"Logo Font & Lettering Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to the Design, Construction and Usage of Alphabets and Symbols"

Yea its a great read/ on my shelf/ one i need to re-read. But that one is more of a generic book and I don't remember too much on hand lettering in it. But ill check again.

Maybe you should considering taking some calligraphy-lessons with a good teacher, it's a great way of getting to know the proportions of letter and practice the hand muscles :)

I remember using a smallish book by Edward Johnston about writing Italic (the preferred hand for typographers) when I was in Art School (published in the twenties?). And I kind of remember there being a more recent fascimile edition of that book, published by Dover Books (seventies?).
I loved the handwriting of one my graphic design teachers and he pointed me to that one (me being to lazy to take the course he gave). Well, this being 30 years ago, and my memory fading, I may be completely off track here…

@Goran: I've always thought about calligraphy but not sure where they offer classes around me.

@bert: sounds very intriguing. So far i've found:
The House of David, His Inheritance: A Book of Sample Scripts 1914 A.D.

Lessons in Formal Writing

Decoration and Its Uses: Transcribed by John Ch. Tarr from the Imprint, 1913

Writing and Illuminating and Lettering

I bought the last three! Total, including shipping: $23 using Alibris + Abe books + amazon.

Lettering lessons from Frank Blokland.

Thanks! That site is pretty sweet. The lesson seems cool and the site is fun to explore.

Any suggestions for left-handers? I know there are angled nibs, but they always seemed kinda awkward to me. Southpaws have not only the problem of smearing the ink we've just written, but also pushing the nib ahead of our hand instead of letting it trail behind it.
This does tend to leave us constructing the letterforms for everyday handwriting differently from right-handers (eg tending to start a capital E at the top-right hand corner and then drawing the central crossbar right-to-left).
Or am I just making excuses for myself because I know my handwriting is crap? I'd love to have an elegant script like my dad (and his generation?) did...

________________________________________
Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.

The calligraphy basic exercises (forming oooooo and mmmmmm shapes) are just as applicable for the lefthanded, just a little more complicated, you could try cutting a pencil to a chisel point and amending that (by using it and wearing down the edges you need to use) until you achieve an angle that you can make successful marks with, rather than using a pen which will reduce the pushing problem or you could try working upsidedown (I know someone who does this and it's not for everyone). It's a different discipline to lettering though.
Tim

Thanks Tim.

It’s a different discipline to lettering though.
Understood; but it's the sort of thing where if you can write it elegantly to start with, you have something to base a calligraphic lettering solution on.

...could try working upside down (I know someone who does this and it’s not for everyone)
LOL; I can see how that would work, but it'd take a while to get used to (basically learning to write all over again AND without the contextual cues of seeing it look right while you're writing it) and boy would you get some funny looks if you ever chose to do that in company!!

_________________________________________
Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.

One might follow the other, handwriting can be improved by calligraphy too. The difference in disciplines I was referring to is calligraphy on one hand and lettering a logo on the other, for the latter you need more of a skill in hand rendering typefaces and developing them, they aren't totally separate but there is room for more imprecision with calligraphy. For that kind of skill I would look at drawing up a few characters by hand until you can identify the typeface by the sketch.
Tim

Drawing_How-To

Also, I've been scouring Ebay for lettering books for the past couple of years. One of the best books i've been able to buy is Lettering for Advertising by Mortimer Leach. It covers Bodoni lettering, Caslon lettering, scripts and gothic lettering. a valuable resource.

"Any suggestions for left-handers? "

My caligraphy teacher in the early 60s (Arnold Bank) would walk by the lefthanded people in our class and tell them to work on Pointed Pen Italic because it was a left-handers dream script (and a nightmare for right-handers).

ChrisL

>scouring Ebay

Paul, I often have used ABEBooks.com . It includes includes stock from used book stores all over North America, with links to other international branches. Do you find Ebay better, cheaper, different?

re ebay: i'm just a junkie. i don't know why i prefer using it, it's kinda irrational. there are services that show used books from various booksellers and if you're really wanting something, that's probably the best way to buy books. i guess i'm really just an impulse bargain shopper, but i have gotten some great books at whopping deals once in a while (the 1923 ATF book in near-mint condition for ~$35) on Ebay.

Pricegrabber is great for finding books; though it usually leads me to Amazon so most of the time I check their first, then Abe books or Alibris, which has good prices and out of print books. Oak Knoll Press! is an awesome place to look for rare books, I get lost wondering through their. In fact check out their Typography Selection.

While I'm on the subject Published Art, 3 deep publishing, and Ballistic have great designer books. Let me know if there are any other good sites I dont' know about!

lol Paul, I bought Lettering for Advertising; the 4th of July has put me in a sort of Frenzy so that I can't control myself. Anyway, have you read Letter Design in Graphic Arts, also written by Mortimer Leach?

i have not... there are so many books out there that i need to read...

ABE.com is def. awesome. I get most of my books there.

This discussion reminded me of a book by/on Edward Johnston edited by Heather Child called Formal Penmanship and Other Papers 71/77 Pentalic NY (sounds like one for the wiki) I got it at Half Price Books for $4.95. One of those semi-lucky days. Treasures abound.

It's ALOT of his sketchbooks/calligraphy and also tutorials written by himself.

I do like ebay for somethings, i get really annoyed fighting for stuff tho. I find the best treasures on ABE or at the used book store.

I found this recently for rare books…

http://www.abaa.org/cgi-bin/abaa/abaapages/index.html

>So what are some good practices I can do to learn how to hand letter beatutiful type?
Hand lettering and Calligraphiy were two things. If you want to learn the former, a good practice is to tracing letters.

>Any suggestions for left-handers? “
My caligraphy teacher in the early 70s would walk by the lefthanded people, go back into his office, get a lugar automatic pistol, and bring it to you. No lie. And this, was a required course. I changed hands until I got migranes, then I went into the litholab, learned backwards left-handed, printed, and got credit for two classes by the time I was through with them four years later.

"My caligraphy teacher in the early 70s would walk by the lefthanded people, go back into his office, get a lugar automatic pistol, and bring it to you."

A bit more extreme than Arnold Bank but the sentiment was the same :-)
Arnold would just ask left-handers if they had ever considered a career in baseball :-)

ChrisL

> Hand lettering and Calligraphy were two things.

Just to agree and expand on David Berlow's comment --
Handwriting, hand-lettering, calligraphy and type design, though releated, are ALL VERY DIFFERENT in intent, expression and execution.

Being adept in one of these disciplines does not necessarily give you mastery in any of the others, oddly enough. And to make matters worse, none of these talents will assure you of making "good logos".

Very well said Norbert!

Hand lettering is a specialized skill which doesn't include
an automatic gateway to great designs.

If one is concerened w/ execution of an idea, then the computer
is the place to be. Sketches are for concepts and ideas, not details.

(btw, I had a very similar post on this topic awhile back, I speak
from experience)

I have to disagree, while a computer is great for producing final artwork, a drawing can save time and allows for quicker development, it also allows one to learn more about what makes up a character or word.
Tim

We've had some discussion about computer vs. handwork in the past.

My take at the moment is this --
Each "tool" has intrinsic apects that are unique in approach, hand-eye-brain processing, execution and result.

The more versed you are in using several "tools", the better you are able to make judgemental transferences between process and outcome. (Like using Illustrator to create chisled letterforms.)

But the unique experience of using a particular "tool" or medium can lead you down particular "higher function" paths... all viable, by the way, but all unique nonetheless. Like the difference between an artist using brush and oils vs. collage, or a composer writing a score while humming vs. using a synthesizer, or mathematicians/physicists solving equations on chalkboard vs. calculators.

I can't tell you which approach is "better", I can only tell you that each is different based on tool and individual.

I think different individuals "connect" with different tools. Perhaps a more tactile person would prever carving letteres in stone and a mre structural minded person might like compass and ruler better. Norbert is right, each person has to find their way with both tool and process and make a home.

ChrisL

I have to disagree, while a computer is great for producing final artwork, a drawing can save time and allows for quicker development, it also allows one to learn more about what makes up a character or word.

I don't think we are in disagreement. The computer is indeed great
for producing final work (execution), and sketches are great for
conceptualization, ideas -- development.

Just out of curiousity, Tim, are you speaking of art work, or type faces? These seem to be somewhat different animals. I think I heard that some who used to draw type all the time, pre-computer, such as Matthew Carter, now mostly work directly on computer.

If I remember rightly, a number of type designers reported here doing sketches to get ideas and initially test them out, but then move quickly to the computer, without doing a complete alphabet or refining it on paper.

I am talking about hand lettering logos, where for example you might want to shape letters on a curve, for an example there is this thread in the critique section. Indeed a different animal but not unrelated. The reason I mentioned drawing type (as opposed to tracing) is that, for me anyway, it seems to be the best grounding in going on to draw logos. As for drawing a typeface, I imagine that to work up a concept based on a few characters or parts of characters on paper followed by computer would work, but where distortion/ligature (or whatever) is involved I prefer to work out most of the detail before going onto computer, partly this is because it seems to me that opportunities may be missed when you get down to beziers. And as Norbert notes it is really about what one feels most comfortable/creative with.
Tim

"If one is concerened w/ execution of an idea, then the computer
is the place to be. Sketches are for concepts and ideas, not details."

Frank, how old are you? You seem to be unaware of all the products, tools and machines humans have made and employed over the millennia. Computers are a recent convenience that facilitate quick fabrication. You also seem to be unaware of how central drawing (what you call sketches) is to all this design work. There's more to drawing than sketches.

The computer is a place to huddle if there are no other skills present. Take away the computer, and you separate the inventive thinkers, the designers and creators from the mouse jockeys. Raymond Loewy did not use computers to develop his car, train, furniture, or product designs. He drew them, typically to a high degree of detail and finish. Computers are tools like pencils and light tables. Drawing is indeed for details and executing ideas. Just ask Adrian Frutiger, who hand-cut his own rubylith typeface masters, from his own hand-drawn final art.

well have you used Corel Painter with a nice Wacom Tablet? To each his own. Though I still prefer paper, it is just my preference.

I don't buy the digital/analog split.
One can draw on screen.
Grabbing a curve between two BCPs and manipulating the shape until it looks right is drawing.
So too is selecting a number of points, or even an entire glyph, and manipulating that with, say, the skew tool.

The distinction between the media is that analog drawing is about making marks, whereas digital drawing is more about adjusting shapes. For instance, constructing a path shape with the pen tool is very difficult as straight drawing, even with a stylus; however, the best practice working method is to draw the rough shape and then refine it with other pen tools.
The subtle real-time adjustment of a digital shape till it looks right to the eye constitutes drawing, just as much as making a mark with pen on paper. Drawing is the interplay of hand, eye, and image, with real-time feedback.

While it's true that some curves can best be drawn on paper, using the kind of control facilitated by the drag of friction between pen/pencil and paper (or the suppleness of a fine brush) -- and scale may be a factor too -- it's also true that other kinds of curves, most notably those of simple mathematical form, are best drawn with a ruler, compass or template, and these are best done with a computer. Actions like playing with skew can only be done on a computer.

Nick:

Do you think you would feel that way if you had never had any experience drawing?

Maybe what you mean is "I can draw onscreen".

>Actions like playing with skew can only be done on a computer.

Or using a copy camera, or a photocopier or a Grant, it sometimes is easier/more predictable to use the computer, but I feel one does miss out not exploring the manual process.
Tim

Do you think you would feel that way if you had never had any experience drawing?

You mean drawing on paper? Everybody has had that experience.
I'm puzzled you think that working a mouse or stylus -- manually, of course -- to create lines in a software program, is somehow not drawing.

Maybe what you mean is “I can draw onscreen”.

Not just me. Anyone who uses the pen tool in Illustrator (Fontographer, Fontlab, etc.) to create a path, either by clicking points and dragging handles to control the curve, or by using the free-form pen tool, is drawing. It's just a way to "draw out" a line.

Anyone who grabs a curve between two BCPs and plays around with it, controlling it with a stylus or mouse, until it looks right, is also drawing.

it sometimes is easier/more predictable to use the computer, but I feel one does miss out not exploring the manual process.

Drawing with pen on paper is a manual process.
Drawing in a software program is a manual process.
If you only do one, sure, you miss out on the other, as each tool has its own strengths and weaknesses.

I’m not convinced that not drawing on a computer means you miss out on an experience you couldn’t have with pen or pencil, conversely, you do miss the marks that pencils and pens make when you apply more pressure or use a softer graphite or a different nib or on a different medium – the approximations made by software are still pitiful.

Further, I am not sure that drawing on computer is somehow going to improve handwriting or calligraphy.
Tim

I view the difference between computer drawing and paper drawing much the same way as I did the difference between the several types of paper drawing. In the before computer era, we did freehand drawing, constructed drawing (using drafting tools) and even cutting with knife and straight edge (Rubylith, etc.). Knowing good constructing/drafting technique was not-that much aid in freehand pencil technique, true, but in training the eye and mind to see and understand, it all helped. There is no "best Way" to work or learn. Each person has to find their own best way. It does help to drink of many waters though to know about other possibilities.

ChrisL

"Drawing with pen on paper is a manual process.
Drawing in a software program is a manual process."

Nick, this is absurdly simplistic.

"You mean drawing on paper? Everybody has had that experience."

No, they have not! That is my point.

"I’m puzzled you think that working a mouse or stylus — manually, of course — to create lines in a software program, is somehow not drawing."

That is not what I think. You have it in reverse. All Chihuahuas are dogs, right? Well, are all dogs Chihuahuas?

Maybe I've not been clear enough: *IF* one has had some substantial training or experience with drawing manually, then of course that person will have some facility with a mouse and beziers. A person who has already gained hand skills can pick up almost any tool and make letters, drawings, shapes. Chris, Nick, not to be unkind, but you've both been around the block a time or two. There weren't computers around for you to rely on when you started out. That has changed. There are lots of people in the graphic arts today who actually have not had any experience drawing, lettering, or doing anything to develop hand skills. Are you really not aware of their presence?

Hand skills enable one to use beziers (or any other tool) and adjust them to match their vision without a lot of struggle. However, if the only skill one has is moving a mouse around and tapping keys, that does NOT offer the "designer" anything like the control, visual acuity, or coordination to convey their ideas visually, that one develops while learning to draw. If you think it does, you're not paying attention. Look around typophile for examples of people who can't get the thing onscreen to do what it does in their head.

Imagine your own life without *any* time spent drawing, sketching, comping type in layouts, cutting rubylith, painting, lettering, white-out, re-inking, carving, pottery, sculpting, cutting, woodworking or drafting. Then imagine starting a career in graphic arts with nothing but a computer and software. That's what I'm talking about, what's happening now.

"Chris, Nick, not to be unkind, but you’ve both been around the block a time or two."

Perhaps even more than 2 :-)

I am not dissagreeing with anything you said. Notice my last phrase where I said "It does help to drink of many waters though to know about other possibilities." I think hand work as we did in the dark ages really helps hand-eye work as done on the computer today. Having done it for half a dozen decades, I have no fear of drawing. Some of todays young people may feel differently though.

ChrisL

" it seems to me that opportunities may be missed when you get down to beziers."

