OK, let’s take a different approach.

According to the DICTIONNAIRE TYPOGRAPHIE MULTILINGUE the following are equivalent terminology for “type color/colour” in:

French — couleur typographique
German — none?
Italian — tono
Spanish — color

Surely an equivalent term for type color exists in both German and Dutch. Perhaps the original root term can be found in either of these places of type infancy.

————————————————————-
Yes, I’m old, but I’m very curious!

German: Grauwert (Grayscale)

—astype.de—

Thanks, Adreas.
It seems so far that color is just an unimaginative and confusing English term.

Norbert

The first book on printing, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, by Joseph Moxon, 1683–4, mentions colour.

Good Colour. Printed neither too Black or too White.

Pale Colour. If there be not Blacking enough in the Inck, or the Form be Beaten with too Lean Balls, the Work will be said to have a Pale Colour.

A note on some of these terms. The form would be the page of metal type. Ink balls were used to print with (rollers weren’t used until the early nineteenth century).

Gerald

Color me curious too.

ChrisL

Gerald, I doubt that this is talking about the same colour as Norbert is talking about. I suspect this is about the blackness of the ink, whether it is too much ink or too little ink.

The italian word tono means tone. This one seems more appropriate to describe what we refer to as colour or color in typographhy. It may be that at some point the two words—colour and tone—became interchangable.

We all know it is meant to describe the evenness of the page with respect to the type. I wonder if it was first used by printers who were pulling proofs to check impression and ink, or by punch cutters trying to determine if their fonts were balanced in stroke weights? The ink makes more sense when you refer to color but punch cutters didn’t have the luxury of instant proofing we have today to checK our type.

ChrisL

Very true, Chris.
Type and typography had always been part of the printer craft and guild. The mixing of inks, the eveness of printed impressions, the consistency of ink color and impressions from folio to folio, all this was controlled with great understanding of technique and technology.

That’s why I find the terms “color,” Grauwert or tono off-the-mark in trying to describe the subtle yet complex levels of visual effects created by adjusting letter or linespacing, point size, column widths, selection of typeface, weight of typeface, and so on and so on...

In other words, EVERYTHING that typography involves is contained within the single term color. It embodies more than just the grayness of blocks of copy, but also the texture created by the glyphs themselves, dazzle, spikeyness, flow, textura.

It just dawned on me... maybe because the “secrets” of the Guild kept the terminology obtuse because it indeed embodied all the mysteries of typography.

————————————————————-
Yes, I’m old, but I’m colorful!

> I suspect this is about the blackness of the ink

But that’s probably still the source of the term. In fact that was my hunch before Gerald revealed the Moxon passage. Also, you could say that when type is small enough (like for text) they really become the same thing.

hhp

I’ve always viewed the term color as referring to the intensity of the ink on the page, its definition with white space, and the residual contrast thereby formed. The relative strength and definition of that contrast is the color of the type on the printed surface.

I’ve always thought “color” was a perfect term for the overall density of the type, meaning: not just the amount of black in the letters themselves, but also that which results from the spacing and leading...because “color” in its more general definition, does not exist in typography otherwise...if you see what I mean.

So, in comparison to the range, detail, descriptive and technical terminology used by type design, typography suffers from both lack and vagueness of descriptive terminology.

This has been my main point, and also the reason why it is difficult to make graphic designers aware of the nuances and visual refinement that can be made to blocks of copy.

Typographic training rarely goes beyond basic typesetting techniques. Why? Because it is easier to describe and even easier to implement nowadays.

Pick the typeface, point size, linespacing, tracking (letterspacing) and column widths and you are done. OR open the leading, tighten the letterspacing, and pick a lighter weight of the typeface and “Oh my gosh!” I’ve changed the color.

Much of typographic terminology is really just markup and proofing notation with a little bit of type design speak. The more sophisticated levels of typography use warm-fuzzy/cold-prickly descriptions which are difficult to describe without explicit illustrations.

Pick the typeface, point size, linespacing, tracking (letterspacing) and column widths and you are done. OR open the leading, tighten the letterspacing, and pick a lighter weight of the typeface and “Oh my gosh!” I’ve changed the color.

This has been my experience, (except that I didn’t even know of the term “colour”). Likely common knowledge here, but another thing that affects the colour of a page for me are the margins; where the block of text sits in realtion to the surrounding whitespace.

pd

“The density of texture in a written or typeset page is called its color. This has nothing to do with red or green ink; it refers only to the darkness or blackness of the letterforms in mass. Once the demands of legibilty and logical order are satisfied, eveness of color is the typographer’s normal aim. And color depends on four things: the design of the type, the spacing between the letters, the spacing between the words, and the spacing between the lines. None is independent of the others.”

“Color The darkness of the type as set in mass, which is not the same as the weight of the face itself. The spacing of words and letters, the leading of lines, and the incidence of capitals, not to mention the color (i.e., darkness) of the ink and of the paper it is printed on, all affect the color of the type.”

—Robert Bringhurst
The Elements of Typographic Style

> eveness of color is the typographer’s normal aim

Wrong.

hhp

“The most important thing is for the color to be even and consistent.” James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography, p. 104

Felici is a long time type setter from the metal era on, so what he says, as well as what Bringhurst says, reflects a standard view.

You can disagree with the wisdom of that received view, Hrant, but that it is the received view I don’t see how you can deny given these quotes. Can you quote one well known type designer or typographer who advocates uneveness of color?

