Design Issues

Kevin Casanzio

Emily King’s article describes the rise of desktop publishing software as a replacement of once traditional typography firms. Big companies like Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft have emphasized new type technologies like OpenType formats that make font formats universal to all languages and platforms. Software companies have weeded out certain fonts that aren’t internationally accessible enough for the large channels of distribution. The rendering of letterforms into pixels has also given the type user more control. Programs that allow the user to render a traditional typeface into an italic typeface in one push of a button allows more usability than ever, but it can also ruin what the original typeface was meant for. Traditional typefaces were painstakingly created and studied to evoke absolute legibility. It seems that the desktop screen appearance is more important than the absolute legibility of the type. The rise of accessibility of fonts have changed the way designers choose typefaces. Independent type foundries have been designing specific fonts for corporation branding. Kings describes these customs fonts as a, “…must have accessory among contemporary brands.” However, many of these custom corporate typefaces are the incorporation of other traditional fonts. British Airways sans-serif font called Bliss is an incorporation of five other sans-serif fonts like gill sans and syntax. More modern typefaces are also including the use of the vernacular. The platelet font was borrowed from the license plate type. The incorporation of popular culture into the creation of type has given the reader new interpretations to encode. In Fenton’s article he describes that traditional typography does emit a sense of history of western civilization to the reader. He also believes that contemporary typographers are inserting more self-expression into their type designs. In turn, this self-expression might affect legibility. Fenton describes diminished legibility as typography dissolving into the illustration. However, modern readers have the ability to adapt to different type styles. We read distorted text on computers and cell phones. Rudy Vanderlans, who once worked for a newspaper, and believed if Americans could read, jammed text 10-point text put into narrow columns then they can adapt to almost anything. Fenton believed that too much self-expression into type just added to the confusion. Today’s reading platforms have incorporated animation into type with pop up ads and scrolling WebPages. These seem to be ways for the type to stand out more, other than making a huge font size. With this, some designers have made reading text too literal. Fenton used the example of the capitalization the word “gigantic” in bold letters as a way to cheapen the author’s intentions. In some way it seems to take the imagination out of reading for your self, or as Fenton put it, “… the new typography denies the reader the opportunity to experience the text for himself. With today’s over saturated print information, designers are taking any steps necessary to make their work stand out.
 

Brigid Gallagher

Technology has affected the relationship between type designer and the act of creating type in the sense that there are no limits. Where in the "olden days" type was created in order to fit into metal blocks for movable type printing and later the Monotype automated type foundry, now with the advent of the computer, this limited type- space relationship is a thing of the past. However, this type-space relationship is the basis for readability in fonts from the beginning of type as we know it. With increased technology the designer and the use of type has taken on a new role, in which the typeface is no longer created for readability and serif/ sans serif esthetic, but (in the case of Lego font, etc.) is created to mimic and advertise a product, and at the same time allow the user to create their own type within the framework of the new design. Readability may be affected when type is stylized for these purposes, directly affecting the reader and the act of reading, and also delaying the immediacy of the message, when the reader has to decipher not only letterforms, but now also connotative forms and colors included in these new typefaces to promote "styles" along with brands or images that we see everywhere else in our image- heavy society. Today we see type in a variety of places, and we just SEE so much in our lives that our eyes must adjust to many awkward displays of texts, such as the typical places: newspapers, books, signs and billboards, but also television, websites, email, palm pilots, cell phones, etc. The perception of readability and immediacy has changed in that there is now a bombardment of messages, and old fashioned typefaces may not be the ones to catch the viewer's eye. Color is also of large importance here. Basically, type is not just something you see in a newspaper or book, it is everywhere. And it is changing along with the "styles" of everything else we see.
 

