Before the introduction of printing writing was there to portray the spoken word. Text was littered with errors; each piece of writing was unique with unbalanced spacing and a lack of order making each production a personal and individual object. However with new developments in technology and the introduction of print type made dramatic changed.
The introduction of print, especially with moveable type, meant written documents were becoming aesthetically standardised. Bodies of text conformed to the new rules appearing from the introduction of print, text was left aligned, pages had equal spacing, and punctuation retained consistency. The words had to communicate alone, becoming less visually engaging yet far more legible and much easier to read, helping establish the author of the owner of a text.
‘Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking. The typographer’s art concerns not only the positive grain of letterforms, but the negative gaps between and around them’ – Extract from Lupto, E, ‘Thinking with type’ page 67
The typographer’s role was to create a neutral page where the words would speak for themselves; the physical aesthetics of the page layout and text should not effect how the reader sees the text.
“If you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.” Warde, B, The Golden Goblet, 1999
Metaphorically this quote again suggests that typography should be passive, good typography should only be noticed by typographers. It was the introduction of deconstructive views on typography that changed many designers view on how a page of text should be. The view was that the typography should have no effect on the creation of meaning.
These views however were challenged with deconstructive thinking, designer’s were rethinking what a body of text was. Designers were redefining typography, ideas of readability and the creation of meaning through type.
‘designer Katherine `McCoy imploded the traditional dichotomy between seeing and reading’ – Extract from Lupto, E, ‘Thinking with type’ page 73
These ideologies on type were now becoming more apparent with the introduction of digital design, type was now easier than ever to experiment with and people were moving increasingly further away from the rules of linear typography.
In the example above designed by Richard Eckersly, the type obeys very few rules. It is written in two columns, the left is about Hegel and the right about Genet, with quotations from the works discussed and dictionaries. The quotations are in a different typeface and interfere with the other sections of text without explanation; it is unclear to the reader what order they should read the passages, sometimes words are cut in half by a quotation over several pages. This really explores the idea of representing content through layout, and in turn represents the role of typography in meaning and the voice of the text.