It’s not that they don’t know what they’re doing, it’s that they’re not really in touch with what’s really going on, at least not enough to be able to discuss it properly. They need to put those pretty phrases aside and focus on truly expressing the nature of the foundation.

Totally even color is a solid gray blob - 100% unreadable. Good typography on the other hand relies on a balance of white and black, on a balance of even color and color contrast. Information comes from contrast, not a gray blob. Some people are just not sufficiently in tune with the underlying mechanics of how humans see and interpret things, and not sufficiently critical of precedent, to be able to see the shiny Modernist mantras for the claptrap that they really are; all they do is perpetuate meaningless myths that nobody really even believes in.

So: What you point out is not the received view. It’s merely the
received expressions, which in fact do not match any view at all.

hhp

The way Felici uses the word ’color’ it includes balance of black and white, not even gray. Here is more Felici:

“If there is an essential truism in typesetting, it is that a page contains no voids, only spaces between printed elements. The essence of typesetting is regulating the size of those spaces to control the balance and rhythm between black and white. This is the key to a graphically harmonious page—one with good *type color*—as well as to text that is pleasing and easy to read.”

It is an even texture, not a uniform grey that is aimed at in the idea of “even color”.

I am not saying that “color” is all that satisfactory term. As Norbert points out in the beginning of this thread, it is not very descriptive or clear. But if you are saying that “even color” doesn’t refer to something real and important in type, I think you are very off base. Typographers have known what it refers to—an important quality in type and page design and composition—even though they haven’t perhaps ever explained it well.

And it has nothing to do with modernism. I’m pretty sure the phrase ’evenness of color’ predates 20th century modernism.

The people who have been working daily to produce evenly colored pages know what they are referring to. It is not bogus. The question is how to explain it more clearly and fully.

I’m sorry, but you’re having the same problem they’re having: not managing to express what you mean. Texture, color, rhythm, all mish-mashed together. And although the intent is fine, I have to think that part of the problem is a failure to grasp the central role of unevenness in communication. And this is very much a symptom of Modernism (which goes way, way further back than the 20th century btw, it was just called other things, like “The Enlightenment” for example). Grandiose, misguided phrases.

“Color” doesn’t have to be ambiguous or confusing - it just has to be used well.
Same goes for “even”.

hhp

If I understand what you are saying, it is contrast (unevenness of colour in this context) which draws understanding from information. One could take this back to a time where seeing a silhouette on the horizon could mean dinner or death.

I agree with this view insofar as print is meant to be read and understood. But are we not talking about the aesthetic presentation of the printed page or book when we speak of colour?

I took “evenness of colour” to mean that kerning, leading, margins, type choice and size etc. all combine to deliver the look of a page in its own right. However, I assumed right away that the phrase went on to mean that consecutive pages would also adhere to the same conditions thereby ensuring a consistent looking document.

pd

Hrant

I think I understand what you are intending. (?) I agree that the “expressions” are merely acceptances of ideas or values that may have been hashed out in the not too distant past. Mainly by the early to mid twentieth century apostlehood. If you follow them to their historic roots there seems to be only an interpretation, or reinterpretation, or misinterpretation, of a long distant era.

But I am not in any way sure of what you are suggesting as other. An example?

Gerald

>not managing to express what you mean

I would say rather that you are not reading what I wrote, but some fantasy of an opponent. I said the term ’color’ is not very descriptive, but that it refers to something real, and the challenge is to explain it.

Letter forms are diverse, and obviously deliberately, so that one letter is distinguishable from others. The H and the O don’t look alike. But when you space a string of Hs and Os for a typeface, you aim at a quality that typographers and type designers have sometimes called ’even color’. In ’Letters of Credit’ Walter Tracy uses the words ’harmony’ and ’balance’ to refer to this, rather than ’even color’. Others speak of the volume of space between the letters being uniform—though what that volume is is somewhat hard to define (how far does the volume extend into the ’c’?). What is aimed at is a visual quality that practiced typographers will have a large degree of agreement on—such on what constitutes ’good’ kerning—what, yes achieves ’even color’.

’Evenness of color’ is not a phrase that denies diversity, but rather tries to express in a not very clear phrase a visual harmony and balance in a diverse group of symbols on a page.

***

By the way, your view that the Enlightenment was opposed to diversity is balderdash. Before the Enlightenment Europeans were busy killing each other over which version of Christianity should be imposed on everyone. The Enlightenment supported freedom of opinion, tolerance and diversity.

I think it was Hrant who mentions on an article that word recognition in a given script depends on the unevennes of the letterforms of that word, and that is why it is more difficult to read all capital words/sentences.

If I understgand Hrant correctly, evennes in the color of type will decrease its legibility, because it will turn into grey. It is the unevennes that makes it recognizable and readable.

>If I understgand Hrant correctly

I think you do understand Hrant correctly, but his use of the term ’even color’ is a misuse of the term, if he thinks it means going to complete grey. It is not what others have meant by the term, as the above quotations indicate. It is about harmony and balance, not uniformity.

Also I might mention that letterforms have both diversity and sameness. For example a degree of uniformity of stem width, serifs etc. A certain balance of diversity and repetition seems to be valuable for readibility.

I think trying to understand that balance would be more productive than ascribing stupid views to those who have used the term in the past. I don’t think they were stupid, even though the terminology is poor.

Once the demands of legibilty and logical order are satisfied, eveness of color is the typographer’s normal aim.

I think the order of desirable attributes is important here.

