Jean F Porchez was the editor of the book “Lettres françaises” which is an overview of contemporary French type design. The book was published in 1998 to co-incide with the ATypI conference in Lyon. Unfortunately, I don’t know how the book is available.

Regards,
Adam

Peter Enneson (who’s hanging around here now - I’ll alert him to this thread) is translating some of the GN stuff to English. Letterletter is definitely a book to have: it explains the chirographic angle in type design quite well, and has a lot of good, broader insight into human society as well.

hhp

Also, Letterletter is pretty funny.

Thanks Hrant, my translation of Gerrit Noordzij’s ’mini magnum opus’ (as I like to call it) “De streek: theorie van het schrift” will appear published by Robin Kinross’s Hyphen Press some time this fall, under the title “The stroke: theory of writing”. It will be distributed in North America through Princeton Architectural Press. It’s a great compliment to Letterletter.

Other English language titles are listed at:
http://www.letterror.com/noordzij/bibliography/index.html

I have not seen “Zetten Bij Thieme, Nijmegen”, But “De Handen Van De Zeven Zusters” (The [writing] hands of the seven sisters) is beautifully produced and wonderful to read. It contains numerous essays on type or writing, including the title piece, and ones on the primacy of the pen, the domain of typography, the burgundian bastarda, the typographic word, the word-image, as well as pieces on the creation of heaven and earth and the real meaning of bingo. It’s text is probably greek to non-dutch readers, but some of the visuals speak volumns.

Addtionally, it appears that De streek will be published in english by Hyphen Press this fall.
http://www.hyphenpress.co.uk/titles/stroke/index.html

and a news bit here:
http://www.hyphenpress.co.uk/news/news_2.html

Great news, Peter. Look forward to buying and reading it.

Adam, in the case of ’Lettres françaises’ was there enough there in the images that it would be useful learning tool? Or was it more of a beautiful promtional item? Do you have a copy? Do you speak/read french?

I am getting more and more interested in the Dutch school of type design & want to learn - but I am in alaska so books & websites is what I have.

At the same time I am finally seeing what Jean Porchez talked about when he said - pardon the paraphrase here, it is imprefect - ’ The dutch took type design & gave it new solidity & rigor ’ which I imagine comes from an emphasis on written structures - what was called ’ductal logic’ in that christian gothic thread. Then he said something like ’ But now French type is giving the type it’s elegance back.’ Again, apologies for any mis-quotation or mis-paraphrasing. I don’t recall exactly where I read it or I would quote it directly.

At the time I thought that this kind of description seemed a bit maybe nationalistic or maybe even self serving - but I don’t think so now. Now that seems *right*.

Apolline seems to have most of the rigor of the Dutch type I admire so much but an elegant flow to it too. I am still learning where my impressions come from - & my impressions keep changing.

I am hoping to learn about the dutch school by reading Noordzij.

For French stuff, also check out Ladislas Mandel’s “Du Pouvoir de l’Écriture”.

hhp

Eben, the best source for information on dutch type is Jan Middendorp’s massive (300+ pages; large format), profusely illustrated, comprehensive and perceptive “Dutch Type.” Gerrit Noordzij is only part of the picture. You can buy “Dutch Type” through Nijhoff & Lee (http://www.nijhoflee.nl), but the postal charges can be daunting.

I picked up my copy of Dutch Type online at You Work for Them. The book itself was expensive at US $78, but UPS Ground shipping was only $7.15. Worth every penny.

I just finished reading Letterletter. It was much different than I expected, but also enriching in ways I didn’t expect. And I agree with Jackson, Noordzij is pretty funny. His intro will tell you most of what you need to know: you don’t need to believe him, just take him seriously.

It’s ironic that GN’s views make more sense the further they are from type.

hhp

Which of his views on type do you take issue with? & why?

I’m a big fan of Letterletter, with all the caveats that I think that statement necessarily implies to anyone else who has read the book. What I like and admire about Letterletter — and why I am looking forward to reading Peter’s translation of De streek — is that it deals practically with the question of how letters are made, and is the only work I know that attempts to analyse the relationship of tool and motion to letterform. Now, as Hrant will rightly insist, the question of how letters are made is not the same as the question of how letters are read. But for a type designer, especially a beginner coming to the craft from outside either an apprenticeship or school introduction, learning to think about letterforms from the inside-out, as it were, is helpful and probably essential. This is why I have described Letterletter as the most practically helpful book I have read as a type designer, and I suspect that Peter’s new English version of De streek will be even more helpful.

> Which of his views on type do you take issue with? & why?

Mainly the big one: that type needs to be chirographic to work; that “there’s no essential difference between type and [hand]writing”. But there’s a bunch other things too, like his equating literacy with civilization. Riiight.

> the only work I know that attempts to analyse the
> relationship of tool and motion to letterform.

What about Catich?

> especially a beginner

While I worry that a beginner is particularly susceptible to suffering the long-term detriments of a misguided foundation. I think the best place to start thinking about type is the... reader!

The GN stuff is great for: analyzing the past; and making pretty organic display faces. No more.

hhp

Letterletter has the virtue of being thought provoking, whether you agree with it or not, and this is a high merit. As I have mentioned earlier, I also agree with John about the fundamental importance of understanding the relation of the tool to letter form.