Jessica Young

In Emily King’s reading there is much discussion of a move over type designers, here comes technology mentality that is in the type world today. Although there was an initial curiosity and appreciation for the gained access to the type tools designers were learning the lack of necessity of their work with type design. In the discussion of the loss of importance of this type skill came the importance of how to overcome the struggle or work. The main reason discussed is the software developers of these large corporations such as Microsoft, Apple, etc. and their ability to create these type packages and sell them much cheaper. There were different approaches to overcome these obstacles, one being selling as much as reasonably and quickly as possible, and other small type foundries reasonably decided that their services were more valuable and necessary and they would be paid sufficiently for these services.
The typographic field and frenzy are said to have diminished for several reasons, as the reading mentions, “threats of software piracy and cut-rate competition, or market saturation, or even economic cycles, but more likely than any of these factors is the reassertion of a couple of basic truths: type is complex and time-consuming to make, and requires an adherence of principles that put a damper on revolutionary ambition. So basically it is too boring for the design world today in the 21st century to waste so much time on designing type, when there are so many other design avenues to explore. I think that type will always be an important part of a design because text is important in an image and therefore though it may have taken a step back in the design efforts there are still prospects being explored, like comic design.
In Peter Hall’s article it is mentioned that the future of electronic typography is far from stuck in two dimensions. It becomes distinctly more intriguing when it is taken beyond the desktop computer screen into the fabric of the built environment. Type out in the environment large, small, fluorescent, or whatever it may be is an example of endless opportunity in the design world. What I find interesting about Peter Hall’s article is his outlook on the nostalgia of the printed type. The future of the newspaper is mentioned and I can understand the sentiment behind the tradition of the morning paper on the doorstep for all to read during their day but if technology could offer a quicker and cheaper way of reading the paper during the day it will be done. Peter Hall mentions that this will be done when the challenge for designers of taking the refinement of news delivery in print and enabling buildings to carry news in a usable form can be done. Architectural electronic news will work as an integrated part of everyday life, but only when electronic typography attains the portable and readable aspects of printed type will the newspaper begin to abandon its four-century reign.
 

Megumi Hattori

The typeface form and use of type has been changed under the circumstances of digital technology development. Type designer appears software firms like Adobe, Apple or Microsoft etc. To develop the type design technology, Adobe type designers emphasize Opentype fonts. Opentype font was developed to solve the problem of cross-platform incompatibilities of PostScript and TrueType format. The big companies like Adobe sought the way of unification of standard character for different types of digital media. Designers need to consider the typographical qualities for number of different media, not only computer screen, but also hand-held screens such as mobile phone etc.
Many designers took different approach to create typeface. Matthew Carter, the designer for Microsoft, approached `bottom-up` design while Tom Ricker recommended `top-down` approach. This `top-down` design considered using traditional typeface into screen. Under Ricker’s method, the appearance is more important than absolute legibility. On the other hand, the independent digital foundries are increasing. It is difficult for small digital foundries to survive because these small groups may have adopted their effort to the circumstances of big companies. Individual designers made typeface for publications or corporations to crate brand identity.
Typefaces are designed under the outcome of system approach and the rules that designer made. According to Christian Kusters, the idea behind typeface is more important than the typeface look. Type designers who are working this way take his or her inspirations into typeface. It means that it is more important to have mood or traditional typographic value than the readability.
Even the legibility is less important, readers can accept different aspects of typefaces. In Pater Hall’s article, he discussed the way to stand out typeface within news paper (include electrical environment). In newspaper, the font gives it’s own aspect and emotion that correspond readers. Type size has been bigger to correspond trend of aging readership. According to development of technology, the electric typography appears not only on the computer screen but also building construction environment. This new environment gives many possibilities to express typeface. For example, there are many huge screens that give us information in public space. Not only just enlarge the type size, but also designers need to consider how to stand out their typeface within new electronic environment.
 

