"Hardware" for typographers

[sendoushi]

Ryan I don't see why that is the best hardware for a type designer. It's fun, it's useful but not the best hardware.

John, looking for those reducing lens now...

[chrisburton]

I think Ryan was being sarcastic.

[Chris Dean]

Don’t forget “French curves.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_curve

[dberlowgone]

"John, looking for those reducing lens now..."

These can also be handy for putting out fires.

[sendoushi]

@dberlow: or freeze ants to dead!

@Cristopher: What do you use French curves for on typography?

[Chris Dean]

Think of it as a pre-bezier curve drawing tool. It allows you to dray very specific curves that you otherwise couldn’t do freehand. It has been my experience that they are very difficult to use well.

[hrant]

Fixed french curves impose way too much of their own will on a drawing. Flexible french curves (which might actually be called something else) are a pain to use.

hhp

[John Hudson]

I bought my reducing lens on eBay. They look like magnifying glasses, but obviously with the opposite effect. Fiona introduced me to them; she'd started using them at Linotype, back in the day.

[hrant]

Is notan a functional concept in reading? In what way?

Yes, because it is the only thing that is read.

Is this functionality enhanced or impeded by (para)chirographically achieved notan?

Since parachirography is an arbitrary design constraint, essentially it can only hurt. When it helps (for example through the manifestation of "stroke" contrast, which I believe helps reading) that's just dumb luck.

What other design processes might be used to create typographic forms?

Others have had some good ideas. I've been working (in the loose sense of the word) on my own. I had an epiphany on April 13 of this year. I'm not saying what it is.

How do you establish criteria for functionally good notan in a writing system independent of writing?

Lacking convincing empirical findings either way, the only way is lucid thought.

hhp

[John Hudson]

Let's stick with the first question for a bit, so we don't get ahead of ourselves.

You claim that 'notan is the only thing that is read'. But that really does demand a very precise technical definition of notan from you, one which accounts for letter recognition as well as bouma recognition, since both are pretty clearly activities within reading. I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a definition from you.

Earlier in this thread you stated that notan 'is determined solely by the border between black and white'. Evidence indicates that we don't perceive the border between black and white as such at text sizes, only at larger sizes. So it might be useful to elaborate on the function of notan relative to spatial frequency in small areas and structure recognition.

[hrant]

I don't think "we read notan" requires a precise technical definition; I think it's more of an abstract truism - not very actionable except for laying a foundation for further thought. What does require a precise technical definition is "bouma", and I firmed that up back when I wrote the piece "The Bouma Supremacy — they should have left Herman alone" :-) for Typo magazine (issue #13):

A bouma is a cluster of letters that is recognized -in parallel with other boumas- as one thing, anywhere in the field of vision, thanks to a combination of frequency, contextual expectation, distinctiveness and clarity. It can be a single letter (in the fovea, where single letters are fully clear), it can be a whole word (deep into the parafovea, thanks to high frequency, expectation and distinctiveness) but is not necessarily either. So a letter is a special-case bouma, and so is a whole word.

As for "notan is determined solely by the border", I mean "determined" in the mechanical design sense: it is what we make when we're making a glyph (a reality that [para]chirography contradicts). The border isn't what is perceived by the reader; that would be notan.

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

Left to right:

• Parker ball-point—Isn’t that sleek as a 707? I’ll click it again!
• Sheaffer calligraphic pen—laborious and needs a good warm-up.
• 3 mm mechanical pencil—handy for developing drawings (the top harbors an eraser).
• Uni Ball—good for notetaking in Moleskin.
• Parker fountain pen—smoother and faster than the Sheaffer.

Reposted from: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/102299-forwarding

[Chris Dean]

@hrant: Please define terms such as “parachirography.” It’s important to help others participate in dialogue. If you use such genre specific terms, you only end up talking to yourself and a select few. Plain language please (or at least big words followed by definitions). This is a public forum.

[Chris Dean]

And that’s a very cool post Nick.

[sendoushi]

@Nick don't you mess your head with uni ball? Never really liked (don't use them for like 5 years) the way they spread the paint. It always messes everything. Parker is always a nice ball point. I love fountain pens but unfortunately, since I'm lefty, it provokes pain!

[hrant]

That's why I [usually] prefer "chirography" (although it's less accurate). The "para" just refers to the fact that when you're making typographic glyphs you're not actually using a broad-nib pen with your right arm/hand to make the shapes, you're only referencing that method.

hhp

[enne_son]

The “para” comes from me, but I don't remember when I first introduced it.

In the contention-laden forum which Hrant highlighted earlier — https://typography.guru/forums/topic/58843-forwarding — I wrote: “As I understand it, chirography is paraphrastic of the pen. This is different than saying some type is para-paraphrastic. Etymologically para- is beside, alongside of, by, beyond. For me para-paraphrastic is not a program or stance, but a [adding now: universal] type-historical fact.”
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/58843-forwarding#comment-299053
i.e., my post (last page) of 1 Sep 2008 — 4:01pm

Much of this is serious word-play. The root word in all of this is paraphrase.

In the next paragraph I wrote: “Legato is para-paraphrastic” and explained what it might mean to say this.

Elsewhere I wrote that what Hrant calls chiro-graphic is actually chiro-referential.

