Is he just speaking of the color (visual density) of the word? and why does he seem to accuse scholars of separating type and writing like it's all a big conspiracy?

It would help to clearly differentiate between writing, lettering, and typography.
Because your thesis concerns constructed brush lettering, not writing or type.

> the relative proportions of the white in the word

What he's talking about is "negative space", which is the space around an object. It's an important concept in graphic design. Sounds like he's focused on the space immediately around the characters themselves, rather than the entire page or sign.

I wouldn't call it "the white" because that's only accurate when writing on a white surface. If a sign has white type on a red background, for instance, the negative space is red.

> The white of the word is the only thing all the
> various kinds of writing have in common.

I haven't read his writing, but my offhand impression is that his comment doesn't seem very useful. The negative space is dictated by the shapes of the letters. If the negative spaces have common traits, it's because the writing itself has common traits.

One of his disciples will surely provide a superb
explanation soon enough. I myself would simply
like to deploy my standard disclaimer:

You can respect the white, and try to make it happy, but
as long as you're only marking the black it's all an illusion.

Jefferson loved Sarah Hemmings, but she was still a slave.

--

That said, there's plenty of room and reason for
a good study of what he wrote, and really means.

hhp

@carlgraham7:

1. Is this for a masters or PhD?

2. Where are you studying?

3. Who is your supervisor?

4. “since he was 10. He’s 54 now, so that’s like, forever (44 years).” — lose the ‘like’ if you want to be taken seriously. Seriously. (deliberate use of rhetoric). Watch the capitalization.

5. “a neater outter form is valued more than the color or visual density of the words.” — In a document as formal as a thesis, never cite Wikipedia as a source (unless of course you are making a statement to the effect of “Wikipedia defines typography as…). It has been my experience that a professor won’t even dignify the work with a mark. Even at an undergraduate level. It will simply be returned to you with comment to the effect of “re-submit this after you have conducted a literature review.” Regardless of it’s lack of credibility, it can change over time resulting in differennt interpretations of your work. Typo on outter = outer.

6. I agree with Nick. You need to operatinalize your terms. This means to define what you mean when you use a word in your paper. Not a formal declaration of the word’s meaning in every context in every dictionary in the world. Just for the purpose of your paper. This prevents potential misinterpretation and is standard practice in virtually all writing at a graduate level and beyond.

7. The structure of your current writing is remarkably close to the APA structure of a manuscript. I encourage you to move forward in that direction to formalize your work. See:

American Psychological Association, (2009). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition). American Psychological Association. Washington, DC, United States.

Continue with your literature review and remember to stay focused. It feels very daunting at first and is very easy to shot-gun off into too many directions, but as you proceed with your reading, it gets easier and easier to determine what is relevant and what is not.

Professors tend to be afraid of change.
It's not like printing a book makes everything in it true.

hhp

@Nick: that's just the thing. I know he differentiated the 3, but then he also said they were closely related. I do plan on setting that forward in the writing though. I guess what I'm looking for is some systematic way of looking at the white space as opposed to just "feeling" them as I normally do. Any suggestions?

@Christopher: thanks for reading! I actually use the term thesis casually in that first post, which I probably shouldn't have done. It's actually a final project for our undergraduate level course. The interviews were written more casually in hopes that they'd be more interesting and readable. The actual project has more weight in the quality of the execution using the medium (web, application, feature video). And the website up there was a smaller class project that served as an impetus for this final project topic which I have yet to execute. You provide some very good points though, regarding the literature. I wanted something even more straightforward in the final site, something visitors would "get" within seconds and have the option to look into through something like a read more link. Any thoughts on that?

@hrant, I saw that you did work on non-roman scripts on the fonts on your site. How did you go about developing/analyzing the forms? Do you know of any resources I could look into for the evolution of brahmic scripts? The Philippines has an ancient one and i'd like to see of the forms may have trickled into the forms of the letterers.

Can I call them that btw, “letterers” any one-word alternatives to sign painters?

Uh, that's not a post, that's a book. :-)

A couple of possibly useful points though:
- For scripts I have nativity in (Armenian, Latin, Arabic) my
main goal has become to be progressive*; whereas for scripts I
don't have nativity in I either remain safely imitative or when
I do dare to be pushy I make sure to consult a native (like I did
with Akhalkalak).
- In terms of formal analysis I do rely in part on letter
frequencies, which become especially relevant in multi-script
font families. http://themicrofoundry.com/ss_rome1.html

* Although for Arabic I haven't yet produced
such fonts - it's all been sketch work so far.