I don't think anyone is going to argue that point with the "may be". But...No opportunities exist for a pencil sketch to look like a digital letter, and...even fewer opportunities exist for pencil sketches to look like a digital font. ;)

“You mean drawing on paper? Everybody has had that experience.”
No, they have not! That is my point.

Carl, everybody starts out drawing on paper, usually with Crayola.
I'm defining drawing as the process of physically making a line, non device-specific, quite literally drawing it out. I'm not investing "drawing" with any cultural values -- such as I've acquired at art school and as a pre-digital art director.

My philosophy here is not to overvalue my own pre-digital drawing skills against those of (younger) digitally-centred designers. It's because I'm trying to "imagine starting a career in graphic arts with nothing but a computer and software," that I'm wondering why it's necessary to master an obsolete medium.

Using drawing on paper as part of the process to design and render lettering or fonts is still legitimate, and I have a great appreciation for it -- but it's not necessary. There are other ways of working, which may be more in tune with present day reality, more true-to-materials than legacy media.

However, if the only skill one has is moving a mouse around and tapping keys, that does NOT offer the “designer” anything like the control, visual acuity, or coordination to convey their ideas visually, that one develops while learning to draw.

I agree with you about the mouse being a poor tool, a stylus is much better. But I disagree with the notion that learning to draw can only be done on paper. If designers don't have hand skills it's because they haven't spent enough time developing them. Whether they do it with ink on paper or stylus on tablet is irrelevant.

Ideas which are to be conveyed visually don't just materialize out of the purity of the designer's mind, they also concern the potential of the tools used, and the way the designer works with them. In that sense, it is false to bring the baggage of paper-drawing skills into digital work.

There is a relationship between old-school drawing, a certain kind of visual acuity, and classic lettering styles, obviously, and if some type designers want to create classic work from scratch, pen and ink provides insight. That's part of what I do. But it's not the only way to repurpose the past with digital media.

I recall another Typophile thread, where it was revealed that several accomplished type designers can't draw worth squat.

"Carl, everybody starts out drawing on paper, usually with Crayola"

And some of them stop immediately after they put the crayon down.

"If designers don’t have hand skills it’s because they haven’t spent enough time developing them."

How about ZERO time? Am I being clear enough?

I notice that people who only draw onscreen or with beziers tend to be seduced into believing their work is finished long before they have explored all the possibilities. Sketching, erasing, testing several ideas, all operate as part of a pre-digitization stage that is very useful in weeding out stupid ideas, helping make decisions and saving time. That's really valuable to me, and judging from all the bad new typefaces out there, it would benefit a lot of others.

You can certainly digitize a typeface and then play with it, change it, transform it. I do that myself. I just don't think everyone is making use of a development period, and it shows.

Nick your points are good ones - however I think that they are most applicable post-training. For lots of folks ( maybe not everybody ) there is no better way to train the mind to think in visual tems than with drawing & hand skills of all kinds. I don't think it's a question of old & busted media vs. the new hotness of digital so much as a question of having a full set of mental tools and approaches to draw on. After you have some experience with the full set of tools and ways of thinking & experiencing you can better afford to pick the ones that work best for you. Being without the options is a kind of mental impovrishment. I think that Carl is sort of saying 'don't put these kids in a digital ghetto'. And if so I think he is right. I also think that the 'baggage of paper-drawing skills' is a rich cultural hertiage that is worth having a nodding aquatance with at least - again from a training point of view.

If you want to have
a good day to day handwriting

find a good pen
avoid the fat ones
or anything
with
a button on it

black ink is best

when combined with red
perhaps even better

and some time
to copy styles of
the old dogs

don't listen to teachers
or consult anyone in here
or me
for that matter
just look at that thread
(you know which one)
if you really have
to know

why

drink coffee once in a while
but don't overdo it
your hands will start shaking
and you'll write
like an old wounded hen
if you don't do that
already

keep scribbling
or scrawling
whatever you prefer

write some love letters
or poems
whatever you do
as long as it's not
too corny
people will forgive you
except for the jerks

maybe

it's like a language
don't try to put
too much at once
into your mouth
unless you want
to embarrass everyone
around you and
yourself

when you're at
a point
thinking
this isn't too bad
or too good
let me know.

Sergej, that sounds like Dwiggins or Cooper.

Being without the options is a kind of mental impovrishment.

Hey, I'm all in favour of eclecticism.
But the poverty of being single-minded is also a virtue.
Why can't Jesse practise drawing beautiful lettering on screen, with a stylus and tablet?
Why does on-screen drawing have to be an imitation, or refinement of paper drawing?
Why can't it be its own beast?

> Why does on-screen drawing have to be an imitation, or refinement of paper drawing?
Why can’t it be its own beast?

It IS its own beast!

I tried to "hint" at what I meant by each tool having its own unique and intrinsic aspects, but I guess I should elaborate (duh... too many words to express what's beautifully simple in nature).

It's not about getting from Point A (nothing) to Point B (something).
It's about the pathway which makes for unique learning and discovery.

Each tool, each method, each technique, each medium, each problem, each and every time you engage yourself is an opportunity to explore and discover something.

If you could "will" a house into existence, that would be terrific!
(And I'm certain that at one point in technological/biological developments, one will be able to "draw" imagery on the screen by mental commands.)

Though building a house using only hand tools, or only power tools may get the same or similar results as the "mentally" constructed one, the experience (pathway) and understanding (discovery) would EACH be uniquely different.

In other words, it's not about the end result, but it's about YOU, how you got there, what you've learned, and what you've experienced... all of which will make your next project "slightly different" with something more of YOU in it.

In summary -- each tool offers unique pathways, and each pathway is an opportunity. In the end, it's really YOU who count and not "how you did it".

"Sketching, erasing, testing several ideas, all operate as part of a pre-digitization stage that is very useful in weeding out stupid ideas, helping make decisions and saving time. "

I know Carl, but how do you know what's useful, and what's stupid until it's a letter among letters, which it isn't until it is. I'm not saying no one should draw letters with pencils or crayons, but I'm fairly certain from being born early enough, that I know I could have skipped the pencil stage for type design entirely and not missed a beat, (with the exception of 1 or 2 napkin sessions). I could not have skipped calligraphy. But if you look at development: metal types are made in metal, film types in film, sign painting is painted, and digital fonts are digitized, because it's where the idea hits the medium that type design happens. Before that happens, anything else is a substitute for a well trained imagination and experience. And, you don't get the experience to train your imagination until you know how to make fonts in their native from from the start.

>I could have skipped the pencil stage for type design entirely... I could not have skipped calligraphy.

Interesting. What did you learn from calligraphy as opposed to pencil sketching?

Hey Jesse

Some good points are made here; logo lettering skills are not necessarily the same as having worthwhile day-to-day handwriting.

However, all of them are based in drawing and borne out of practice.

In addition to Stephens good advice at post#2 (which you say you need to re-read; heck! I re-read it all the time !) you could look at the writing manuals produced by Alfred Fairbank. These should be available secondhand at many of the sources listed above.

I think I'm right in saying that Fairbanks work in the UK left a legacy of instruction for all English primary schoolers – cursive hand was still taught by rote when I was there, but like Bert says, that's going back a while.

Of course, you could also pick up a copy of The Stroke by Gerrit Noordzij if you want to take it further.

Interesting. What did you learn from calligraphy as opposed to pencil sketching?

i'm guessing ductal logic and a feel for Notan.

"What did you learn from calligraphy as opposed to pencil sketching?"

I will let David speak for himself but for me, I learned that caligraphy is about learning to produce a cohesive system of letterforms which speak as a family and rely on each-other. Pencil sketching was for me just a temporary way to communicate to myself a visual notion until I had the time and the tools to actually produce the form. Before computers, I would build up more precise forms going back and forth with black and white paint until the curves were as I thought they should be. I would then make photostats and clean up corners and straights with ruling pen, french curve, and straight edge. I sometimes would cut an amberlith over my painted letters using a swivel knife. This was exacting work. I don't ever want to go back and do that again but it did teach me to "see" rather than just "look". I think I can now see a bezier curve better for having done it the hard way but there is no way I can say it is THE WAY to work. Today's generation will develop their own way out of the tools they have--just as every generation has done before.

Basically, pencil sketching is about talking to myself--like scrawlling a grocery list note and putting it on the refrigerator for when I am ready to go to the store.

ChrisL

We've gotten off track. I'm trying only to point out that hand skills are much more valuable than some people seem to think. Especially, it seems, people who have the hand skills.

Re: the question posed by this thread:

Type is not lettering. Type, calligraphy, lettering and signpainting all involve letters, but there are big differences. Type is an interchangeable system of forms engineered to work in any combination. Calligraphy can be lots of things, but it tends more to the individual letter, or sequences of letters as a kind of performance. Logos and lettering can draw from both, but they have the benefit of being freestanding and so can be very individual and expressive.

Do a lot of hand-lettering. Calligraphy, letter drawing and signpainting are 3 good ways (that complement each other) to develop those skills. But you learn more in each area if you get some instruction. There are a very few signpainters who still know the techniques of brush lettering; arrange for lessons with one of them. Any volunteers or suggestions?

For daily exercises, get a fountain pen with small chisel nib and follow Italic handwriting models, slowly at first, then use it for everything you write.

Especially, it seems, people who have the hand skills.

Actually, it seems there's has been a recognition that hand skills are not solely limited to analog media.

Type is not lettering.

But drawing the individual glyphs in a font is.

To develop drawing skills, draw by eye. It's no different than figure drawing with charcoal on paper -- you're looking at a solid shape which you're attempting to "capture" by describing it with an outline. So do the same thing with your stylus and tablet: look at a letterform (don't trace: you can put the original beside your drawing on screen, or look away to it on paper) and use the pen tools in FontLab to recreate the shape in outline. The beauty of digital tools is that you can composite as well as draw point by point. So, to draw an "o", you can either draw the outline point by point-- which is like analog drawing -- or use the "oval" tool to create a shape which you can then modify with other tools (eg skew) or by tweaking BCP handles or path sections. Stems can be drawn point by point, by using the rectangle tool, or by drawing a path and applying a stroke width ("expand" or "make parallel path").

But perhaps tracing can be useful too. For instance, try pasting an "o" from Helvetica Thin Italic into the mask layer, and draw over the outline. Then compare where the extrema points are on your version with the original, and refine. Another one: paste a Helvetica "g" into the mask layer and paste "q" into the outline layer. Now try modifying the bowl of the q to the shape of the g with different tools, to find what works best.

Actually, it seems there’s has been a recognition that hand skills are not solely limited to analog media.

Nick, I agree completely.

Stems can be drawn point by point, by using the rectangle tool, or by drawing a path and applying a stroke width (“expand” or “make parallel path”).

Also a great point.

But you are not addressed the question of the experienced person vs. the novice this time.

And the example you give is something that you know because of your experience.

So while these things may be completely true in the abstract; and particularly for experienced folks, I think newer designers get too precious, careful, conservative and restained as soon as they get in front of a screen. Why? I have no idea. But I think they do.

On the other hand when you give somebody a chalk & chalkboard, pen & napkin; or a crappy sheet of paper and a pencil - the very informality implied by the materials opens them up to a comfortable, playful and freer kind of expression. 99 times out of 100 that rough crappy drawing isn't a product in itself afterwards. But it is a byproduct of something more precious - exploration, learning, and sometime invention. Which can then be applied in a variety of ways and using a variety of tools.

Leaving the psychology of it out of the equation it still remains that most digital tools are not made with rough idea exploration in mind. They also offer an inherently more abstracted experience. Their profound power for doing one kind of thing usually makes them less flexible, more constrained, and almost brittle for doing other things. And even with a bevy of tools you are still in some sense just exchanging one straight-jacket for another. Which might be okay alot of the time if you have enough tools and experience.

I do also think that each tool, digital & analog, has it's own personality and way of seeing that it can encourage. But for sheer immediacy and flexibility, both actual and psychological, I don't think you can beat analog - for now anyway.

And the idea that digital media in any area but especially in type, inherently offers the potential or seed of some wholly new and self contained aesthetic viability - I don't think I buy that idea. And probably least of all where type is concerned. To take music as an example, the sampler did help to create several new forms of music, but not wholly new & independent forms.

> I’m certain that at one point in technological/biological developments, one will be able to “draw” imagery on the screen by mental commands.

Today's Technological News Update:
"Matthew Nagle is the first participant in the clinical trials of the device called Braingate. He is a quadriplegic, yet he was able to use a computer with the help of the device. 'It was amazing to be able to look at a screen and a mouse and control it with your thoughts,' Nagle said."

A few of the replies made by Eben, Chris, and others keep bringing the point home that previous learning, practice and use of diverse tools are essential to critical "thinking" and decision making concerning the development of letterforms and glyphs.

As demonstrated by developments in thought/mind commands using Braingate to move a cursor on screen, the questions now are:

- If you remove "hand-motor" movements from drawing (pencil or stylus) what kind of images can be created? Will they be "New" or repeated from previous "hand-motor" experience?
- Will a person with no previously developed drawing or design skills be able to "draw" as well as an experienced one, just on the basis of visual understanding?

I'm sure we'll see remarkable developments during our lifetime.

Beam me up Norbert...

ChrisL

Well said Eben.
It's the messiness of analog media that makes it expressive and open to serendipity.
You can throw your whole body into the process; much more physical.

Digital is a different aesthetic, so if the question is about developing hand lettering aesthetics, the next question is, do you want to develop an analog or digital aesthetic? Don't privilege the old media over the new. Some people may want to channel the past by developing muscle memories from legacy tools, but others who want to create a new semantic groove should avoid that stuff.

I think newer designers get too precious, careful, conservative and restained as soon as they get in front of a screen.

That's a myth. I've found that cliche-friendly students don't play media favourites.

the example you give is something that you know because of your experience.

Exactly -- experience working with digital tools.

the sampler did help to create several new forms of music, but not wholly new & independent forms.

Let's save a discussion of Matthew Herbert for later. But on digital music:

"I really think it is possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say: you mean you used to listen to exactly the same thing over and over again?"
-- Eno on (digital) generative music

Segue to random fonts...

>Interesting. What did you learn from calligraphy as opposed to pencil sketching?
>i’m guessing ductal logic and a feel for notan.
Guessed good, and that the paper can't move for one, and must move for the other. But overriding all of that, is the immediate ability to judge Black and White in context(s) that makes analog work useless (practically, arguably and eternally), when in the pursuit of unscanned digital conclusions.

Imagine your own life without *any* time spent drawing, sketching, comping type in layouts, cutting rubylith, painting, lettering, white-out, re-inking, carving, pottery, sculpting, cutting, woodworking or drafting. Then imagine starting a career in graphic arts with nothing but a computer and software.

That sounds like a wonderful dream to me.

I think you're painting a dire before/after computers design dichotomy that doesn't really exist. I have a sterling example of said nonexistance in my own house: my girlfriend and I are both designers (and I'm an illustrator), and I'm a little over ten years older than she is. I *have* cut lots of ruby/amberlith, covered my hands and pants in wax doing paste-up, yadda yadda yadda, she's never had to even consider such a thing. I didn't start using a computer for anything until I'd been working in graphics for five or six years, she started doing design work on computers in her formative years, while yet unaware that she wanted to be a designer.