It seems logical that eveness of colour will conflict with legibility while promoting a better initial view of a page, it also strikes me that the two qualities are separated by scale and action; in that, the reader takes an initial view, “mmm… strong rectangular form”, then ’zooms’* in to start reading, “ahhh… I can read this without skipping lines”. There may be a point at which the actions of looking and reading overlap and it seems that the overlap should be kept to a minimum, whether by scientific methods or by personal experience of reading.
So the first action should remain subordinate to the second. However, the action of reading can be disrupted by too wide a gap in between characters, words etc. So it seems that another term would be useful to describe this micro eveness of colour.

*not the best description but hopefully understandable.

Tim

Eveness in the overall darkness or blackness of the letterforms-in-mass—a textural density issue on the macro-scale of a column or page of type, as Bringhurst implies—doesn’t at all conflict with or imply not being in touch with or realizing the importance of a black / white balance in bounded glyph-clusters on the intermediate scale of words in a line of type.

Is it really worth the effort for me to sort through
all this, put it in order, and try to reduce the cronic
confusion where there should be none? Damned if I know.

—

> But are we not talking about the aesthetic presentation
> of the printed page or book when we speak of colour?

Well, I’m not. I’m talking about functionality, and the fallacy of the supreme merit of even color. Aesthetics? Some people like a gray blob, others like a gray rainbow. I don’t think taste is worth arguing about.

> I took “evenness of colour” to mean that kerning, leading, margins,
> type choice and size etc. all combine to deliver the look of a page
> in its own right.

I fail to see what one has to do with the other. The “look of the page”, not to mention its readability depends on uneven color as much as even color. It comes from balanced color, and I don’t mean a formal, conscious balance.

> But I am not in any way sure of what you are suggesting as other. An example?

You mean an example of what I think would be better? I think typical current practice (at the high/sensitive end, not the secretaries using Comic Sans for that flyer) is fine, if not great. It’s become that way through centuries of pragmatic, instinctive, quiet evaluation/experimentation. It’s become that way in spite of the superficial, posturing worhip of Even Color.

A good example of the value of uneven color is... stroke contrast!

> I said the term ‘color’ is not very descriptive, but that it
> refers to something real, and the challenge is to explain it.

Yes, it’s not an ideal term, but explaining it is only a challenge (in fact it becomes impossible) if you think color has to actually be even.

> Letter forms are diverse, and obviously deliberately

1) How do we know they’re diverse enough? By taking many second to identify a letter -made in a certain conventional way, mind you- at a huge size? If we really look at immersive reading, it’s pretty clear they’re not diverse enough - that they can be more diverse and only a certain class of type designer would mind.
2) Deliberate? You must be joking. The cases of deliberate differentiation of characters (like the crossbar on the “7”, which most people don’t even use) are quite rare. See “Canons of Alphabetic Change” in “The Alphabet and the Brain”.

> Walter Tracy uses the words ‘harmony’ and ‘balance’ to refer to this

Are you trying to make this more confusing?

The Enlightenment: people die less or more depending on what the people in power want. Your cherished 20th century, the height of Modernism, saw more deaths that at any time in history. Modernism started with monotheism/Rome. It is a lust for Control, through regularism/predictability/simplicity. It does not match the human reality, at least not more than about half.

> It is the unevennes that makes it recognizable and readable.

And virtually everybody agrees with this (it’s just the degree/flavor that we argue about). Unfortunately though too many people seem to prefer the numbing incantation, “even colorrrrr, ohmmmmm, even colorrrrr, ohmmmmm...” Slap them awake, I say.

> It is not what others have meant by the term

Please ask them to use English better then. And they’re not stupid, just too susceptible to illusion and pretty phrases.

> Once the demands of legibilty and logical order are satisfied,
> eveness of color is the typographer’s normal aim.

But why would you separate the two like that?

Now, I do agree that there are layers of reading - and un/even color needs a different balance depending. However, “ahhh… I can read this without skipping lines” never happens.

> Eveness in the overall darkness or blackness of the letterforms-in-mass

But this is confined to theory/hypothesis, at least in terms of function. When you get down to designing an actual font for example, if you try to shoot for totally even color, you’re dead. Nevermind that’s not even possible - which however doesn’t seem to stop people from thinking that’s what they’re doing. Because it sounds nice. Much better than “I’m trying to strike this tricky, essentially unattainable balance between black and white, between macro distraction and micro divergence.”

hhp

>“I’m trying to strike this tricky, essentially unattainable balance between black and white, between macro distraction and micro divergence.”

This seems like just another way of saying ’I am trying to acheive visual balance’. A more explicet way but not essenstailly different.

This ’balance’ could also be described as ’eveness’. All these terms are remarkably opaque unless you see what someone means by them. It is *only then* that you can see if you agree.

About this terms color... Color is a broad trerm sometimes incorrectly made synonymous with saturation. Color is actually inclusive of hue, shade, saturation, lightness, darkness, greyscale etc and so on. It’s a big basket - a catch-all.

So I have to agree that using te term color is a very vague way of expressing the idea. On the other hand perhaps deliberate vaguesness is better than an imperfect word that can be more readily misconstrued like ’eveness’. Maybe it’s good at provoking the question ’what could you possibly mean by that’.

⇒ typography suffers from both lack and vagueness of descriptive terminology
... to quote myself.

⇒ The more sophisticated levels of typography use warm-fuzzy/cold-prickly descriptions which are difficult to describe without explicit illustrations.
... to quote myself again.

