But what's a designer to do, when previous generations have already done all the "good" designs? You can't just repeat things the way the old guys did them, you have to do something different, and break their rules.

No doubt you will find a justification. In this case, it being German, bear in mind that Goudy was an American, and his reference to sheep-shagging somewhat Anglo derived.

Why should Germans kowtow to the Anglo aesthetic? The letterspacing of lowercase characters has an excellent precedent in older German culture -- it was done for emphasis with the Fraktur types, because there was no bold or italic.

in 'an essay on typography' doesn't gill recommend l e t t e r s p a c i n g for emphasis, rather than using italics?

Did Gill want to slow down the reading process with it? imagine an emphasized sentence, or paragraph.

Oy! Typographic torretts!

Playing devils advocate here, perhaps slowing down someone's reading process may be seen as a good thing if you are trying to emphasise a particular point?

I wonder if increased letterspacing would affect the overall colour of a type setting less than emboldening?

>doesn't gill recommend l e t t e r s p a c i n g for emphasis

Morison must have loved that: "Eric old chap, how do you expect us to sell any of your ruddy italic and bold fonts if you keep telling people they can make do without them?"

Nick, letterspacing in German is not different or new: it is a technique inherited from the fraktur days in which letterspacing was used for emphasis in the absence of italics. Letterspacing is a bad idea, especially in text, because it degrades word recognition; this isn't an 'Anglo aesthetic', it's functional.

I think the appeal to Goudy's famous comment is misplaced: one shouldn't avoid letterspacing lowercase letters because Goudy said it was a bad thing, you should avoid it because it is a bad thing, and demonstrably so.


This reminds me of an amusing point made during the keynote address at the ATypI conference in Copenhagen. The speaker was talking about the typesetting of various editions of the works of Kierkegaard (this was more interesting than you might imagine, as Kierkegaard had taken a keen interest in the typography of his books). In one book, Kierkegaard likens psycho-spiritual anxiety to being l e t t e r s p a c e d, a typographic metaphor that captures perfectly the sense of fragmentation. Of course, the early Danish editions of Kierkegaard were set in fraktur type, so the metaphor worked because letterspacing was the method used for emphasis. In a later edition, set in roman type, the typography was changed so that emphasis was indicated with italics; the editors took it upon themselves to change Kierkegaard's text to liken anxiety to being italicised.

>Nick, letterspacing in German is not different or new: it is a technique inherited from the fraktur days in which letterspacing was used for emphasis in the absence of italics.

Thank you vicar, that's exactly what I said. Why are you correcting me for having said the opposite?!

Sorry, Nick. I read your post too quickly and responded to the first part without properly reading the last part. That will teach me not to try to grab a few minutes on Typophile while Font Validator is doing its thing.

Goudy only used the phrase steal sheep in polite company. Maybe that is why Gill found letterspacing lowercase exciting.

For display setting (like in that page 17), I think it simply reeks. But the case with immersive reading is different: slowing down reading for an emphasized snippet is actually a good idea I think - and letterspacing does that well, exactly because it disrupts boumas! Unfortunately, strong color variance does something really bad many lines before its positive effect could kick in: it causes an errant fixation. And this is why a Bold is typically too strong, and people just use Italic. A carefully-chosen Demi weight though (in an equally carefully controlled output environment however) works great, without the skew in the voice than an italic can cause. Italics are the safer choice though - a bit brutal and superficial, requiring less thought.

> The letterspacing of lowercase characters has
> an excellent precedent in older German culture
> -- it was done for emphasis with the Fraktur
> types, because there was no bold or italic.

Precedent, yes. Excellent, no way. That's like saying every neighborhood should have a horseshoe maker because in the past we didn't have cars.

hhp

>Precedent, yes. Excellent, no way. That's like saying every neighborhood should have a horseshoe maker because in the past we didn't have cars.

No Hrant, an excellent precedent is one that fulfills the qualities of being a precedent, nothing more.

It's like you can have a good reason for doing a bad deed. Or the wrong reason for going a good deed.

Wasn't the actual quote "Anyone who would letterspace blackletter would steal sheep." -- I seem to remember that from the Adobe book, and a couple other spots. He said it when he was presented with a hand-lettered calligraphic award at some event, if I am remembering the entire story.

I have been told by reasonably good sources on Goudy that the actual verb Goudy used was quite different and rather more crude than "steal."

I mention this partly because the purported original version makes more sense to me. Stealing is unethical in more simple ways. The other version connotes a particular kind of lack of concern with reasonable behavior....

T

Thomas,

Presumably the verb was "worry", Thomas?

I am intrigued by the Kierkegaard reference. Is there more I can follow up on? References, footnotes, etc much appreciated. I'm looking for specific passages and examples.

Fraktur, used for the printing of German for many years, often used letterspacing for emphasis. Was this a good idea, though?

Perhaps it would have been better to use Roman for emphasis. Perhaps it would be better, today, to use Fraktur for emphasis than to letterspace lowercase Roman.

It may be, though, that letterspacing is not all that bad. Excessive letterspacing slows down reading and word recognition. But a modest amount of letterspacing would not be harmful in that way. So, all that is needed is a tasteful control of the amount of letterspacing, right? Of course, the answer is no - because the amount of letterspacing that is slight enough not to be harmful... is also slight enough not to be unambiguously visible, and, thus, the intended emphasis would not be noted.

I think that perhaps the two issues need to be separated. On the one hand, letterspacing lower case is unambiguously a bad thing. But it may be that the Anglo esthetic of using italics (and then bold) for emphasis is foreign to German reading habits.

If so, it is not unreasonable to search for a reasonable alternative.

Use a demibold with slight letterspacing. Or use Roman and sans-serif with one as the emphasis type.

If the italic of Roman types is simply unfamiliar to German eyes, almost as much as Fraktur is to ours, then use instead the sloped italic of a sans-serif type for emphasis, even though the regular text is in a Roman type.

So, while we can criticize letterspacing of lower case as a poor choice for emphasis, if Germans wish to use a means of emphasis that happens to differ from the usual convention in other countries, they may have legitimate reasons - and so the search for a more suitable alternative is what is needed.

I happen to have some old print (a book of poetry from 1898) that has several examples of emphasis by spacing whiteletter. Mind, I saw no evidence of the printery owning bold or italic in that face.

Aside: This book is the earliest I have seen a grottesque in use. Resembles News Gothic, btw. And, yes, it too was spaced for emphasis.

Yes, there are a number of examples I have seen of this. I am specifically asking where I can see examples in Kierkegaard's early printed books (see John Hudson's post above about the ATypI conference in Copenhagen). If there are any specific references (bibliographic, scholarly, etc) other than photographic reproductions, I'd be interested as well.