** http://themicrofoundry.com/f_akhalkalak.html
http://www.slavic.ucla.edu/people/faculty/ivanov/

BTW, sign painting is indeed lettering.

hhp

…some systematic way of looking at the white space…

It is determined by the relative scale of the tool size to the letter height.
The white space is what’s left over after the ink/paint has been applied.
This applies even to constructed brushwork.

Constraints include the complexity of letterform, and the amount of words in the page layout.

> The white space is what’s left over

Which is, of course, the problem.

hhp

“I wanted something even more straightforward in the final site, something visitors would "get" within seconds and have the option to look into through something like a read more link. Any thoughts on that?”

I agree. Your paper should be more academic, and a plain-language version for the lay-person online. The full academic paper should certainly be a downloadable PDF from the site. However, if you have the full academic version online as HTML (in addition to the plain-language HTML version, and the full downloadable PDF) then you may be more findable via search engines.

Keep up the good work.

…some systematic way of looking at the white space…

Moveable type allows great subtlety in horizontal spacing of type.

Perhaps strangely, more recent technologies have been more restrictive:
- typewriters
- linotype
- pixel screens
- ocr

More methodologies:

Types of Space
http://books.youworkforthem.com/book/P0226/Type-Spaces

Fourier analysis
http://typophile.com/node/33659

Hrant: You can respect the white, and try to make it happy, but as long as you're only marking the black it's all an illusion.

If Noordzij were talking about the shape of the white, I'd agree that there are specific situations in which the marking of the black determines the shape of the white such that the latter must be considered secondary. By the same token, though, if one were to manipulate the pen to shape the white in some particular way, that would subjugate the black to the white, and I'm not sure the situation is much changed if one creates the black/white edges in some independent way: decisions about shapes affect adjacent shapes.

But Noordzij is not talking about the shape of the white, he is talking about 'the relative proportions of the white in the word', in the context of comparing different examples of writing. His point, and I think it is a sound one, is that if one seeks a single common measure by which one can compare any two or more examples -- regardless of script, age, style -- then the only measure available is relative proportion of the white, because all other aspects of the examples introduce too many variables. In particular, note that the stroke itself does not provide such a measure.

> if one were to manipulate the pen ....

Which nobody does, and for good reason.

> the only measure available is relative proportion of the white

That's the easiest measure available, but one of
the less significant ones; just because something
is difficult to grasp and discuss does not make it
irrelevant. In fact to me it's the other way around.

hhp

Hrant, we're talking about measures of comparison, a basic principle of which is that you need to isolate the factors that are unique to the things being compared, and identify a common factor or factors. In the case of text, given the particularities of writing systems and of individual styles within those writing systems, proportion of white isn't the easiest measure available, it is the only common measure. This is not to say that there are not other common measures that would apply to some particular set of compared examples -- slant is a common measure by which italics can be compared, for example, but not romans --, only that when you take all text, in toto, the only common basis on which they can all be compared is relative proportion of white. And I don't think Noordzij is making this point in order to suggest that comparing different examples of writing in this way is a useful exercise, but to stress the universality of the proportional role of the white in all the world's writing systems.

> "Writing rests on the relative proportions of the white in the word."

What does "rests" mean to you? To me he seems to be
making a much more radical statement than you state.

BTW are you sure he means relative to the black?

> The white of the word is the only thing all
> the various kinds of writing have in common.

By "the white" does he really mean "the relative proportions
of the white and black"? Because otherwise it's entirely white-
centric. Is this his way of negating black-centricism? Because
to me it's like demolishing a building full of people you don't
agree with; it's better to convince them to leave the building
because it's not livable.

> it is the only common measure.

It's the only common explicit measure. But what I
was saying before is that doesn't make it valuable.

If you take two unlike Latin typefaces where the
Regular and Bold of one is comparable to the other's
in terms of weight, is it accurate to say that the two
Bolds are more alike than the Regular & Bold of each?
Certainly not.

--

If GN is in fact saying what you think he's saying,
it's entirely banal. What I think he's saying -in
obstructive language- is simply that the white is
important. Which is worth pointing out to novices,
but does not really help deal with the deeper issue
of how to build optimal type.

hhp

@ Hrant

WHITE is critical to me! When I design I am constantly bouncing back and forth between the black and white. In Pooper the black came easily but the white was critical in defining the appearance, fit and texture and frustrated me for quite some time. Without hesitation I would proffer that the white was/is primary, the black secondary (although black was the genesis of the font). Whenever I do commercial lettering the first generation touch up is white letters on black background so I am essentially reworking the "white."