Color (prisma) and color in typography are both measurable (wavelengths, total area density of glyphs on field) as well subjective visual experiences by viewers.

My personal sense of color in typography comes from my person sense of color as a painter in fine arts. I am able to see text as texture and glyphs as being fine to coarse droplets of ink.

My views on typography are both right brain and left brain.

A pragmatic view of typography is essentially the technical craft of what used to be called typesetting. I guess a more accurate term would be copysetting. It incorporates various guidelines for readability and layout, and allows for a moderate amount of expressiveness. The majority of literature on typography only gets this far in viewpoints and guidance.

For lack of a term, there is an ascendant state of typographic awareness that explores levels of visual perception and cognitive experience. Obviously this is non-exclusive to typography and is more often experienced in music, fine arts, performing and cinematic arts, and mathematics.

This is the realm where we as a community strive to be. This is where Picasso’s admiration of Matisse exists, where Salieri’s murderous jealousy of Mozart sprang forth, and why arguments between Hrant and Berkson colide with sheer sparks of insight and inspiration.

Maybe this is why color remains such a vague term in typography, because descriptions fall short of experiencing it.

>My personal sense of color in typography comes from my person sense of color as a painter <

“Arrangement in Grey and Black”
You weren’t just Whistlering Dixie:-)

ChrisL

> ascendant state of typographic awareness

Tell ’em bout it, brother!

Wow, what a sermon. Amen :)

>You weren’t just Whistlering Dixie:-)

I don’t know notan about that.

After going over this discussion agian and again, I am starting to get the feeling that evenness is a synonym for monotonous. I mean, lets put aside the diversity of the letters, legibility, logical order, and whatever else that forces itself to be uneven, and make whatever remains even. I mean lets put aside the different faces, different body types, different heights, different quirks of each person in a military troop march, it is simply boring, especially if you have more that a handfull of pages in front of you.

Uniformity I can accept. No, uniformity most of the time I would insist on. Evenness makes things stale. It is the unevenness that stimulates the perception to understand the colorless. In other words it is the unevennes that gives the boring vitality, and the monotonous glamour.

But Levon, those in power like it boring...

hhp

According to the DICTIONNAIRE TYPOGRAPHIE MULTILINGUE the following are equivalent terminology for “type color/colour” in:
French — couleur typographique

In french we speak more often about gris typographique than about couleur typographique.

It is both impossible and undesirable to get “perfect eveness” of typographic color.

Though I started the topic thread, I haven’t gotten around to describing and illustrating the methods used to view and fine tune text color.

One fact remains true. The calligrapher and typographer must rely on the given language and text of the document. Since the copy is a given, there is no control over the sequence and order of glyphs. Therefore the patterns and textures created by letterforms will always be irregular. Unless you were setting a text block using only a single character, there will always be modulating frequencies and haphazard patterns of positive to negative forms.

Ain’t dat great!
Dissonance and not symmetry is where the magic lies.
(Hmmm... I guess I’m mixing terms here. Asymmetry vs. symmetry is more appropriate. Or melodic vs. monotone is even better.)

————————————————————————-
Yes, I’m old, but my back has style!

In a graduate history course we discussed the fall of empires. To jump to the conclusion, the more power the empire practices over neighboring states, the closer its demise. And it is usually the smallest and most insignificant that puts the knife into the heart.

I am not comparing, I just remembered this because it was vedry interesting.

Thank you, Andre.
I will make note gris typographique is the preferred term. Would you say “gray typography” is a close translation?

hey! me no french. english anyone?

> More like ’typographic gray’

did I get that right, Hrant?

Or as a true Frenchman would say, “THE typographic gray”. :-)
Like that book by Paput called “The Punchcutting”, which
I suspect is ideally pronounced with the emphasis on the
last syllable. :-)

hhp

Now that’s using your grey matter to make grey matter (and help clear up the matter).

ChrisL

gris typographique is “typographic grey”;
the German Grauwert (way above) is “grey-value” not “greyscale”

All ’even’ asks for is a consistent grey-value across a textblock top to bottom and left to right in a page of pure text, such as one finds in a descriptive essay or expository text. The grey-value is constituted by the play of black and white within the text block. ’Even’ is an emergant quality. ’Even’ at the text-block level does not mean undifferentiated at the letterform construction or stroke contrast level. If it is ’even’ the setting is not disturbed by rivers, clogged with areas of greater density of black, such as might be caused by pockets of too boldly rendered double two-story g’s. Consistency of grey-value is not in competition with the need for stems bowls and counters to have proper salience and independant cue-value at the microscale of wordform resolution. Professionally-set well-printed pages set in Smeijer’s Quadraat, a moderately lively typeface, can have a wonderfully assertive but still consistent grey value top to bottom, front to back over many pages in its running text areas. A ragged right setting, dynamic positioning of the text-block on the page, subheadings or section marks in a contrasting weight, strategically placed running heads and folios, can give pages with a consistent grey value in their running text vitality, articulation and navigability.

’Eveness’ or consistency of grey-value at the macro-scale of the text-block is not a power grab of the complacent. And it isn’t the only requirement. It has a place within a heirarchy of typographic values. ’Eveness’ and consistency of grey-value at the macro-scale of the paragraph or text-block are perceptual processing requirements for a smooth reading experience, an experience not distracted by the subliminally signaling force of non-essential variation in colour or rhythm.

