a book, but I miss the sequential aspect of the book and the gradual revelation of information.
I'm not sure what I will show on Wednesday. I won't have a prototype of the book - maybe I'll show some colour copies of the posters and some spreads from the book.
I like the idea of the text becoming one continuous text, almost like a page from a book, but I miss the sequential aspect of the book and the gradual revelation of information.
I'm not sure what I will show on Wednesday. I won't have a prototype of the book - maybe I'll show some colour copies of the posters and some spreads from the book.
The Meaning of Typefaces 2
The form of the word and the meaning of the word i.e. the signifier and the signified is arbitrary: the sound of the word and its written form has no relation to the thing itself.
“Duality freed concept and symbol from each other to the extent that change could now modify one without affecting the other”[1]
So, to some extent, the subtle changes of form that occur when a word is set in different typefaces has a marginal effect on the meaning of the word. However, as Jost Hochuli points out: “…typefaces – regardless of their optical legibility – trigger particular feelings on the part of readers simply through their appearance, and can have a positive or negative impact. This seems to be pragmatic evidence to show that, over and above their primary task of acting as a visual means of transport for language, typefaces are also able to communicate atmosphere.”[2]
Herbert Spencer notes “that findings of congeniality (in analyses of typefaces) may have little temporal stability, and such an examination supports Warde’s view, that the choice of an appropriate typeface is a subconscious act, the effect of which is ephemeral. We must also reflect that sans-serif letterforms which have been much used in this century to express the notion of ‘modernity’ were first revived in the eighteenth century because of their associations with rugged antiquity.”[3]
Typefaces themselves do not carry meaning; the words themselves signify meaning and the typeface can carry atmosphere. The same text set in different typefaces will have a different appearance and will represent that text differently. The typographic details (type size, arrangement, position on page etc) contribute to this effect. However, it seemed to me, that analyzing the effect of a typeface would always be subjective. As Jost Hochuli points out “For typographers, ananlyses of the impression created by typefaces are thus often purely theoretical: they neglect the sheer complexity of typographic practice.”[4]
‘A type primer’ by John Kane contains a really useful introduction to the history of the alphabet. Kane charts the development of the alphabet from its roots in Phoenician votive steles, dating from 4th century B.C.E. and found in Carthage, Tunisia where the text was scratched into wet clay with a pointed stick, through to Adrian Frutiger’s grid of the various weights and widths of Univers, released in 1957 for the new technology of photo typesetting.
Kane’s history is useful for positioning the evolutions in typeface design within the social, economic and technological developments of the time – and also the aesthetic trends of that moment. Kane presents technical terms for describing letterforms and guidelines for describing typefaces. He also presents a simple classification of type, based on a system devised by Alexander Lawson. These are all useful tools for describing the shape of letterforms and the differences between typefaces but Kane is as vague as Jost Hochuli when expanding on the atmosphere or, as he calls it, ‘texture’ of a typeface:
“Beyond learning about the unique characteristics of each typeface – and understanding its place in history – it’s very important to understand how different typefaces feel as text. Different typefaces suit different messages. A good typographer has to know which typeface best suits the message at hand.”[5]
“Duality freed concept and symbol from each other to the extent that change could now modify one without affecting the other”[1]
So, to some extent, the subtle changes of form that occur when a word is set in different typefaces has a marginal effect on the meaning of the word. However, as Jost Hochuli points out: “…typefaces – regardless of their optical legibility – trigger particular feelings on the part of readers simply through their appearance, and can have a positive or negative impact. This seems to be pragmatic evidence to show that, over and above their primary task of acting as a visual means of transport for language, typefaces are also able to communicate atmosphere.”[2]
Herbert Spencer notes “that findings of congeniality (in analyses of typefaces) may have little temporal stability, and such an examination supports Warde’s view, that the choice of an appropriate typeface is a subconscious act, the effect of which is ephemeral. We must also reflect that sans-serif letterforms which have been much used in this century to express the notion of ‘modernity’ were first revived in the eighteenth century because of their associations with rugged antiquity.”[3]
Typefaces themselves do not carry meaning; the words themselves signify meaning and the typeface can carry atmosphere. The same text set in different typefaces will have a different appearance and will represent that text differently. The typographic details (type size, arrangement, position on page etc) contribute to this effect. However, it seemed to me, that analyzing the effect of a typeface would always be subjective. As Jost Hochuli points out “For typographers, ananlyses of the impression created by typefaces are thus often purely theoretical: they neglect the sheer complexity of typographic practice.”[4]
‘A type primer’ by John Kane contains a really useful introduction to the history of the alphabet. Kane charts the development of the alphabet from its roots in Phoenician votive steles, dating from 4th century B.C.E. and found in Carthage, Tunisia where the text was scratched into wet clay with a pointed stick, through to Adrian Frutiger’s grid of the various weights and widths of Univers, released in 1957 for the new technology of photo typesetting.
Kane’s history is useful for positioning the evolutions in typeface design within the social, economic and technological developments of the time – and also the aesthetic trends of that moment. Kane presents technical terms for describing letterforms and guidelines for describing typefaces. He also presents a simple classification of type, based on a system devised by Alexander Lawson. These are all useful tools for describing the shape of letterforms and the differences between typefaces but Kane is as vague as Jost Hochuli when expanding on the atmosphere or, as he calls it, ‘texture’ of a typeface:
“Beyond learning about the unique characteristics of each typeface – and understanding its place in history – it’s very important to understand how different typefaces feel as text. Different typefaces suit different messages. A good typographer has to know which typeface best suits the message at hand.”[5]
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