This may not bolster your argument if you really think my fonts are "junk" :-)
When I started 30 years ago Notan was mentioned frequently by calligraphic artists that I respected.

Thanks for the input. It's interesting how you had to
handle the black and white sort of separately, which
seems to make for an interesting dynamic.

I myself don't pretend to have a good grasp of notan.

I don't think your fonts are junk. Some of them
I would surely use if the right project came up.
Except I don't use fonts much...

hhp

Actually Hrant, I handle them simultaneously. I do not "distinguish." I simply came upon, and practice, the realization that they are interdependent. In Pooper though the white was the pivotal "color." And I do, very much, manipulate the pens in consideration of the white. Pooper became a "chess game" in that respect.

Actually I think Notan has been over-complicated by academes. I view it as a very simple principle... for me it is the process of harnessing the "energy" of two polar opposites to create a "synergy," or whole, of sorts.

Hrant... I have an example but with the new "format" I have no idea as to how to load a picture! :-(

What happened to the lady's post before mine? I see the moderators are getting aggressive. Just like Montalbano's thread they deleted last week :-)

Was she selling leather bags?

For the record: I didn't request any deletions. I never have.

hhp

Did not say that Hrant :-)

Anyway, did my remarks clarify anything? Do you have any idea as to how to upload a picture?

Do you have any idea as to how to upload a picture?

At the moment, you need to have it stored somewhere in the interwebs and then you can "hotlink" it with a < img > tag.

interwebs????? I am a plug and play kind of guy :-)

I think it's very interesting -and centrally relevant-
to grasp how the black and white interplay to unite.
And then applying that knowledge. The tallest peak
to climb in this craft.

hhp

Carl,

You say you are fascinated with what Noordzij says about the white but are wondering if there’s some structured way you can speak about type using the concept of white space.

I see chapter 1 of The Stroke as a manifesto about something that eludes ‘structural’ description, and less about the ‘synergy’ between the ‘white’ and the ‘black,’ than about the centrality of the white.

In writing, that is, when it comes to readability, it's all about the white. The black of the letter must be close enough to conventional forms to be identifiable — and these vary from type to type and script to script — but when it comes to words and texts (which are what writing puts in place) the white is primary. If there is no equi-valence between the whites inside the letters and the whites between the letters, and if there is no disruption between the white of the word and the white space between words, the word disappears because the word-image as a bounded visual gestalt or unitary object-like entity falls apart.

However, while you can get a precise or ‘structural’ description of the black, even when the shapes deviate from the strokes of writing in systematic (and unsystematic!) ways, you can only gauge the whites of the word according to their comparative ‘weights’ or valence.

I said the white eludes structural description, but it is possible to talk about the hierarchy of the whites in typography.

Peter Enneson

Do you have any idea as to how to upload a picture?

Michael, posting an image, at present, is described on Michel Boyers blog. It pretty much boils down to attaching the image to a blog post (as he did) and then copying the URL and using it in an <img> tag. It's described in the post. I think it's been possible pretty much the entire time I've used Typophile.

Thanks, I always just uploaded a png file from my desktop.

…attaching the image to a blog post…

You can also use “CloudApp” on a Mac, to store your image at a URL in an Apple server farm.

Something like imgur is probably the best solution: You upload a file, copy the relevant embed code they provide and hey presto.

> the white eludes structural description

Indeed, and that is its nature. Having two Yins or
two Yangs is just pointless; and the more different
they are (for example one being explicit the other
implicit) the more fruitfully they unite. That said,
the way we make the black can improve, in terms
of ending up with better notan.

One thing that would help me understand things
better, looking at my own very modest efforts in
marking the black*: exactly what should I do to
make the white less servile?

* This is the only semi-decent thing I've ever produced:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48413419@N00/222343485

hhp

> the white eludes structural description<
I do not agree. It is just as tangible to me as the black! Just 'cause ya caint see it dont mean it dont exist :-)

Hrant, the white gives order to the black and harnesses its "randomness."

In your piece the white is irregular/disconcerting because symmetry/equality does not exist in the black. Individually your letters are acceptable but do not "fit," in toto. Sorry, but at the point when you were doing the letters you WERE CONCENTRATING on the black... ONLY. You had not yet begun the process of assimilating the "Yin and the Yang."

