TYPOGRAPHY IS A GRID
Typography is a grid published , in: The Designer [bibl. 122]. The article was written at the height of the vogue for grid-based graphic design, imported into Britain from (especially) Switzerland. In an earlier contribution to The Designer, Brian Grimbly-a friend and colleague of AF -had discussed grids in a purely pragmatic way, as a tool for designers. 'Designing to a grid', The Designer, no. 162, , pp. 4-5. AF then wrote this call to order
, restating central tenets of his approach to typography. Some slight editorial changes have been made in reprinting the article here. Notes to the text and illustrations were originally numbered in one sequence, but have here been renumbered in two sequences.
As explained in the editorial note on p. 189 below, the cover image of that issue of The Designer constituted one of the illustrations. It has been omitted here: reproduced small it would have little meaning, and similar images can be seen in the reproductions from Typographic norms on pp. 71-4 above. Typography is a grid was reprinted in Design Dialogue, no.1,: a magazine edited by students at Stafford College of Art and Design. A F's work was important for the design course at Stafford, as Peter Burnhill implied in his retrospective: Outside the whale, Information Design Journal, vol.8, no. 3, , pp. 195-218.
Grid structures are implicit in the word TYPOGRAPHY After half a millennium it is time for an understanding and re-assessment.
To mention both typographic, and, in the same breath/sentence, grids, is strictly tautologous. The word typography means to write/print using standard elements; to use standard elements implies some modular relationship between such elements; since such relationship is two-dimensional, it implies the determination of dimensions which are both horizontal and vertical.
Consider the problems which faced Gutenberg, some five hundred years ago, in helping the eternal God to bring
into existence the laudable art, by which men now print books, and multiply them so greatly 1 Item, the said Johann Gutenberg knew of the invention of paper (which had reached Cologne by 1320); item, knew of the development of suitable inks of the general features of the cloth-and winepress, of the arts of the engravers, of the die-and punch-making of the goldsmiths (after all, he was a goldsmith himself).2 What did Gutenberg invent?
In order that letters, characters, may be arranged in lines, line upon line, for printing, each letter must be of the same depth or body-size as its neighbours, irrespective of its individual width: the vertical dimension (y in Cartesian co-ordinates) is critical. If, as seems historically probable, Gutenberg's invention was that of the adjustable type-mould, tolerant of characters of differing widths, intolerant of divergence in body-size [1: overleaf], this invention acted as a vertical grid upon the setting, the form, the page.
1 Chronicle of Cologne ,1499.
2 A.P.Usher, A history of mechanical inventions , Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1954. Chapter 10 deals with "The invention of printing"; however, Chapter 4 on "The emergence of novelty in thought and action" should not be missed.
Die unregelmäfsigkeit diefes fatzes wird durch die typen der buchftaben a und e verurfacht; fie find zwar gröfser als die anderen lettern, bei genauer mefsung aber doch nur um dreizehn taufendteile eines zolls. Diefer verfchwindend kleine unterfchied wiederholt und vergröfsert fich mit jeder zeile, bis der zufammenhang der wörter und linien zum teil zerftört wird Wenn das Bröfsere a und e noch zu einem dutzend linien verwendet werden follte, fo wäre der lefer gar nicht mer im ftande den fatz zu lefen.
Edilcipline LultaDiirorupiiltia- LurrgodilaplinediledioE:rdilect- noultodialegiilliiLultaDiioautl- egumrõlummatioorruptiomseA- inmorrupioDautkaritellepxiído- Loupiltiaîtaqlapîentietedunrad- reguīpeptuuBiengoledaminitedi bsetlaptisgesplidiligielapitatia tiantīpepetuйregnttisDiligitelu- mealapimeomnesquigeusplisud- deAautlapiftiaEequfadmodufa- dalnrefetaanonablondamavobis lanamamadiTdabimidonaduîta- smeligabo:rponaíabimidonadbis
S CYTHIA intra Imau montem termínatur ab occafu Sarmaria Aliati ca ſcam linea expolita A leptentrione terra in cognita.Ab oriete Ima omonte adarêtos vergente ſeam meridia na ferme linea qapdido oppido vlq,ad terrainw gnitam extenditur. A merídie aс etiam oriente Satis quidé & Sugdianis e Margiana inxtaiplora expofitas líneasvf oftia oxeamnis in byrcanu mare exeutif ac etia parte q binc est vſq ad Rha amuis oftia gradus habet 87248 3. Ad oc calum autvergiturin gradib 89944 Rbymmi f ofta Daicis ff oftia Iaxartiff' oftia
But the length of line, the width of setting, provided another dimension. It seem that this horizontal dimension (x) of the grid was determined by convention, and embodied in the Procrustean bed of the composing stick probably at that time, as more lately in the case of 13-pica fixed newspaper sticks, an unadjustable hod into which the standard bricks of characters could be successionally piled.
Of course, the fixing of a horizontal dimension or 'measure' demands conventions of variable spacing between words, or of abbreviation of the words themselves 2, if all the characters align at left, where the line begins, 'and are to end as leadsoldiers dressed by the right. The multifarious grids used by the scribes were directly translated into the techniques of metal setting. The scribes had long explored the two-dimensional axes, long before Gutenberg, long before Descartes described them as constraints.
This account restricts itself to those who used the Latin alphabet, who read from left to right; but only so far as concerns continuous narrative text. Quite early on, even in the days of incunabula, not only letters but other characters, for example numerals, needed setting - and in the attempt of mathematical conventions to show the sequence of a proof, equalities and tabulations were aligned, each below its antecedent step: centring a new implicit axis on the page 3.
So during centuries: for the first ninety years of typographic printing saw the exploration and development of justified and unjustified setting, of italic, of new letters (J and U surviving; some, like the omega, left at last), of punctuation marks. After , though, interest shifted toward experiment in letter design and, later, mechanical improvement.
All later work, until the demands of writers such as Blake or Mallarmé disrupted the conventions, considered the typographic grid unalterable 4. And even with the poets, their understanding of typography was such that they hardly considered the presentation of their personal desires a challenge to the grid.
Here's a sadness.Typography, as taught in schools of art, and captioned in the illustrated books, is mostly but a word delimiting a field of art/craft-history; books of types, of typographic ornaments and rules, of title-pages (fewer books of double-page spreads), sit on their shelves or presses. Typography has become the study of placing letters onafield: typography, a more precise form oflettering. And lettering, calligraphy, has died some sweet Roman death or letraset itself below the ground.
It is time, after half a millennium,for the re-assessment of typography. In architecture, stones, mud, plants humbled together, were governed; labour was delegated, craftsmen worked their feeling for materials on that material, builders organized, architects, later, chiefed constructions. After the decline of architecture, all major work nowadays is done by those who dreamed of white cathedrals or had an intimate experience or interest in their material, old or new.
At this point AF refers to one of the visual tables
from Typographic norms (see pp. 71-4 above), part of which he had reproduced on the cover of that issue of The Designer. His caption ran: 'Cover: thin, mid, thick, en and em spaces for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48 and 60 point anglo-american. The spaces printed in grey are interchangeable with 2-,3- and 4-pica quadrats.'