We both drew and painted as kids, and then had to do it as part of our courses in college. (You are aware, right, that art schools and universities still require you to sit in studios and draw nude people for hours on end, and they won't let you do that on a laptop?)

She's a better designer than I ever was, and I'm not ashamed to say that. However, I can draw rings around her. This doesn't have anything to do with using computers from a young age--she spent at least as much time drawing as I did. I'm just better at drawing than she is.

And I don't miss having to manually knock out photos or put pages together or try to draw freaking ellipses, not one bit. Nor do I think "the kids today" are missing out on anything, not having to do that stuff.

Oh, and I rarely execute a finished pen-and-ink drawing anymore, and I *do* consider the illustrations I do these days with mouse and/or tablet real drawings, thank you very much, as much so as anything I ever did on bristol or scratchboard with pen, pencil or gouache.

For learning how to hand letter, this web page takes some beating. http://www.theletterheads.com/lhparts/lettering.html

This reproduction of a 1943 publication describes the basic hand lettering techniques, including one essential tip;

‘Practice, practice, practice! Unfortunately, there is no magical wand here. ’

When I worked in an advertising agency studio, an experienced artist gave me a useful tip; ‘it’s all about brush control’. Another artist said ‘think before you make a mark’.

Books are fine, but pick the right one. An excellent book for both experienced signwriters and beginners is ‘The Complete Guide to Truck Lettering Pinstriping and Graphics’ by Gary D Steel (ST Publications, $30). The book is full of colour pictures of the author writing and pinstriping vehicles, but the techniques apply to other projects and it’s packed with useful practical information about lettering, layouts, colours and other associated subjects. I wish I’d had something like this 30 years ago.

Computers are great tools, but brushes and pens have several significant advantages; they’re portable, inexpensive, long-lasting, rarely break down, never get viruses and you don’t have to upgrade them every year. Fine sable brushes are incredible value for money, but you must look after them.

Lettering is just drawing. If you can draw letters, you’ll have no problems drawing logos. When a friend and I go to the pub for a couple of pints, we always take some paper and a couple of pens. As the beer flows, some of the drawings can be very good!

Good notan cannot be painted, it has to be drawn.

hhp

"Good notan cannot be painted, it has to be drawn."

Why does the tool matter? Didn't the Chinese invent the term and do they not use a brush?
ChrisL

It's not the tool, it's the method - and method is always central.

To draw, you can use the pencil or the computer - the difference between them is mechanical* - the important thing is that you're defining the border, not the black body. Painting -which can also be done with the brush or onscreen**- defines the black body, and this is necessarily at the expense of the white, hence notan.

* If only hypothetically, until drawing software actually becomes good, one fine day.

** In fact even with beziers: think of "stroked" fonts based on skeletons, and Knuth's monstrosities.

--

The Chinese: hey, I love them, but nobody's perfect.

--

See also:
http://typophile.com/node/29149

hhp

I don't see how this explanation of the flaw in chirography with respect to reading could be made any simpler to understand. Anybody who still resists this logic is probably beyond hope.

hhp

Hrant,
I don't know how much painting of letterforms you have ever done. You are probably too young to have even tried it. You really don't understand the tool if you think you can only paint black. When letterforms are designed using paint, it is not a "writing" process. You don't execute a predetermined glyph in your head and have it come out with a few strokes of the brush--that might be a signpainting technique. In letterform design, paint in both black and white is gone back and forth until your eyes find the point where both foreground and background merge and become one un-seperable image. Type was designed this way for many years before the computer was invented. Designers were capable of seeing positive and negative space from the beginning of all mark making. The tool is the servant of the user. It can be used well. It can be used poorly. That is only determined by the users vision and skill. Chosing a pencil can actually inhibit you into thinking about line instead of the figure-ground relationship.

ChrisL

You're confusing tools and methods (still).

I've done calligraphy, and it's painting. I have also done some brush painting (Chinese and Latin) although I admit it looks pretty crappy. In calligraphy and brushwork (think about the Chinese again here) it's virtually a cardinal sin to go back after the "continuous" stoke and patch things up. So painting isn't about physically applying some opaque material to some substrate, it's about how you're treating notan. So for example if you paint the black and then go back and paint some white patchwork around it (something some people -like Majoor- are known to do on occasion), that's just another way to draw (and a way more conveniently done on the computer). Same with Frutiger's use of scissors (although that's sort of hard to undo :-).

In painting the most you can do is accomodate the white, which
is not same thing as giving it equal notanic weight as the black.

Why such resistance to thinking lucidly about this?

> Chosing a pencil can actually inhibit you into thinking
> about line instead of the figure-ground relationship.

Which is one advantage of the computer: instant and dynamic filling-in. But if you use paper/pencil, yes, do fill the form in as needed. However, experience can alleviate the persistent need for this.

hhp

"In painting the most you can do is accomodate the white, which
is not same thing as giving it equal notanic weight as the black."

You obviously have never done it or ever seen it done.

It has nothing to do with philosophy or "cardinal sins", it has to do with seeing instead of just looking. I call painting any marks made with paint and brush. If you want to call that drawing, fine, I understand your interpretation then. To me then using your definition, any markmaking of any kind is drawing.

ChrisL

David Berlow said: But overriding all of that, is the immediate ability to judge Black and White in context(s) that makes analog work useless (practically, arguably and eternally), when in the pursuit of unscanned digital conclusions.

I don't know that I can argue with you about conclusions. You are right that it's that result which is final and that context in which the judgement must be made. But I think the issue is not the conclusion which which we agree will be digital but rather the process.

For example you design 'from a-z' according ow what I have read. I think if you met someone who uses a different method, th HOH method or the z-a method that you would not ding them for that process as long as the results are there.

By the same token if somebody thinks better in pencil at the beginning stages of their design you would not ding them for that either I am guessing. The assertion that I think Carl & I were making is that many people are going to benefit more from the immediacy of thinking in analog pencil mode ( or even brush mode as the case may be ). I don't know that anybody has done a study to find the ratio... however, the real point is that some people will. And that beginners are better off having the option rather than skipping the process of developing skill. It's not the paper that matters but the brain development.

The tool is the servant of the user.Chris, I agree with you general point. I would restate this way: Notanal awareness arrises from the head - not the tool. Hrant, about this method stuff, I think you must by definition define white with black. *And* vice versa. Simultainously. Or are you saying that you must define black with white? My view is that Notan is best defined as an active tension between the two & that favoring one over the other is self defeating.

> You obviously have never done it or ever seen it done.

You're not listening.

> I call painting any marks made with paint and brush.

That's a definition counter to fruitful discourse about notan.

> using your definition, any markmaking of any kind is drawing.

If you actually read what I wrote, you'd realize that's completely wrong.

--

Eben, we seem to pretty much agree about the definition of notan.
But my point is that painting cannot treat the two parts equally.

> favoring one over the other is self defeating.

Stop beating around the bush.
If you agree that painting favors the black please say so.

hhp

Painting only favors the black if the user thinks that way and choses not to see.

A project for a student to try: Start with a black piece of illustration-board and the use a brush with white acrylic paint to paint the background and paint until you reveal the black letterform. Use the number 5 as the letterform because it has most of the parts you can learn from. Do not sketch an outline or use any guidelines or straight edges or drafting tools. Just use black paint, white paint, and brushes. Paint loosely at first with unsharp edges. Let it be unclear at the beginning, fuzzy, naive, unpretentious. Work as if you are going on a journey but do not know how to get there and will only know it when you finally arrive. Stay in the moment, in the present. Don't judge "good" and bad, just look and makes marks until you start to see something emerge. As this happens, gradually, your brush strokes will naturally become more defined. Work back and forth between white and black paint giving each its equal do. The point is to have the form defined at the same moment the brush strokes become defined. You cannot force this or rush it. You have to "allow it". Eventually, your number five will arrive. The negative space will become the defining factor of the positive space just as much as the inverse. You will fail if you predefine a solution. Remember, you are learning to see, not to paint; not to design type; not to please your ego or anyone else's. The first time you do this, it may take days, weeks, or even months. There is no deadline. Those will come later.
Put your 5 away for some time. Later try a lower case "a" using the same technique. This one should come more quickly if you have truly done your 5 with no predetermination. If you continue doing this excursive in increments of time. You will learn to "see". Afterwards, go to the computer and draw type straight away on the screen using FontLab tools and no scans or background images to trace or view. You will find that you will now be able to come upon letterforms and the glyphs (which are their product) more quickly and efficiently with far better figure/ground (notan if you will) than before. The chances are greater the the glyphs you draw now will be your own and not just memories of type you may have seen in your life.

ChrisL

> Start with a black piece of illustration-board and the use a brush
> with white acrylic paint to paint the background and paint until
> you reveal the black letterform.

Done it. :-)

> Work back and forth between white and black

1) No longer painting.
2) Not how anybody actually makes fonts.

> figure/ground (notan if you will)

Nope, the two are not the same.
Go east, young man. But you have to be young = willing to grow.

hhp

"2) Not how anybody actually makes fonts."

Never said it was.

A closed mind is a terrible thing to waste Hrant. When you ever decide to open yours, you may find there are things in the world to learn that actually do not begin and end with you. Hard as that is for you to ever believe, it is the truth. For a young man you are so locked in your own self-fulfillment. You may never escape your own wall of narcism.
Kindly refrain from the rude emails and IMs you send to me. As a matter of fact, why don't you just pretend that I don't exist? What I said above in my previous post was not directed to you. It was a comment based on the original request which had to deal with developing hand-lettered aesthetics. Silly me just gave J-polo9 (and whomsoever else may be interested) an exercise which may be directed at that topic. It is simply offered as a suggestion of a way to look at the topic. I make no claims other than that. It does not require your approval or your childish tantrums. You are free to offer your own suggestions and I hope you will offer something more than vitriol.

This is the last time I will "Feed the Troll". I don't ever want to see another email or IM from you or for you to comment about me on this forum. I will oh so happily do the same. It is a shame because you can be a bright and interesting young man when you allow yourself to be--"a terrible thing to waste"

ChrisL

I'm not good at pretending. If I were I'd be painting.

Rude? Not listening is rude. And it's old.

> What I said above in my previous post was not directed to you.

Baloney.
You think we're stupid?

> I don’t ever want to see another email or IM from you

Got it.

> or for you to comment about me on this forum.

Could you please clarify? Would you like me never to reply to anything you write?

If by "about me" you're referring to "personal comments":
1) You should know how fuzzy that border is.
2) I thought we agreed to follow Paul Hunt's advice to limit them to indirect/non-individual phrases, which I've been trying to do actually - although I admit to sometimes being sloppy with the ambiguity of the English "you".
3) You just lodged like half a dozen violations! :-)

> I will oh so happily do the same.

You can do whatever you like - but you'd be doing that for yourself, since I don't feel any need for you to do that. You can say anything you like (short of conducting a formal defamation campaign) via any medium (just no phone calls between 7pm and 9am please) and I won't ask you to stop (not even your dumb puns and cartoons). Because I have a grip.

hhp

counter-logic: notan only becomes operative once a line has become the boundary of a real or imagined black or white shape inside a framed field; you can control the trajectory of a line in abstraction from a shape, but not the notan of the letter set--one of whose components the line has to become a contour of--until the shape it is to become the boundary of has taken shape and been put beside others of its ilk; and then adjusting notan by adjusting contours becomes relevant and an iterative process...

> notan only becomes operative once a line has become the boundary
> of a real or imagined black or white shape inside a framed field

1) A black AND white shape.
2) Why the frame?

> trajectory

Better to find a term unassociated with movement here.

From what I gather you're making the -interesting- point that when you define an instance of notan using the border (via drawing) you don't immediately "see" the end result, and you control the end result through iteration. I have to admit I hadn't thought about the possible relevance of that. So what I would ask (sincerely, not rhetorically) is this: is iteration somehow disadvantagous?

I can see how iteration is -arguably- counter to Modernism, deep down.
But as you know I would hold that up as a good omen! :-)

hhp

Chris: Nice post!

Hrant, you seem more passionate than usual!

I don't think we dissagree in any substantial way here. But let's see. The bush not beaten says: What you think is impossible I agree will be fruitless in almost all cases - that is unless special and unusual conditions are met. But, I think these unusual cases exist, and are worth aknowlegement & study.

In my usual way I will go on about the details for a bit too long - sorry.

So, based on the last two posts it sounds like the question we are chewing on is in partly sematic again; e.g. It's a question of what painting 'is'. I, and apparently Chris, have been saying that painting is just the act of using a brush. You have another defintion. That's fine if we all understand this. So let's put the issue aside for now. But even if we agree on a given set of semantics ( what 'painting' means) - it doesn't solve everything.

Talking about Chris' example may help. Let's talk about Notan vs, Figure ground. I agree there is difference. In figure-ground thinking the two things are seprate. You consider the one then the other. In Notanic thinking they are one whole inseparable consideration. But I think it's also true that you have to notice the white again and to go though a period of figure ground awareness before you can eventually stop switching back & forth and mature to Notanic thinking.

If we agree about that, let's think of chris' example - I don't think that having white ink solves anything per se. The white ink is just a formaly presented oppotunity to mentally take sides in a figure- ground debate. By the same token - I agree that working in black may leave you with the tendency to think in black - but it isn't destiny. Ink='awarenes' in this model. I think I can see why. After all, you are 'working' in the black, so it stands to reason that you must be black centric - no? And it the vast majority of cases yes, I agree - that's what happening. But if you agree with my definition of the difference between figure ground & Notan you know that you have to eventaully loose the habit of 'taking sides' and take a whole/Notaic point of view. So while ink may represent a strong tendency, ink can't equal awareness in an absolute sense.

Since ink isn't = 'awareness', I think that a person with black ink & a chinese brush ( or a quill, or a stick or mop ) can make glyph on a white surface (with no white to correct their marks) and still avoid favoring the black because I think the difference occurs exclusively in the mind. I don't want to discount the idea that techniques and materials have qualities and tendencies that are worth thinking about, and even resisting at times - but again: they are not destiny.

So I think it is possible to give B & W it's equal due working just in black - but that it's hard. Very hard. Probably too hard to do without tons of practice. But it's *possible* and desirable - and essential if you are going to be a good calligrapher.

Side issue: The odd thing is I even think you can end up with pro-Notanic choices in your work to some degree without thinking about it, noticing it's happening, or giving it a name. And that this Notanic sensitivity can become present in your work as a natural result of sustained activity, intensity and maturation. I don't know that it can be brought to it's fullest state of development this way but I think it can start to bud. This is because I think that Notanal awareness is not synthetic in origin - it's naturaly present and available for cultivation.

Chris, do we disagree about any of this?

Instead of trajectory try path.

Iterative tuning isn't disadvantageous: it's the key in type design and lettering to what can be gained over direct writing, in both optical grammatical terms and gestural atmospheric terms.

I'll stick with OR because a shape is never black AND white.

The field has to be framed in order for there to be a counter shape and the criterion of notan to be applicable. In words the boundary of the bounded map is the frame within which the criterion of typographical notan applies.

[ figure / ground ]

In perceptual word-objects both the white and black are 'information' toward visual wordform resolution. The word is a bounded map of black AND white information in perceptual processing terms. It's all figure. What is outside the bounded map is ground.