I look at the "channels, or canals" that exist within and around the black. That is the white, and it has to work with the black in a way that is consistent, ordered and rational. It literally controls how the black should appear.

This too defines spacing/kerning.

Michael, no need to apologize. The only thing we should
hold back is the vitriol, and only because that causes most
everybody to lose focus. In my view people who can't handle
impersonal criticism, no matter how close to home it strikes,
simply don't belong on a public forum devoted to progress.
We all have our limitations, and admitting them -first of all to
ourselves- is likely to reduce friction and misunderstanding.

--

- I don't pretend to have a handle on notan. Not even in
my fonts, much less in real-time marking of the black!
My consolation is that instead of admiring the beautiful
plateau we're all frolicking on, I'm looking straight at the
big scary mountain.

- I don't see how the black is "random". Not that the white
is random, but Peter's point concerning the black being
explicit while the white is implicit seems to make a lot
of sense (although those are not the terms he used).

hhp

I think when Peter writes about white "eluding structural description", I think he is alluding to the kind of structure you can ascribe to the black of a letter: that the b is a long vertical stick with attached ball, etc. The shapes of the white, especially between letters are not "read" as a structure so much. Still, the visually experienced quantity of these whites, in relation to other spaces between letters, between words, etc. are important to both readability and aesthetics.

As an aside, this is a very well-written synopsis:
http://www.eyemagazine.com/review.php?id=130&rid=620
It manages a balance that very few apologists do.

hhp

@ William
That is exactly what I was saying! The "whites" ARE read. They are as important as the black... otherwise the black does not make sense, or, if done incorrectly, at minimum makes it difficult to read.

This is why I love lettering, calligraphy whatever... it is more obvious to us... the relationship, that is.

@ Hrant

Think of the black as variants... /(|. These are the basic shapes, therein lies the "randomness" that I was speaking of. Verticals, curves, and diagonals... and the "white" that cushions them.
Why is this so difficult to understand?

I do understand, and even agree.

My main concern is "mechnically" how to render
the black (I mean how to manipulate the virtual
marking tool) in order to get ideal white.

hhp

[Bill] I think he is alluding to the kind of structure you can ascribe to the black of a letter: that the b is a long vertical stick with attached ball, etc.

Actually I'm not. I'm referring to the type of description Noordzij lays out in The Stroke using the idea of the moving front.

Peter, so you're not talking about your 'role units' of letters, but about rotation and expansion of the moving front? —Which has no analogue for the whites.

Geez.
What the hell does that mean William.
That sounds like gobbledeegook or doublespeak!

@ Hrant... that is what I am saying. You cannot do one without doing the other. They are intertwined!

I said this in a class of professional lettering artists 18 years ago... "The first stroke you lay down will determine everything that follows!" There's your moving front :-)

Michael, I do recommend Noordzij's brief book, The Stroke, which Peter translated. You will probably enjoy it, and then this lingo won't be alien to you. I'm sure what he writes about will be extremely familiar to you.

Read it. Does not change my feeling on the overly verbose attempts to talk about something that is very simple. I think people obfuscate to hedge their "practical" bets, over compensation in my mind! You still have not picked up a pen have you? Pen manipulation is a reality.

What you call pen manipulation Noordzij calls rotation of the moving front. But if you're going to get hostile again, forget it.

I agree it's simple. It's natural. Which is why it's possible
to understand it (not the same thing as mastering it!) with
minimal instruction. But the next step is what stumps me.

hhp

Quote: Read it.

Problem: This can imply that one has to read it, or that one has already read it. Semantics. The same applies to Noordzij’s essay. I will reread it (Reread it!) and will get back to you all with my sentence (not a sequence of words with some meaning, but a diversion of implications or whatever).

(There are some advantages to being Dutch.)

Look at architecture... not buildings but the bricks... windows and their relationship to each other. Look at landscaping, planned gardens. You are in LA... look at wave sets as they arrive on shore, especially from a high vantage point (this literally influeced one of my fonts :-)). Any thing that has a rhythm, random or metered. Therein lies the key to the white/black relationship.

Look at your hand, palm facing you, fingers spread and closed. Interrelationships!

Bert. I read it, past tense.

