Text education
At least that’s how I made it through the day whilst working as a typesetter. I even had my own theme tune, playing in my head whilst I toiled away at the type face.
Korobeiniki
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Bad typesetting is everywhere, leaving in its wake widows and orphans. In many ways that job ruined a lot of books for me. The temptation to take out my green pen and circle the mistakes as I read through a paperback is almost too much.
It’s not just a case of convention either. Typesetting is like manners, that is once you know the way to do it you are at liberty to ignore certain things… you know which rules matter and which are flexible.
Good typesetting is rarely noticed. It’s function is to enable the reader to do just that, read, comfortably and unimpeded by the structure of the physical book.
Bad typesetting gets in the way, however. It makes you struggle to get to the information, it makes you flick pages back and forth to finish sentences. At its very worst it changes the meaning of the text… like a hyphen at the end of a line splitting the word ‘therapist’ in two… the-
rapist.
Some of my favourite books, in terms of their design and implementation, are the Penguin Classics series, particularly these three:
Design as Art – Bruno Munari
Ways of Seeing – John Berger
The Medium is the Massage – Marshall McLuhan
Not only are the covers beautiful, but the text inside is fantastic. There’s also some amazing typesetting gymnastics in McLuhan’s book by Quentin Fiore.
Holding these books, as objects as well as vectors for information, is a joy for me… and what I want to know is if any book does that for you. Feel free to name and shame some that really don’t too.
Ah, that’s an interesting rendition of Korobeiniki. I myself prefer the Ozma version, it doesn’t have the electro edge and like most of Ozma’s work it is somehow juvenile yet polished, but it has more pickup and energy and manages to sound natural even though listening to it you can’t help recalling that it’s the theme from Tetris.
I hate those dashes sep-
arating words at the end
of lines. When I write thi-
ngs in Word I usually se-
t it to auto-justify, which
has problems of its own
but at least it never splits
words up and the margi-
ns are nice and straight.
The Great Joe Bivinss last post..I Curse and It’s a Whole Blog Post
Tetris with text, you say?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordtris
Also, on the subject of Korobeiniki interpretations:
(and, erm, when I was trying to find the song from the Adam & Joe show…)
/b
Oh man, I just realized I’ve never played Wordtris and yet I am obsessed with both Tetris AND words (and would play Scrabble more often if the dog hadn’t chewed up most of the letter tiles, not to mention we don’t have the awesome one with the raised borders to keep the tiles from moving around).
Heh, that one with words was pretty funny actually. Except there totally is a learning curve for Tetris but you only notice it after you get to be a frickin’ grandmaster. You casual players are doing it ALL WRONG.
And here’s the Ozma version, this video always reminds me of this kickass PSX/Saturn game called Robopit that someone should really make a sequel to:
Actually on the subject of typesetting I just noticed the other day that my new copy of Breakfast of Champions, which is from the first paperback printing, has these fat little right-pointing arrows which force an indent on the first line of each paragraph. They’re pretty neat, but my old copy (paradoxically from a much later edition, purchased brand new at Borders in 2002) doesn’t have them, using traditional (much bigger) first line indents. Upon closer examination I notice that the new copy is also set in different fonts, where the old makes special mention that it it “set in Caledonia, Memphis, and Playbill types by Maryland Linotype Composition Company. Designed by Joel Schick.” As a consequence of these changes, the pagecount is increased from 296 in the old copy to 303 in the new and and there is no consistency in the pages on which you can find specific passages between the two editions. This infuriates me. I wonder if that’s why my copy of Cat’s Cradle seems so goofily typeset?
The Great Joe Bivinss last post..I Curse and It’s a Whole Blog Post
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM06XhyEXvs
The Great Joe Bivinss last post..I Curse and It’s a Whole Blog Post
>Except there totally is a learning curve for Tetris but you only notice it after you get to be a frickin’ grandmaster.
