Poet Ponders the Digital

The following timeline of typography milestones is part of the digital companion materials to Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms published by Parlor Press.

Lower case ‘a’ from Adobe Caslon Pro, superposed onto some guides. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Asked to summarize my research projects... Curiously, beyond the theses and dissertation, all my work is in economics of media and narrative. I ask what works and why when offering stories to audiences. What connects with an audience and can we model what audiences want from narratives? (Yes, you can model data on narratives and what "sells" and what wins awards and what nobody wants.) Yet, my degree research projects all relate to design of writing spaces, as knowing what works is also key to knowing what could be "sold" to users. MA: How poor LMS UI/UX design creates online spaces that hinder the writing process and teacher mentoring of students. Also: The cost of LMS design and compliance with legal mandates for usability. Ph.D: The experiences of special needs students in online settings, from commercial spaces to games to learning spaces and which space...

I love typography. For my contribution to an upcoming collection on the rhetoric of type, I consulted the following texts: Bennett, Paul A., & Bruce Rogers. (1963). Books and printing : a treasury for typophiles (1st Forum Ed. ed.). Cleveland: World Pub. Co. Berry, John D. (2006). dot-font : talking about fonts (1st ed.). New York: Mark Batty Publisher. Bringhurst, Robert. (2004). The elements of typographic style (3rd ed.). Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, Publishers. Carter, Sebastian. (1995). Twentieth century type designers (New ed ed.). London: Lund Humphries Publishers. Clair, Kate. (1999). A typographic workbook : a primer to history, techniques, and artistry . New York: Wiley. Coles, Stephen. (2012). The anatomy of type : a graphic guide to 100 typefaces . New York: Harper Design. Davis, Graham. (2007). The designer’s toolkit : 500 grids and style sheets . San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Dodd, Robin. (2006). From Gutenberg to opentype : a...

Call for proposals for an edited collection: Type Matters: the Rhetoricity of Letterforms Edited by C.S. Wyatt and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss Stephen Bernhardt warned us almost 30 years ago that our "preoccupation with conventional essay format" excludes the rhetorical rigor of typographic elements. Later, John Trimbur extended this argument, noting that "one of the main obstacles to seeing the materiality of writing has been the essayist tradition and its notion of a transparent text." Many visual rhetoric scholars have interrogated the ways in which meaning-making happens iconographically, photographically, and via other visual means. Few, however (save for Anne Frances Wysocki), have paid much attention to the rhetorical work that typography does. Although always part of any text's argument, the choice of typeface is an under-articulated and under-studied aspect of textual production within composition and rhetoric. Today, even as there are thousands of fon...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley September 2, 2014 Deadline October 2014 Issue Font Wrangling: Take Control of Your Typefaces Too many typefaces are cluttering up printed pages, online spaces and computer drives. Hundreds, or even thousands, of fonts on our computing devices prove too tempting for some people. It’s time to wrangle your fonts and refine your designs. A high school teacher rejected the first term paper I typed into a computer. Notice that I didn’t write the paper on the computer; I entered text I had written on paper. I sought to avoid the hassles of using correction fluid with my typewriter by switching to the computer and its dot-matrix printer. Despite using the “letter quality” mode of my Epson printer, the built-in font looked odd. The teacher complained that the lowercase g, p and q were squished and lines of ink smudges were unacceptable. Unless you could afford a daisy-wheel printer with its typewriter mechanism, a personal computer was an ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 3, 2014 Deadline April 2014 Issue More Than a Typewriter: The Power of Word Typewriters still amaze me, especially the antique mechanical models. There’s something wonderful about the feel of levers, gears, springs and rollers working together to transmit thoughts into words. Typewriters possess a romance computer keyboards and touch screens lack. But, please, stop using your word processor like a typewriter. Word processor abuse mars many otherwise good documents. Bad habits people develop over time lead to documents that are ugly and difficult to edit and revise. The numerous excuses for improper word processing deserve dismissal. It does not take days or even hours to learn to use tabs effectively. Paragraph styles take minutes to understand and appreciate. Even a complex looking table of contents takes only a few mouse clicks to create if you construct a document properly. When you know more about your software tools, you also kno...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley July 2009 Issue May 30, 2009 Font Fanatic: Putting the Best Face Forward How words look on a page or screen can be as important as what they state. Consider corporate logos and signs you see around town. The lettering conveys everything from how “serious” the message is to associations with specific eras. Personally, I love the clean precision of Art Deco lettering, which brings to mind elegance, the Roaring 20s, and a young Hollywood. However, no matter how much I might like Art Deco, I would not prepare a business letter using the typefaces Broadway, Plaza, or Desdemona. These might look great on Agatha Christie or F. Scott Fitzgerald novel covers, but they are inappropriate for a letter to my university department chair. Having a few hundred fonts installed on your computer does not mean you should try to use them all, especially within the same document. I’ve seen the results of font addiction and they aren’t attractive. I admit to being...

This is a portion of my summer (re)reading list, at least on one particular subject matter. I am reading various books on type and design. So far, I have completed Dodd and Lupton. The Bringhurst and Parker texts are re-reads, which I will tackle later in the summer. The current book on my stand is the Stanley Morison Tally of Types . I'm putting the bibliography up top, to stress the books a bit more than my own ramblings. Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style . 3rd ed ed. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, Publishers, 2004. Consuegra, David. American Type: Design & Designers . New York: Allworth Press, 2004. Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to Open Type: An Illustrated History of Type From the Earliest Letterforms to the Latest Digital Fonts . Vancouver, WA: Hartley & Marks Publishers, 2006. Lupton, Ellen. Thinking With Type : A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students . Vol. Design briefs. 1st ed ed. New York: Prince...