Zach Kaitz

The type designer and the act of creating type have been affected by the new technology of software and printing by giving it so much freedom with so many problems. The page on the screen and print could now be as free with type as the Dadaists were with collaging them with the exception of resolution and what you see isn’t always what you get. Technology affects the creative approach to designing typefaces because of the more popular use of digital media the readability and legibility of new typefaces are being worked within the limits of the screen rather than the page. This whole move towards access for all to play with type has changed the type world dramatically as well. Big software and operating system companies supply fonts in a large package; type foundries make custom typefaces for companies (creating an exclusive identity) and type designers create new typefaces that can be embracing technology while adding new elements to designing and interpreting type.
Designers are suppose to know what their font means in history and to the world. There is an underlying context with every font connecting it to a time, place, movement, scene etc. and it changes throughout history. With technology typefaces can be manipulated in thousands of ways, an idea that could make original type designers turn in their graves. The work that went into making a typeface just to bold it, italic it and underline it might be wrong but it also gives designers a chance to add meaning by tweaking. Because designers know the parts of a letter and the history of type they can interpret the parasignal better than most readers. But the readers have been known to attach new meaning to typefaces killing the original parasignal.
The interpretation of type by the reader has evolved with the deconstruction of traditional type and the page; the breaking away of the strict horizontal and vertical graph like structure. An experiment in letter/word dominance on the page gives the designer the ability to illuminate the reader visually, contextually and conceptually. The design of a newspaper is made for an audience/community, every aspect from the headlines, size, photos, typefaces, cover and graphics fit to make the visual culture of that community. I think readers by the 60’s wanted type that their conformist parents wouldn’t read.
Types constraints since the printed word have been on the technology of printing. Typefaces were designed with the mechanical process in mind (spacing) along with readability and legibility. The computers first typefaces were blocky (VT100) built within the computers limits. Typefaces were all designed with an underlying theory to their construction since the printed word; Futura is built on math, Times New Roman is an updated classic made for ultimate readability. The construction of a typefaces meaning is always relating back to its context in history and culture. The art of creating a typeface requires as much knowledge of history as does a painter or a photographer. Type just as art has historical implications that can be refigured, combined and completely changed. The swastika that used to be known in the ancient world as love is now a symbol of death to Jews.
Everyone who grew up with a remote control has the ability to take in his or her news fast with headlines the entire way. The combination of the Internet and 24-hour news channels has changed the face of news and how we digest it. Immediacy is what the news is adhering to in order to keep their outlet on top. This has led to the ticker and new headlines on yahoo every hour.
 

Steve Voutsinas

Technology not only changed the conditions that type was being designed but also changed how it was being used. Over the past years, many software companies will never become the white nights of typography. Adobe is an example of this. The software made by Adobe was as odds with the software products made by the rest of the firm. When Adobe's PostScript types went through the roof, the type team was cut to only 12 people. As a result, beautiful type booklets were replaced by glossy leaflets selling Fun Types. Now at Adobe, type design emphasises the developments in type technology. By using OpenType formats that make type faces universal to all languages, and weeding out certain fonts, they have changed typography. Before where the traditional typefaces were meant to stay the same, this companies such as Adobe now have it where you can change any aspect of the typeface, to allow the designer to have more control of what he wants to do. In 1 way, this is good, because it gives the designer options, but traditionally, these typefaces were made for a reason, and by rendering them in such ways goes against why they were made for their legibility and grace. Because of these new technologies, designers now have a whole new way of choosing the fonts they want to use. When it comes to the reader, many of the new technologies go away from the readability of the original typeface, by certain renderings. Although it does go against the legibility of the orignal, good designers can still use the rendering of fonts and make it still very readable. However, some are not as succesful at this, and the readability is terrible. The question is what is better, a good design with rendered font or a simple design with traditional not been rendered font with maximum legibitlity? I think that both have good things about them but it depends on the design.
 

Dave Bellari

In the past typography followed certain standard guidelines as to what was “good” type. Type fonts were created to fit the blocking devices once used to lay out text. Variations of type fonts were minimal. With the new technology of today type fonts are changing. Changing their in their style and in their purpose. New computers are allowing designers and typographers to create typefaces that fit a certain style. A certain project may demand a different unique typeface in order to help sell a product. Typefaces are helping sell products in a way not previously used. One may see a certain font and relate that font to a product. Font faces have become a part of the identity of a product. A sleek font will say something about the product; it might tell the viewer that the product is of high style. These different types of fonts are seen everywhere. One will see different fonts everywhere they look. The font on the billboard you pass is unique and different from the font directly behind it on the store sign. The future of font is unknown, someday an average person may be able to sit at their computer and develop the font face they want to use in order to add new dimensions to their projects.
 

Kelli Dochstader

David Womac's article regarding Jurg Lehni and his design/coding projects illustrates a different approach to design and typography. Lenhi, instead of showing the relationship of the artist to the work, chooses to showcase the relationship of the designer to the machine. His special printing apparatus, named Hektor, gives the ability to create vector based word forms on any vertical surface, while acting as an ink-jet printer... except a little less structured and from a paint can. Essentially, Lenhi says that what keeps designing interesting for him is to see how else he can stretch the software used for design; how he can change or innovate it, rather than just changing the design itself, because many of the designs created in a vector program all have the same feel of the Bezier curve. So while many designers have used technology to create new fonts, Lenhi has used technology to create new methods.
However, this is not to say that one is any better than the other. Many designers are faced with creating new fonts in order to keep up with new technologies with digital interfaces such as pds and cell phones. Such is the creation of Cleartype. Which aims to make digital interfaces more readable.
Essentially the world of type has to change as the world does and as technology advances. New appliances will surely require more high tech typographical solutions in order for maximum readability and hopefully sometime soon there will be advacement in the rather stagnent area of online news. but i feel that the best thing about type is that it is something that will never go away, and is essentially timeless, even though some fonts are associated with time periods and are therefore "dated." Type, second to speech and articulation, is one of the most valued tools we have to communicate with those around us, and has been around for thousands of years, developing and changing, yet essentially remaining the same.
 