I agree with Hrant that type is not writing, but disagree to the extent that type, as Van Krimpen said, retains an influence or force of writing that can’t be escaped from. As I think Goudy noted, it is hard to find a (two story) a and g where you don’t see the influence of the pen.

I also think that G. Noordzij is right about the connection of writing and civilization. Without writing, you can’t have rule of law over anything larger than a village. It was a key step toward individual freedom, which was to some extent lost in the ’oriental despotisms’ of high culture and productivity that came with irrigation technology-in the Nile, Mesopotemia, India and China.

John Hudson: “and I suspect that Peter’s new English version of De streek will be even more helpful.”

I trust it will.

Hrant: “The GN stuff is great for: analyzing the past; and making pretty organic display faces. No more.”

Yes, Gerrit Noordzij’s writings are great for analyzing the past, including the recent past. And his understanding of writing helped him make a series of highly readable text types. Typophiles might be amused to learn that I came to Hrant’s bouma concept after having been convinced by Noordzij’s writings of the importance of the visual integrity of the word image.

Gerrit never wanted to prescribe, just describe. In an unpublished text I promised once to get letterpress printed for an ATypI doggy bag, Gerrit writes: The dogma of independent typedesign could only be supported with a selection of beautiful decadent roman fonts in the Dutch manner by such designers as Voskens, Kis, Fleischmann and Caslon. For esthetic reasons they made the shapes of their typefaces different from penstrokes. [...] It is decadent to make an artificial distance between the tool and the shape, but keeping them artificially together is decadent as well. This leaves the playingfield wide open. Gerrit’s stuff is great for opening up the future.

addendum: one of the the things Gerrit’s “but keeping them artificially together” quip leaves the playing field open to is: the contribution of a cognitive-scientifically sustainable understanding of perceptual processing in reading. Are we there yet?

Hrant, I was actually hoping to corner you at TypeCon and ask your thoughts on Letterletter. It’s very interesting stuff, but very at odds with, well, a significant chunk of your philosophy of good type design.

I found his suggestion for type-drawing techniques to be very illuminating. I’m a fan (in my amateur way) of a combination of techniques, but I’d never thought of doing it quite that way. It appears to add a lot of clarity to controlling axes when you’re not using tool that has an inherent axis (I often use a ballpoint pen). Though it’s a bit beholden to handwriting.

Not to start a debate on it, but I also found his writings on the Bible very fascinating.

> Without writing, you can’t have rule of
> law over anything larger than a village.

And you can’t end up having such a “civilized” century as the 20th...
Seeing illiterate cultures as “uncivilized” is disgusting.

> Yes, Gerrit Noordzij’s writings are great for
> analyzing the past, including the recent past.

And the forseeable future even! But not the direction we need to be going [now]. And I don’t buy that describe-versus-prescribe business; it’s quite clear what GN likes, and this obviously influences what he makes (where “highly readable” is relative) for others to see/use, and what he teaches/perpetuates.

> Noordzij’s writings of the importance of the visual integrity of the word image.

But when will people realize that you can’t have both the pen and ideal notan?

> It is decadent to make an artificial distance between the tool and the shape

Yes. Dump the tool.

> but keeping them artificially together is decadent as well.

Then why keep doing it?!

> Gerrit’s stuff is great for opening up the future.

I think if it were, it wouldn’t be doing the exact opposite...

> For esthetic reasons they made the shapes of
> their typefaces different from penstrokes.

I see that as an insult against Fleischmann.
Not to mention against the craft itself.
Focusing on aesthetics is for juvies.

> It appears to add a lot of clarity to controlling axes

Yes, the GN stance is a typical byproduct of the Western obsession with Control, not to mention the Self (here ITO the desire to express yourself more than serve others). Many people like the GN angle because it makes them feel relevant and it makes life simpler. So does living in a cave.

hhp

“when will people realize that you can’t have both the pen and ideal notan?”

when 1) notan in type is properly specified, 2) shown to be desirable in the typographic realm, and 3) shown to be not acheivable with the pen.

When I think notan, I think black / white equi-valance (hypen intended); and when I think equivalence I think modularity, and textura—a product of the broad-nibbed pen—but in the textura bouma divergance is compromised or so it seems to me.

What about Catich?

Yes, Catich is important, especially for demonstrating that the tool in question isn’t always the obvious one. But Catich was concerned with the production of a specific style of lettering using specific tools, while Noordzij’s analysis is much broader and takes into account models of expansion and rotation as well as translation. This is where I think it is most useful, because most Latin type designers, consciously or unconsciously, begin with a translation model. Making designers conscious of the characteristics of other models helps them to extend the ’vocabulary’ of their letterforms. It can make designers more adaptive, and increase the range of solutions that will occur to them when they encounter specific problems including problems of readability.

While I worry that a beginner is particularly susceptible to suffering the long-term detriments of a misguided foundation. I think the best place to start thinking about type is the… reader!

But what does that mean? We return to my question of some months ago: What would the designer do differently? How would the design process differ? Theoretically, starting from the reader, i.e. starting from an understanding of how we read rather than how we write, makes emminent sense, but I think we have this problem: we don’t understand enough about how we read to substantially inform a design process from the ground up. We can pick up bits of empirical and anecdotal evidence about how we read, and we can reach (tentative) conclusions or working hypotheses based on them, and these can and should inform decisions during the design process, but this is very different from saying that we can make the reader the foundation of text typeface design in some way that ignores completely the chirographic background of our writing systems.