Eben,
we are close but I am not sure of one thing. Figure ground is a term I used. You could also use the terms yin and yang and get a bit closer to what I mean. You can talk about figure and ground to indicate parts. I prefer this to black and white because there is no rule that says figure and ground need have any particular colors. This also gets away from the "positive" vs "negative" judgement thing when you use those terms. I do not claim to "know" notan. I describe only what it seems to mean for me. For me it means a given state of a figure and ground relationship when the two are now inseperably in harmony and coexist as one. There can be an infinite number of figure/ground relationships but most do not yeild this harmony. The act of painting that I described in my little #5 excersize is an attempt to make the painter resist finalizing an absolute figureground relationship until they find that moment of harmony. Until then, it is fuzzy. If a person goes right to a computer vector program like fontLab and draws hard lines straight away, they can get trapped into thinking the precision of the medium has given them a harmonious form. We don't automatically know exactly the form a letter will take and construct it in one quick setting--would that it was so easy! We tinker back and forth to find that exact moment where the figure and ground achieve unity and harmony (if that is notan, so be it. if not then please tell me what it is). My little #5 process is by no means a way to design type. It is just a way to train yourself to "see" so that when you are pushing and pulling those vectors around, you have an understanding of what you are looking at and are not overly enamored of the clean lines and curves that come so easily to vector drawing. I put my brushes away years ago. I don't need them any more. I just go straight into FontLab without a sketch or a model. I have designed nearly 2 dozen fonts in the last year not because I am a FontLab whizz (I am surely not) but because I learned to see over the last 5 decades. By no means do I say "this is the one true way", not even close. Do whatever is inside of you as long as you keep looking outside too. I am only able to describe my experiences and make no judgements about the experiences of others. I do believe that a person has to remain open though. I have learned as much from my children as I have from my professors.
For me, we cannot achieve notan instantaneously. Read Peters very last post. I think it is very key, it starts: "notan only becomes operative once a line has become the boundary of a real or imagined black or white shape inside a framed field..."

ChrisL

[ Hrant ] "From what I gather you’re making the--interesting--point that when you define an instance of notan using the border (via drawing) you don’t immediately “see” the end result, and you control the end result through iteration."

What is "an instance of notan?" You don't control the end result through iteration, you control the notan through iteration; you set up the conditions for its applicability through making your line the boundary of a definite shape, or making your shape directly. My point was a line doesn't define an instance of notan until the line becomes the boundary of a realized shape

> So while ink may represent a strong tendency,
> ink can’t equal awareness in an absolute sense.

Agreed. And as somebody like Gary Munch will tell you (and show you) you can make any shape with a pen, quill, whatever. But that's moot, because the question is: what's the point? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should - it doesn't mean something else won't go wrong as a result. Contorting the tool and your joints should raise an alarm bell in any objective person. The tool DOES affect some things, somehow, for a very simple reason: whenever a human does something, there is an element of practicality, of convenience, of expediency somewhere. There is never abstract, absolute, control - we are limited, physical creators. It's not that the tool has a mind of its own, or that the creator is clumsy or dumb; it's that the creator is human. Choosing the optimal tool is central to craft.

The denial of this goes hand in hand with certain other things, like not seeing the difference between text and display fonts, and thinking that Familiarity is the only factor in readability.

And the reality of this is that -like I tried to point out- nobody makes fonts by painting with black AND white. Because that's too contorted to qualify as craft.

So: when you make fonts by painting the black, in practice you're shortchanging notan, if only in a subtle way (but maybe much more). Not necessarily or absolutely, but as a rule, yes. And mind you, I don't think everybody should suddenly stop making fonts like that. All I really want is a simple admission. But even that has proven to be too much to swallow for most everybody. Pitiful.

> Probably too hard to do without tons of practice.

It's too hard to do for any human being in the real world. Anybody who claims he's doing it is suffering from hubris or ignorance. Eventually, theory should hit the pavement, and when it does, an admission is in order.

> you can end up with pro-Notanic choices in your work to some
> degree without thinking about it, noticing it’s happening,
> or giving it a name.

I agree.
And that's nicely PoMo.

--

> Instead of trajectory try path.

Slightly better.

Iteration: I'm glad you think that it is actually an advantage.

> I’ll stick with OR because a shape is never black AND white.

But notan is always both.

> The field has to be framed in order for ...

I'm still unclear.
Do you think your "shape + frame" is my notan?
Doesn't sound like it - but then I don't get it.

--

The difference between a useful meaning of figure-ground and a useful meaning of notan is an entire world. The former is divisive, the latter unifying.

> I have learned as much from my children as I have from my professors.

Even more important than where you learn from is not stopping.

> we cannot achieve notan instantaneously.

And that is a good thing, and something painting goes against.

hhp

Peter, our terms are slightly offset (at best), so please allow some room for "play". When I say "an instance of notan", I mean a given black&white shape, "a notan" if you will; when I say "end result" I mean the instance of notan that you can't/don't see/have at first but arrive at (in some meaning of the term arrive).

> a line doesn’t define an instance of notan until
> the line becomes the boundary of a realized shape

Sure.
Is this something you see as opposed to something in my view?

hhp

"Is this something you see as opposed to something in my view?" [Hrant]

It implies the logic underneath your methodological preference needs to be resisted--or at least interrogated.

Chris said We are close but I am not sure of one thing. Figure ground is a term I used.

Maybe it's just a semantic difference. I certainly could be. I made the distiction because it suited my arguement, 'figure ground' being dichotimous in formal structure vs 'Notan' which is one word. It fit so well I thought... Also, the english langauge and western approaches to these things have been very distction driven - historically speaking. Meaning. We tend to focus on differences rather than wholes. It's a very useful way of doing things. You can be so specific! But there is a tendency in our culture to believe that you can describe something fully by breaking it down & cataloging it's parts. To be dichotimous in our thinking. I think I was after a description of a mental state where that had temporarily stopped happening & Notan as a whole was being attended to. Sort of like being in the 'zone' as they say... I know very whoosh-whoosh huh? Anyway. I suspect that in my zeal I treated the term you used a bit roughly & pehaps you by extension. If so, I am sorry.

'I do not claim to “know” notan.' & 'By no means do I say “this is the one true way”, not even close.'
Likewise.

'Better to find a term unassociated with movement here.' & 'Instead of trajectory try path.'
Agreed.

RE: Boundries. The field has to be framed in order for their to be a counter shape and the criterion of notan to be applicable.

I don't think is is completely correct. I think that Notan occurs in response to lots of kinds of boundries - The edge of the paper for instance. And as you point out the shape of glyphs next to each other. I think there are lots of implied & literal frames. Of course from the type designers point of view many of these are not controlable and not relevant as a result. It still exists. Whereas the way letters interact- is. Nice description of that BTW. I still like the 'bounded map'. Likewise thereis the Notan of the page for the graphic designer...

RE: The idea that Notan only forms when one glyph relates to another.

... but not the notan of the letter set
Agreed.

My point was a line doesn’t define an instance of notan until the line becomes the boundary of a realized shape Or imagined shape? like you say here:
or imagined black or white shape

Also, does this mean you are willing to talk about the Notan of a single Glyph's shape? Just as I think that there is Notan existing outside the bounded map despite the fact that we are not looking at it at the time (by definition of the bounded map - no?). I think there is also the Notan of the single glyph which can then contribute to the Notan of the wordform or realized shape.

I think notan would operate at every level where the reader has at some point turned the parts into a whole. i.e. the letter parts, the syllable parts, the word parts, the phrase and sentence parts, the paragraph parts, and the page parts. These are all involved in immersive reading. The actual point of text that's being read at any one moment is like the part of a giant fractal pattern of meaning which the reader is focusing on. Or perhaps the image of the text is like a lens on its meaning; the reader focuses on the moment at the centre of the lens, but that would be impossible without the rest of the publication forming the rest of the lens and the eyeglass frame.

[Still replying to Hrant]

You want to begin with drawing contours. Unless your line describes a circle, to make your line the boundary of a shape you need to make a second line. In doing this you commit yourself to a realized or definable shape while leaving the countershape pre-defined, unless you are working in a rectangular frame with a set dimension. That is, you are committing yourself to either the black or to the white, because besides the two lines nothing else that is relevant to gauging notan yet exists. The rectangle in which you are working is not relevant because it bears no resmblance to the context of letters in which your shape has to work.

So your scheme has the same problem that the method you oppose has, in that it in reality prejudices either the black or the white with the very second move you make, with the added problem that the second contour is constrained by a line that can never anticipate the counters that the shape put in place by the second line create.

So your scheme has the same problem that the method you oppose has

...oooooh. i just love deconstruction.

"I think notan would operate at every level where the reader has at some point turned the parts into a whole." [Nick]

Very true. But the notan that obtains at the level of the wordform is in a way fundamental once the text has been engaged.

i need the cliffnotes version of my thread.

LOL!

ChrisL

Sorry if your thread was hijacked!

At least the 1st half was directly relevant... actually, sometimes wandering thread spawn new ones... maybe it's time.

> We tend to focus on differences rather than wholes.

Indeed. And we don't like to come to grips with the reality that nothing can exist without its opposite - that the two halves are actually sisters.

Notan as a term is of critical usefulness here, whereas something like figure-ground is damaging. And no, terms aren't just terms, it's never "just a matter of semantics" - terms do things to our thoughts based on associations - sometimes in spite of us, sometimes subversively (remember my explanation of how some people [ab]use "rhythm"). That's why a new (to us) term can be so useful.

> I think notan would operate at every level where the
> reader has at some point turned the parts into a whole.

FWIW, this isn't how I use notan. This is closer to how I use bouma.
Notan isn't a process or a phenomenon, it's a thing.

> ... giant fractal pattern of meaning

I like this - I think it's useful.

> You want to begin with drawing contours. Unless ...

I don't know where this first, second, third, lines and circles stuff is coming from.

When you draw a contour, ideally you do so in order to form an instance of notan (and this is its natural result). As you're drawing a contour, whether it's closed or not, crisp or not, ideally you're looking at the relationship of black and white, locally as well as into the future when the instance of notan will be "finished". As we discussed (and we agreed is a good thing) this is necessarily iterative.

In any case the essential thing is that you're not physically painting one or the other component; you are physically marking their border - that's more "fair" than painting, and as fair as notan creation could ever get.

So I don't see how it could "suffer from the same problem". One problem it does suffer from which painting does not is that it requires a rarer breed of creator. Most people prefer to paint - they like to see, and take credit for, visible gobs on the ground.

> the notan that obtains at the level of the wordform is
> in a way fundamental once the text has been engaged.

I think the fundamental one is at the level of boumas,
with words (and single letters) being special cases.

hhp

"When you draw a contour, ideally you do so in order to form an instance of notan (and this is its natural result). As you’re drawing a contour, whether it’s closed or not, crisp or not, ideally you’re looking at the relationship of black and white, locally as well as into the future when the instance of notan will be “finished”. As we discussed (and we agreed is a good thing) this is necessarily iterative." [Hrant]

A manifest and manipulatable relationship of black and white doesn't occur until the contour becomes the contour of a realized shape, so, to say it again, the notan (black / white of it) as a thing is not a fact, or notan (black / white balance) as a criterion is not an operable dimension until the line becomes the boundary of a realized shape. Until the line becomes the boundary of a realized shape, notan is just a future dimension and cannot be controlled. To manipulate notan or work toward it as a condition, or to provoke it's emergence, you must commit to progressively realizing shape at the one or the other side of the border--one or the other side of the black / white divide. You must intially commit to somthing more than a contour. You must intially privilege the one--i.e., th black one or the white one--to evoke and 'get in hand' the other, and consequently notan.

Your battle with 'chirography' cannot be won on the grounds you think it can (that it privileges the black and hence is anti-notan), because your method has to privilege the black (or white, if you start from the counter) as well in order for you to 'see' any notan (bliack / white action). How your initial contour carves up the space on either side of it is irrelevant to typographical notan, because the black / white balance of any given bouma or word doesn't become manifest until the structures of role-architectural parts and counters are defined across the dimensions of contrast and construction, and laid inside the word.

You said: "I don’t see how this [i.e., your (pe)] explanation of the flaw in chirography with respect to reading could be made any simpler to understand. Anybody who still resists this logic is probably beyond hope.

I'm saying: No, your logic must be placed beside a counter logic which uncovers the achilles heel in yours. I resist the implication that those who resist your logic are probably beyond hope.

You need to ask: is the way a ductal logic in principle apportions saliency and cue value in the white and black antagonistic to effective visual wordform resolution. I think it isn't, but I also think the hand held tool's phenotypical maifestations can be incrementally, strategically and intelligently superceded over time and the apportioning of saliencies enhanced by featural manipulation.

I think the underlying motive for your rejection of 'chirography' is that you are looking for a more direct route to something more definitve, involving or generating greater perceptual distance between similars (such as in the d b p q) than an underlying chirographic premise will allow, without smashing the crystal goblet, and I respect you for it. But what I can see for now is that by your method you doom yourself to a featural eclecticism.

I'm sorry for my part in this tangent.

"Until the line becomes the boundary of a realized shape, notan is just a future dimension and cannot be controlled. To manipulate notan or work toward it as a condition, you must commit to progressively realizing shape at the one or the other side of the border."

This is exactly what I was hoping to say before (but failing badly). Beautifully said above by Mr. Enneson! Thank you Peter for clarifying that.

ChrisL

>And we don’t like to come to grips with the reality that nothing can exist without its opposite - that the two halves are actually sisters.

this was actually the explanation to my deconstruction comment, deconstruction theory holds that all terms are defined by and contain their opposite (and thus they are not really opposites are they, precious?)

Paul, I thought your 'deconstruction' comment was a comment about what I was trying to do with Hrant's logic. Chris, thanks. My generalization feed off the exercise you described. Your exercise helped me bring in focus the source of my discomfort with Hrant's oestensibly irresitable logic (which has to be out there to be gotten beyond).

Hrant my comments don't mean your wish not to be constrained by a ductal logic doesn't have some merit. But to break it's rules you have to know them, and than starting with contours to diversify counters within similar bowls (for instance) to strengthen their cue-value may indeed keep you from being distracted by filled-in shape and have a strategic exploratory function.

I thought your ‘deconstruction’ comment was a comment about what I was trying to do with Hrant’s logic.

yes, that too. that was serendipity.

Peter, here are the ways in which your argument is false/misleading:
1) A shape does not need to be "realized" for it to be manipulatable (otherwise we could never start making a shape by drawing) and it doesn't need to be fully manifest for us to be able to think about it (while giving the white and black fair treatment). An instance of notan does not need to be a "fact" for us to work on making it so (obviously). And the fact that we're marking the border of notan and not one of its bodies is a qualitative advantage over painting.
2) If the human mind indeed cannot see/address both halves simultaneously (which I am not sure of one bit, and I don't see how you can be yourself) drawing still has the qualitative advantage over painting of physically allowing an optimally fair addressing of both halves. Also, your "intially" is false, since -as we agree- this is an iterative system that operates -until the last instant- on an unfinished thing, so the important thing would be the aggregate: how much of the contour favored one side more over time/length? So it's impossible to be totally fair (what else is new in life? see below) and furthermore a person drawing the contour can persistently and consistently favor one half or the other, but he will still do this qualitatively less than when he's painting.
3) Your cue saliency argument is not in this sphere; first we need to understand the tools/methods. Yes, we're not even close -as a community- to addressing your rarified sphere. On the other hand, if you do believe that a bouma (not wordform, come on) is relevant through a construction of its parts, that actually makes the non-committal, "local notan" aspect of drawing that much more advantageous.