Yun Wa Chan

Emily King’s article discusses how technology affects typography. She first mentions that type used to be designed by independent type foundries, but now they are mostly designed by software firms, such as Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft. These companies design fonts mostly for desktop publishing and web design. Sometimes fonts are included with operating systems or software, which also lowers the price of typefaces. This competition affects smaller type foundries, whose designers spend many hours designing a typeface and need to charge more for them.

Technology has also led to the creation of new type technologies. For example, Adobe’s OpenType addresses the problem of cross-platform incompatibilities of PostScript and TrueType formats. It was later developed to address the international standard character set of Unicode to support the interchange, processing and display of written texts of all languages. With advances in technology and increase awareness of communication within different languages, OpenType is an attempt at creating an international typeface.

In the past, type designers were designing type for the specialist. They aimed toward the experienced designer. Since software companies took over a large part of type design, typefaces have been designed for a broader audience. Because the goal of these software companies is to gain profit, the design of type is affected by the companies business and the economy. For example, Adobe’s type sales went down in 1992 when there was an economic recession. Before 1992, Adobe’s type team and type booklets have been impressive. After 1992, their type team and booklets were greatly reduced.

Technology has also affected the reader and the act of reading. Now, people are reading text from screens, such as computers, PDAs, cell phones, etc. These new technologies require the creation of new fonts. Examples of these new screen fonts include Matthew Carter’s Verdana and Georgia. Software companies also drive the creation of these fonts because they have access to wide channels of distribution. King’s article mentions that Matthew’s method of design is described as “bottom-up” rather than “top-down.” With advances in technology, the technological methods of type design also change and multiply. Screen fonts also place more importance on appearance rather than legibility, which also affects the design and use of these fonts. Microsoft’s ClearType is an attempt at creating more comfortable screen fonts for small screens, such as PDA’s and mobile phones because the current fonts are jagged and difficult to read. Peter Hall’s article also discusses how electronic type is not as portable or readable as printed type. Electronic type also follows the same conventions as printed type instead of being utilized in new and different ways.

The history of type is changing with new trends in typography. Typefaces that are different are being combined to create a new and distinctive typeface. Type is also being influenced by popular culture. King seems to state that current typographic trends still have relationships to the construction of meaning, but the direction of type exploration has been edited down to the trends of the early 90’s.
 