However, all is not lost, because I think the kind of graphic understanding developed by Noordzij can be reconciled very easily with a gradually increasing knowledge of reading and its application to design. Rather than ideologically declaring that type design should proceed from an understanding of reading, even though that understanding is insufficient to support the process — leading to arbitrary and capricious design decisions —, we can realistically locate such understanding ’downstream’ in the design process, as a recognised and increasingly clearly defined target.

I also think that G. Noordzij is right about the connection of writing and civilization. Without writing, you can’t have rule of law over anything larger than a village. It was a key step toward individual freedom...

There is very strong evidence that individual freedom and equality has never since been so great as it was in pre-civilised, i.e. pre-agrarian, hunter gatherer societies. The downside, of course, is a short lifespan and chronic low level inter-group warfare. Civilisation is defined by a number of key technologies, one of which is writing, but all resting on agrarianism. The aggresive alternative to agrarianism is pastoralism, which occupies the geographic and social fringe of agrarian civilisation, and is generally antagonistic to it. It seems likely that many peoples chose pastoralism precisely because it offered them more individual freedom than in the increasingly tightly controlled agrarian civilisations. The desire for individual liberty that persists despite civilisation can be seen as a kind of homesickness for the freedom that we enjoyed as hunter gatherers. So what we have is a long societal movement from the freedom, social equality and consensus decision making of the small hunter gatherer group, to the increasingly constrained and hierarchical structures of agrarian and, later, industrial society, to modern attempts to foster institutions of individual liberty within mass societies (democratic goverment, constitutional rights, the Internet). The fact that these insitutions are consistently undermined shouldn’t blind us to the extent to which they recollect our most ancient sense of ourselves as free persons.

> What would the designer do differently?

First, psychologically: Relinquish the control and ego-trip of creativism (Art) to start heading towards serving the reader (Design) for real. Overcome the fear of not knowing the destination, or even that a destination exists; the reader is served by our attempts during the journey, not our “arrival” anywhere - that only serves us.

Then, practically: Pay primary attention to the border between Black and White, instead of carrying out moving-front formalisms on an illusionary skeleton. Make glyphs that come together to strike the balance you think is good between: aesthetics, bouma divergence, even color/texture, and familiarity. The glyphs do not need to follow a formal system (like chirography, or geometry) - in fact if they do they cannot approach the “ideal”. This makes them nebulously defined, and that’s scary - but that’s the most something made by a human for other humans can ever be anyway.

> we don’t understand enough about how we read

We know enough to stop relying on chirography [as much as we do].
Even a little knowledge is better than blind allegiance to legacy circumstances.

> There is very strong evidence that ...

That’s quite good John.

hhp

>freedom and equality

I do not know whether your praise of hunter-gatherer societies vs agricultural is entirely merited—what are your sources?—but in any case it does not contradict what I wrote about law and freedom. The point is that what we regard as the pioneers of civilized societies are the highly productive and creative civilizations of the Nile, Mesopotamia, China and India. I mentioned specifically that something was *lost* in these as well as gained, as well as, no doubt in the earlier transition from hunter-gatherer societies to settled agriculture.

What is normally called civilized is just the specialization, with the flurishing of art, invention, and yes writing that came with the irrigation societies. These were far more productive than earlier ones, and so enabled people to have leisure and specialization that resulted in many advances.

Within the context of these large, developed, sophisticated but oppressive societies, writing enabled the rule of law, protecting the individual to a greater extent. Moses seems to have been the first to try to eliminate the monarch in this context, proposing a rule of law purported to have divine authority. Ancient Greek democracy proposed law sanctioned by the votes of the people, but the same ideal of rule by “law, not men.”

Within large, productive societies that produce economic surpluses—and which allow for such activities as type design—law is critical to individual freedom, and writing is necessary for such law.

Hrant, why do you wish to take the art out of the design? Are you speaking only about the making of maximally legible type? Or are you attacking the inherited assumptions made in general about what makes the most legible type?

Art is as much a condition of humanity as nebulous definition, no?

Or am I misinterpreting you?

> enabled people to have leisure

Riiight.

> Moses seems to have been the first

Oh yes of course - u all da man.

> why do you wish to take the art out of the design?

Never take out. But put in its place - balance.

Anything made by a human cannot avoid personal expression, and anything made for a human should not. The limits of expression come in due to the need of Design to serve others, not merely satisfy the maker.

hhp

I do not know whether your praise of hunter-gatherer societies vs agricultural is entirely merited—what are your sources?

I’m not praising hunter-gatherer societies, I’m making an observation about their social organisation, which tends to be non-hierarchical, based on consensus decision making, and in which men and women have substantial social equality. One doesn’t have to sign-up to a sentimental ’noble savage’ myth in order to acknowledge the relative freedom of such groups, and it would be foolish to praise them, because it is not as if they have chosen to live this way: it was simply the pattern of human existence for many hundreds of thousands of years, and it survives, just about, and has been observed among the few hunter-gatherer societies that persisted into the modern age. The key to the social life of hunter-gatherer societies is the small group, and a significant area of open and fruitful land.

