The loss of the
typesetting industry happened without much notice. A lot of publishers,
especially those entering the field post-Y2K, probably think typesetters were
just glorified typists anyway. The welcome embrace of desk top publishing
twenty years ago let authors and publishers do all the prep work themselves.
The loss of the typesetting industry happened without much notice. A lot of
publishers, especially those entering the field post-Y2K, probably think
typesetters were just glorified typists anyway. The welcome embrace of desk top
publishing twenty years ago let authors and publishers do all the prep work
themselves.
“And this is the purpose of typography: The
arrangement of design elements within a given structure should allow the reader
to easily focus on the message, without slowing down the speed of his
reading.” Hermann Zapf
But a primary
function of book typography was designing the book…the entire book. Cover
design comes to mind but that was generally handed over to a staff graphic
designer. The nuts and bolts of good design involved typeface and font size.
Aside from aesthetics, which is reason enough, good design has a
number of unexpected benefits, whether it’s for a printed
book or an ereader.
The typeface for
the text needed to be chosen and then a size in “points” specified. The space
between the lines of type was “leading” and that needed to be appropriately
considered. If the designer called for
Garamond 8/6 it meant that the font would be 8 point and the leading would be 6
point. Kerning,
the space between the letters, could be adjusted.
Chapter openings presented a wide array of
options. Would the chapter title be in the same typeface or would a different
face be better? How low should the title drop and then how low will the text
drop beneath the title? Would all chapters open recto, meaning some verso pages
would be blank?
Where would the
folios go? Head or foot, left, right or centered? Again, would another typeface
enhance the folios and what size would it be?
Would running head
or feet enable the reader to browse the book? More typeface questions. And what
about margins? Classic design would say push the text up toward the head and in
toward the spine, but how much? Today’s default is center the text on the page.
Would that look better?
I published a book
some time ago and I can honestly say I considered almost none of these
things…and compared to professionally designed books, you can tell.
Type is such a
basic and integral part of book production that I’m trying to at least
The history begins
with early cave paintings, then Egyptian hieroglyphics that morphed from
representational art to standardized characters in the shape of objects, then
to forms that abstractly defined objects and finally to shapes that described a
sound rather than an object.
The difference in
the terms typeface and font is subtle. In the 15th century, metal type was
sorted and stored in a box called a font. You might have Times Roman in one
box, Times Roman bold in another, and Times Roman light in yet another. Each
box contained a different font, but taken all together, they are fonts in the
Times Roman typeface. Stacking all the
Times Roman boxes together would describe a font family, the design that
identifies them as Times Roman is the typeface.
During the modern era of typography and
printing, the terms uppercase and lowercase evolved because capital letters were stored in a type case
usually stored above a case of small letters. The cases were physically
different to take advantage of the size difference between the two. Prior to
letterpress typesetting, uppercase letters were termed “majuscule” while lower
case were “minuscule”.
Unfortunately,
today typeface selection has devolved to the point that there are basically
just two faces that are used in the majority of printed matter. Out of many
thousand fonts, we use Times (serif)
and Arial (sans serif). That’s it.
The ability to more
easily design modern typefaces has led to an explosion of creative type design.
It’s not uncommon for a publication or business to have a unique typeface created for
their use.
Did you know that
all of the Inter State road signs in America use the same typeface, one that was
specifically designed for that purpose? It’s called Clearview
Hwy. The story of how the specifications were
written and how the designers developed it describes an unusual situation
of creating a face for one and only one usage.
“In a badly
designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a
book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a
well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their
jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive.
They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and
aisles.”
― Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style
― Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style
Just for the heck
of it, try using a different typeface than Times
or Arial, but please, not Comic Sans, a face that’s universally
reviled on the typography web sites.
This month’s
newsletter is set in Book Antiqua.
Apple
Evades Oversight
In
its bid to be the final arbiter of all things digital, Apple has
been uncooperative
with those charged with measuring Apple's compliance with court
ordered anti-trust monitoring. Shocker!
Scribd
Takes on Audio Subscriptions
Last
November Scribd jumped into subscription audio books with 30,000
titles that could be streamed or downloaded for $8.99 per month,
which also included full ebook access. Penguin
Random House just added 9,000 of their titles to Scribd's list
including Game of Thrones and Fifty Shades of Grey, making 45,000
titles available, way more than Kindle Unlimited's offerings.
UK
Indy Bookstores Disappear like Pubs
Public
houses (pubs)
have been closing in the UK for years. Apparently the village
bookstore
is about to face the same fate.
Children's
Print Book Sales Climb
Another
market that remains vibrant in traditional book sales is the
children's market which continues
to show spirited growth in numerous countries.
Improbable
Libraries
Like
baseball, banjos and saxophones, America claims credit for the first
lending libraries. The role of libraries
continues to be stretched and redefined by offering the world's
knowledge to everyone.
Coloring Books Take Off (Whaaaat?)
Amazon's
best selling book is a coloring
book ...for grown-ups. I'm not sure I understand this craze but
I'm glad that folks are buying paper and ink books.
Canada's Clueless Bus Driver
This
is either the nanny society on steroids, a school bus driver who's a
control freak, or a very illiterate driver who can't comprehend why
someone would sit
quietly on a school bus and read. Canadian authorities are too
polite to say which it is.
Kobo Uses Value to Fight Kindle
Kobo
designed their new Glo
reader by listening to die-hard book lovers. It reads more like a
book, outperforms the base Kindle and costs $70 less.
January
Book Sales Up, Except for eBooks
While
trade book sales climbed over year ago numbers, ebook
sales declined 10% in January.
Banana,
Milk, Sugar, Kobo and Cheerios
While
there's no toy in the box, 8.4 million Cheerios consumers will
get free access to nine different ebooks via BookShout.
Kindle Does Marketing eBooks
I
have no idea why Kindle
publishing an ebook featuring Land Rovers is worthy of breathless
headlines. Didn't any millennials work in the industry before
Kindles? What's next? They're already awash in CEO autobiographies.
Kindle Unlimited Payments Shrink Again
While
Kindle Unlimited's customer base grew again, payouts
to publishers/authors have continued to shrink.
UK Publishers Prosper. Authors? Not So Much.
While
UK austerity moves are more rhetoric than policy at this point, UK
publishers continue to throttle
authors' paychecks despite the fact that they're earning a tidy
sum, thank you.
Wall
Street Notices B&N
While
many were busy writing Barnes & Noble's obituary, things there
improved while we weren't watching. In the past two years it
paid off its debt, tightened up financial controls and brought
Samsung in as a partner in developing the new Nook. Has its
demise been canceled or postponed?
Final Thought
If
all printers were determined not to print anything till they were
sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Benjamin
Franklin
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