From my Printed Books professor
Dug up this encouraging note from my Printed Books professor regarding Sophocles’ Philoctetes, which I had typeset, printed, and case bound that semester. Emphasis mine.
It’s a beautiful book, well-conceived, painstakingly executed with a fine attention to detail. I can’t believe you want to do web design: what a horrible place to do fine typography, a refined practice for which you obviously have an eye. You should (at some point in your career) hand-set a book in letterpress. You have the knowledge to benefit from that experience and I am sure you could make something remarkable. Type looks supernaturally good when printed from a real version of a typeface cast from good molds.
Are there any modern books being printed with letterpress? I recently became a fan of R.L. Allan Bibles, especially their Oxford Reference editions because they use the old printing methods.
Check out this KJV set in Brevier Clarendon. Yep, they even call it Brevier, the name for the type size. They have a Longprimer too. I have both of them and can attest to the amazing look of the type on page. It has slight imperfections here and there where the ink didn’t completely fill out the letter, but it gives it a very organic, antiquated charm that seems to only add to the experience of reading it. http://bit.ly/bvKB1a
Here’s a direct link to, R.L. Allan, the people in Scotland, using “the Queen’s” binders in London to put these together. There bindings are simply the best among Bibles. http://www.bibles-direct.co.uk/
Same things my Profs told me when I started using the Mac in 1987. I actually had one prof ask me what I would do if I went to an agency/design studio that didn’t have a photocopier. I told him I’d walk out of the interview since that company wouldn’t be around much longer.
They were interested in preserving the past. They could never understand that I wanted to blaze a path into the future.
The key phrase is “what a horrible place to do fine typography.” What he failed to realize at the time is that you would go on to make “fine typography” achievable on the web (and we’re glad you did).
It might sound quaint and out of touch now, but at the time he said it, the web wasn’t such a friendly place for typography. Widespread lack of antialiasing alone would have made most of those beautiful typefaces look pretty bad.
So I don’t blame him for those words alone, although what mcloki said about preserving the past definitely reminds me of most of my studio arts professors. For the most part, they didn’t understand or trust modern design technology, and tended to regard it as a cheap solution for lazy people.
I do, however, like his phrase “supernaturally good”. I had something like that in mind when I printed something off a laser printer for the first time and saw book-quality Times instead of the usual faded dot-matrix.
There’s always a starting point for new ways to publish words. Of course the web as it is now isn’t a typographer’s heaven. But Gutenberg had to improve, refine and extend the ways how to print letters, too. It wasn’t done in the first day.
So let’s improve typography in the web instead of throwing the whole thing away while thinking “aawww, it can’t do it and never will”. Let’s instead embrace and extend the future of the written word!
At the moment, we’re in the year of 1470 compared to when Gutenberg started and when the WWW took of – just a mere 20 years of experience. Have a look at what’s published in 1470 and what came afterwards: beautiful typography that was fine-tuned year after year. There’s a lot more to come for the web.
Sorry for my bad English, I’m not a native speaker.
Robert, the bibles are beautiful. Thanks for showing me.
Folks, your enthusiasm is awesome. What we have to figure out are the conditions in which typography can be as stunning and rich in web context as it has been in other contexts throughout history.
What does the web have to offer the art of typography?