I’m certainly not trying to paint an idyllic picture of such societies. As I noted above, they were characterised by chronic low level warfare. There were almost no pitched battles of the kind that we associate with civilised warfare, but a succession of ambushes and, when possible, massacres. The number killed on any one day was miniscule compared to the increasing efficiency of civilised warfare, but the proportion of the overall population killed in each generation was much higher than in any subsequent warfare (as high as 25%, if I recall correctly). This kind of hunter-gatherer warfare was well documented among the Australian aboriginal peoples, and was still prevalant in New Guinea until quite recently. It is also, by the way, exactly the same kind of warfare that has been documented among different groups of chimpanzees.

My point about such socieities is that they reflect the vast majority of human history: civilisation is a recent phenomenon. So it isn’t unreasonable to think that much of what we are as a species was formed in such societies, and that conformance to hierarchical social organisation is to some degree alien to our nature: it is something that we have learned in the past few thousand years, and which most of us continue to resist and subvert in various ways.

My main source for this thinking is the early chapters of Gwynne Dyer’s War, which I’ve been reading recently. He provides a good summary of recent research on hunter-gatherer societies, most of which seeks to bury the old noble savage myth and accurately detail the shortness and unpleasantness of such existence (the tribesmen of New Guinea were reportedly very relieved when the goverment told them that they were not allowed to fight each other any more). But at the same time, the relative social equality and freedom of such societies should be acknowledged: because it is part of our common, pre-civilised past.

While we’re on the topic of civilization:

Way back in this thread Hrant took exception to Noordzij’s “equating literacy with civilization.”

Does Noordzij actually do this? I have not reread Letterletter in its entirety to confirm or disconfirm this, but what Noordzij does say is that “[I] am initiated in the convention of a civilization by learning it’s technique of handwriting.” (page 6) And what Noordzij does equate is the begining of Western and Islamic civiliztion with the invention of the word. (page 36ff)

>early chapters of Gwynne Dyer’s War

Thanks for the reference. I look forward to looking at it. I am skeptical of the claims to lack of hierarchy in hunter-gatherer societies. Every other traditional society I have heard of has adults in authority over children, men over women to a serious degree, and some community leaders with more power.

Back on topic, sort of:

Ever since the “true Italic” thread where I put “constructed” in quotes in an attempt to qualify it as a broader idea in opposition to chirography, I’ve realized I need a better term. “Notanic” sucks though. And “chirography” deserves a suitably Greek opponent. So I arrived at the idea of expressing the boundary-based nature of notan-centric design. My first choice was the Greek word for “membrane” (something that both separates and relates), but ironically that’s “chorio”... and “choriography” is both taken and too confusable against “chirography”. So I’ve decided to go with “dichography”, since “dicho” means -or at least can mean- something like “one thing split into two”. And one good thing about it is that many people are familiar with that prefix already.

Now, I’m not a fan of terminological despotism, so this is your chance to suggest something better.

hhp

Questions of Civilization ( or lack therof ) aside - It seems to me that some factors have been left out of this discussion about the approach to the design of type.

Type signifies in at least two ways; One; as written - in other words ’what’ is written. It’s type’s ability to do this better than letters writen by hand that Hrant in particular seems excited by. But Typophiles in general seem to share this prejudice.* This is also also the reason I am interested GN’s books, dutch type & french type.

Two; type signifys - and this is where graphic designers get so much of their kicks - from the design/art/style of the letters - and the implied meaning or feeling they suggest. A type has a kind of ’voice’ like an actor speaking.

* By which I mean nothing pejorative.

I can understand where some type designers may fixate on the 1st kind of signifying but even the ’best’, most neutral, or most readable ( pick your own quality really ) type cannot fail be interpreted by readers in both ways. It’s probably true that sheer familiarity of the forms reduces the extent to which we are aware of our reactions to the sheer style or feeling of book or text fonts. But this 2nd factor doesn’t go away.

It seems like the 2 characteristics must interact and enhance or undermine each other. It also seems like a font with a beautiful rhythm would add to it’s fuction. I think that the GN influenced fonts & dutch fonts in general have this quality. Fonts from Ourtype, Gerard Unger, Enchede & so on seem to embody this quality. But the Apolline seems to deemphasize some of this rhythym which seems somewhat chirographic in origin to gain some additional melody. My musical analogy may not be right, and my observation may be poor, and finally I could be wrong about the way in which these two elements interact. But thats the way it seems to me. Any comments?

The key to the social life of hunter-gatherer societies, or at least the ones who survived, was Information. “After the Ice” explains all this from the only perspective that matters, which is the vast trove of archeological evidence unearthed in the last, and only the last 20 years or so, when they’ve been able to subject the bones, and one bit of clothe! to cool forensic studies, and the other remains to microbiological and micromineralogical analysis. The book is a must for discussions like this ’cause it’s a global study of studies, and spans the transitions from huntress, to shepherdess, to housewife (and from bean eater to bean guarder to bean counter). ....From these studies, we know that they didn’t have italics, free time? a concept of freedom? Not for long. Freedom and eat’em, as they’d say. The other important part we’ll never understand but know existed was a connection to nature that was so overwhelming that there was no room for most of the concepts we have today about how people must have lived ; ). They were, as groups, full of information or gone. This slowly morphed into representations of that information: after the ice.

The ideas of the Noordzij and Catich, mixed with Dyer and Diamond are nearly too much for me at least. The later, by the way, in The One or Two pages on the subject of typography and printing, all but acknowledges the title should be, “...and Steel & Type” and, New Guinea Is home to 2/3 of the spoken languages on earth, so it is the old us as we were everywhere, (not).

