When I began my career in this industry, as a graphic designer, I spent a lot of that time as a typesetter. This was for a variety of reasons:
1. I had recently moved from Montreal and was one of very few bilingual (French/English) typesetters in the city
2. I knew how to use AM Varityper and Comp Set phototypesetting machines
3. I could type….touch type…really fast
4. I was passionate about typography
There have been a lot of changes in the industry, but none as significant (in my humble opinion) as the (lost?) art of typography.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane
When I was taught typography we had one textbook that we referenced time and time again: Designing with Type.
We were taught to distinguish fonts by learning seven main font families: Times Roman, Helvetica, Futura, Garamond, Baskerville, Bodoni, and Avant Garde. We painstakingly had to learn these families by spending hours upon hours doing hand-lettering projects.
We learned which letters and numbers to seek out in order to differentiate fonts. Letters like g, i, and a. To this day, I can spot Futura with its circular dot over the “I” as compared to Helvetica, which is square. We studied the nuances of kerning (the space between letters) and leading (the space between lines of text). We knew that there were 12 points in a pica and 6 picas in an inch.
We created designs simply using typography, using both negative and positive space. We agonized over the bad white space between A and V, and learned to squint when looking at paragraphs of text for fluid text wrapping.
Kerning, leading, x-height, widows, orphans, ragging, and cap height became everyday words. And, although not everyone had the same passion as I, we all were acutely aware of the history and roots in typography and had a deep respect for the art behind the letters.
Then something happened
In 1983, desktop publishing was born. And everyone became a “typesetter”. Newsletters were being produced by secretaries (aka admin assistants), and included multiple fonts, in multiple weights, and often in a variety of colours. Less was definitely not more!
Being able to create documents internally became the norm and, although the end results were often not pretty (ok…they were pretty ugly), the fact that businesses no longer depended on their printers to layout and set their materials was enough to cause a huge shift in the industry.
Today, we have sophisticated programs available at our fingertips – programs used by designers and admin assistants alike. In fact, if you scour the classifieds, you will often find that knowledge of the Adobe suite of products is a requirement for these, and similar, positions. And although more people today understand what fonts are, I still cringe when I hear text referred to as “left-justified”.
So how can we ensure that the art of typography stays alive?
1. Educate your customers. If you are about to print something that has 57 fonts on a page, gently share suggestions on how to improve it. After all, the goal of the printed piece is to sell…and if you can improve the outcome then you become a valuable ally
2. Educate yourself. I get that you may not have much knowledge, or even interest, in typography. But spend some time with your designer, or do some online research. As with point #1, it’s in your best interest to learn how to make your customers shine, as opposed to being known for producing a “typography fail”: http://bit.ly/1RvKZ37
3. Don’t treat typography as an afterthought
4. Learn which fonts work best on the web, and which work best in print
5. Learn typography best practices and common terminology (I already mentioned the spacing between A and V). Spotting common “infractions” will improve the overall look of the finished product. As will understanding the difference between a widow and an orphan
As this industry evolves, and more and more aspects become automated, it’s important not to lose sight of the craftsmanship that was the very foundation of print and design. We have moved from setting hot type, to photographic typesetting, to desktop publishing. As the saying goes, “How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been?”