Black-marking is inherently unfair to the white, no matter how hard we try, because we're human, and the physicality of painting translates to a real barrier. There is no weaseling out of that, not with contorted logic, not with bold.

> cannot be controlled.

True. Nothing can be truly controlled. That's why the Modernism of painting is a fallacy. The illusion of control and the celebration of the self are exactly why many people prefer painting; it is arrogant and naive. Type, like life itself, is too Real to be that way.

> I resist the implication that those who resist
> your logic are probably beyond hope.

That "probably" is key. Most cases are exactly that.
Don't pretend you're a common phenomenon.

You need to ask:
Why can't I get over Noordzij? Why do I fight the
obvious using hyper-elborate speculative conjecture?

> This is exactly what I was hoping to say

Right.

--

I've battled against chirography for a very simple reason: it has a flaw which has been hidden, and it's a flaw that is holding us back, even after more than five centuries. My battle with chirography I've already won for myself; initially my instincts guided me, but then my conscious understanding cemented it. If others are losing the battle (or are running away from it) that's their problem. I try to help them get to the place I've discovered, but I'm no shrink, and I don't think any shrink could reverse a whole lifetime built on delusion using ASCII. We are all humans, not logic machines, and the appeal of a self-validating argument can be strong enough to cause our personal reality to overpower any utopian objectivity.

hhp

> to break it’s rules you have to know them

Thanks to GN, I do.
But there are no rules, only realities.

hhp

"not with contorted logic" [Hrant]

I'll stop.

I try to help them get to the place I’ve discovered

I don't believe your self-righteous, confrontational modus opoerandi is the best way to achieve your goal. It seems to encourage people to concoct ever more elaborate apologies for their chirographic bias.

If you were to publish a book named Counter Stroke, it would work better not as a closely argued refutation of GN, but if it were more like ES's Sheep book. In other words, show don't tell, with examples of Legato and other faces that support your theories (as much as they are able), the whole thing set in one of your own fonts, of course.

In fact, Counter Stroke would not be a good title, The Notorious Notan or All about the Bouma would be better. Perhaps those are too cute, but the idea would be to forground your buzzwords and positive aspects of your theory.

The self-righteous part is really not me - it's really just plain old complaining. For one thing, I haven't made fonts like I think should be made, and I know it, and admit it. The confrontational part though is, and I think it's a two-edged sword.

> It seems to encourage people to concoct ever more elaborate apologies

Well, thanks for noticing.
On the other hand, you could say that most of those people are unlikely to ever be convinced anyway. As I've said before (although perhaps it was elsewhere) if I can convince anybody, it's those who have the luxury of being undecided.

A book would be great, yes. But it would have to be mostly explaining, not showing, not least because there's just not enough to show, yet. And that's always the case with any nascent, iconoclastic idea - it starts with thought, not matter. In any case though I would have trouble living up to such a book (or any book, at this point).

hhp

you could always include a dvd with visuals in your book :P

But seriously the "debate" seems to be lose-lose here. I can't even follow it anymore. And the arguing seems to be overshadowing the information...

This post is mostly for Hrant. Peter I will review what your writing next.

So: when you make fonts by painting the black, in practice you’re shortchanging notan, if only in a subtle way (but maybe much more). Not necessarily or absolutely, but as a rule, yes.

Hrant, you are just substituting the tool for the ink. Which is not a good trade in my view because it misses the point altogether - which is that it doesn't matter what the tool is, mac, pc, pencil, ink, paint - whatever. You have to know what your aiming at & if you do you may get there. This is true for developing good Notan or any other characteristic. But again, the key ingredients are awareness and intent - not the tool (or ink). Your point about tools having characteristics has huge merit of course but is insufficent. Why? Because no tool can prevent or cause good notan. Only a person can do that.

You seem to agree with me when you say A shape does not need to be “realized” for it to be manipulatable (otherwise we could never start making a shape by drawing) and it doesn’t need to be fully manifest for us to be able to think about it (while giving the white and black fair treatment).

If I can, I want to encourage folks to avoid using the term Notan in this way:
we cannot achieve notan instantaneously.

There is no achieving or Notan. Notan is always there. It's basic & notan means nothing without adding description. It can be poor or good or great perhaps but it isn't a term that confers some kind of superlative. Notan per se doesn't indicate intensity either. Notan exists with barely discenable mild grey contasts & with the deepest Black brightest White.

Good Notan, as Peter reminds us is built out of context. In the case of a Glyph there is internal context; flags, bowls, stems, decenders- whatever is there. Then there is the Notan built up as the glyphs are placed next to each other - this is the Notan you & Peter are focused on primarily ( & rightly for the most part ) & then the Notan of the Paragraph if there is one & on up the chain of graphic complexity. The point of all this is that context is all important where the question of Notan exists. To the best of my understanding, Hrant you are mostly concerned with pointing out that you don't have a free enough hand and you are too chained to ductal logic & convention generally when you develop ( as you must) whatever Notan you get by caligraphic means. And really I do agree with this idea where final faces for immersive reading are concerned. But it's not enough to say that - you need contextual alteration too. And strangly enough I think that the biggest & best resource for that is Calligraphy - ductal logic or no. Why?

That's because Calligraphers have something type deoesn't - ample access to contextual alteration. This access gives them vastly better opportunity for building Notan than we have had in the world of type. Do they use it? Some do & some don't & some know they are doing it & some don't. But the Opportunity is there - that's why I am looking so closely at Calligraphy now - to discover where the golden bits of Notanic contextual alteration are. That way I can make available for inclusion in Type of all kinds - even immersive text faces.

RE: figure-ground, I agree that it is a sub-ideal way of talking about Notan. Semantics are not just a wash, there is a real point to choosing different words. But on the other hand it's hard to know what someone really means by a term until you see them use it for a while. That's why the meaning of words shifts so much in English. Just because somebody uses the term Notan doesn't mean they 'get it' any more than someone using the term figure ground guarantees that they don't. And 'Getting it' comes by degrees too.

I agree with Eben that terminology can sometimes be misleading. We now have a word in English for black-white balance--the Japanese 'notan'. This is useful because it directs our attention to a key part of letter design. But a word for it doesn't mean we understand it. I think to advance this discussion we would need a better theory of what constitutes good black white balance.

Of course the eye can see a huge amount that we can't yet explain, so we can just go ahead design with an awareness of white-black balance. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that we any clear theory of what balance of black and white actually works best in type design.

ps. The Chinese pointed writing brush in the hands of a competent writer has a much greater variation in width of stroke than does a pen. If just the point it touched, it is very fine; push down down and it becomes broad. When brushing the relatively straight strokes that make up Chinese characters it has more control, and in more directions, than a broad pen would over the balance of black and white within a character.

Eben, I'm not sure where to take this. I'm inclined to leave it with what I said. The statement you quoted from Hrant, which Hrant thought expressed ways in which my argument is false/misleading, contained three mis-readings in the first two sentences:
1) Hrant says: "A shape does not need to be “realized” for it (I assume he meant : the shape) to be manipulatable..." What I wrote should have been taken to say: A shape needs to be “realized” for notan to be manipulatable" I could have added: A shape needs to be on its way to realization for notan to be anticipated. (We can operate on that.)
2) Hrant says: "...and it doesn’t need to be fully manifest for us to be able to think about it." I didn't say it did.
3) Hrant says: "An instance of notan does not need to be a “fact” for us to work on making it so (obviously)." I said: "the notan (black / white of it) as a thing is not a fact, or notan (black / white balance) as a criterion is not an operable dimension until the line becomes the boundary of a realized shape." This means: there is no "black and white of it" until there is a black and white. In part I was playing on Hrants reference to notan as a thing. Implicit in my sentence was a distinction between the black and white of it as a describable condition, and the norm for how they should relate (equal-valence).

Eben, this Modernism will not get you to where the important things live.

> it doesn’t matter what the tool is

Everything matters.
Especially when the thing holding the tool is an animal.

> You have to know what your aiming at & if you do you may get there.

You don't have to Know what you're aiming at; you just have to aim. And thinking that getting to where you want to be depends on knowing how to get there is a sure-fire way of never really getting anywhere useful.

> Because no tool can prevent or cause good notan. Only a person can do that.

A person can achieve instances of notan only with a tool, and any tool has an effect on the process. It's not a matter of prevent, not of absolutes, but a matter of what's a better tool for the job. You can make a newspaper face using large boulders dipped in guacamole - but is it a good idea is the question. Likewise, it's not a good idea to paint a text face.

> you don’t have a free enough hand

Yes, or more accurately that chirography/painting introduces arbitrary constraints on notan. Not insurmoutable barriers, but constraints.

> Calligraphers have something type deoesn’t ...

You're talking about the process, not the forms. And you're failing to see that calligraphy can't utilize this advantage to any real benefit because chirography necessarily holds it back. The dynamism of handwriting is not something that benefits reading per se - what you're looking for is something else.

> it’s hard to know what someone really means

Indeed. Gorgias's #3:
If anything is comprehensible, it is not communicable.

> we would need a better theory of what constitutes good black white balance.

Indeed.
But first we need to realize/admit what our tools facilitate and what they impede.

> The Chinese pointed writing brush in the hands of a competent writer
> has a much greater variation in width of stroke than does a pen.

But it's still a one-sided marker.

> A shape needs to be “realized” for notan to be manipulatable

No, notan is manipulated, locally and anticipatorially, whenever you draw.

> A shape needs to be on its way to realization for notan to be anticipated.

A shape is always on its way to realization.

> there is no “black and white of it” until there is a black and white.

There is always a black and white: one on one side, the other on the other side.

hhp

"...notan is manipulated, locally and anticipatorially, whenever you draw." [Hrant]

This helps me make precise a more sustainable claim: notan is evoked, locally and anticipatorially, the moment your drawn contour becomes the boundary--real or imagined--of a shape in progress. Until the shape is in progress through real or imagined filling in on the one side or the other, or through it's juxtaposition with an opposing boundary which is to contain the shape, notan is only a future dimension.

The placing of the opposing boundary and the filling in on the one side or the other are instances of the 'painting' which Hrant claims he is opposed to. My point is that even Hrant has to commit--attentionally or implicitly or really in his process--to the black, or to the contained space to shape the white or the uncontained space. That is, to shape them both together he must work on one side or the other of the boundary at a time.

I ask myself, what's the point for me of pursuing this and subject others to it. Perhaps to find for myself and ourselves as a group a more right-sounding basis for action and for the discussion or assessment of the efforts of others and ourselves.

> notan is evoked ...

Sounds fine.

> The placing of the opposing boundary and the filling in on
> the one side or the other are instances of the ‘painting’
> which Hrant claims he is opposed to.

I think there's a difference between painting and filling in: besides (in parallel to?) the notan integrity issue, it's central that the latter doesn't actually need to happen (not physically, and not even imaginatively) and in fact -as you seem to allude to- you think (correctly) that I think it shouldn't be. In contrast, painting cannot proceed without "filling".

> he must work on one side or the other of the boundary at a time.

Even if this is true (which I continue to doubt) it remains that the two halves have an equal chance at attention, whereas in painting the black is never on the bottom. In painting, when the black lends a hand to the white and lifts it up to its level (but never above), it is at the expense of its own integrity. In drawing, the (aggregate) balance is natural.

> what’s the point

Everybody can and should have his own point for doing something, but I think the useful point right here right now is a rather timid one: to simply make people wake up to the fact that painting, and in particular its subset chirography, isn't all honey and yogurt; that drawing, and in particular beziers, are a blessing, not a handicap. This change of mindframe is the only thing that can finally bring type out of Art and into Design.

Once this is done convincingly, then we have a reading on our compass, and we can be more confident of which mountain we should try to cross. That's the difference between Modernism, PoMo and just wandering in the valley.

hhp

The 'filling in'--real or virtual-- doesn't have to be complete. All it
has to be is on its way. But the conditional priority of a definition-generating 'filling-in'--real or virtual/ fully realized or still in progress--at one side or the other of the line that is to be an outline, is analytic to the notion of notan.

I'll now claim: not until the contour becomes the boundary of two shapes, where you can only see what you are doing, or where you are going, by attentionally addressing one shape at a time, does your adjustment address notan; yet every movement of the contour affects both shapes together. So there is an unavoidable paradox here, which no tool can escape.

Your painting / chirography complaint amounts to this:
1) any mark with a dimension perpendicular to it's path, overdetermines the black at too early a stage--especially when this dimension sets the counterpoint--to acheive what you think needs doing (with shapes in letters) to enhance the perceptual integrity and 'divergence quotient' of the bouma for parafoveal vision. You categorize as painting, the products of any tool that adds a dimension perpendicular to its path.

The bit about "what needs doing with letters to enhance the perceptual integrity and 'divergence quotient' of the bouma for parafoveal vision" raises the issue of 'what the body needs,' specifically in this context, what notan does the body need? Is it a notan skewed toward keeping the black salient, or one that should be skewed toward making the pattern of the salient whites pre-eminent, or one that prevents either from dominating at any stage of vision? What notan does the body need for sustaining immersive reading? What notan does the body need to assimilate display? Should it be a foregone conclusion that the black and white should be in balance?

Hrant, I think that maybe we agree more than I or you realized...

You’re talking about the process, not the forms. Chirography etc..
Judging by the rest of what you wrote I am pretty sure you are assuming a meaning I did not intend there. And actually, your criticism oddly enough points pretty well at what I do mean. I am talking 'process' not the final forms. Or put another way, I am not advocating that type for immersive reading be made by calligraphic means with a rich overlay of notan centered contextual alteration. It might be interesting as a experiment... but that is not at all what I have in mind.

Instead, I am saying that calligraphy is a rich sounce of examples of notanic contextual alteration that could ( in some cases, and not the majority ) be adapted to nearly any kind of type face. So you see: Processs. Exactly. The Constraints you mention - they can be recognised & dispensed with. Put another way the examples could be used with or without their Chirographic baggage. Don't believe me? Keep reading.

Let me draw the contrast I have in mind a different way, Let's imagine that you do just what Nick suggested and you mannage to make your ideal text face using all the theory re: bouma, notan and really every other insight you can muster. Great! Now you can write your book. But that wonderful type, for all it's possible virtue is still going to be a sort of modernist mummified monstrosity. Why?

It's the way we make type: You had to make one 'a' & one 'A'. That's a modernist straightjacket there.

Obviously typedesigners have come up with extremely clever means of dealing with this limitation. And paying attention to Notan is one of these ways. I don't want to cast shadow on that acheivement. It's great. My point is that this acheivement can now be augmented. And if you believe in Notan as a source for improvement of type & text faces in particular, this potential for augmentation has to be taken seriously. Let's look at an example: As things stand, for a given notanic problem, an 'rc', 'gy', 'Wh' or 'WY' you can alter the forms or kern the forms or both.