Not getting hostile William... but I do not understand how you can call it the leading front when pen manipulation affects the left and right side of the form. Once again you are going off without even a basic understanding of......... wait for it........ pen manipulation, which you denied the existence of two years ago.

Stick to redrawing existing/old forms, it replaces the need to be creative.

"Moving front" is from Noordzij; I think he sees
it as a useful term because it refers not only to the
edges but also the body, which (sorry :-) is painted.

Your observation that the main thing it produces
of interest to type designers is the edges and not the
body is significant; and to me that leads straight to
the need to separate the edges, basically obviating
the -formative- relevance of the body. And this is
how the white really becomes liberated.

So the term "moving front" to me is in a way
rigged, and that's what's limiting creativity.

hhp

I agree Hrant. To me the "edges" are a boundary of sorts, they require an opposing force.

The "leading front" forgets about the "tailing behind." Once again it is about the white. You cannot forget about the "behind" that is essentially a "white bumper." :-)

Michael; do not understand how you can call it the [moving] front when pen manipulation affects the left and right side of the form.

Noordzij is asking the question 'What happens in the stroke when the pen is manipulated?', and tries to come up with a systematic terminology, independent of particular tools or techniques, within which to answer that question. I don't think that's 'obfuscation'. I also think that it is an approach that is of very little use or interest to a calligrapher, which is perhaps what you are expressing. Noordzij's analysis is of use and interest to people who need to look at and think about writing, not to writers, and still less to readers. I've found it useful in two areas in which I'm involved: palaeography and type design, the latter involving making letters from thought rather than from movement.

@ John
Bottom line John... are not the forms we bend, fold, staple and mutilate in the name of NEW fonts based on those very forms, originated by a pen?

I do not care if it is Helvetica... it is still dependent on a concept that is over 2000 years old...pen/brush influenced!

The "thought" that you speak of cannot be disassociated from those "very old preconceptions" in which movement was a major player.

Actually I think when one is designing the border
between black & white the pen can in fact only
be an illusion. A powerful illusion, and sometimes
even an effective one (for example in display type)
but I can't help but believing that there's something
better out there, especially in terms of readability.
And a design like Legato seems to show that.

hhp

Michael, I don't think we're disagreeing. It is precisely because I don't think the thought of letter design can be disassociated from the movements of the tool -- although the association can be stretched and bent in various ways, some of which may be fruitful -- that I find Noordzij's analysis of the results of those movements to be useful.

You have the particular facility of being able to perform with your hand what I can only perform with my mind and translate into technology. I have found Noordzij's analysis of the stroke very helpful in understanding what is possible in terms of the results of manipulation: he helped me to see and understand things in writing. I can understand how, to you, as a scribe, his analysis seems unnecessary and probably a complication of things that are easy or self-evident. But I don't think he is presenting these ideas for the benefit of scribes and calligraphers.

[Hrant] Actually I think when one is designing the border between black & white the pen can in fact only be an illusion.

I know what drawing an outline is, and I know how adjusting it in font creation software is done. I also know what marking the boundary of a form— where form and counter form meet — is or amounts to, but I must confess, I don't know what designing the boundary is.

In drawing an outline or marking and adjusting the boundary of a form (“the black”) I think “the pen” can provide a notional reference axis. This is different than setting up the shapes delivered by the pen as the norm. What I've been calling norm-violation (vis à vis the pen — systematic, across the character set; or ad hoc, in a glyph-by-glyph manner) I can conceive of as enhancing readability.

To me Legato introduces non-incidental norm-violation of a complex and systematic sort, and I think there is at least a theoretical basis for thinking it enhances readability.

My point has been: why start violating from a flawed standpoint?
Because it's easier than starting from scratch? OK, I can accept that,
but only if there's an admission that the starting point is flawed.

Even Bloemsma started from an imperfect point: Modernism (which
he had long been a fan of). But at least he made something truly new.

Ideally, we start from the right place: reading. The problem is it's ill-
defined (and probably will stay that way). But not knowing something
perfectly is no excuse to look away. That's why I'm a Post-Modernist,
just not a hooligan-style 90s one.

hhp

I don’t think of what we have as flawed, but as something singular and evolved that has — in terms of reading — reached a benchmark level of performance and efficiency. This doesn't mean performance can’t be optimized, and efficiency enhanced.

OK, but staying on the chirographic continent limits
the optimization; you can't get to an (although never
the) ideal from there.

hhp

I think lack of inventiveness and a sense of direction in norm-violation combined with miss-apprehensions of what the reading system needs limits optimization. The sense of what the reading system needs can be intuitive and become instinctive. It can also be evidence based.