Thinking on newly coyned Dichographic Divide. . .could that be it’s own thread? because John: “We can pick up bits of empirical and anecdotal evidence about how we read, and we can reach (tentative) conclusions or working hypotheses based on them, and these can and should inform decisions during the design process, but this is very different from saying that we can make the reader the foundation of text typeface design in some way that ignores completely the chirographic background of our writing systems.”
..has gone in a wonderful new direction.

I don’t think writing with a pen has as much bearing on literacy as it used to.
There was the Scandinavian discovery recently that teaching writing by going from printed block letter, to keyboarding, followed by script writing, worked very well, not missing anything irrevocably. That would suggest that keyboarding is fully adequate.

However, what pen/pencil writing provides is an expressive richness. Typography has picked this up, particularly with its riff on the broad nib. That’s what we generally understand by chirographic, but there are other expressive aspect of writing which typography has not captured, namely speed and pressure.

Speed is the deliberative quality of writing, and is apparent in the writer’s choice of shortcuts, truncations, and ligatures. Pressure has been parsed, in a way, by the “upstroke thin, downstroke thick” convention of the broadnib-based contrast in types, but that’s a slow, stilted version of what happens. The importance of pressure is something I noticed in trying to make a script font from pencil writing, it cries out for a tonal axis.

The expressive quality of writing is recognized by graphologists — a derided area of expertise and inquiry which could be useful to script fontmakers.

It’s interesting that the OpenType script fonts now emerging (using contextual alternates) follow established formal genres. These are formalisms that have been successfully established for commercial lettering genres, or type treatments (both metal and typositor).
There’s an opportunity to use digital media to take another crack at making fonts from writing, just as moveable type originally did. It’s something I’m contemplating doing, using contextual alternates, but a tonal axis is out of my reach, although I recall that Frank Jonen has done some research in this area.

What do you mean by ’tonal axis’? It sounds like emotion reflected in the writing?

> Pay primary attention to the border between Black and White, instead of carrying out moving-front formalisms on an illusionary skeleton.

This seems like a particlarly opaque phrase to me. Hrant, Would you expand on it?

Tonal axis: a design axis, varying the tone from the usual 100% black.
I use the term “axis” as it has been used with Multiple Masters, eg for horizontal scaling and weight. The idea of othe potential axes is shown in Penumbra, with a “serif/no serif” axis.

> This seems like a particlarly opaque phrase to me.

It’s hard to be clear on this without writing a short book every time...
I’ll try harder soon.

Axes: we’ve only scratched the surface.

hhp

Eben, if you read Letterletter, it makes more sense. The ’moving front’ is a concept that Noordzij writes about (and created?).

Thanks Crugen!

Hrant, I hope you do!

Also a while ago you wrote -’The expressions of an artist making pretty, harmonious formal shapes is selfish and largely wasteful; the expression of a craftsman in spite of himself making fonts that serve the reader is better, in my mind. Prettiness, I’m really sick of - it’s a succubus.’

I was asking before if anybody ( you too) thought that a pleasing quality - what I called ’melody’ at the time couldn’t have some sort of benefit to a text face. Sure, to worry about prettiness alone is silly, but don’t you think it might have some sort of role? Being attractive would call out to the eye & encourage further reading - It seems like having a modulated lively quality would keep the eye entertained in a way & sustain it through a long text - would it not? Too much prettiness would wear after a while.

Nick S - You wrote > ’a quality of sporadic sharpness (aka sparkle?)’ in the christian gothic thread. That phrase has really stuck with me. Could you write a bit more about how you see the role of ’sparkle’ in a text face? Or even in other kinds of faces. Where does this term come from?

Also, Nice points about Speed & Pressure. That was easy to understand & useful!

> don’t you think it might have some sort of role?

It most certainly does. But to me the key is treating it as just another factor (one that can be sacrificed, pushed around, etc.) not an over-arching principle. This doesn’t mean I’m a fan of the Cult of the Ugly; I’m a fan of Looks Don’t Matter That Much. I’m a fan of what’s underneath.

—

Like Chris indicates, the “moving front” stuff (a great term) comes directly from GN. Ironically, it is thanks to his formalizations of writing that I’ve been able to put my finger on exactly why it fails in the realm of type design.

The making of letterforms can be divided into two general methods: chirography, which creates the black (possibly with an eye on the white, but still) by applying one or more of translation, rotation and pressure on a set of vectors (the letterform skeleton*); and dichography, which creates the boundary between the black and white. Any marking method (such as the broad-nib pen held by the human arm/hand) is chirogaphic; bezier curves are dichographic. Furthermore, reading is dichographic: we percieve and decipher black/white shapes, not movements of some virtual, paraphrased marking method.

* I further put forth that these structures are imaginary. They make us happy by providing an illusion of control, but there’s no reason to believe that letters have any such structure to the reader (just the maker - or some makers). Peter will argue that letters do have strucures in reading (and I tend to believe him) but these are definitely not chirographic structures. The conventional structural definitions of the letters are violated every day (like an UC “R” without its vertical stem, which is still read as an “R” just fine), but some people prefer to look the other way. Basically, we don’t yet really know what the letters are.

Both chirography and dichography can create any shape they want, but each is more attuned to making certain types of shapes. I put forth that the functional dimension of typography is better served by dichography. While the aesthetic aspect of typography is partly served by chirography; I say partly, because things like geometry and symmetry (both to some extent violated by chirography) are also important in aesthetics. This is why I say that chirography is best for making a certain class of display fonts.

