TYPOGRAPHY TODAY

By Bent Kjolby

We all see it in advertisements and publications — potentially worthy designed pieces that suffer from a lack of good typography. Text matter is handled with little attention to hyphenation, line breaks, paragraph endings, kerning, and word spacing. Sometimes even headlines catch your attention with their bad spacing or straight quote marks.

What's even more "annoying" to a trained typographer is to see the misuse of type. Designers choose typefaces that don't complement each other. Or, they condense type with almost religious devotion without any regard to design aesthetics.

WHAT CONSTITUTES GOOD TYPOGRAPHY?

Is good typography achievable on the desktop? You might think that, as a typographer, my answer to these questions would be an unequivocal "NO!" However, the problem of achieving good typography is not with the new technology. The issue is that typography should be treated the same way that photography, design, scanning, color separation, and printing are handled: These used to be five different disciplines that were entrusted to five different specialists. We now expect a designer to master several of these disciplines, sometimes with little or no training.

And, it is not that standards need to be lowered to accommodate desktop typography. This is sometimes the case with the introduction of a new technology and probably was an excuse during the early stages in the desktop revolution. It is possible now for a properly trained person to achieve the same typographic results which were possible with earlier typesetting technology.

As a typographer, I know that it takes a little longer to make a graphic piece look right. But considering the efforts put into many pieces, it would easily be worth the little extra effort to make the typography look right. The entire piece would be enhanced as a result.

FORMAL TRAINING…

I believe, however, that a lack of knowledge is the real culprit here. With the democratization of the production process in the graphic arts, there is now no real formal training. Graphic arts schools do incorporate typography into the curriculum. But they are either not doing a good enough job or they simply don't have the time to teach from ground up.

In the past, that may have been sufficient, since the designer could rely on the expertise of the typographer to advise and craft the type. Now it is up to the designer to sweat the details. And often under enormous time pressure.

Digital technology, which is enabling anybody with a computer to do type, has also removed the restrictions of typesetting of the past. It is now possible to curve, distort or stretch any type to any degree. However, knowing when and when not to use this technology to produce pleasing printed materials is consequently more difficult. Distortion of type should be done with the greatest of care.

With the cost of short run printing dropping, more of it is being produced and will be produced in the future. The problem with the short run work is that the cost of prepress becomes a substantial part of the total cost, and the need to keep prepress costs down becomes essential. That is especially true when it comes to four-color work.

We're starting to see four-color brochures printed in quantities of 500 to 1000. This very visible printed matter often suffers from lack of good design and decent typography. It is often produced by improperly trained personnel.

SO WHAT IS THE TREND IN TYPOGRAPHY TODAY?

I truly believe that a trend is lost in the chaos created by the new technology. At the high end of the spectrum, it seems that typography is playing a slightly less important role than it used to. Tight letter spacing is being replaced by a little less tight letterspacing, and sometimes with open letterspacing.

The real drop in quality, however, has taken place in the mid-range level, where less experienced people have taken up the typesetting function from more experienced people.

At the low end of the spectrum the real sins occur, but quality in the low end has never been very good. I don't know if we can talk about a real drop here.

My hope is that the low end will improve and that it will force an improvement in the mid-range market. Competition in the high end will eventually force the quality to improve.

This article was originally published in the Spring 1997 edition of "Blueline", a publication of the Print Buyers Association of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.

The author, Bent Kjolby is president of Rapid, a company that originated as a high end typographical company and is now a full service prepress company in San Francisco.

Table of Contents
|_About NALC_||_Local Clubs_||_Resources_|
|_Articles_||_Convention Information_||_Links_|
|_Sponsors_||_Guestbook_||Suggestions|

This site is hosted by:
Cardoza-James Binding Company