When Wisdom Fails

May 16, ’12 7:40 AM

I will try to keep this on point.

Recently I posed this question on Twitter:

“If a type designer makes a typeface with a specific intent, is it their duty to make that intent explicit wherever it’s offered?”

It didn’t ignite a conversation but it’s been on mind for a reason.

Visit this page to see a pay-what-you-want font called Wisdom Script. It probably looks familiar—it’s been getting around, as cheap things do.

The main banner image on the page shows the name of the font set in the font, on a horizontal baseline. Now scroll down and look at the four examples below “See it in Action.” All four images deviate from the banner image and have something precisely in common. We’ll come back to this.

A typeface should serve a purpose, it should aim to solve a perceived problem (big or small). What drives this particular creation?

The information on this page is minimal. There is a sentence stating that the script was originally designed for a poster series of bad advice. There is also a credit for the designer, who is a college student that once tried amateur stand-up comedy.

Bad advice and jokes. We’ll come back to this.

Now let’s visit this page to see Wisdom Script presented on the designer’s own site. Amongst scattered samples there is a description of the font. This version has an extra sentence:

“Wisdom Script is designed to be on a thirty degree incline to get perfectly vertical strokes.”

Now we know the purpose of this font. It was made to achieve vertical strokes.

In recent months I have seen Wisdom Script used in advertisements, magazines, and even, embarrassingly, a logo for a well-funded startup. I have never once seen it set on a 30º angle. I don’t expect to as long as the font’s intent is hidden. And even if revealed, I don’t expect everyone to follow that intent—there’s no way to police a font, other than with cautionary tales.

My drive here is not to critique the script’s make, I think the many flaws are obvious. And I’m purposely skipping over an easy thesis, which is that everyone using a free font would be better served by purchasing the license for a well-developed script, made by a professional, especially since scripts are one of the cheapest categories of fonts. But if you take another look at the four samples provided on Lost Type, it’s clear how the angle masks the wonky letterforms. In that light, the quality of the font does not improve, but in following it’s own logic, it makes some sense.

Normally I might avoid openly critiquing the work a college student, but this font has been offered to the world for free. It is spreading quickly, affecting all kinds of design. Though surely the fire will burn out after a popularity backlash (the designer himself acknowledges this), I have to wonder…

Is the vagueness of the font’s intention a kind of silent bad advice? Is this an amateur comedian’s darkest and most successful joke?

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A Kickstarter Letter to Jane

Nov 10, ’11 10:38 AM

My day job is to design a magazine that gets printed on paper. I’m probably supposed to be insecure about digital publications and what they portend. For now, I choose to believe that I have an unmatched freedom to manipulate content, especially type, each month that I produce an issue (to say nothing of the final few minutes before files ship!). Of course Design Freedom doesn’t drive business. But I keep my faith in the readers’ love of familiar formats: the saddle-stiched, the perfect-bound, the folded-up.

The leaders of magazine apps are still the so-called replica editions of national titles and much has already been said about their worth. What hasn’t recieved enough attention — and what I actually find inspiring — are the independent magazines that have dared to launch apps. I’m particularly excited by those that have no real roots in the print world, or have at least detached themselves from their print DNA. To me, these endeavors aren’t threats to an establishment but are an entirely new and separate thing.

I’ve followed one such app closely since it’s debut. Letter to Jane, created by Tim Moore, who graduated college in 2008 with a BFA in Applied Visual Arts and Art History, is an iOS app that began life as a PDF. It’s a magazine with heart, culturally in its dedication to music, film and photography but also in its ambition. It has not been developed by a team of programmers, editors, and editorial designers. Each issue credits several contributors but it’s mostly one person’s dare to figure out a new platform.

Three issues of Letter to Jane have been released for iPad. Issue 3, Moral Tales, even has a separate iPhone version. They are finished products but in essence remain apps which can be updated. (Some have had functionality improvements months after their release. This is a good thing.) They are all worth buying. Lovers of magazines will enjoy the straight-forward interviews and striking photography and that it has a voice. Those more intereseted in development will find inspiration in some of the subtle but clever navigation techniques. Plus, they’re only $.99, $.99, and $1.99.

So far, Letter to Jane has been created with the money in Moore’s pockets. While this didn’t stop him from making each issue better, for issue 4 he has turned to Kickstarter. It’s about time. Upon meeting the fairly modest goal of $5,000, Moore will stay on track (and probably stay saner), pushing the bounds of what digital publishing can be. With a near top-level donation of $200 you will get the commented source code, an enticing, practical gift. At the time of writing the project has $3,007 pledged. There’s less than 13 days left, so back Letter to Jane now.