>‘Eveness’ and consistency of grey-value at the macro-scale of the paragraph or text-block are perceptual processing requirements for a smooth reading experience, an experience not distracted by the subliminally signaling force of non-essential variation in colour or rhythm.

Right on!

>Consistency of grey-value is not in competition with the need for stems bowls and counters to have proper salience and independant cue-value at the microscale of wordform resolution.

Actually there is a conflict or tension between the need for diversity of letter form, and the evenness of color that promotes smooth, easy reading. It’s the job of a designer of text type—maybe his or her main job—to reconcile the two. To have a lively, variegated texture, and yet balance and evenness to words and sentences constructed from the letters.

> If it is ‘even’ the setting is not disturbed by rivers, clogged ...

This argument falls apart when you take into account that lack of “disturbance” is: relative, not least in terms of the reader; and no guarantee that functionality is optimal, not least because there is a chasm between deliberative observation of a layout versus actually reading it. As Optima demonstrates so well, there is such a thing as too-even color, and that’s all the evidence one should really need.

A typographer who really wants Even Color will use a fat monoline sans in all-caps, in a medium gray tone, with just enough leading to make consecutive lines appear as close as consecutive words are. Heck, he might even forego blank spaces! Fortunately, we only have some people pretending that’s desirable, and not even explicitly; when you really corner the Even Color boys with the right arguments, they turn into hot steam... and disappear.

The problem here might simply be the term “even”.
But personally I think it’s a manifestation of a deeper psycho-cultural problem.

hhp

William, perhaps I should have said “need not be in competition”. There are or can be countervailing pressures, but they can be successfully navigated. One or the other need not win. The tension inherent in the countervailing pressures can be generative of new approaches. Design is always at a set of crossroads.

Hrant, when the even boys and girls use ’even’ in relation to colour, they do not mean featureless regularity. To make your point you need to pretend that they do. What part of the slipshod extension of the everyday term ’even’ to ’colour’ or ’grey-value’ in type-composition contexts by type-involved practitoners don’t you understand?

In my argument I interchanged ’even’ with ’consistent’ and I pointed out that the signalling effect of disturbance is subliminal. I am an ’even’ boy at the macro-scale of text-composition. I don’t feel cornered, and I’m not evaporating into clogged rivers of hot steam.

Because color or grayness are vague terms, we are imparting too much significance to what was meant to be one characteristic of block setting.

For a moment, let’s examine the one sentence description found in our own Typowiki:

Indices: Terminology: Color

The color of a typeface refers to the overall lightness or darkness of a set paragraph of text, and is generally thought of in terms of levels of gray.

The other definitions cited in this thread suffer from the same mistake of including non-essential and extraneous descriptions of typography. Clarity and simplicity of meaning will do a lot in understanding the essential aspect of the term color.

FIRST: Strip away “typeface” from the definition. Since a block of copy can contain several weights (book, medium, bold), styles (roman, italic, condensed) and even kinds (serif, sans serif, script) of typefaces it is only the DENSITY of glyphs that matter.

SECOND: “Paragraph” confuses the definition. It is a block or deliniated area of glyphs we are attempting to describe.
A single page can contain several blocks or areas of text which are differentiated by color (captions, sidebars, extended quotations). If our refined definition of typographic color holds true, then even changing the line measure (indenting) or justification (centering) affects the overall color.

THIRD: Remove any references to “readability” from the definition. The typographer must look at readability as a separate issue from color. You can make one or two minor adjustments (leading, letterspacing) that would affect color while the readability of the text remains virtually the same.

FORTH: For clarity, replace gray with tonal value. The terms “tone” and “value” individually have multiple meanings, but together speak specifically to the range of light to dark. Copy blocks set in or reversed out of actual ink colors (red, blue, etc.) can vary in tonal value so why confuse it with “gray.” Also, different ink colors can have the same tonal value, so in that instance it is HUE that differentiates blocks of copy.

FIFTH: Keep texture as separate from typographic color. Though both are integral, one modulates the other much in the same way melody and cadence do in music.

By focusing on one perceivable attribute I believe we can arrive at clearer definition of the typographic term color (though I personally would replace it with tonal density). But before we attempt it, I feel we to exercise our eyes with a few examples. Remember the expression, “You can’t see the forest through the trees”? You can’t see color when you are too close to the type.

EXAMPLES OF TYPOGRAPHIC “COLOR”

Guilelmus Parisiensis.
Postilla super epistolas et euangelia.
Venetian Woodcut: Jacobus Pentius de Leuco, 1505.

Virgil.
Bucolica, Georgica et Aeneis.
Birminghamiae, typis Johannis Baskerville, 1757.
Comentary: “Baskerville’s first book was a revolution that influenced printing on the Continent as well as Great Britain. New type, new ink, and calendered paper in combination with heavily leaded lines and generous margins was a complete break with the past. The typeface he designed was open with a graceful elegance. The paper was of his own invention.”
— Brian Slawson, University of Florida, Dept. of Fine Arts

Sixteenth Vienna Secession Exhibition Poster
Vienna 1903, design by Alfred Roller

Homer.
The Odyssey / of Homer.
1932.
Rogers, Bruce, 1870-1957, book designer.

Fantastic thread.

Nothing black and white about colour!

pd

Hrant

“A good example of the value of uneven color is. . . stroke contrast!”