Niki Zengerle

Well, I guess I will start with a summing up of the historical events before moving on to opinion and interpretation. Since the Digital Type Decade Article seemed somewhat dry to me, the first two paragraphs here may also seem a boring reiteration, but no matter.
In the late 1980's new hardware and software tools, capable of creating new kinds of type, suddenly became economical and affordable to desktop designers. As a result, the older traditional typographic firms were forced to redirect their energies or be squeezed out of the market. Software firms such as Adobe emerged and captured the market for a few years, until an avalanche of independent type designers who had “arrived at type inadvertently through the development of desktop publishing”, began to make their marks. This competition and economic hardship forced firms like Adobe and Microsoft to concentrate on the type technologies that were “unwieldy and forbidding” to independent type designers. Adobe focused on creating new type technologies such as OpenType (a collaboration with Microsoft), to address the problem of cross-platform incompatibilities in the already existing PostScript and TrueType fonts, and well as work with Unicode, the international character standard designed to support the written texts of all languages. Microsoft also concentrated on creating type fonts for the screen, using basic bitmap fonts created in three sizes that retain their basic spacing regardless of scale, and ClearType, designed for non-scalable, low-resolution screens such as those of mobile phones.
While larger firms were redirecting their energies smaller independent type firms continued to flourish. After discovering that type is complex and time consuming to make, they employed a wide range of strategies to survive in a competitive market. Some specialized in high-end artistic typefaces or designs that captured the nostalgia of certain time period, while others concentrated on making custom typefaces as a part of the corporate branding strategies so prevalent in today's marketplace.
Which brings us to how designers use type in today's oversaturated marketplace. It seems natural that most affluent, high profile, companies would want to have a type face of their very own to contribute to their brand recognition. But I am more intrigued by the way in which other groups or organizations are utilizing type to get the message across. The kiosk in Times Square is a good example. It's obvious that people are in a hurry these days, and don't want to devote a lot of time getting the scoop on the days events. They want clear concise information in the most efficient way possible. While the large, colorful images grab the visual attention of passers by, the continually scrolling text deliverers information about headlining events. It's more than just the news about what is going on in the world, it's a gigantic visual hook used to make people curious about what is happening out there. It's “The News as its own Advertisement!” and, as is often the case these days, has multiple purposes other than the obvious. This need for immediate information also promotes the popularity of on-line news sources, though I find the visual layout annoying. There is so much happening on the page that, to me, flashing ads and large colorful pictures obscures the text. I actually agree with some of the points made by Kevin Fenton about readability losing its importance in much of today's design. Although it's faster, more efficient, and probably less obvious to your boss, to be reading the paper on-line, if given a choice I still prefer the newspaper. I think it has several pros over the on-line version: You can scan a much greater area of the paper at one time, making it easier (and faster) to pick and choose what you want to read, the typography is consistent and only the headlines are used to assign a preset hierarchy of importance, and its easier to concentrate on what you are reading with out external things like ads flashing at you unexpectedly. Most importantly, there is a wonderful sense of relaxation, a break from the rat race, that sitting back with a cup of coffee and the newspaper has traditionally represented that I think is completely lost in the “feel” of on-line news experiences. Newspapers are being phased out just like everything else as being too slow, when in fact it may be healthy to slow down for that half an hour.
I also agree with Fenton that the readers experience can be skewed by what the designer has chosen to emphasize in traditional writing. Don't get me wrong, I love the look of an unconventional page, different sized type, letters and words running in different directions, etc., I think typographical design can be a great asset in many situations, but sometimes the words themselves may have a meaning that is beautiful without embellishment. I just don't want us to evolve to where we become too bored and impatient to look for it.
 

Alyssa Crick

The type designer has been experimenting with letter form for centuries. The act of creating type has drastically changed with time due to technology and culture. Printing presses are becoming more and more sophisticated and the location of type is becoming ever more wide spread. Computers use type primarily for information on screeen and cell phones need simple type faces that are legible on tiny screens. Type faces are also being developed as creative art forms, molding the typographer into a designer or artist. Type may be created to deliver information, but with the use of a particular type face, the text can become loaded with additional meaning. Type designers can intentionally or unintentionally design with such added meaning and greatly change the impact on the reader. The audience that reads type is rapidly losing their attention span and range of understanding/vocabulary. Information is so widely available through television and the internet, that reading type becomes virtually unnecessary. The act of reading is quickly losing its importance in delivering information due to the explosion of technology. Printed materials such as newspapers have declined in popularity and are almost an old fashioned medium to get the day's news. All throughout history type has been used to spread information over distances and spans of time. The shapes of letters are mainly designed for legibility and practicality. Saving space and creating a harmonious flow are crucial to good type design, but meaning is also constructed into the type through culture. Type faces can deliver emotion through their design, independent of the words that the type forms.
 

Kristin Soro
Typography is found in our everyday life used in number of ways, it can be used to inform or used in design but technology has allowed for the coming out of more and more ways of globalizing the way typographers design text. The creation of software decoding allows more fonts to become readable and useable for in the everyday, the designer I think is then also influenced by the technology in a way the fonts created become more technical. As Kings Article points out the twenty-first century typeface shift in design was towards the “techie look” which I would say reflects the use of technology in today’s society.
The designer has use for they type in ways to communicate there ideas to the world by designing typefaces that are not only readable or harder to read but to follow in form of the product of words that it is describing. Typography can be used as just design with no real legibility, or it can stand for the products or words as a whole. The type becomes part of its identity.
Everywhere we look we see a new use of form of type. As time has progressed and the demand for new vehicles and display materials to reach out at mass typography has grown to accommodate. Immediacy has become an issue directed to the typographic industry; it has pressured the use of type to be placed in and around our society to inform use of information that people need to find quickly, road signs, in airport screens, news bands. I think that type will continue to grow with our changing environments and new software will catch up with the rising demands of creating fonts that are interchangeable between users, and possible creatable by them as well.
 