Legato is para-paraphrastic without being directly chiro-referential. Hrant likes to use the phrase anti-chirographic. Anti-chirographic is a stance or attitude —which Hrant is keen to promote — that I would call anti-chiro-referential or post-chiro-referential.

The importance of saying Legato, for instance, and Turnip too, are para-paraphrastic is that it recognizes that nothing is from scratch, and encourges one to trace how the contrast in and construction of Legato deviate from conventional writing in it’s variants. In the thread I used the para word “parasitical” and discussed the essence of type-design as feature manipulation that involves positive and productive or beneficial norm-violation, which —adding to this now — in digital technologies is splino-graphic or bezier-o-graphic or vector-based. [same thread, starting with 1 Sep 2008 — 6:40am, point 4 of the second set of points.]

The shapes produced by actual conventional writing with a broad-nibbed or pointed-nibbed pen can, if they are well-understood, function as a template for understanding the nature of the forms in faces that are produced by para-paraphrastic feature manipulative work or play. The goal can be enhanced readability or expression.

Understanding the nature of the forms as shapes in para-paraphrastic / non- or anti- chiroreferential instances is not achieved by trying to write these forms with varying pressure on, or twists and turns of the broad-nibbed or pointed-nibbed pen, but seeing the para-paraphrastic / non- or anti- chiroreferential instances against the background of the form-templates — as form-analytic foils — these tools produce.

Gerrit Noordzij showed me the heuristic value of this in relation to the “clipped” forms of Henk Krijger's Raffia Initials and the similar forms of his contempory Helmut Salden.

I tried to do something in a similar vein for Legato here:
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/65783-forwarding#comment-335821
i.e., my post (last page) of 17 Mar 2009 — 7:55pm

So let's not put the hardware aside.

Peter

[hrant]

It's a shame to reduce the genius of Legato to this, especially in the absence of Evert.

hhp

[enne_son]

I believe I’ve captured the uniqueness and genius in Legato in a way Evert might have embraced.

See the more fully elaborated background to my analysis and the functionality-for-reading comment here:
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/26140-forwarding#comment-97148
i.e., my post page 2, 25 Nov 2005 — 3:04pm
“[…] the tension caused by Bloemsma’s rotation seems to make the white of the word more active or salient vis a vis the black. Here he is in a line that includes W. A. Dwiggins. If I am right (in my understanding of perceptual processing in reading) about the place of 'the map of salient whites' in reading (see the “bouma as bounded map thread’) we can see why Bloemsma is justified in thinking he is reconnecting (optically, ‘after-helvetica’) the single units of our scripts, or restoring and extending the optical integrity of the wordform.”

In saying “Bloemsma’s rotation seems to make the white of the word more active or salient vis a vis the black,” I am alluding to the notan characteristics of the font and reflecting my contention that both the black and white of the word are information for vision.

I think what I want to argue in this thread on “hardware” is that one doesn’t have to negate what Noordzij has called, in an as yet untranslated essay, the primacy of the pen, in order to be progressive, inventive and experimental, or embrace what makes Legato so unique. In fact, my analysis reveals rather than reduces it and gives a basis to articulate it's genius.

[5star]

:)

n.

[Karl Stange]

I love all the directions this thread is taking and the great variety of contributions.

@Neil. I really like what you have done, very cool!

[John Hudson]

Hrant, I appreciate your gradual efforts to refine and present your ideas in more precise form, but I still think you are a long way from making sense. You can't insist that notan is a functional concept in reading, and then retreat to saying that 'we read notan' is an 'abstract truism', a phrase which prompts even more questions.

In order for an idea to be a functional concept, you have to explain how it relates to functionality, in this case how it relates to the perceptual and cognitive processes of reading (or, at least, to a particular model of how such processes function). If you can't do this, you have not got a functional concept, but only a borrowing of a word from Japanese aesthetic philosophy and that ends up meaning 'black and white relationship' in the context of typography and reading. If all you are saying is that relationship of contrasting shape and ground is what we read, well, duh!

[hrant]

Peter, Legato's genius is rooted firmly in the conscious "breaking" of the black. This is a clear break from chirography, and any subversive chiro-apologism is not welcome by me, because it keeps us in the dark ages.

one doesn’t have to negate what Noordzij has called, in an as yet untranslated essay, the primacy of the pen, in order to be progressive, inventive and experimental

It's certainly possible to be all those things within the confines of chirography. But it's still the same old boring over-populated continent, one where both style and reading performance are inhibited due to psychological lethargy, to an unwillingness to stop celebrating the established and start working on the possible.

you have to explain how it relates to functionality

I'll try to be more specific (eventually). But this might be where the constant reprimand I get to "put my money where my mouth is"* does kick in.

* Although most people who say that are theory-free between the ears...

If all you are saying is that relationship of contrasting shape and ground is what we read, well, duh!

Well, I think it's "duh" too! But the implications remain largely avoided by most people, who insist on continuing to paint the black.

hhp

[hrant]

David: No, mostly I watched my dad use them.

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

I’ve used French Curves with a Rapidograph to draw smooth high contrast artwork over the top of pencil drawings in which I had freehanded the curves of letter outlines.

After a while, I became familiar with which parts of which French Curve template (and different oval templates and straight edge) would match my pencil lines. It was very much an “assembly” job piecing together composite lines, but worked fine.

In my experience French Curves did not impose any of their will at all on my curves.