But it’s not a matter of banishing chirography - not at all. It’s a matter of seeing and aknowledging its limits, and striking a better balance than we have been between the two worlds, aesthetic and functional; of rekindling the fires of exploration, which will lead to radical improvement, not mere refinement. It’s a matter of striking a balance between celebration and progress. Let’s put the bottle down already, and find a more rewarding, challenging continent.

hhp

>how you see the role of ‘sparkle’ in a text face?

”...the diamond studded highway where you wander...”
—Van Morrison

Hrant: So I’ve decided to go with “dichography”, since “dicho” means -or at least can mean- something like “one thing split into two”.

I think you are focusing on the wrong part of the word. We already have a distinction between chirography and typography. Noordzij wants to suggest that the distinction is minimal because both are writing (γράφος). So it is the ’-graphy’ part of the terms on which you should be focusing your attention. I first suggested the term chirography to you because you had been using ’calligraphy’, which is a formal aesthetic subset of chirography.* The distinction between ’writing by hand’ and ’writing with type’ is perfectly expressed in the terms chirography and typography, and I don’t think a new term is necessary in this regard.

What you are talking about, Hrant, is not writing at all, but a design process for making the individual units of typography. Throughout most of the past 550 or so years, type has come in a sense ’after writing’ (i.e. after chiropgraphy), and you are seeking a kind of type that comes ’before writing’ (i.e. before typography), and which begins not with writing but with reading. So I would say that, terminologically, what you are talking about has nothing to do with γράφος at all.

The distinction you want to make is between what you consider ’chirographic type design’** and what I would be tempted to call ’anagnostic type design’, from the Greek verb to read. [The equivalent to the Roman order of Lector in the Orthodox Church is the Anagnost.]

* I think a good argument could be made that ’calligraphy’ could refer equally well to a formal aesthetic subset of typography, since it is the formal aesthetic element that defines calligraphy, not how it is made. The new terms chirocalligraphy and typocalligraphy are etymologically obvious.

** As we’ve discussed before, I think there is very little purely chirographic type design out there. I think it was Peter Enneson who, on the ATypI list, suggested that most type design was ’parachirographic’. I’m still trying to figure out how to complete the t-shirt slogan ’Parachirogaphers do it with...’

> What you are talking about, Hrant, is not writing at all, but
> a design process for making the individual units of typography.

Indeed. But I can’t really call that “typography”, can I?

I’m open to using a suffix other than “-graphy”, although I have to point out that its meaning can be a lot looser/broader than something related to writing.

I actually thought of finding a term related to reading. But I think that’s too “intent-centric”. It would be better to have an “action-centric” term, something that describes how the stuff is actually made. After all, we are saying “chirography”, not “individual-expression-of-creative-control-graphy” or something! :-) I worry that a reader-based term will be too theoretical, too prone to dismissal by people who say “you don’t really know how we read*, so your term can’t be any good”. Don’t you think an activity-based term would be better?

* And being partly right in saying so!

> ’parachirographic’

Yeah, that was hot.

I agree that chirography (like any concept, really) cannot exist in a pure state (maybe not even in actual writing by hand, since even things like the paper texture play a role). But the way you think of things certainly affects the way you make things. Like look at that nutsy “y” in Unibody-Bold.

hhp

Since you are primarily using the term chirographic as an adjective to refer to a particular kind of type design, you should be looking for a term that can be contrasted in the same usage. ’Typographic type design’ sounds really dorky and is confusing. The simplest place to start is simply ’non-chirographic type design’, of which my suggested ’anagnostic type design’ would be one, intentional variety. The problem with trying to find an activity-based term for what you are describing is that the activity is difficult to distinguish from the majority of ’chirographic’ — or parachirographic — type design: the vast majority of type is made by people constructing outlines. The distinction you are seeking is not in the activity, but in how that activity is informed (by handwriting or not by handwriting). So beyond ’non-chirographic’ you will probably be thinking in terms of a variety of different ways of thinking about type design and how these inform the activity of making.

You could reduce your suggested term to ’dichotic type design’, by which you would mean type design that is focused on the dividing line between black/white space. I think this is as good a term as you are going to get.

This leads us to the interesting question: is anagnostic type design necessarily dichotic type design? You would say yes; I am not convinced.

> The distinction you are seeking is not in the activity, but in how
> that activity is informed (by handwriting or not by handwriting).

True. Although “not by handwriting” isn’t how we should see it. That’s almost as bad as “non-Latin”. :-)

> dichotic

Why such aversion to “-graphic”? I think it provides more information.

> is anagnostic type design necessarily dichotic type design?

I would say no; each is its own thing. Anagnostic seems more complex, because it incorporates things like Familiarity. But dichographic design is clearly closer to anagnostic than chirographic is.

hhp

John H., try: parachirographers do it with splines.

Hrant, could you accept splinographic, or splino-primitive?

Why such aversion to “-graphic”?

Because, as I explained, you are not talking about writing, but about an approach to type design. The suffix -graphic implies writing to me, especially in the context of a discussion that centres on the role of writing and reading in type design.