Ha! I just completed a letterpress job using Monotype Granjon (digital). Had to be “corrected” a bit but. . . The stroke constrast drove me nuts. But there has been a bit of a sea change in my thinking and I see your point. Faces at a microtypographic level don’t always reveal their significance at a macro level. I think, in regard to this thread, you are dealing with the former. And that is not being addressed otherwise. If one examines Caslon Old Style or Granjon’s Civilite, for instance, at the micro level there is seemingly some quite odd stuff that would not rationally seem to make sense, but when they are set in text form, there is a wonderful weave (color) to the page. I suspect that you are right about where to start.

A long while back Letraset decided to revive some of the great Czech faces but they followed Adobe’s thinking about digitization and Herman Zapped them to death. They got the harmony and color right, but the faces just weren’t much to write home about. They took out the funk.

Gerald

There is historic relevance in guidelines to achieve eveness of typeface color.

Prior to phototypesetting and offset lithography, there were numerous variables that had to be contended with that are no longer present in printing today.

The “color of a typeface” when set in blocks of copy could fall prey to known hazards of the trade; poor line casting, poor quality of casted font, worn, nicked or smashed type, missing or additional “lead” between composed lines of copy, uneven placement of spacers (inter-character spacing), and so on.

These were all potentially present in typesetting and had to be corrected during the proof stage. The “eveness of typeface color” could be disrupted by any of these mechanical variables and screening them out was one of several earmarks of quality typography.

With current methods of prepress and printing we no longer consider combing character by character and line by line for inherent typesetting problems. Because of this one should consider method of production and historic context when evaluating “typeface color.”

>at the micro level there is seemingly some quite odd stuff that would not rationally seem to make sense, but when they are set in text form, there is a wonderful weave (color) to the page

Gerald, are you suggesting that Caslon and Granjon were unaware of the affect that their variations on the micro level would have in mass? I think there is good evidence that were acutely aware of this, and very deliberately introduced such variations in a way that both created lively, readable texture, and still gave even color. I am not sure about how even Civilite is, but in other faces Granjon was, and for sure Caslon was aiming at this, as well as a varied texture.

None of those quoted here claim that evenness of color means turning everything to grey. The alway discuss how to balance and harmonize diverse elements.

It is only Hrant who has created the straw-man fantasy of “the even color boys” who are supposedly on some whacky crusade to turn the world grey to satisfy their lust for control because of their admiration of monotheism, Rome, the enlightenment, the twentieth century and whatever else Hrant hates.

In reality, these old folks were not just aware, but devoted to making typography that achieves balance and harmony with diverse elements. For traditional printers, the typeface with its diversity of forms was already a given, set in metal, and the issue was to mass them in way that is lively but retains ’even color’.

For the type designer the goal has been to strike a balance so the diverse forms of the letters knit into an even texture while preserving and emphasizing “stems bowls and counters ...[that] have proper salience and independant cue-value at the microscale.”

I like Norbert’s suggestion to keep even tone and texture as two different variables, which helps clarity. However, I have to disagree that color has nothing to do with readability. As Peter has noted, evenness of the resulting set type aids readability. The point is that you have a predictable, even background, against which the diverse elements in the letters that are key for recognition stand out. If you have variation in non-informational characteristics this becomes ’noise’ that interferes with the readability of the text. (My translation of the Ennesonese.)

So yes, Hrant, you can have too much uniformity and that hurts readibility. But you can also have too little and that hurts readibility also. It is the balance that is the key, and your crusade against gray is unbalanced.

You can have different sizes of type with different ’color’ as in Norbert’s first example. But if you mixed different sizes or colors in the same line it would definitely slow down the reader. (Of course, sometimes you want the reader to slow down, and use italics or caps, but that is another matter.)

> at the micro level there is seemingly some quite odd stuff that
> would not rationally seem to make sense, but when they are set
> in text form, there is a wonderful weave (color) to the page.

Exactly. The smaller text is, the more the “strangeness” moves from micro to macro relevance. Furthermore, there is a threshold (the deliberative-immersive threshold) below which the reader will realize nothing - although his subconscious is still in tune (it always is). The best recent example of the power of strangeness is the new Houston Chronicle face. Lastly: my feeling is that the nature of this goes beyond strangeness, and directly into ugliness; for a text font to be “real”, it has to look awkward large.

William, I don’t think you should claim to know what other people
(especially ones who’ve been dead for centuries) were thinking.

> you can have too much uniformity and that hurts readibility.

Yes, and the best interpretation of “even color” is just that.
Please use different terminology. But not all at once either.

hhp

>William, I don’t think you should claim to know what other people
(especially ones who’ve been dead for centuries) were thinking.

Hrant, I have a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science, and it is my business to gain new and better understanding of history of ideas, by carefully testing alternative historical hypotheses against evidence. I will go on doing it, just as you will go on being rude.

When you get a degree in Time Travel, with a minor in Mind Reading, then you could attempt to KNOW, which is not at all the same thing as to “gain new and better understanding of [the] history of ideas” - I know because I do the latter all the time. And then maybe you could shoot for a Bachelor’s in Growing Skin, or Whine Control. Rude, he says - when I haven’t been this gentle in years.

hhp

Hrant, if you read what I wrote you will see that I said that there is good evidence of their efforts at balancing varied texture and even color, not that I am a mind reader who posesses clairvoyance.

Matthew Carter, among others, notes the “famously even” quality of Caslon’s text type. Because of the widespread historical admiration for Caslon on this point, and the knowledge of how difficult it is to achieve a good balance, I said I was sure about Caslon. I have been sure and wrong before, but I am sure about Caslon.

