Just My Type.. Love Letters

Another book I found on Amazon, and I believe recommended by Dr. Veltsos, is titled Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield. 

The book begins with a fun forward by Chip Kidd who explains his love of fonts beginning in his childhood with the bible in church and the different typefaces found in 70s television shows and rockband album titles. It also has a super funny comic about (ironically) Comic Sans.. 

Anyway, in the introduction of Just My Type, titled Love Letters, Garfield starts with a description about a man who never graduated from college and decided to take a calligraphy course and ended up finding his passion for fonts.This man is revealed to be Steve Jobs (sadly I read this days before his death) and how his love of letters is found throughout the Macintosh brand. Its discussed that Jobs introduced the fonts Chicago and Toronto to be as beautiful as calligraphy and original as the cities for which they are named. 

One of my favorite parts of this chapter was when Garfield makes the point about how fonts have been around forever, so how are we still improving them?

He writes: "Typefaces are now 560 years old. So when a Brit called Matthew Carter constructed Verdana and Georgia for the digital age in the 1990s, what could he possibly have been doing to an A and a B that had never been done before?" 

This quote got me thinking and made me want to learn and research even more about the characteristics that are found in fonts today that were found in fonts long ago in the beginning. 

He also  makes a great point about how an American friend of Carter created Gotham, which is the font that helped to bring Barack Obama into the White House. 

He then asks:

"What makes a font presidential or American, or British, French, German, Swiss, or Jewish? These are arcane mysteries, and it is the job of this book to get to the heart of them."

Garfield states at the end of Love Letters that the purpose of his book is to extend awareness and to celebrate our relationship with letters, the relationship that most of us don't realize existed. 

I think this book was written for my geekness..

From Gutenberg to Opentype - Introduction

So I found a few books on Amazon that just had to be mine, and this is the first one I have opened so far. From Gutenberg to Opentype by Robin Dodd, which is "an illustrated history of type from the earliest letterforms to the latest digital fonts." 

Very fancy. 

Here we go.

The introduction of this beautiful book covers what most intros do: the content of the book and how we got to needing such a book in the first place. Dodd begins the intro with a statement about how the printed book is now endangered by the personal computer, but yet both "are products of the creative imagination. The advent of the printing press mass possible the spreading of knowledge, debate, thoughts and ideas, and this provided the learning that eventually inspired the computer" (6).

What I liked about this quote is that it sums up how I've always felt about computers, because when you sit and think about it, the quote is completely true. Without the printing press, computers would have never been here. Without those fantastic metal letters, we wouldn't have fonts today, and I, my fellow readers, would have no reason to write what could be my APP. I am far too geeked out about this book, so I'll stop there and continue.

The fantastic metal letters we have all come to know that belong to be printing press were the basis of Johannes Gutenberg's breakthrough, which are sometimes referred to as "soldiers of lead that have conquered the world." Dodd begins to talk about how the world of personal computers changed the printing world, just like many other industries. Designers have at their fingertips hundreds of typefaces that were previously only the property of the printer. Anyone today can pick from a collection of fonts, "choosing one at random with no knowledge of its origin" (6). These thousands of fonts are a collection that has been building over 500 years of printing, some, which Dodd points out, have been in existence since before reading was ever a everyday practice. He points out that each font has a story, they all fulfilled a specific role in their time, and these roles are still fulfilled today. 

The beginning of each font's story starts with a punchcutter at his bench, who was able to transform a "commonplace letterform into a character with a unique personality." In the beginning, typefaces were cast from a mold that was fitted into a matrix. This was so that when the molten metal was then poured into the mold, the reversed, indented form of the matrix created the type's shape. Dodd goes over every step of how these molds were used, but it's far too much for me to write here, and then it would take the fun out of all of you reading it too. :)

Johannes Gutenberg's most original invention was adjustable molds, which could fit into different sizes of character widths. This invention allowed the process to be done quickly. This was the process used for the next 400 years until the American inventor Linn Boyd Benton invented another way to cut matrices, with he introduced the punchcutting machine. From here, punchcutting remained until the draftsman-designer, which is what is still used today.

