5/13/16

Without TYPE...


I wouldn't have had a business the past forty plus years.

For each of us our first introduction to type was probably books or newspapers. Someone read to us when we were young and we longed to be able to read ourselves. Once you learned to read you realized that type could lead you on endless journeys, though you most likely weren't actually thinking about type itself.

When I was in art college studying design we went on a field trip to a local large typesetter. I watched a man sitting at a Linotype machine setting type. That was the one and only time I ever saw someone use hot metal. A lot of the hot metal was eventually destroyed, sold off as scrap metal.

By the time I got out of college type was already starting to be set more and more digitally, but still required a knowledgeable typesetter to do the work. I spent my first year out of college working for various companies doing paste-up of typesetting. It was boring and meticulous work. I eventually got a job at a large publisher where again I was doing mostly paste-up for months before I was finally given my first book to design. From then on I was often the one telling the typesetter what to do. I would write out detailed specifications, creating the architecture for the books. I was very good at this. A good compositor could typeset a whole book just by reading my specifications, no visual layouts needed.

And then, what can I say, the home computer came along, and then Adobe postscript, and….

All the typesetters I knew are out of business. Some had invested tens of thousands of dollars to try to keep abreast of what was happening, to no avail. First it was actually the larger compositors that disappeared. They were bought up by people in India who came in and shut down the US operations. Eventually the little houses couldn't compete. You would really be stunned to find out how much typesetting is being done in India today. Good paying jobs around the world were lost; whole industries disappeared. It's the story of free trade and the modern world.

There's another side to type that before only people who worked with type appreciated. The art of creating and using a font was not something we shared with the masses. And then again, the computer changed all that. Suddenly anyone could sit down and do typesetting without any regard to some of the most common rules required for good typesetting. People were able to collect fonts and use them however they wanted. You don't have to look far these days to find appalling typesetting, but there's not much we can do about it.

So for me, this image from Sepia Saturday, means a lot. It is the very structure from which my profession began, thanks to Johannes Guttenberg.

Typesetting leads to reading, which leads to imaginations being tested, and a world larger than ourselves.

This photo is from my book Tattered and Lost: The Quiet Art of Reading.


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24 comments:

  1. I, too, regret the onset of desktop publishing -- suddenly everybody who had a computer thought they knew about setting type...I ran a typesetting and graphic arts business for years, but sold it when the desktop came in: I saw the writing on the wall and got out!

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    1. I wouldn't even buy a computer until postscript came out. I thought of the machines as a novelty with little practical use for designers. Postscript changed all that. At times I still long to be sitting at a board with my t-square, x-acto knife, and waxer. Things took longer to do and when something went wrong you could easily fix it. Now if the computer goes hinky you just use all the fine profane words you can remember and wish you could reach inside and strangle the little gremlins running it.

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  2. Now I know why your blog looks so good. I have to admit to creating some autrocities when I first learned to use fonts. I still have friends who write emails in caps. As a professional you must do a lot of cringing at the horrors we amateurs cook up.

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    1. One of the best things I learned in college was "Less is more." Follow that rule when designing something and half of the problems can be solved.

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  3. I hear ya on the atrocities of DIY typesetting. I'm stunned anyone still uses that Old English font, and blogs that use curly fonts are a turn-off. I don't know the rules, but I try to present something readable.

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    1. Less is more. Always remember less is more. Just because you have 100 fonts doesn't mean you have to use all of them. I have redesigned many books where the previous designer would use over 20 different typefaces in one book. I call those books Clown Vomit. Too much color with too much happening. So if you see something really bad with too much going on just say to yourself, "Oh, Clown Vomit."

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  4. Love your description of what a person can do when the computer goes 'hinky'. Been there & done that to one degree or another. :) The photo is beautiful.

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    1. I never swore until I got a computer.

      I love the photo. Always wondered how it was taken. The woman is holding a piece of sheet music.

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  5. I haven’t heard the term Hot Metal for years; it was the title of a 1980s TV comedy series, set in a newspaper office.

    You are so right to highlight the typesetting leading to reading and the world ‘larger than ourselves’. Wonderful.

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    1. Never heard of the show Hot Metal. It would go right over most heads today without even momentarily stopping. I'm guessing millennials would think it a review of a heavy metal band.

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  6. A great post, as it happened in every country due to the "great globalisation, which has opened up the world but also done some terrible damage like losing many skills, work and jobs.
    As we look at it in a more distracted sense it is just part of our evolution, as humans have the drive to go forward with the paradox by inventing and destroying.

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    1. It always seemed that typesetting would be one of those jobs you could do your whole life and have a secure position since it had been that way for centuries. IBM then Steve Jobs changed all of that.

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  7. You post so reminded me of my dear friend who has taken my text and made books out of my last two endeavors. She had a publishing business that saw it's demise in the growth of digital. When I was having problems with the book before last (I always tried to do it myself!) she took over, and now is quite adept at digital publishing. A hard transition, but she is back doing what she loves.

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    1. It is much easier and faster to do the work on a computer, but now clients expect things to be done at lightning speed. In the past you could always say a bottle of ink had been knocked over on the layout and get a bit of extra time. Now you have to say there's a computer glitch, but they still expect it to be there by morning. And thus the reason I learned to hang up the phone and swear.

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  8. Oooh! An essay! I like essays! They're worth something like 100 gazillion pictures:-)

    A long time ago during my army brat years in Germany I was taken to the Mainz museum to see Gutenberg's press and I still have the little souvenir lead slug with the letter M to prove it. I continue to admire modern fonts and typeface layouts, but the old original technology remains the best.

    Recently I finished a biography of Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain who had a fascination, even obsession, with typesetting which he learned as a young man. After his books became successful, Clemen's lost an enormous fortune to a scoundrel who claimed to have invented an improved faster typesetting machine. But being a complete fraud, it never worked. It was one of several heartbreaking stories from his life.

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    1. I am so envious that you saw THE press.

      And the Clemens/Twain book, is it one of the volumes published by UC Press? I have the first two and will soon buy the third, though I have not yet finished the first. I worked for the Press for over 18 years as a freelancer.

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    2. The title is: Mark Twain: A Life
      By Ron Powers. It was a special deep discount offer for my Kindle and I suppose it must be an extra thick bio. A fine read by an excellent biographer. Clemens had a very full life and it inspired me to read more of his less familiar work. Lately I read only eBooks as I love the idea of carrying a 100+ library inside a one slim tablet. I often adjust the eFonts, serif for formal or classics, sans serif for fiction or modern, but I wish I could get the publisher's choice instead like those special vintage typefaces described on the last page of the better kind of books.

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    3. I'll have to keep an eye open for that one. Thanks for the information. I'm still especially fond of "Roughing It."

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  9. I feel such an ignoramus in regards to type/font/design but I believe you.

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    1. Oh, don't believe anything I say. I make things up as I go along.

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  10. Happy I posted so I would go around and read this weeks offerings and find your description of change and demise in publishing.

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    1. The various industries involved in publishing have been in upheaval for years. I saw it coming, but just couldn't believe it was going to be as bad as it's been.

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  11. My next-do-neighbor was a type-setter for a small local newspaper. I remember him coming home one day in dismay and saying "It's all gonna be done with computers!!"

    He took training to do it with computers and keep his job, reluctantly.

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    1. Yup, it was a shock when it finally hit. I have a love/hate relationship with my computer and the software. I'm always tethered to this damn machine

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