I suppose this makes Caslon and Carter part of the “even color boys” conspiracy who according to you are out to turn pages into a bleak, featureless grey. Glad I am in good company.

Caslon was a hack. Carter is not. He is more in tune with Fleischmann, who I’m pretty sure would be on my side in this discussion. But even if he weren’t I wouldn’t accept that “even color” -in the useful sense of the term- is more than half the story; because the human subconscious thrives on divergence - with the consciousness obscuring. Modernism, Even Color, Control, are all children of consciousness, lost in the dark, luscious forest.

hhp

“Gerald, are you suggesting that Caslon and Granjon were unaware of the affect that their variations on the micro level would have in mass? I think there is good evidence that were acutely aware of this, and very deliberately introduced such variations in a way that both created lively, readable texture, and still gave even color. I am not sure about how even Civilite is, but in other faces Granjon was, and for sure Caslon was aiming at this, as well as a varied texture.”

William

I sort of thought that was what I said.

>at the micro level there is seemingly some quite odd stuff that would not rationally seem to make sense, but when they are set in text form, there is a wonderful weave (color) to the page

I’d think yes, obviously, the punchcutter (rather than type designer in these cases) was quite aware of how their letterforms would print on the page. Hrant pointed out that there was discordance at the microlevel. I’d agree. This hardly means the punchcutter was errant or did not know what he was doing. It simply means that there is purposeful discordance. Which I believe was Hrant’s point. That this can result in a page with appropriate color doesn’t alter the claim. But it does provide more insight, yes (?); more so than simply re-issuing platitudes passed from one apostle to another.

Gerald

Gerald

Hrant: “[...] even if he weren’t I wouldn’t accept that “even color” [...] is more than half the story [...]

I’m not hearing anyone saying it is even close to the whole story.
And by the way, ’purposeful discordance’ is a wonderful and very useful concept. I wonder if the fluctuation of axis in types in the Mannerist and Lyric Modernist (Mannerist Revival) tradition are purposeful in this sense.

> I’m not hearing anyone saying it is even close to the whole story.

But then why do we not hear nearly as much about the merits of uneven color, of divergence? The answer to that is simple: Modernism, Control, Consciousness.

Discord[ance]:
Could be said to in fact be a level of harmony beyond a [given] recognition.

hhp

Gerald, great posts! You made this idea much much clearer! I think I can intuit what kinds of things you might mean because I think there are lots of examples of couterintuitive or are least seemingly divergent shapes that occur in better bold faces for instance. The lc a in Porchez’s Costa comes to mind.

Still, I know I am missing plenty. This is probably a bit much but could you show us specifically what you mean? I think alot of us who are readiong this could benefit from examples. Hrant? What about you? Got some examples? William what do think ever seen a purposeful divergence?

Eben

Wish I could be a wizard here but I am not. This is just a new investigative journey for me. Sometimes we are best not to accept the status quo or the commonplace or the wisdom of the day. What is the nuts and bolts of the idea? Where did it come from? Why do we believe what we believe?

I am very interested here in teasing out of Hrant what he is trying to tease out of us. Ain’t easy. And, maybe he’s not there. But it doesn’t hurt to look.

The thing is, yes, you have to do the work. You are already thinking about it. You are on the way.

Gerald

As Peter says, nobody has said that even color is the only consideration in type design or page design. Hrant your “even color boys” are just a fantasy, so far as I can see. Who exactly is in this crowd? Bringhurst and Felici, who brought on your attack, explicitly talk about harmony and balance of diverse element. Someone else?

Yes, deliberate variation is important to texture, and I do think Peter is right that the variation in stress in, for example Caslon, is an example. I think to call it discordance is going too far, though. Such variation must be brought into harmony so that, yes, an even color is achieved or else the variation will distract and make the text less readable.

I believe the reason that variation is not so much talked about as even color is that variation in form is a given, and even color is usually the difficult challenge to achieve, whether in type design or page design. You are dealing in design of the roman with two different alphabets—caps and lower case—and each letter with a different shape and different differentiating features. To keep these differentiating features noticeable in the blink of an eye, yet with the evenness to guide and not slow down the reader is a major challenge.

In the early days of printing even color was also mechanically also quite a challenge to achieve, which is another reason it was talked about.

Now it is true that you can achieve even color with dullness in page design, or type, so the challenge is much more than even color. But even color is such a huge part of the challenge, and that is why it is talked about. But Tracy, for example, talks about the dangers of dullness as well as the need for harmony and balance.

Now as to being discordant to the point of being ugly or awkward, I think it is demonstrably wrong that this is necessary. Baskerville is a refutation. It is an admirably readable text type, and each letter has a neoclassical balance and beauty,

I don’t deny that you can have effective text types where individual shapes of letters look awkward on their own, but the letters in question must look harmonious in combination with other letters. If a letter looks awkward or discordant in combination—it fails to harmonize—then I think the typeface is hurt as a text face by that letter. This applies most strictly to the lower case. With upper case letters, which mark the beginning of sentences, it is possible to over weight them, violating even color, and for this to be functional.

The balance of diversity and evenness is a fascinating business, at the heart of good type and page design.

> Got some examples?

Fleischmann’s #65.

> must be brought into harmony

“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more
star systems will slip through your fingers.”

> even color is usually the difficult challenge to achieve

Quite the contrary! Making things the same is child’s play. Making them different, but intelligently so is what’s beyond the abilities -but also desire- of so many. And this is why beginner type designers make gridnick fonts.

> the letters in question must look harmonious in combination with other letters.