But now there can be others solutions too. These solutions can be as small as altering a serif or as big a a whole new shape. Or a whole new pair of shapes. Could be ligature... Or anything, as long as the solution promotes good Notan and a Bouma with a successful cue value. And contrary to what it sounds like you were saying, absolutely none of it need be Chirocentric per se. Can I prove this? Sure: ligatures need not be chirocentic to be successful but they derive from a calligraphic solution to a Notanic problem. Do you see where I am going now?

RE: drawing & paint. The distiction you continue to make remains dubious to me. You may insist but I cannot help but think of a new spin on your arguement to me that the tool matters - Maybe the tool matters because one tool may be more familiar than another to a given person and that familiarity may be one key to their ability to find the Notanic balance they seek. If I told a Japanese calligrapher master that the best way to create good notan was to make a set of shapes and then combine them and check them for good Notan I bet he would laugh too. I still think you can get to good notan lots & lots of ways & that the main prerequsite is that you want to get there.

I ask myself, what’s the point for me of pursuing this and subject others to it. Perhaps to find for myself and ourselves as a group a more right-sounding basis for action and for the discussion or assessment of the efforts of others and ourselves.
Peter, I agree!

Also, your 'more sustainable claim' re: Notan seems solid enough to me. Except for the idea you put foreward that he must work on one side or the other of the boundary at a time.

This, unfortunately seems as bad as Hrant's insistance that Drawing is unlike painting. He is claiming that during the process of making shapes, that he ( and everyone else) can bridge the gap & perform the mental balancing act that lets you consider Notan. But that cannot be done with paint or ink. You are saying no one can do this during the process of making shapes. That you can only consider this question afterwards - and then adjust.

But you also say: A shape needs to be on its way to realization for notan to be anticipated. (We can operate on that.) I think you are closer to what I am getting at there because I think that you can consider Notan during the act itself in any media, with any tool - in the same way that you anticipate hitting a ball before you do. As Hrant says: No, notan is manipulated, locally and anticipatorially, whenever you draw. I am just extending his idea. Obviously in the case of type you are also dealing with these choices - good or bad - when you look at the letters combined as well.

RE: Notan & Art vs Design

While I think that idea of the Bouma probably is useful tool with which to promote a Hrantian idea about text type - it seems to me that the idea of Notan does neither favors ideas specially or diminishes it. The reason it looks that way to me is that Notan has to be attended to no matter if you are making a workhorse typeface or a very arty display face.

William said I think to advance this discussion we would need a better theory of what constitutes good black white balance. I am not sure we need a theory so much as examples to discuss. I am working on that now. But William, if you want to have a go at it. Be my guest! Moreover, not having a theory does not stop us from considering this way of looking at type. Particulary when such luminaries as Frutiger advocate it.

I am guessing that this idea of Notan strikes you as just a bit too New-Age or something and that until somebody shows you what they mean & why it's important using examples you are likely to continue to balk. What do you think?

>William, if you want to have a go at it. Be my guest!

I'm afraid I don't have any good theories of black/white balance. Yet :)

Peter, I think there's something misleadingly "over-determined" with saying the drawing is the border between two shapes. Maybe "shape" isn't the best word to use here - it might be too... painterly. Because there really is only one (visible) thing there, an instance of notan.

> what notan does the body need?

Yes, that's the question.

But I maintain that we need to first get a consensus on the (potential,
at the very least - and I'm being accomodating here) flaw in painting.

> calligraphy is a rich sounce of examples of notanic contextual alteration

Inspiration is one thing, derivation another. Yes, chirography does exhibit beneficial things, like stroke contrast. But it's important not to let it become more than an inspiration - essentially a happy accident. Heck, you can find inspiration for type design anywhere, like maybe the mating rituals of ducks. But if somebody claimed that "there's no essential difference between avian sex and reading a book" you'd probably think "man, this guy really likes birds" and wonder what his wife thinks about it, and when she'll finally publish "Men who love fowl and the women who love them"... Sorry. :->

> Notan has to be attended to no matter if you are making
> a workhorse typeface or a very arty display face.

Attended to, yes. In fact you do it even if you don't realize you're doing it.
But how you leverage it does depend on the display/text distinction.

Concerning your point that our technologies of making/deploying type are too Modernist, I totally agree - both geometrically and structurally. On the other, I'm a big believer in using whatever tools are on hand to their best potential.

--

Neologisms: the degree to which a person is receptive to them is generally proportional to his dissatisfaction with status quo, his need for change, his doubt concerning the integrity of what currently exists. For example, people who don't like new terms tend to like conservative typography. (This is more of an observation than some sort of jab.)

hhp

"...misleadingly “over-determined” with saying the drawing is the border between two shapes."

Try: two shapes-in-the-making"

"...there really is only one (visible) thing there, an instance of notan."

Only the thing is visible. It is both an instance of notan, and an instance of two shapes, one dark, the other light. We assess the notan-in-the-making by evaluating the interplay of the shapes-in-progress at the contour where they meet.

[regarding: what notan does the body need?]

"Yes, that’s the question. [...] But I maintain that we need to first get a consensus on the (potential...) flaw in painting.

Tell me what notan the body needs, and I'll tell you if you are right about the flaw in painting when it comes to type.

My introduction of the question "what notan does the body need?" was a recognition of the correctness of Williams observation that "... to advance this discussion we would need a better theory of what constitutes good black white balance." I though it might be a bridge to a new forum topic.

We might also need to get a bead on the (potential) flaw in drawing. For example: a drawing action which has absolute notan as it's intentional object might not be able to guarantee a proper salience for the things that must have independant cue value toward visual wordform resolution, and you can't get a real handle on this until you paint. Proper salience is another thing the body needs.

(What things have criterial cue value? In the 'o' it might be the counter; in the 'e' it might be the crossbar.)

Thinking of it as two shapes is:
1) over-determined because a single border controls the whole thing;
2) not conducive to an understanding of reading.

It seems only useful in undermining a realization that painting is an arbitrary constraint.

> Tell me what notan the body needs, and I’ll tell you if you
> are right about the flaw in painting when it comes to type.

If you can't explicitly accept that there's at least a potential problem with
painting (one that drawing doesn't share) then I'm not wasting my time.

I think your belief in [black] cue values arises from a desire
to avoid what you would see as a betrayal of Gerrit Noordzij.

hhp

My acceptance of the applicability of the concept of cue values comes from my reading of the "Cue Values of Letter Properties" in Herman Bouma's 1971 "Visual Recognition of Isolated Lowercase Letters" as well as some of Cyril Latimer's work.

I wasn't being coy with my: "Tell me what notan the body needs, and I’ll tell you if you are right about the flaw in painting when it comes to type." I was trying to put first things first.

If the visual cortex responds to words as a pattern or role architectural particulars (blacks) and role architecturally evoked forms (whites), as I think it does, thinking of shapes is essential to an understanding of reading, because their well-formedness becomes as essential as their strategic balance in a word or bounded map.

Betrayal has nothing to do with it. The force of Noordzij's logic in its interplay with yours does.

Yes, thinking in terms of shape does undermine a realization that painting is an arbitrary constraint. But I've said many time in different ways that feature manipulation is both the achilles heel and the boon of type design. Feature manipulation introduces norm violation upon beneficial norm violation to the shape boundaries imposed by the dimensional swept object (the painting or writing tool that introduces a dimension perpendicular to it's path). And the benefits exist in both the optical-grammatical sphere and the gestural-atmospheric sphere. The optical-grammatical benefits address what the body needs; the gestural-atmospheric relate to what the human subject wants.

You are free to choose your own path to introducing your norm violations to a system whose accessibility and bulk functionality is governed by conventions, but I reserve the right to try and trip you up when you dismiss the efforts and suggestions of others by appealing to truths that are half-truths. Your truth being, that when you move a boundary you are affecting both the black and white at once.

You do not really know which method will get you to 'what the body needs' faster. And you do not know that your perception of what the body needs is specified fully enough. To discover what 'truths' imply for action you must keep all the applicable ones in place, and work to an ever fuller specification of what the body needs. (The lack of consensus on what the body needs--i.e., how perceptual processing in reading works--means we are not there.) Design is a practice surrounded with countervailing pressures.

Prescriptiveness doesn't wash; mechanical exercises like what your efforts or Chris's suggestions or Gerrit's practices, or Frutiger's, or Bloemsma's, or Zuzana Licko's, or underware's explorations entail , do.

If there are black cues, there are white ones as well.

Furthermore, even if there are only (or even merely mainly) black cues, tying the two edges of the black (ie: moving front, and essentially any painting) is still an arbitrary constraint.

In fact, if you're right, my own current type design method is the ideal one. But I don't think it is - I think Bloemsma is closer to that, although he was still too Modernist. The closest to the ideal that I can picture is a cross between Bloemsma and Bilak. No Noordzij in sight.

> Your truth being, that when you move a boundary you
> are affecting both the black and white at once.

Either simultaneously, or alternatingly, this must be true.
And it's not true of painting.

> You do not really know which method will
> get you to ‘what the body needs’ faster.

Indeed you're right.
But I'm gazing in the right direction.
Not admiring my own hands.

In fact, I "really know" nothing.

> Prescriptiveness doesn’t wash

I don't really understand what that means. And "mechanical exercises" are for warming up, not running. What exactly doesn't wash about telling people "be careful, your [virtual] tool is limiting the usefulness of what you're making"? It is in Art that objective opinions are moot, not in Design.

hhp

"If there are black cues, there are white ones as well." [Hrant]

What was this meant to counter?

Isn't what you say implicit in my: "If the visual cortex responds to words as a pattern or role architectural particulars (blacks) and role architecturally evoked forms (whites), as I think it does, thinking of shapes is essential to an understanding of reading, because their well-formedness becomes as essential as their strategic balance in a word or bounded map"?

This also has in mind the well-formedness of the whites as shapes.

If cues are not only black, then painting can't be a
sufficiently good method to achieve optimal notan.

hhp

...and neither can drawing: to assess notan when drawing (in your sense of drawing) I have to attentionally 'paint' or focalize the white and attentionally 'paint' or focalize the black, alternating between them to keep them both in play...

...and I can't see the quality of formedness of the white until the formedness of the black is complete and the letters side by side, or vice versa if you are starting with the counter as early punchcutters did...

But we're going round in circles

The drawing limitation you suggest, if it's true*:
1) is due to the limits of the human mind, hence unavoidable (and arguably as a result not arbitrary);
2) nonetheless allows for a nominal equality of the two sides, something painting does not.

* What makes you believe that we can't evaluate notan (I mean both halves) consciously, even though -as we agree- that's what we perceive when reading?

> But we’re going round in circles

Because you keep addressing past claims of mine, not my most-recent counter-claims. Don't you see that there's a qualitatively different degree of unfairness to notan between painting and drawing? Is the absence of Perfection triggering an escape to non-commitment? That would be like me saying that Anarchy is the only Fair political [non-]system (which I do) but then claiming that we must actually implement it (which I don't, and/because we can't anyway).

hhp

"Don’t you see that there’s a qualitatively different degree of unfairness to notan between painting and drawing? Is the absence of Perfection triggering an escape to non-commitment?"

No. The notan of a figure containg a slight s-curve inside a demarcated circle is very different from the notan of a configuration of brush strokes that together form an implicitly self-enclosed character with a referent. They are or can be each as good as the other in their own sphere. What achieving good light / dark means in the one instance is entirely different from what acheiving it means in the other context, and it is acheived by different methods. Your view seems to me to be premised on the idea that the notan of the bounded map of letters forming a word be more like that of the ying yang symbol than the of the chinese character.

If the tool in question is the bezier curve, there is a limitation which hand and brush may have an advantage. At the "moment of inertia" where a curve meets a straight, the bezier is unable to make the transition perfectly. The brush is not impeded in this regard however--even though it may take it many iterations before achieving it. Until Raph perfects his new approach to curve rendering, we are all prevented from true transition of curve to straight. Admittedly, this may be very hard for most people to see and only debatable by brothers and sisters of the cause who "Wrangle" with it in our solitude:-)

ChrisL

Peter & Hrant - While other folks may find this discourse a bit opaque I am glad you had it. I feel (perhaps falsely) that despite the somewhat circular nature of the last few posts on Peter & Hrant's debate that I am getting a better idea of what they think & why.

Peter, I would ask you - maybe in slightly different words than Hrant - why you doubt that you can work on an instance of notan by drawing, as opposed to working on one side at a time, when you seem to agree that as a reader you can take that same notan in - in a glance. The idea that you may create with Notanic b/w simultainiousness is a key idea for me.

Hrant, I know that you favor one tool over another but again, I don't see why you think one tool must be superior to the other. On this point I have found you more insistant than illuminating. Perhaps I need simply to extend my rhetorical question to Peter to you: How can it be that a reader can take Notan in at a glance, a type designer can draw and look at his drawings of glyphs and do the same, but a painter of a glyph cannot envision the finnished Notan he intends all the way from from the glyph itself to it's context. I am I will remind you not talking about the idealness of the tool for text faces but the frame of mind of the glyph painter.

Peter, BTW very nice points about cue value vs. Notanic utility. I can imagine a case being made that Notan is a kind of sugar and that Cue Value is the medicine that does the work. But I think that's a primitive dichotomy. I am guessing that the reason that Hrant doesn't want to assign Cues to shapes in black is that he believes ( & I do too ) That shapes per se cannot be black. They can only be Notan. In other words no glyph shape is just black it's always the B&W at once. It's total impact is also always provisional & based on it's context - if it's on it's own or next to another glyph etc. So what Hrant is saying is that the cue is in the notan not the black shape. Hrant, if I am putting words in your mouth that you don't agree with feel free to say so ( obviously ). Still, if Notan is seen as only a 'balance' of B&W and aesthetic in value rather than a basic state of reality I can well imagine how a cue might be seen as separate from Notan. The fact that Notan has been used as a superlative by Hrant & others obscures the idea of Notan as a basic state. Thinking in terms of Black or White shapes is fine as long as you recognize that this thinking is an artificial abstraction from a full and natural Notanic reality. This is one of the reasons that I tried to dissuade folks from using Notan as a superlative. Do you see the distiction I am getting at?

Still, your point, if I get you, about Cue value & salience being primary is great. From my point of view, thinking in terms of Notan instead of B&W is just a way of getting to better cue value minus the constraints of Modernism, Noirpremacy or Chirography etc. I think contextually altered Notan has a great potential role in promoting proper cue value.

Chris - Nice points about the beziers. I was thinking about that too.

I woke up this morning thinking notan--a notan of some kind or another--is especially relevant to some other things I typically like to mention: 1) it is important to the inhibition of slot processing according to letter (in the neurophysical receptive fields as salience provoked black and white information moves up through the layers of the visual cortex), 2) it is important to the perceptual learning that has to happen for reading to become fast and automatic.

So, relative to 1):
Notan contributes to the prevention of 'response bias collapse'. This makes it functional and not soley aesthetic in it's importance;
Relative to 2): I've claimed on other contexts here on typophile that perceptual processing has to be pushed down to a more primitive level than that of whole letters for reading to become fast and automatic. It has to be pushed down to the stems, bowls, counters, inter-letter shapes level and to the features of these components, like closure and 'disturbed expressedness' in order to code for itself the pattern of blacks and whites, or features, that make up the word or exist inside the bounded map. Good notan at the level of the word encourages this sub-attentive 'digging deeper' of the perceptual system to the pattern of the salient whites, disturbances to strict rhythmic expression in the black, and features, to form more efficient feature-level encodings of the whole word object than slot processing at a letter level can offer.