Whether or not printed magazines die out while I’m still in the business, I don’t know, and I don’t care. At the moment I do find it distracting that big print magazines spend time on duplicative iPad apps but I see no reason to rule out mag apps altogether. I’m happy to champion the efforts of independent content artists who are diving in head first. Those that can fight the dirty, early battles. Those unchained to the past. Those Un-bound.

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They Were Doomed

Jul 18, ’11 9:42 PM

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, announced his retirement last month after eight years. He’s been with the newspaper since 1984 and won a Pulitzer in 1989. In this month’s Esquire, the Man at His Best section kicks off with Scott Raab’s ESQ+A with Keller:

SR: Has there ever been a time when newspapers have not been on the brink of disaster?

BK: There is a long history of newspapers being doomed. They were doomed by radio. They were doomed by television.They were probably doomed by the telegraph way back when. Newspaper publishers have done more to kill newspapers than any innovative form of media.

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Great Job!

Jul 18, ’11 9:21 PM

In the Atlantic‘s July/August issue, Lori Gottlieb’s article, “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy”, tackles the obsession well-meaning parents have with their kids’ happiness:

When ego-boosting parents exclaim “Great job!” not just the first time a young child puts on his shoes but every single morning he does this, the child learns to feel that everything he does is special.

…what starts off as healthy self-esteem can quickly morph into an inflated view of oneself—a self-absorption and sense of entitlement that looks a lot like narcissism.

I don’t think this problem starts and stops with parent-child relationships. We must keep our expectations high, always challenging and critiquing our peers. Adjective-dumb praise—Amazing!, Gorgeous!—hardly helps anyone.

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The Way Readers Think

Jul 17, ’11 3:00 PM

In the Economist‘s special report on the news industry, the only reference to design came in “Reinventing the newspaper”:

…Juan Señor of Innovation Media Consulting, a firm that advises newspapers around the world, reckons that “you won’t fix the business model without fixing the editorial model.” He believes that as well as looking for new forms of revenue on the web, newspapers should overhaul their print editions to make themselves more relevant and thus boost circulation. His firm advises them to undertake a radical redesign, abandoning traditional sections and instead arranging the newspaper around themes that correspond to the way readers think…

Citing two foreign newspapers whose circulation have increased after such redesigns, Señor says that no American newspaper have shown interest in anything like this.

I don’t know if that’s entirely true but there does seem to be an opportunity for a major newspaper to take a leap and set a new standard for publishing. It’s more than having a companion website or porting all of your content to a mobile app. Its about thinking like a reader: understanding why people want to read X in print, Y on their computer and Z on their phone, as well as why, sometimes, XYZ can work everywhere.

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Post One

Jul 17, ’11 2:45 PM

Last weekend I watched Page One: Inside the New York Times, and, feeling very inspired, drove from the theater to the nearest bookstore. Looking to further the buzz, I found a book of essays about the state of journalism, Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights. Then at the checkout counter I noticed the July 9 issue of the Economist, featuring a 14-page report on the future of news, “Back to the Coffee House.” It was a small but perfect storm. I went home and read for hours.

With everything going on with newspapers, magazines, websites, and apps, we’re in a pretty chaotic time for media. Not so chaotic that we’ve lost control, just chaotic enough for things to appear more disconnected than connected. While things work themselves out, we retreat a bit to our circles of comfort—our disciplines that we strive to master. We focus on specific things and make much sense out of them, but what about the bigger picture?

—

“My legibility instinct became very strong and, I am afraid, it will never go away. This is a real professional deformation which, in real life, means that I can hardly look at any text without first shaping an opinion about the typeface/letters in use, the general layout, quality of print, etc. It usually takes at least a few seconds to scan all these before I can start to read.” —Fred Smeijers on Legibility

Ironic that legibility, loosely defined as whether or not something is clear enough to read, can be impeded (for a type designer) because of the very awareness of legibility. I’d like to apply this to the landscape of media production and consumption. The Internet, for example, with its abundance of long tails, hyper-focused on niche subjects, is really good at being exact. Instant authorities are spawned weekly. But there’s a tendency to become obsessed with particulars over context.

It’s as if we’re all working on a puzzle, our noses an inch away from the pieces. We can see that each unique piece is precisely cut and means something, even if not much. So we keep digging through the pile, sorting and slowly putting the puzzle together. We’ve never had the puzzle’s box to reference, so it’s always exciting and I’ll be damned if we’re not making progress. But I’m going to stand up for a moment. I want to see how it’s all coming together.

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