Indeed. But if you limit harmony to the kiddie kind (superficial formal harmony) you will end up with pointless [text] fonts. The harmony you seem to want is not the one the human reality most needs.

hhp

“Making things the same is child’s play. Making them different, but intelligently so is what’s beyond the abilities -but also desire- of so many.”

Making glyphs—or place-holders in a glyph set—different enough so that role architectural particulars and evoked form have proper salience and independant cue value, but the same enough so that they conjoin constructively on a visual wordform level, and so that the response bias to visual whole-word-form resolution is not compromised, and so that the gestalt impression of the block of text is not problematic, but smooth in tone, vibrant in texture and consistent in its attributes across diverse blocks of text and within itself, is the mark of a professional—desired by all who know their craft, exacting at both ends, and acheived by a goodly number.

You want to push the ’different’ envelope and that is respectable. Others don’t, and you are frustrated that they don’t or that they don’t want to push it us far as you do. You think intelligent difference is a functional benefit. And you are right. But so is formal familiality. They are both important at the subterranean level of processing within the visual cortex, or so I believe. And there is no error in being mindful of the one (sameness / familiality / conjunctivity) if it is not at the expense of the other (difference / divergence / perceptual distance). It is just that your sense of where the inflection points (a term I picke up from Kevin) between the pressures lies is different from others.

⇒ students don’t seem too satisfied with the conventional answer of “color” means grayness.

This thread has progressed into areas of typographic awareness where mere mortals would fear to tread.

That is to say...
let the sparks fall where they may and let the meek quake in their boots... there’s enlightenment in the air!

p.s.> my intent in this topic is to come out with better descriptors and possible samples to help graphic design students make the leap. I may need to regroup and form another thread later.

> is the mark of a professional

I don’t think that’s what most people think “professional” means. Strictly speaking, it’s much easier to be a professional (make a living, or at least good money) than to do what we’re talking about. I might even say that making money is opposed to what we’re talking about - or even just the act of talking!

I contend that most people who don’t want to “push” as much as I think we should are simply ideologically lazy. And that doesn’t make me frustrated. At most it makes me sad. But one thing that does make me angry is denial - denial that pushing can be useful - sometimes even denial that pushing exists.

hhp

“But one thing that does make me angry is denial - denial that pushing can be useful”

I think that’s fair.

I may be making a kind of squishy thought here if so sorry. But It just occured to me that sometimes I have have read the term color in the context of type to mean just this idea ’pushing’. I am a little sick at the moment & don’t quite trust my thought process... As in ’this face has color’ - as opposed to being bland. Of course this is also a somewhat couter intuitive use of the term at first too. But when you see a beatiful and not dull page it makes some sense I think. Color in this sense might be related to saying that the text is lively or sparkles. Maybe therfe is a continum

grey> dull> plain> color> lively> sparkles> hurts my eyes?

’Color’ being the place you would probably want the text to be if it was a text face. ’Sparkles’ might be okay in a display face.

Certainly, “colorful” is related to eccentricity in English. On the other hand when I hear “this face has color”, I tend to associate that with an assertive darkness (although not Bold), not an “internal” divergence of color.

hhp

> “colorful” is related to eccentricity in English

Yes, if there is too much or it is poorly judged but it can also be said that ’Good Color’ or is also an important idea - you might say it about a Fruit or Vegi - or even someones complexion if they look healthy. This would be in contrast to having dull looking skin for instance which would be associated with being un-well or spending excessive time in the dark... When I think of type ’having color’ this is the color I think of.

Thinking about type as being darker in the same phrase seems odd & simple to me... It seems would be easier & more descriptive to just say it is darker.

But this brings us back to the statement already made that the term ’color’ does take on meaning over time & that what is meant by it isn’t always all that clear.

This ambiguity seems inevitable to me.

I am also increasingly convinced that the judicious use of divergence is what creates a ’healthy’ looking type that has ’good color’.

I think you have a point.

hhp

As the dialog continues regarding aspects of typographic color there are two main viewpoints and several issues to consider in order to keep proper perspectives.

Graphic Design & Typography Viewpoint
The visual experience and adjustments are made at the macro level in regards to blocks of text, juxtaposition with other page or document elements, the graphic designer/typographer wrestles with solving “total balance” or intentional disharmony if that is the intent. Selection of typeface and fine tuning textsetting are the only means of solution.

Type Design & “Punchcutter” Viewpoint
In regards to developing text faces, design decisions are made based on how they resolve at the macro level, with adjustments and fine tuning made at the micro level. Once a typeface is released, there are no adjustments to be made by the type designer.

Issues to consider
For the benefit of Forum members and readers who may know certain details about type design prior to phototypesetting, color was often adjusted by the type designer (and punchcutter) for EACH text point size font that was released. If one were to closely examine clean specimen sheets of block settings at 8, 9, 10, 12 and 14 pt. text, the subtle adjustments to design and widths are quite evident. Also, designers of hot metal typefaces were concerned not only with scaling adjustments but also account for printing methods where ink had tendencies to “well up” and “plug counters.”

Scaling of digital fonts from text to display settings is of major concern to type designers today, though not always apparent to your average graphic designer. Training the eye to “see” type color is the only way to understand what adjustments can be made.

These illustrations from Adobe’s guide to creating multiple masters might give the novice an idea of some factors involved.

Also, the viewer must take into consideration that typeface color can only be examined based on final output or near final resolution since the subtle details are lost on screen.

Nice summation dude!