Job:03171 Title:Typography Referenced (Rockport)
Page: 37
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Type Design and Development
Text
Job:03171 Title:Typography Referenced (Rockport)
Page: 37
This series of nibs cut by Tim Holloway
appear in the angle required for Indian
penmanship, in which the stroke modula-
tion is the reverse of that for Latin. These
nibs were used to produce sketches that
formed the basis for a Devanagari typeface
from a major typeface foundry. The roots of
all scripts are infl uenced by the interface of
the writing tool, the pen-holding technique,
and the writing surface. Although smooth
paper is now ubiquitous, the charac-
teristics of palm leaves and other such
substrates still echo in typographic forms.
This sketch of a template cut in card by
William Addison Dwiggins in his 1940 monograph
WAD to RR showed a technique that allowed
Dwiggins to combine the fl uency of hand-rendered
curves with the facility to repeat the shape
in letters with similar strokes. The process
suggests an element of modularization,
but one reserved for main strokes only.
Wood letters, like other
carved or dug-out forms,
are largely agnostic as to
the style of letters on their
face. The letter-maker is
imagining a shape written,
designed, or constructed,
and transfers this onto
the face of the block. The
stylistic cues survive
longer than the original
tools and techniques for
letter making, perpetu-
ated through the longevity
of the format and the
demand for the style.
the stroke. Hot-metal type making operations would
use brass patterns, specially made French curves, and
other methods of storing shapes. Throughout the hot-
metal and phototypesetting eras, shapes were captured
as engineering drawings, each letter several inches
high, at scales that had little to do with the specifi c tool’s
movements. The arrival of platform-independent digital
type stored without reference to the rendering size pushed
further this separation between the model for a typeface
and the specifi c shape of its rendered forms.
When designing a script typeface, the designer can
reference written forms directly, modifying for output
size and rendering. Most typefaces, however, depart
from written form shapes. To ensure a typeface’s consis-
tency, the designer must develop a mental model of a tool.
This may imitate the behavior of a writing tool, but may
include mark-making and movement quite unlike any-
thing possible to render with a real tool. An invented tool
that, for example, makes incised vertical strokes and pen-
like bowls can become the basis for a wide range of styles,
ensuring consistency without the limitations of a spe-
cifi c tool. This approach is especially pertinent in scales
for which the limits of manual tools do not off er useful
guidelines, such as typefaces in very small sizes. In those
extremes a tool model might mark the counters and space
between elements as much as the strokes.
It also does not hinder the generation of large, con-
sistent families even without directly related elements.
A light condensed, for example, can belong to the same
family as a wide extra bold when the modulation, the
joins between vertical strokes and curves, and the shape
of instrokes and outstrokes are similar. Imagined tools are
particularly helpful when a design abandons the organic
shapes that reference pens, nibs, brushes, and other exist-
ing tools for entirely constructed shapes, treatments of the
strokes that hint at perspective, or surface eff ects.
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