Again, you are using chirographic as an adjective applied to type design, i.e. you are referencing chirography. But you can’t reference ’dichography’ in the same way, because it isn’t something that exists as a practice independent of what you are describing. So I’m suggesting that you make a much more direct adjective, dichotic, that describes the kind of type design without appearing to reference something external to it through a terminological parallel to chirographic. I thought this would appeal to you, because it subtly reinforces your argument: chirography is something external to but referenced in type design (handwriting), while the dichotic approach is internal to type design.

> splinographic

I don’t think so, because it doesn’t have to be splines. It doesn’t even have to be mathematical. You could even use a pen! As long as you’re minding the notan, and not the black only.

> you are not talking about writing

But I am talking about making visual things. Do encephalographers poke pens in your brain? I think you’re being too... etymological.

> ‘dichography’ in the same way, because it isn’t something that
> exists as a practice independent of what you are describing.

I don’t get it.

What do others think about “dichotic” versus “dichographic”?

hhp

I thought it might be of interest to insert two quotes by Adrian Frutiger; one on the deliniation of white/black inside/outside space, and one on how chirographic tools affect his abilitity to design. Oddly enough, both are from the same interview.

ADRIAN FRUTIGER
Excerpts from an interview with
Marcelle Charriere, “Information TG” 1970
English translation by Helen Reshetnik and Pam Manfried, Mergenthaler Linotype Co.

Q: Have a number of concepts or ideas governed the creation of your typefaces?
A: Certainly, I feel, for instance, that the inside white spaces are more important than the outside contours of a letter.
The letters of an alphabet are like the various elements of a house; the material of typography is the black, and it is the typographer’s task, with the help of this black, to capture space, to create harmonious whites inside the letters as well as between them.

Q: And your Indian typefaces, do they arise from the same concepts?
A: The Indo-Germanic connection is well-known; and, most important, the writing tools used in India for centuries resemble our own quite closely. The Indians use the pen, the reed pen. I would be unable to design Chinese type characters because I am accustomed to working with a pen, not with a brush.

The problem I see with dichotic & dichographic is that they seem to suggest nothing more than division. In this case the black & the white. I did like the splinography but I agree that it is saying how not what. What about Notanography? I actually don’t yet know what is meant by ’notan’ but judging simply by it’s use in Hrants sentance it sounds like that is his object.

> they seem to suggest nothing more than division.

I’m hoping that it suggests more of a separation (“dicho-” means split, into two) in something that’s actually a whole.

I thought of “notanic” (“notanographic” is too cumbersome), but it sounds dumb, doesn’t it? Plus it’s not Greek (and “chirographic” is).

hhp

> “dicho-” means split, into two

Right by division I meant split or cut or torn asunder. I guess that’s the thing. I get the separation in the term but not the richer realtionship to the whole from the term.

I am asking alot I supose, but it seems like dichotic doesn’t address what you are championing in point of view - I am inferring quite a bit here so hang on tight - that it is the dynamic between the b&w eg the notan ( I read a little more now) that is important & which you want folks to be more aware of in designing type.

Put another way fullness needs empty space to be precieved as full & vice versa. That idea is I think probably at the core of notan centered typographic thought. Notan as I am understanding it sounds alot like some buddhist ideas about reality & also wabi sabi ideas about form.

For example “Suzuki Roshi said, ’There is no emptiness which has no form, which means that emptiness cannot exist separate from form.’” Similarly, Heart Sutra says, “Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form; that which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness, form.”

Which seems to me to tie in to the idea that typographically speaking you can’t have one or a meaningful understanding the shape of letters without equally thinking about their empty spaces both in counters & between juxtaposed letters & between lines of type. Or in japanese caligraphy - between strokes & between Glyphs & groups of glyphs.

Since this is true in sculpture, japanese caligraphy* & other arts I don’t see why type would be exempt.’

* Isn’t this where the phrase ’notan’ comes from right?

Anyway this is why I think notan is better starting place to come from - it is philsopicaly central to your outlook.

> Plus it’s not Greek (and “chirographic” is)

Notan not being a greek word seems unimportant to me. Particularly since it’s 2005 now not 1920. I guess if you could find a greek that means notan that would be okay but I doubt it exists.

Also english exists in part because of it’s borrowings. It’s a big part of what’s decent about it. So I say borrrow away! And you in a pacific rim city! What more convicing could you need?

Hmmm, Eben-san.
“Dichographic” is acquiring a distinct continental stench now...
OK, maybe you’re right.

Is there a suffix besides “-ic” I could use at the end of “notan”?
Or maybe a prefix?

hhp

You have writen about the usefulness of the dash before so maybe ’typo-notan’ or just ’typonotan’. Having never seen the word before I find it looks good as a single word. If it only had a nice decender towards the end of it! I guess you could say ’notanographic’. At least there are two nice descenders! An i: ’notanigraphic’ It sounds pinched when you say it. ’notanagraphic’ sounds like a feature on a printer. Sounds too commercial. ’u’ is out. Notanegraphic makes it seem almost french... Maybe cool. O is the most neutral. It also sounds the most Japanese.

Then there could be ’notanic’ which is nice because it’s short - but which might sound like a wine lacking tannins. Actually that is growing on me. It’s shortness makes it seem accesible.

But typonotan sounds like a meta feature of type that can be observed like the directional stress or the bouma. That seems like it’s more accurate. In contast ’Notanic’ sounds like a simpler more direct quality and would tempt a writer to say something stupid like ’that type is very notanic’ which I don’t think can ever make sense. Observing notan like isn’t like noticing boldness or floridness or degree of ornament. It’s a meta-characteristic. Put another way - you can’t have a font with more or less notan than another. You can only have notan that is more or less balanced (or maybe rythmic or flowing?) and which maybe helps the eye and which maybe which helps readability. Balance can of course be dymamic rather than static. Ever seen the caligraphy of ’Sesshu’?

