Friday 27 November 2009

On Typographic Reference



It is interesting to refer back to the original of this article - published in issue 36 of Emigre in 1995. The thrust of the argument is that...

The oversimplistic positioning of typographic work in relation to Modernism and Postmodernism is not a useful dualism within which to debate, describe or develop.

We need to shift from discussing work in terms of these 'isms' to discussing specific context, intention, etc.

Theory can provide new perspectives - designers need to work with other, more theoretical, disciplines.

Functionalities are multiple, relative and context specific—aesthetics have a part to play in typographic communication—a semiological function. Maybe this means the often trotted out Form v Function is another oversimplistic dualism... (This reminds me of Max Bruinsma's editorial in Eye 32 in 1999)

Looking at the design of the article one can immediately see there are 4 or 5 different voices or elements to the text—body text, references, footnotes, a case study and some occasional sides that are actually quite long, so less of footnote and more of some kind of intertextual/hypertextual linking.

Within this complexity there is a traditional hierarchy evident in terms of headings and sub-headings. The different elements are also clearly defined by use of quite different typeface, size, case and positioning.

So.... I think I need to look at the hierarchy in my piece, possibly something that works for the whole document, rather than something that is different for each piece. Each piece has a different number of potential 'levels'—the academic essay could possibly have five, from title through to references, whereas the conversation has far less of these formal devices—perhaps only two—distinctions between the speakers. I also need to integrate the texts in a constructive/meaningful way—to use the 'montage' to make connections, disruptions, etc—it needs to be content led. Maybe I also need to develop some kind of frontspiece that places the book in some kind of context in relation to contents, methods and aims?

Stuff book in process





Have just put together the first draft of the stuff book. Lots to work on yet though. Format has lost something, I think, and is now a little too big. Think I may need to drop the obsessive Fibonacci based grid in order to give myself more flexibility. The different threads of texts running through the book are also perhaps too separate - there is no productive use of montage in terms of juxtaposing things to make people think or create some kind of 'charge' - at present they exist on separate spreads and use a change from portrait to landscape layout to show very obvious difference.





In order to solve this I think I need to define the voices much more clearly in terms of the typography, before I even think about the layout, so they can interact within the spreads. Maybe I should look at Mermoz's original article On Typographic Reference for some inspiration...

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Excuses at the ready…



Supervision later today and here's a ready made excuse... the cat keeps sitting on my chair in the office, so I can't do any work!

Pecha Kucha night at The Building Exploratory

The lovely folk at The Building Exploratory have invited me to take part in a Pecha Kucha night entitled The Changing Face of Hackney on Thursday 26 November. Pecha Kucha involves a timed Powerpoint presentation of 20 slides of 20 second duration each - I'm not sure I'm known for my succinct summations, so it'll be a challenge!

Sunday 8 November 2009

The 'stuff' of inhuman typography



I am starting to develop work for a series of projects that view place through the lives of objects. A series of three projects will take a micro to macro, or private to public, look at Hackney in relation to objets that are kept, recycled, bought, or sold. The first in the series is the 'close up' view of objects in the home - how we create our own intimate space through the accumulation of significant objects.



This project was inspired by probe pack returns that talked about personal possessions that related to memories, to the process of one's life unfolding over time. These objects can be used to create a kind of 'pause' within one's ongoing life. A chipped blue mug from Berlin is more than that—it is a memory of a time and place, of a shared experience—it enables one to seemingly suspend the daily grind and transport oneself back to a particular moment.



One can perhaps see parallels with the ongoing gentrification and 'regeneration' of parts of Hackney—residents can control the space of their own homes and keep things that nay no longer be functional in a practical sense, but that function in an emotional way. They have less power when it comes to the demolition of the Four Aces Club or the cottages of Roseberry Place.



The content for the project will consist of two, possibly three, aspects—an essay written about 'stuff' (some of which appears in the post dated 9 August 2009), more personal texts and images provided by participants relating to the 'stuff' they referred to in their original answers and possibly a conversation about 'stuff' between myself and one of the participants.



This mix of threads will give me an opportunity to explore the idea of 'montage writing' (Crang & Cook, 2007)—an experimental form of ethnographic writing—within the context of design. The use of extended texts also provides a more realistic test for the geo/graphic design process in terms of the view of geographers and ethnographers who routinely deal with such extended texts and in relation to Mermoz's (1995 on) thoughts with regard to typography. It also offers another opportunity to refute Ingold's (2007) claims about the 'silencing' of the page since the advent of mechanical print.



All well and good, as so often is the way with neatly constructed argument through theory. But, the proof of the pudding, and this PhD is to be found within the practice and I am finding it not nearly so easy to construct such a watertight argument.



The first section I have explored visually is that of the essay The images previous and the next one below) and I am reasonably happy with the interpretation of the text in relation to Mermoz—that the typography should work at the 'level of the text'— and with the way it challenges Ingold's ideas that the page has no voice and is no longer a landscape one can travel.



The layout is constructed using the golden section and uses a 6 pica modular grid to reference the order—or when the text breaks out the grid, the disorder—relating to collections and collectors. The typeface used is Lucas de Groot's Thesis, which comes in a serif, sans and mix version—used to denote the difference between specific collections and generic 'stuff.'

However it is the interpretation of the participants' story (the following images) that I am less happy with. Or at least I am now I have stepped back a little from the screen.



I had a conversation with the work, and as Schön speculated, it talked back to me. Unfortunately it told me I was working in such a way as to be making self referential typographic interventions within the design that related not to the content of the text, but to the system of reading and the 'landscape' of the page.



I may have been trying to take interesting elements from medieval manuscripts, from a time—pre-Gutenberg—when pages were a maze that one had to make their way through, following asides and notations from individual scribes. I may have been accidentally enjoying making work that looks like it fell from the pages of Emigre circa 1992.



But I'm not sure what I was doing was making work that reflected the human story, the real content—work that engaged at the 'level of the text.' It is inhuman typography—it has become perhaps too much about the system and not enough about the person.



So further conversations with the work need to be had, to ensure that the voice of the participant appears within the pages, not just the voice of the designer...