"...why you doubt that you can work on an instance of notan by drawing..." [Eben]

I don't!

(Go back to the very first post where I jumped in, (and include the 'process'-oriented glosses that I was forced to make later, but that were implicit in my start).) See my "not until..."-type clauses.

"... shapes per se cannot be black. They can only be Notan... [Eben]

"A letter is two shapes, one light, one dark." [Gerrit Noordzij]
[me] They can be in a state of dark / light balance (notan) but there are still two shapes. In a word or bounded map, many shapes some light, some dark, become one thing for vision. The thing has an object-like integrity and is resistent to 'componential abstraction'. This last sentence is my construction of what you might be saying when you say: "They can only be notan"

They can be in a state of dark / light balance (notan) [me]

Better [accommodating Eben's thing about superlatives, and my asking what notan does the body need]:
The 'dark / light of it' [the notan] is a readable condition, but...

Let me add:
What looks to me like an insistence on the pre-eminence of notan over issues of proper salience and independant cue value in Hrant's posts, is probably a reflection of 1) the role he sees for parafoveal vision in his understanding of what happens in immersive reading and 2) a different--thogh maybe only tacit--concept of how words are encoded. I see the complimentarity of parafoveal vision and foveal vision in immersive reading quite differently than Hrant does.

What I see as fuzzy is the difference between reading letterforms (and groups of them) and designing them. In reading, if a letterform is presented in a good notanic state, the reader may implicitly "know" it by virtue of its ease in being read. He "recognizes" it but may not know or care why--he just goes merrily along. While designing glyphs and groupings (to form a typeface), the designer may "know" a good instance of notan but is extremely unlikely to achieve it at first crack. To achieve it, he/she moves the boundary between positive and negative shapes by whatever means available until they "recognize" the balanced state as achieved. Type with good notan has been achieved prior to the bezier digital tools used today. Most readability studies were done using pre-digital type. The designer may have been skilled in the use of any given tool to a point far above what we may perceive today. Their tools were an extension of their vision. The limitations of their tools were overcome by their skill and vision just as we overcome the limitations of bezier curves today. It is far easier to envision regular geometric forms and come to agreement on their rendering because they have strict mathematical description. The nuances of typeface letterforms are not mathematically describable until after they are drawn, therefore, the designer is put in the state of flux to determine where the border should be. The reader only needs to see it. If it is not there, reading is inhibited but the reader has no control over it. The designer seeks to control the many form variables to achieve this balance for the reader but while he/she is working, it remains fuzzy, in a state of flux until all are resolved. To this end, I cannot see how a designer can achieve notan without iterations of failure, near failure, near resolution, and resolution. Whatever tool we choose to affect the iterations may or may not work well. It depends on our mastery of the tool and overcoming its shortcomings much more than the tool. That is not to say that we do not abandon a tool once we have found a better one. Just like construction workers have all but abandoned hand tools for power tools, type designers will move to the next tool after bezier drawing when it makes itself known. People are very adaptable, they use a tool and figure out ways to make it go beyond the tools ability. Later, a new tool is invented and the process of adaptation continues.

ChrisL

>So what Hrant is saying is that the cue is in the notan not the black shape. Hrant, if I am putting words in your mouth that you don’t agree with feel free to say so ( obviously ). Still, if Notan is seen as only a ‘balance’ of B&W and aesthetic in value rather than a basic state of reality I can well imagine how a cue might be seen as separate from Notan.

Eben, I like your formulation here, that 'the cue is in the notan not the black shape.' I wonder if it is true. In other words, I wonder whether the brain registers the inner white circle in an O, and not just the black ring. The other option would be that getting the weight(s) and dimensions of the black ring right in relation to the inner white makes it easier for our perceptual apparatus to recognize the ring--but it would still be the black that would register for 'cues' as to letter and word shape.

I definitely think good notan is not only an aesthetic matter, but also a readability one. Cyrus Highsmith wrote somewhere about the character 'becoming a part of the paper, rather than sitting on top of the paper' when the right shape is achieved. I think this is also what Frutiger means when he and others talk about 'activating the white'. I think of the character 'clicking' when it gets the balances right.

Just two points on this. One is that there is a bad kind of 'activitating the white', which I noted in another thread. That is when the white oscillates, asserting itself as foreground, and then going to background in a cycle. This kind of dazzle may be good in a display face, but not in a text lower case.

The second point is that good balance of black and white in a typeface cannot only be judged on single characters. Getting things to 'click' as far as readability is not only getting an H to look good on its own, but also next to an O --and a lower case n, o. Here I don't know where notan ends and 'color' begins.

Chris: marvelous post!

Bill: in my way of constructing reading, the internal features (mostly) of the bounded map--as mediating agents--are the cues to visual wordform resolution, the notanic whole is the unit of perception. The internal features relate to role architectural parts (the black) and role architecturally evoked forms (the white). My complaint about a parallel-letter recognition approach to word recognition was that it was "too rigorously biased toward the black" (the role architectural parts); "too centered on the black" (see my Typo#13 contribution). When I say that both the black and the white (the evoked shapes) are information contributory to visual wordform resolution I imply "the brain registers the inner white circle in an O, and not just the black ring." In the 'o' the counter is the salient cue.

The whole is not the cue to the identity of the word, the white parts and the black parts together in their pattern provide them.

Or do I need to say: the white parts and the black parts together in their pattern are the cue?

I said: "In the ‘o’ the counter is the salient cue."

Perhpas not just the counter, but also the closure of the shape containing it.

The Cyrus Highsmith quote is a good one by the way (in the context of a perspective that says both the black and white are contributory to visual wordform resolution), and so are your two final points.

>in the context of a perspective that says both the black and white are contributory

Yes, I should have made clear that that is Highsmith's general approach. Here he is talking about Prensa, which was inspired by Dwiggins' work:

‘Finally, I looked closely at [Dwiggins] work for a third time in regards to his approach to form and counterform. Since I was young, my approach to drawing has been based around negative space. I learnt it from my mother who is an artist. The lesson came one day when I was frustrated that my drawings of trees never really looked like trees. They just looked like a bunch of lines. I could not get a feel of the shape or structure of a tree. She taught me to draw the shapes between the branches instead of the branches themselves. When you do that, you quickly come a lot closer to actually drawing something resembles a tree. When I am drawing letters, I use the same approach. I am drawing the white shapes not the black strokes. So the relationship between the white shapes on the inside of the character and the outside of the character is something I am very interested in. I think Dwiggins had a similar interest so I studied his work from this point of view.’

I does not matter what the tool is, but you do have see before you can draw.

Just as an aside... In the time it took for this thread to get to this point, I finished a new 16 font (8 weights with Italics) geometric sans OpenType font w/small caps and lots of other features.

James

You are a really fast dude!

ChrisL

I think this[*] sums it up pretty well.

(And learning to seeing does not happen by staring at previous models, but involves producing something -- practicing typography, writing, drawing ... At the same time it prevents one from merely copying other people's 'hand'. Whether, later, one actually writes or draws letters by hand or not is not that important.)

[* Edit: I don't mean Mr Lozos' post but the one before. :)]

You know guys, James has a point: engaging in this thread is a lot of work for no money. On the other hand, progress has never been marked through repetition...

--

Chris, the bezier curve is one tool in the method of drawing. And when you say about painting that "it may take it many iterations" it seems you're not making the leap to abstraction necessary in what I for one am trying to discuss.

More on bezier drawing:
1) Its limitations are not those of drawing in general.
2) You don't have to draw in beziers directly to be drawing, and if you use beziers to trace a drawn-by-hand outline it's easy enough to place enough points to avoid what you're talking about.
3) Most significantly: the limitation you speak of does not favor the black or the white, hence is not unfair to notan.

> I don’t see why you think one tool must be superior to the other.

It's not a matter of superiority, it's a matter of sense versus prejudice. Using a tool/method that limits your end result in an arbitrary way is simply a Bad Thing. That doesn't mean you should never do it, but it does mean you should start by admitting its flaw. Just like my consumption of lard.

> How can it be that ... a painter of a glyph cannot envision
> the finnished Notan he intends all the way from from the
> glyph itself to it’s context.

He can envision anything we wants, but when it comes to actually making the thing, the contorting of his painting is: unnatural; and less likely to actually happen.

> what Hrant is saying is that the cue is in the notan not the black shape.

Close. If Peter is right that we "isolate" cues, as opposed to deciphering bouma wholes*, then I would contend that a cue can be black or white. A cue, even though it must be formed by both black and white, can be said to be identified as a thing in one or the other half. Maybe.

* When you think about it though, you could integrate the two views: a bouma is a unit of reading; it can be a whole word, a cluster of letters, an individual letter (think fovea/Larson) or maybe even a cue! Unless in fact a bouma is made up of cues.

> perceptual processing has to be pushed down

Possibly. But it certainly has to be pushed "up" [as well]: to the level of multi-letter boumas. And to me this would be more useful to more people, not just type designers.

> The limitations of their tools were overcome by their skill and vision

No animal can overcome anything completely.

> it remains fuzzy, in a state of flux until all are resolved.

It remains fuzzy, forever.

> I cannot see how a designer can achieve notan without iterations
> of failure, near failure, near resolution, and resolution.

A designer always achieves a notan. But a designer never achieves ideal notan. That is why Modernism is inhuman.

> It depends on our mastery of the tool and overcoming
> its shortcomings much more than the tool.

It depends on the mastery of the tool/method, overcoming its shortcomings AND the tool itself. The latter matters, and that needs to be admitted explicitly, please.

> type designers will move to the next tool after bezier drawing

Think about the nature of the method (ie drawing vs painting) first.

> I don’t know where notan ends and ‘color’ begins.

Notan doesn't end.
Color is an attribute of notan.

> Cyrus Highsmith wrote somewhere about the character ‘becoming a
> part of the paper, rather than sitting on top of the paper’ when
> the right shape is achieved.

Tellingly, Legato is what does this best (so far).
http://typophile.com/node/29064

Concerning Dwiggins: it's ironic however that his amazing results came directly from his instincts, not his conscious understanding - which was quite laughable. For example he thought that extenders only have an aesthetic value. He was a genius, caged by the machinations of industry.

> "the relationship between the white shapes on the inside of
> the character and the outside of the character is something
> I am very interested in."

The tricky thing -and something I don't think anybody has done yet, although Bloemsma was headed that way I suspect- is to design for the relationship between the white shapes on the inside of a character and the outsides (and insides too!) of all the potential characters, ideally weighted according to frequency. This non-determinism is what we have to address if we really want to leverage notan.

hhp

"...a bouma is a unit of reading; it can be a whole word, a cluster of letters, an individual letter [...] or maybe even a cue! Unless in fact a bouma is made up of cues." [Hrant]

In my way of constructing it, the word is the unit of reading in western scripts. The bouma is a unit of perceptual processing. The bouma is a bounded map of cues, which in their pattern cue the identity of the word or word part. Cues are mediating agents to the resolution of the whole. The are not isolated.

"Using a tool/method that limits your end result in an arbitrary way is simply a Bad Thing." [Hrant]

Using a tool or method that goes to determining your end result in a productive way is necessarily a good thing. (What I have in mind with 'productive' is: productive in terms of 'what the body needs") The broad nibbed pen or swept object metaphor does that. It does that precisely because it has a dimension perpendicular to it's path. There is nothing wrong with stepping outide the western tool of writing to--at least as, or even more--effectively accomodate those needs within a different medium. Type-making has always done this. There is nothing intrinsically superior in your or someone else's method. The breaking of ductal logic, rather than solely it's augmentation is a good thing to explore. This I will admit.

> In my way of constructing it the word is the unit of reading in
> western scripts. The bouma is a unit of perceptual processing.

Sure. Note my "a".

> Using a tool or method that goes to determining your end
> result in a productive way is necessarily a good thing.

Sure. But painting is not "productive".

> There is nothing intrinsically superior in your or someone else’s method.

Then I'm glad you're not the contractor who built my house.
You might have hired Chinese acrobats to do the job.

Ductal logic (or anything arbitrary, like avian intercourse) is only useful to the extent that it might provide "dumb luck" inspiration (like stroke contrast), nothing more. If you take it further than that (for example in thinking that the left diagonal of the "A" needs to be "naturally" thinner than the right one) then you're moving away from Design.

hhp

I'll leave it with what I've said.

Likewise - for now. Thanks for explaining your points of view!

-e.

[re: arbitrary / dumb luck ]

A few additional things occur to me.

The use of 'arbitrary' (in reference to the constraints of the pre-eminent western tool of writing) and 'dumb luck' (in reference to how it achieved the efficacies of what it put in place) is a great rhetorical manouver but insufficient and unproductive as a stance.

I would rather say the availability of the western tool of writing is dumb luck, and it's constraints arbitrary or circumstantial from the point of view of formgiving in a punch-cutting or digital environment, but relevant from the point of view of 'what the body needs' (in perceptual processing to sustain effortless immersive reading), and as a referential axis. I mean 'arbitrary' here as 'non-intrinsic' from the point of view of form-giving in current digital technologies and the older punch-cutting / matrix-making technologies.

Hrant, my fear is that as a stance your claims about 'arbitrary' and 'dumb luck' become coercive and undermining, not empowering and productive. I can see they might become paralysis and guilt-inducing. I doubt that that's your intent.

Being ever more explicit and specific about the point of greater bouma divergence (i.e., to introduce a kind of beneficial overdetermination at the cueing level) and being explicit and specific about the point of notan (i.e., in inhibiting 'response bias collapse' / 'componential abstraction' / 'slot processing') and relevant kinds of notan--and then ranking them within a co-ordinate system among other things as part of a larger system of relevant 'refererntial axis' for channeling action or gauging practice--might be more empowering. Relevant things can exert countervailing pressures, and this might be the reason to break ductal logic. For example a discovery that an oppositional dynamic play between the interletter and the intraletter whites can enhance the perceptual integrity of the over-arching whole (the bouma of the word), could force one to break ductal logic in the way Bloemsma did with Legato.

Sorry about the bold: they are my alternative to your use of caps.

> relevant from the point of view of ‘what the body needs’

How do you know this?
And I thought you believed in white cues.

> not empowering and productive.

That comes after the blinders come off.

> For example a discovery that an oppositional dynamic play
> between the interletter and the intraletter whites can enhance
> the perceptual integrity of the over-arching whole (the bouma
> of the word), could force one to break ductal logic in the way
> Bloemsma did with Legato.

Why would one/Bloemsma have to "discover" something (presumably by... dumb luck?) that leads to the realization that ductal logic needs to be broken, as opposed to the more deliberate (intelligent, wise) process of first realizing that ductal logic needs to be broken, and then looking for alternatives? Bloemsma for one was anti-chiro for years before "discovering" the idea behind Legato.

But as far as epiphanies go, yes, let's please pay attention to those too:
like maybe the one that suggests that a symmetrical "A" works better.

--

BTW, one thing -and a central one- that I usually mention in such discusisons but had failed to here is an explicit/geometric(?) reason why painting introduces an arbitrary constraint: it ties the two edges of the black in a relationship (think moving front) superior to the relationship across the edge between the black and the white (notan).