Maybe leaving it less accessible is actually more accurate too.

Maybe just saying Notan is enough. Why gild the lilly?

I wonder if observing chinese/japanese/korean caligraphy wouldn’t be a better way to think about Notan and notan’s relatioonship to western type anyway since :

1. Notan comes both as a concern culturally and as a word from that tradition and -

2. because a chinese brush has a wider dynamic range of expression in terms of thickness - and probably other ways too - than a reed pen and therefore oddly has a closer relationship to the full range of a typographic letterform than a reed pen can have at least in terms of dymamic range.

> O is the most neutral. It also sounds the most Japanese.

I think that would be notanogolafico. :-)

If I/we go with notan, I think “notanic” is good.

> you can’t have a font with more or less notan than another.

True. But you can have a font that minds the importance of good notan more than another.

> Ever seen the caligraphy of ‘Sesshu’?

No. Links?

> I wonder if observing chinese/japanese/korean caligraphy
> wouldn’t be a better way to think about Notan

Ironically, oriental lettermaking is strongly chirographic! My guess is that their -well placed- respect for the organic in Art over-rides the necessary typographic sensibilities. Sort of how many people think Arabic only looks “right” when it’s chirographic. On the other hand, I have seen one example of oriental calligraphy that’s more in tune with notan than anything else I’ve seen in any script.

But the night is young.

hhp

> If I/we go with notan, I think “notanic” is good.

Why? because it’s short? My warnings about likely misuse didn’t convince huh?

Sesshu was a caligrapher/painter zen monk martial artist & so on.

http://metropolis.japantoday.com/tokyo/425/art.asp

I have a book of his caligraphy - as opposed to his landscapes - maybe I can find it & scan something from it. I have to admit that I thought of his work as exemplifying spectaucular flow & rythym rather than notan per se. Although I am sure his stuff has a very solid notanic aspect to it as well. It could hardly fail to really.

> oriental lettermaking is strongly chirographic

Of course it is - but the absolute neccessity of constently being aware of notanic issues - in part because because of the way that complex glyphs combine simpler ones to create new glyphs, and for several others reasons, means I think, that there must be a goldmine of notanic perspective in even the most strongly chirographic oriental letterforms. In fact, they may be proportionate rather than opposed because the more you stress the chirographic aspects of the glyphs the more you have to think about & make allowances to ensure that good notan is preserved.

What is your example of being in tune with notan?

> over-rides the necessary typographic sensibilities

Would you expand on this? I don’t really see what you mean yet.

How about “stroke based” and “outline based” ?

> there must be a goldmine of notanic perspective in even
> the most strongly chirographic oriental letterforms.

Agreed.

> What is your example of being in tune with notan?

Legato is the best (in fact only) example of a [usable] font that takes notan seriously. There are however earlier examples of movements in the right direction, most notably the work of Dwiggins.

>> over-rides the necessary typographic sensibilities

> Would you expand on this? I don’t really see what you mean yet.

1) Typography is primarily about reading.
2) Reading is essentially notan-based.
3) Chirography skews notan in a non-productive direction.

> How about “stroke based” and “outline based” ?

Maybe because they don’t say enough about the mindframe, only the mechanics. I previously said that John’s suggestion to focus on the act of reading in finding a term was too “intent-centric”. Now I realize that maybe the ideal term would be somewhere in between; sort of like guiding, without forcing specific theories. Is this possible?

hhp

But I am talking about making visual things. Do encephalographers poke pens in your brain?

No, but they are creating images, just as lithographers are. So there is this dual meaning of the suffix -graphic, which refers to writing (the original etymology) and the creating of images. But as Mr Gill wrote, a letter is a thing, not a picture of a thing. It is visual, yes, but it is not an image. It may be used in an image, but it is not an image in itself. And as Mr Papazian has written elsewhere, a typeface is a ’little machine’, which is a much better way to think about it than as an image. So this is why I don’t think a reference to anything -graphic is desirable.

How about “stroke based” and “outline based” ?

The problem with these is that they are already in use to refer to font formats, while what we are talking about here are approaches to design that are format indepenedent. We are talking about a distinction between type design that directly references or is influeced by writing implements, and type design that is based on a balanced consideration of light and dark space.

Thinking about this some more, I’m inclined to agree with Eben that the proposed ’dicho-’ terminology is inadequate. Hrant has posited that the way to get away from chirography in type design is to draw outlines in which Noordzij’s ’front’ is ignored, in which the two edges of a ’stroke’ are defined independently of each other. But this seems to me to be a particular approach to ’balanced consideration of light and dark space’, and it might not be the only approach. So I would be inclined to go in search of a term that does not suggest a particular methodolgy, but evokes the idea of the ’balanced consideration of light and dark space’. This is why I’ve welcomed Hrant’s adoption of the term notan; all we need now is an appropriate adjectival form of that word. Notanic is probably as good as you will get. Although Hrant might like the pun implicit in Notanal.

Reminds me of Analon, which is a brand of cookware believe it or not.

Notan it is, then.* Now let’s find the best suffix (or prefix).

* Provisionally. As always.

hhp