TRAVIS APTT

Throughout the years, technology has affected the relationship between the type designer and the act of creating type. From the days of Gutenberg and the printing press to todays infinite numbers of ways to produce type, technology has had the most important and significant effect. Type is as easily reproducible today and it may possibly be. Just about everything is a click away and can be morphed, stretched, etc in any way imaginable. In the past fonts were standard bold, block shaped, with little to them. Technology has helped to add serifs, italics, condensed, etc. The possibilities are endless. The internet has possibly been the biggest influence. It allows for worldwide searches and ideas to find a font or typeface for any situation available. This in turn changes the way consumerism has changed. Type relates to the products they sell and help to attract customers. It may connect or communicate with viewers. Say something to one person but at the same time, something else to another. The present technology I believe contradicts the original ideas for what fonts were devised for. Overall, however it has become such an incredible success. There are millions of fonts today, and I bet that there is one perfect for every situation. I would say for the future… the only place to go would be for self font creation. A program where you simply enter maybe adjectives of what kind of a type-face that you are trying to create… and you would easily be able to create it. Who knows though.
 

Typography today seems to have become less important due the rising effects of technology. Computers can select a type face in less then one second, type a word in less then 30 seconds, and be printed out on paper in under a minute. The process of selecting the right type face has because insufficient because there are so many different possibilities. The challenge use to be making a type face look perfect. Today the challenge for the designer is to pick the correct type face, the placement, the size, and the correlation with the piece. Design has become an endless amount of possibilities with the piece itself. Typography either makes or breaks a designers work, it is one of the most important elements in successful designers work. Knowing which type of font to use is just the beginning, the problem of achieving good typography is not with the new technology. Type should be treated the same way that photography, design, scanning, color separation, and printing are handled. Many type today is either carelessly thrown into an amazing design, or becomes part of the design itself. A good designer knows how to make several fonts work with there design. I think a piece that is primarily type is easier to construct rather then a piece that has no type at all. A design that has less type easier to see the good use or bad of choosing a correct font. A reader of a design is not necessarily looking at it for the readably these days, it has to do with the over all message of the design. The text could possibly say less then the design itself, and that is one way how type has changed throughout history. Personally I hate type and sometimes can't figure out where I begin, but guess I should start to get over that!
 

opps Carolynn Giordano for the last comment!
 

Eda Karahan

I believe that technology has affected the relationship between the type designer and the act of creating type because there is not as much thought put into the process of font creation. Back when type first started, designers appreciated it more, and actually had reasons for the particular font. Now, with all the new technology we have, its been put on the back burner, and sometimes its worried about last, which ends in just putting anything that just looks good. As a student I feel that type should be more emphasized in classes more, which it isn't. I am taking my second typography class, yet I still feel like I know nothing about typography, I honestly do not know which fonts work best with what. I believe that it just has become a minor detail in design, but we learn here at school that the type is what finalizes the design. Technology has also affected the designer and their use of type because once again the thought process of choosing a typeface has been neglected. Honestly, I think that readers could care less today when viewing and interpreting a design. I know that before I started taking any design classes as a viewer I never even thought that there was a thought process that went into choosing a font. We need to stop letting technology take over certain steps we need to take as designers, and even in everyday life.
 

Kristina Nosal

Typography has come a long way...from moveable print to computers and word processing. There was no variety of fonts, now there is a font for everything. Choosing a font is very important to the readability of the viewer. If the reader can easily read the font, meaning it has serifs to create a flow between the letters and easily draw your eye to the next character, they will read faster, and will continue to read. There is so much to learn and know about typography to create a well designed piece. So many studys have been doneabout type. For example to figure out where the readers eye falls first on a page, and such so that we as designers can make sure we grab the attention of the reader. Designers know when they design what will be looked and first on their design, and what will draw their eye down to a certain place on the page.
I believe that typography is soemthing that isnt taken as important as it should be. There should be more emphasis, or maybe even more classes here so that we leave knowing everything, or nearly everything there is to learn about type.
 

I happened across this forum and saw that my essay was included as extra credit reading, which was flattering. The only thing I would add is that my essay was a reaction to a particular time in typography. The typography of the mid-90s was very fermented; from what I've seen in the design annuals, the craft has pulled back from the more chaotic experiments of the time. I've also found that a part of my problem was that my eye wasn't yet accustomed to what I was seeing. When I look at the best of the type from that time, it now looks surprisingly classical to me.