Sounds like an excuse to dig out the ‘people who are awesome at tetris’ YT videos…
/b
Thank you Beemoh, for that second video. Wicked, tho, my gf misheard and now thinks I was enjoying something involving lesbians and tetris.
Bens last post..Dark Orange, Weird Gran and Bulgarian Umbrella
Haha, I def see how she could get that out of the video. Good fun.
I’ve never heard of Wordtris before, but I used to play a game that was almost identical to it, on my parents’ Franklin Language Master. Except it was called Letris, and I think it allowed words of two letters as well, and there was no blank tile. It was addictive.
Erika Hammerschmidts last post..Abby and Norma #449
Hmmm, until yesterday, I wouldn’t have cared much about typesetting, because, as you say, good typesetting goes unnoticed.
Then I read a Terry Prachett book, in PDF formatt. Ironically, the book was Truth, all about typesetting, newspapers, etc.
Whoever made the file did such a terrible job, Pratchett’s books are normally well done, but this was painful. Line breaks missing, non-standard formatting, etc.
So, yes, now I understand and appreciate your subtle, yet integral art.
Bens last post..Dark Orange, Weird Gran and Bulgarian Umbrella
To be honest, I have no real comment to make but hey, just so you know, although i am drowning slowly in the sludgy pit of exams, I am STILL HERE!
Love you all! Ah, don’t you just deserve a poke? *poke*
I’m done.
x
Yay, you aren’t dead!!!!
Bens last post..Rave Graffitti
Yay indeed!
hehe, thanks Ben. x
Adam, or any one else with an opinion on the matter.
Just got told that reading long texts, fonts with serifs are easier to read, but, I always thought it was easier with sans-serif.
Bens last post..Rave Graffitti
I don’t know the science on the matter but I think serifed fonts are definitely easier to read. On the other hand I find sans-serif fonts work better in smaller sizes, so both have their advantages. But of course Jokerman is the industry standard.
The Great Joe Bivinss last post..Scatterbrained Nonsense
Jokerman? Horrendous. I can only assume you are joking or entirely insane.
Hmmm, I will have to do a test and see which I find easier on the eye.
Bens last post..Rave Graffitti
“I can only assume you are joking or entirely insane.”
Can’t it be both?
The Great Joe Bivinss last post..Scatterbrained Nonsense
Souvenir Light, i use it for all my scripts. (First fell in love with it when I saw it in Basic Dungeons & Dragons books)
That is a nice font… now slightly soiled with D&D connotations
You write scripts?
Not for a living (yet), but working on it. This is a script for a two scene short (in spanish):
http://sites.google.com/site/fbudinichd/archivos/021_EF_G_Americano.pdf
Felipe Budinich´s last blog ..Geoclism! Stereotypical Class Traits
Typesetting is amazing! I have a wonderfully typeset PDF copy of Charles Stross’s Accelerando that my brother did in LaTeX for use with eReader devices like the Sony PRS. It’s a kick ass book, too, released on the GNU Public License too. So ask, I’ll send it your way.
Personally, my favourite lately was House of Leaves, though I realize it’s a love-it-or-hate-it type of thing. I loved it.
On another note, I lost my job this week! So, I’m on the dole, and working on some personal projects, trying to figure out my life a bit, and drinking too much. I’ll be in Montreal in a couple of weeks — if anyone’s up there, let me know, maybe we can get together in meatspace.
Heh, meatspace. “Meatspace: It’s where you can keep your meat!!”
The Great Joe Bivinss last post..Scatterbrained Nonsense
Hahaha, that’s true. Maybe I read too much cyberpunk…
Yay on the job loss! (that sounded odd).
Definitely some truth to “Good typesetting is rarely noticed.” like most design really.
Thanks for the book reccs I’ve only read the McLuhan one and it was a real page turner, in part just to see what the next page was going to look like.
Eager to take a look at the other two, they look good.
Lyrics last post..Sublime Time