Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty. A printed work which cannot be read becomes a product without purpose.
Typography must be regarded as the sum total of various aspects. These concern the content, intention, sender, receiver, language, design, technique and the economic point of view.
Typography is not a free, independent art like painting, sculpture or music but, like architecture and graphic design, it is connected with a definite order. Its aim is the impartial transmission of thoughts, ideas and facts.
In Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design, Walter Tracy explains the different between legibility and readability:
Legibility, then, refers to perception, and the measure of it is the speed at which a character can be recognised; if the reader hesitates at it the character is badly designed. Readability refers to comprehension, and the measure of that is the length of time that a reader can give to a stretch of text without strain.
Printed in 1941, Bernard Lewis’ Behind the Type: The Life Story of Frederic W. Goudy is a short biographical sketch of America’s most eminent type designer. Lewis writes:
Goudy has found in type design as others have discovered in the writing of prose, poetry, or music, or in the painting of a piclure, that there is a coordination of parts, a pull toward the finale. Just as in music where the whole completes itself in temporal expectation so in letter design does the whole complete itself in spatial expectation. In music one tone pulls toward its successor; in type design, one stroke or movement leads to the next. Goudy has found that in order to design an integrated alphabet in which each letter has a mutual affinity for its companions, he must get in on the beginning of a swing or a visual or kinesthetic “set.”
Behind the Type also includes a transcript of an address Goudy delivered at Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, February 12, 1938. Goudy spoke about type design:
The inexperienced designer says to himself, “I will design a new type.” He does not as yet realise that whoever imagines a tree must also imagine a sky or a background against which to see it standing. He cannot imagine a type unless he imagines also its destination. He must have visions whose power is his power. He must deal with what is logical as if it were a miracle; yet, as a matter of fact, what he is attempting to produce is something which should long have been in his mind, perhaps without his being conscious of the fact, and from what he has studied and arranged he has now only to read and project what already is there.
Goudy spoke on legibility:
Type, to be fine, must be legible, not merely readable, but pleasantly and easily legible; decorative in form, but not ornate; beautiful in itself and in company of its kinsmen in the font; austere and formal, but with no stale or uninteresting regularity in its dissimilar characters; simple in design, but not the bastard simplicity that arises from mere crudity of outline; elegant, that is, gracious in line; fluid in form, but not archaic; and, most important, it must possess unmistakably that quality called “art,” which is the spirit the designer puts into the body of his work, the product of his study and taste. How many of the types demanded by advertisers or the typographic advisers would be able to stand analysis of this sort?
In The Designer’s Guide to Text Type, Jean Callan King and Tony Esposito define: “Copyfitting determines the amount of space that typewritten copy will occupy when it is typeset.”
Aside from the technical and historical details documented in Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style, what intrigues me about this classic book is the connection between typography and music:
Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness. Much typography is far removed from literature, for language has many uses, including packaging and propaganda. Like music, it can be used to manipulate behavior and emotions. But this is not where typographers, musicians or other human beings show us their finest side. Typography at its best is a slow performing art, worthy of the same informed appreciation that we sometimes give to musical performances, and capable of giving similar nourishment and pleasure in return. (p. 19-20)
Bringhurst selected two perfect jazz musicians to illustrate time and space. Billie Holiday was famous for her extraordinary timing. She often sang behind the beat, but never missed it. To differentiate his style from Dizzy Gillespie’s fast and ferocious, Miles Davis left plenty of space in his phrasing to allow listeners to absorb his music. His timeless album, Kind of Blue, is a great example. Although this is a typography book and not music, I would love to hear how Thelonious Monk’s idiosyncratic use of space would be interpreted in typography. Nevertheless, here is Bringhurst’s analysis:
Phrasing and rhythm can move in and out of phase—as they do in the singing of Billie Holiday and the trumpet solos of Miles Davis—but the force of blues phrasing and syncopation vanishes if the beat is actually lost. Space in typography is like time in music. It is infinitely divisible, but a few proportional intervals can be much more useful than a limitless choice of arbitrary quantities. (p. 36)
I am surprised that Bringhurst didn’t use music to explain punctuation—just kidding! What surprised me though is learning grammar from a book on typography. I had been confused about punctuation’s position when quoting, and Bringhurst made it absolutely clear for the first time in just one sentence:
Punctuation is normally placed inside a closing single or double guillemet if it belongs to the quotation, and outside otherwise. Most North American editors like their commas and periods inside the raised commas, “like this,” but their colons and semicolons outside. Many British editors prefer to put all punctuation outside, with the milk and the cat. (p. 87)
Without a doubt, Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style is a book every designer should read once a year.