TYPEtype

I find myself thinking about design all the time. It’s not something that I can (or would want to) leave at the office at 5pm. Ideas emerge in my dreams, while I’m showering and if I have any amount of free time, I’ll still work on a design project because it gives me personal satisfaction.

I picked up a new book at Henderson’s (our gigantic used book store in town): Robert Bringhurst’s “The Elements of Typographic Style.” Typography, I’ve found, is one of those weird interests that I probably share with only 0.2% of the general population. You either find it fascinating, or you don’t. Even though I never took our typography class, I’ve still always appreciated the nuances of type and layouts. I’m engrossed in this book because Bringhurst writes about type like the letters and words were sentient beings. They are alive with personalities and deserve respect, he seems to argue. And because I’ve got a weird attention to detail, I can’t help but agree.

I’ve started marking down some of my favorite passages:

"Lists, such as contents pages and recipes, are opportunities to build architectural structures in which the space between elements both separates and binds. The two favorite ways of destroying such an opportunity are setting great chasms of space that the eye cannot leap without the help from the hand, and setting unenlightening rows of dots (dot leaders, they are called) that force the eye to walk the width of the page like a prisoner being escorted back to its cell."

"However empty or full it may be, the page must breathe, and in a book—that is, in a long text fit for the reader to live in—the page must breath in both directions."

"Typographers generally take pleasure in the unpredictable length of the paragraph while accepting the simple and reassuring consistency of the paragraph indent."

Bringhurst writes with such tender care about his subject that reading this book is a true pleasure. It’s perfect for my porch in the afternoon or, since my roommate is gone for the weekend, a long drawn-out bath in the clawfoot bathtub with a glass of wine.