Peter, I don't think the notion of 'norm-violation' is very helpful, at least not without the kind of nuance in the interpretation of the words that requires quite a lot of explication. I think it is possible to approach type design in relationship to written forms in a variety of ways without evoking 'norms' or suggesting that some of these ways represent violations. My own approach is to recognise that -- presuming one is designing for a cultural script, i.e. one that has evolved over time in the literary life of communities with particular histories -- almost all scripts have originated in and/or passed through writing, and this process has established the shapes of the signs as expressed by particular tools and movements. Hence, reference to those tools and movements is a legitimate and sensible aspect of typeface design, and what is important here is not that this anchors types to 'norms' of letter shape or stroke modulation but that it anchors them within the script culture.

One of the things that is interesting to me about Legato is just how comfortably it sits within the Latin script culture, despite doing things that would be considered norm-violations in your analysis. I think this comes from the strength of structure -- the sense of a skeleton even though the edge relationships plainly demonstrate that none can exist -- and also the quality and measure of tension in the "strokes", which although being differently arrived at is of a similar tenor to that found elsewhere in the line of 'humanist sans' derived from more traditional constructions.

I believe Legato seems to exhibit this paradox
only because our conscious perception of the
existence of "skeletons" is in effect illusory.
To me Legato in essence proves -or at least
demonstrates- that any expanded-skeleton
approach to type design (chirography being
the pinnacle of this) is an arbitrary constraint,
at least in terms of reading.

hhp

I didn't say anything about an expanded skeleton. What I was talking about is the strong sense of structure, and the fact that even though the edges do not follow a traditional or tool derived relationship there is no sense of structural wobble in Legato. Contrast this with types that attempt a traditional edge relationship but fail because of lack of experience or skill of the designer (the Typophile critique forums have plenty of examples): they're less a 'norm-violation' than Legato, but also less structurally sound because what happens in their edge relationships introduces wobble in the perception of the shapes. This is important, and I think it is key to the success of Legato's systematic approach to edge relationships: even though no writing tool or manipulation can create quite those 'strokes', one can impose a hairline skeleton on the Legato letters and see that a) it is a strong structural form and b) the relationships of the edges to that skeleton are systematic and consistent. They're just not tool based.

Now here is an interesting idea: since the relationship of edges to a structural skeleton in Legato do seem to follow a consistent, systematic approach, would it be possible to algorithmically expand that skeleton to produce these kinds of relationships? That seems to me a practical question that could be practically explored. Why would one bother? Well, it would settle the question of how illusory or not the perception of a skeletal structure in Legato is. What it wouldn't do it settle how important that perception -- illusory or not -- is to the readability of the type. I theorise that it is important because what we recognise in reading -- at text sizes in any case -- is shapes not edge relationships, and hence edge relationships need to support the perception of shape not undermine it (which is why wobble is a problem).

John, when I use norm in these contexts, I'm not using it in the sense of standard or model (an ‘ought’), but in the sense of conventional pattern (or ‘is’) that has accrued over time. Violation in these contexts is just deviation from that evolved conventional pattern. Any feature manipulation away from a conventional base is norm violation.

My use of the term stems from my reading of Douglas Hofstadter's “Letter Spirit: Esthetic Perception and Creative Play in the Rich Microcosm of the Roman Alphabet” in Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought and papers he did with Gary Mcgraw and John Rehling in the aftermath of his critique of Donald Knuths essay in Visible Language on the Concept of a Metafont.

For Hofstadter, “norm violation is the name of the game in creation.”

I once did an an analysis of Legato on Typophile that shows how, starting from an expansion-with-contrast reduction base (the sans serif), a clever series of norm violations are introduced which have the result of producing a humanistic sans, namely one that approaches the conditions of translation.

As I said, a usage that requires quite a lot of explication. :)

Three sentences and a source attribution is a lot?

I do like what you say about script culture, and that what is remarkable about Legato is just how comfortably it sits within the Latin script culture, despite doing things that I would considered strong norm-violations. What I said about my analysis of Legato provides an elaboration of just that.

In the context of this thread it might be interesting to point out that Bloemsma's vantage point in the introduction of his norm violations is the consideration of how the whites sit inside the black and how they co-relate in the context of the word. The outcome is a distinctive contribution to the consolidation of the word, which is his avowed aim.