Of course this isn't even remotely close what seems to be
required to convince some people: divine intervention.

hhp

[How do you know this?]

In two ways:
1) I intuit it from my study of how retinal and neural receptive fileds are structured, and how receptor cells respond to reflected light;
2) I intuit it from the observation that every widely successful and enduring, non-marginal script ([??]with a robust tradition of immersive, silent reading[??]) has--and has evolved through--a fluctuating contrast derived from a tool.

I wonder if you want to try to make me says that: because something is relevant, it is also has to function as the boundary condition, limiting where we could fruitfully go or explore?

[And I thought you believed in white cues.]

The kind and variability of the white the dimensional tool sets up is also relevant from the point of view of what the body needs.

Your #1: Maybe. Wondering: what about emitted light?

Your #2: Pure circumstance. Lamarckian illogic. Not to mention the exception of Hangul, which just happens to also be the most powerful, intelligent, and what the body needs script on the planet.

> I wonder if you want to try to make me says that: because something
> is relevant, it is also has to function as the boundary condition,
> limiting where we could fruitfully go or explore?

I'm not sure I follow you. If you mean that [I think] painting limits our exploration (and even discourages the direct application of sound ideas) then yes - this is what an arbitrary thing does.

> The kind and variability of the white the
> dimensional tool sets up is also relevant from
> the point of view of what the body needs.

Not as relevant as its setup of the black, hence imbalanced.

hhp

Getting back to James Montalbano's post. How do we take our 6 month discussion and pose it in such a way as to make it helpful to a type designer? We have had much debate on semantics but precious little to take to a practical level. Was this just an acedemic excersize like Thomas Aquinas debating the existance of God with Nietze? Is there someting visual anyone can show which demonstrates the concept and makes it applicable? I hope we have not been just debating a term like "Farfiknugan" from the old 1980s VW ads?

ChrisL

What's precious little about trying to tell people to physically draw outlines instead of bothering with things like testing forms with calligraphy or fleshing out forms with diagonal hashes? What's impractical about trying to tell people to give the whites equal importance to the blacks? Yes, some people do claim to do the latter, but it seems that the most that's being done is looking and pretending, not doing.

On the other hand, if James's point is how to make more money faster with more ideal type design, that's of course going nowhere fast. It's not progress towards an ideal that sells, it's celebration of the established.

hhp

[Lamarckian illogic]

Actually: Darwinian.

I don't think that was James's point at all. I think it was his way of saying do something with your time (like design a font) which shows the superiority of your theory and your theory will have a more objective base.
Decent type designers have been giving equal importance to both blacks and whites for centuries. This is not new. There will always be those who harken back to the "good old days" and thrive on older ways of seeing. There will always be those who damn and condem the old ways as pathetic intrusions on their own way of doing things. Others will do what they will no matter what. Just as you will continue to work your way no matter what those who don't support your theories might do or say. The point is, what comes out at the end? Is it type or just rhetoric? If it is more important for you tothinkof yourself as the person who redefined the asian word notan as a typographic term than it is for you to make type with good notan, then so be it. I have no problem with that. I would rather design something and am not so concerned with the terms people might use to describe it--but that is me.

ChrisL

Hrant, let me be clear about one thing: while I contest large chunks of your logic, labels and your construction of oppositions, this doesn't mean I don't see great value, real validity, and have a vital interest in your underlying motivations, your observations, and your explorations especially where they go against the grain of ductal logic, because that indeed is where the future of path-breaking typographic exploration lies. But, what the history of writing has to teach us is more than ductal logic.

If you need your logic to sustain it, go for it. But I'll use mine to contextualize yours and decide for myself the meaning that I think it has.

> I think it was his way of saying do something with your time
> (like design a font) which shows the superiority of your theory

No, I think he was saying "don't theorize so much". It's a common sentiment among financially successful font makers. We should get a clue, eh? But we don't, and that's that. Lucky for culture.

> Decent type designers have been giving equal
> importance to both blacks and whites for centuries.

Balloney.

> Is it type or just rhetoric?

I didn't realize there are no other options...

> I would rather design something

That's great. I would rather design something too, but I'd really like it to be significant to more than my pocketbook and/or ego, and I'm not going to have that until I start marching somberly in the right direction, instead of dancing in place with a stupid smile on my face. Yes, we are each different, and you have to make yourself happy - go for it, and more power to you. But the flip side is that then the most you should do is what James did, instead of spending hours insisting that painting is just as good as drawing in addressing text-face notan.

--

Peter, thanks. And likewise.

> what the history of writing has to teach us is more than ductal logic.

Agreed. In fact I have heard stone carvers complain about the dominance of calligraphy in type. Like look at the amazing "M" in this image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/typeoff/282096361

> I’ll use mine to contextualize yours and decide
> for myself the meaning that I think it has.

Natch.
I might be a preacher, but I'm no go-to-Afghanistan evangelist.

hhp

"...and I’m not going to have that until I start marching somberly in the right direction..."

You may never start marching at all though. You might try doing something in a type design that fits your theory as it stands now and see what you can learn from it--better yet, to see what you can teach from it. If your purpose is evangalism, a few good examples go a long way. I hope it is just not a sense of perfectionism which holds you back, waiting for just the right moment (which never comes).

ChrisL

Yes, that's a good point (although I don't think my problem is perfectionism).

hhp

[me] "... what the history of writing has to teach us is more than ductal logic..."

[you] "Agreed. In fact I have heard stone carvers complain..."

OK, but I had in mind: "even the history of writing with the broad-nibbed pen".

Chris, you asked [several posts ago]: "How do we take our 6 month discussion and pose it in such a way as to make it helpful to a type designer? We have had much debate on semantics but precious little to take to a practical level. Was this just an acedemic excersize...?"

To say it again, from my excursions into the literature on perceptual processing in reading through the eyes of a worker-in-type, I can tell you what's important, what to be mindful of, and (perhaps) why; or why--in perceptual processing terms--"strategic construction, a well-motivated contrast scheme, and "space craft" still matter," but I cannot tell you what to do mechanically, how big to make this or that. I cannot tell you how to get there.

That is, I can give you (new) perceptual-processing touch-stones for type design and typography. I can give you a coordinated repertoire of new terminological or referential axes according to which, or with which, you can channel your actions and gauge your practices. As a non type-designer, but a typotect and nomad scholar, that's all I am able to supply.

Thanks Peter, I'll take whatever I can get to help me keep an open mind :-)
As always, we appreciate your input.

ChrisL

Regarding the theory vs. applicability question: I don't think that any of this discussion should be held up to some kind of arbitrary usefulness standard. How can anyone know if a conversation will be useful ahead of time? Also, if people want to read or contribute they can. Clearly those folks who are reading this, or writing in, hope that they may get something out of it. Probably you get as much as you put in or something similar. In other words - nobody is here to spoon feed you on this topic - yet.

Personally, I feel that I have been helped by the thread. And I like having a more fine grained understanding of what everybody is thinking. Over time I hope to make some examples that relate to these ideas available in a structured form - and I hope other people will contribute theirs too. But before I can start my project I need threads like this to help me structure my effort. Maybe when the project is underway the spoon feeding will begin. :-)

"...held up to some kind of arbitrary usefulness standard"

That is not at all what I said. With any theory, it is fair game to project the shadow of operability. If we dare not ask about it, it will never be considered. People do not have to stop theoretical thinking just because someone asks them to consider what direction usability might take from their discussion. It is quite possible that attempts to make use of a theory, even before it is totally resolved, can aid in furthering the theory or at least giving it new avenues to research. There is a great deal to be learnedfrom just trying things and failing--perhaps even more than succeeeding.

ChrisL

" That is not at all what I said. "

I agree. Sorry if it seemed otherwise. Writing about an 'arbitrary measure' was a rhetorical flourish not an attempt at forcing words in your ( or anyone's) mouth.

I also agree that for the maker of fonts this kind of chatter is probably not all that immediately useful or applicable - yet. Unless, they are not yet designing with a Notan-centric point of view.

Not that they have to call it 'Notan' to be doing it .

"not yet designing with a Notan-centric point of view"

What if they don't even attend to any philisophical point of view yet their type comes out with good notan anyway?

ChrisL

> Unless, they are not yet designing with a Notan-centric point of view.

Which is virtually everybody.
So yes, threads like this can be useful to many people, but only if they let it.

> What if they don’t even attend to any philisophical point
> of view yet their type comes out with good notan anyway?

1) We're not talking about good notan (that's a non-starter) we're talking
about ideal notan. (Note: ideal is not at all the same thing as perfect.)
2) Luck is great. Just don't bet your house, or your culture, on it.

hhp

Can you show an example of ideal notan in a typeface? or anything close?

ChrisL

By definition you can't show an ideal.
But you can show a person aiming for one (not it), and that would be Legato.
Please read my short review here: http://typographi.com/000969.php

hhp

Just had a memory refresh, so back to some things from before:

> “even the history of writing with the broad-nibbed pen”.

I don't see how writing can go against writing.

More on Evert/Legato:
In fact Evert seems to have explicitly "broken" ductal logic, by consciously disposing of the linking between the outsides and insides (so to speak) of the black (AKA the moving front). It was not a "discovery", but a planned -if speculative- excavation, in an area some people were telling him not to bother digging. In fact these people don't like digging in general - they prefer low-hanging fruit.

hhp

When Chris said "What if they don’t even attend to any philisophical point of view yet their type comes out with good notan anyway?" I think he was getting at the point that it is possible without-theory or vocabulary to make things which measure up pretty damn well from a Notanic point of view. But the obvious rejoineder is that eventaully they will probably notice what happening & start wondering what it might mean, how to take it further, etc. That's where the ideal could come in. Still, I think there is value in looking for & commenting on typefaces or even glyph pairs where we feel there is above average to excellent sensitivity to Notan. So : examples anyone? Actually that aught be a new thread!

> it is possible without-theory or vocabulary to make things which
> measure up pretty damn well from a Notanic point of view.

Indeed - like Dwiggins.

> examples anyone?

You should definitely start a new thread [instead].

hhp

Thread started! Post your examples today!

http://typophile.com/node/29362

"...without-theory or vocabulary to make things which measure up pretty damn well from a Notanic point of view. But the obvious rejoineder is that eventaully they will probably notice what happening & start wondering what it might mean"

EXACTLY!!!

General to specific vs. specific to general

ChrisL

One of the things that came up here was "the notan the body needs".

In the process of writing up a post to the Rule or Law thread, I came to think the following might apply: the white needs to have a proper salience and criterial components of the black, distinctive cue value.

Proper here means: so that the pattern of the whites inside the bounded map is well-defined and assertive; criterial means criterial in relation to their place in visual wordform resolution, not just letter identification. (I read recently in some papers on ‘crowding’ that reading operates on not one but two spatial frequency registers.)

Sounds good, Peter.

ChrisL

Nothing beats drawing type by hand ;) (use the drop-down next to "andere weergave" for the rest of the family, and the controls in the bottom to zoom and such).

Thanks for the link Jelmar. Totally fabulous.

No prob. I agree, totally fabulous. Especially with the comments in the margins and all (directed to Peter Matthias Noordzij).

Here is a link to the main page of the collection (Amsterdam University "special collections" archive), although the gallery I linked to are the only images online. It's in Dutch, so that's a pity for the English speakers here. ;) Basically it tells the history of the material and some other background info.

Thanks to whoever brought this old thread back!

I think newer designers get too precious, careful, conservative and restained as soon as they get in front of a screen. Why? I have no idea. But I think they do.
On the other hand when you give somebody a chalk & chalkboard, pen & napkin; or a crappy sheet of paper and a pencil - the very informality implied by the materials opens them up to a comfortable, playful and freer kind of expression. 99 times out of 100 that rough crappy drawing isn’t a product in itself afterwards. But it is a byproduct of something more precious - exploration, learning, and sometime invention. Which can then be applied in a variety of ways and using a variety of tools.
Amazing, Eben, and you wrote it two years ago… Thanks!

Leaving the psychology of it out of the equation it still remains that most digital tools are not made with rough idea exploration in mind.
Yes, yes, yes! While I agree an awful deal with Nick (Drawing is *in the mind*), it's at the same time, for most ideas, a million times difficult to refine things with vector tools, instead of a physical tool. I recall Jon Barnbrook wrote a review of the software FontStudio, many years ago, and he underlined how still unfriendly were these digital tools for the fine-tuning of forms (or should we say "inking"?).
Of course there are tablets, but the result seems different to me.
And it seems to me we're witnessing a plethora of almost identical typefaces coming out from "mere computer environments"…

Thanks to all…

Thanks to whoever brought this old thread back!

I think newer designers get too precious, careful, conservative and restained as soon as they get in front of a screen. Why? I have no idea. But I think they do.
On the other hand when you give somebody a chalk & chalkboard, pen & napkin; or a crappy sheet of paper and a pencil - the very informality implied by the materials opens them up to a comfortable, playful and freer kind of expression. 99 times out of 100 that rough crappy drawing isn’t a product in itself afterwards. But it is a byproduct of something more precious - exploration, learning, and sometime invention. Which can then be applied in a variety of ways and using a variety of tools.
Amazing, Eben, and you wrote it two years ago… Thanks!

Leaving the psychology of it out of the equation it still remains that most digital tools are not made with rough idea exploration in mind.
Yes, yes, yes! While I agree an awful deal with Nick (Drawing is *in the mind*), it's at the same time, for most ideas, a million times difficult to refine things with vector tools, instead of a physical tool. I recall Jon Barnbrook wrote a review of the software FontStudio, many years ago, and he underlined how still unfriendly were these digital tools for the fine-tuning of forms (or should we say "inking"?).
Of course there are tablets, but the result seems different to me.
And it seems to me we're witnessing a plethora of almost identical typefaces coming out from "mere computer environments"…

Thanks to all…

Thanks to whoever brought this old thread back!

So that's finally a plus point for the spammers!

(In case the post gets deleted -- this thread was resurrected from the archives because someone thinks this is a great way to attract attention to his product. THINK AGAIN, DUDE.)

Oh, I didn't even see it was brought back. Thought it was an interesting read, so I didn't look at the dates when I replied earlier.

No worries -- the capitals were not to shout at you, Jelmar.

What is it that people take the trouble to create a login, just to post spam? I heard "spamming works, because 1 in 100 people respond to it". If one of you typophiles is that person, can't you go and **** ***?

(The asterisks are mine. Don't wanna offend anyone, or something.)

((Is it just me, or is this entire thread in italics?))

It's you. I don't see italics. ;)

> “spamming works, because 1 in 100 people respond to it”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7719281.stm

hhp

Interesting read! From that article:

"The profit margin for spam may be meager enough that spammers must be sensitive to the details of how their campaigns are run and are economically susceptible to new defenses."

That explains the sudden interest in spamming here, they are desperately seeking new ways to push their thrash.

Maybe they'll give up if they realize their precious one in a 2 million hit didn't come from this site.

Hopefully. :=)

Back to the "hand" issue: a silly article I did on the topic for Max Kisman (& FontShop) in the far year 2002:
http://www.hollandfonts.com/tribe/tribe02/0007/000704.html

If you forgive the naiveness, it still includes some interesting data…