Dodd then discusses typefaces and the fact that every one imposes a visual tone, that each one affects the message in ways that are not always apparent to those reading them. He states that in spite of all the changes in technology, the classic typeforms are still highly regarded by designers today. "Like great music and great literature, they still fulfill a practical need and provide aesthetic satisfaction after generations of use" (9).

The illustrated part of this introduction shows great drawings of the original punchcutting process and those working on them. The pictures are a great companion to the reading.

Dodd, Robin. 2006. From Gutenberg to Opentype: An Illustrated History of Type From the Earliest Letterforms to the Latest Digital Fonts. Vancouver: The Ilex Press Limited.

Digital Printing: Current and Future Applications

Woo! Helvetica. I have yet to find Helvetica on any of my computer applications, and I am super happy it's on Blogger :) 
Anyway.. lol..


My first article I read was "Digital Printing: Current and Future Applications" by Estelle Jobson. Throughout this article, Jobson describes current applications of digital printing, which include "self-publishing, printing for the educational market, stocking libraries, keeping back-lists alive, assisting university presses, and the futuristic book-ATM vision" (20). 


I found quite quickly that this article discusses digital printing and how it's used in different settings, rather than actual information on how digital printing itself as changed, but the information is still useful for information on how digital printing is being used today and why it's so important. I was disappointed at first that this article didn't really answer anything for my question, but figured it had some good information, and even research that didn't answer many questions still is research and that's all part of the process..


So back to the reading.. 


In the first section of her article, Jobson discusses the self-published author and how this trend has become popular among many authors. There are many companies that offer self-publishing, and she states that  "these companies enable aspiring authors to dispense with publishers in the traditional sense and become their own publishers" (20). Some of these companies include: Xlibris, Replica Books, Lightning Source, and Advanced Self-Publishing. She discusses how these companies are subsidiaries of other larger distribution companies and that they hold the widest reach for print-on-demand publishing. After using these services, the author will then have to market their book/materials themselves, though some of these companies offer help with marketing. 
She shows that there are not many huge success stories from self-publishing today, but some of them do include Chicken Soup for the Soul, and The Bridges of Madison County. 


In the next section of her article, Jobson discusses how digital printing helps keep back-lists alive. Many traditional publishers will use a print-on-demand service to keep many titles from being out of print. Also, this option is useful with university presses, many of which will never have to reprint their volumes again, but have the option to  have them available when needed. This service is also helping authors in developing countries. The African Books Collective, located in the United Kingdom, sells and distributes African titles to the United States and Europe through the print-on-demand service, Lightning Source. 


The print-on-demand service called Replica Books has also helped many libraries restock their shelves with out-of-print or out-of-stock titles. Since it began in 1997, its out-of-stock database has grown from 45 to over 13,000 titles. Their service accepts digitized (PDF) files and also provides scanning services to those titles that were printed before 1990 and have not been digitized. The finishing options include hardback and paperback options. 


An option that she briefly touches on is the idea from the company 3BillionBooks (3BB) who has plans to create  a global network of print-on-demand titles using technology from a machine they have called PerfectBook, a sort of book-ATM. The machine would be the size of an industrial photocopier and would print out, trim, and bind books one at a time. "The actual machines, which cost about $100,000, will be purchased and owned by local entrepreneurs in different countries around the world. Initially, the owner of a PerfectBook machine is expected to act as an interface between the technology and the buyer" (23). The long term dream is for these PerfectBook machines to be installed in public places, such as college campuses, bookstores, coffee shops, etc. 


Jobson states that the most beneficial application for digital processes is technical manuals, documents, financial reports, legal reports, tax statements, ballots, and many other areas that create documents that are constantly changing. 


In the future, she believes that more and more people will want to customize their own printing needs and need print-on-demand services. She states that people may want to make their own gardening books, cookbooks, dog training books, etc., and will need a place to print them without the hassle of a traditional publisher. 


She concludes her article with stating that to be successful in the future, publishers will have to figure out ways to stay ahead of the print-on-demand companies and make sure to keep offering services to help customize print needs of their customers. 




Jobson, Estelle. "Digital Printing: Current and Future Applications." Publishing Research Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring2003 2003): 20.Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 22, 2011).