Category Archives: Uncategorized

Design is not a matter of surface appearance

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Typography supports the Design Commission’s launch on 13 March 2013 of Restarting Britain 2: Design and Public Services, and strongly endorses its opening statement: ‘Design is integral to the DNA of each and every public service. Design is not a matter of surface appearance.’

Prof Sue Walker, who contributed written evidence to the Commission, has also been invited to become a member of the Associate Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group (APDIG) to highlight existing work in the design research field that has not yet been exploited by policy makers and those in government, to point to design research as an untapped resource for policy makers. The group will report to a parliamentary seminar in June.

APDIG brings together colleagues from universities recognised for excellent and relevant design research. Information design research has much to offer government and public services through its user-centred and often collaborative methods, as well as through research outcomes that inform the presentation of complex material, in print and online.

An example of research-led information design is the Centre for Information Design Research’s work for the Behavioural Insights Team, a group of economists and psychologists working within the Cabinet Office, to help with a trial they are running to support unemployed people looking for work. Earlier this week the forms were shown in the Independent in a piece describing the impact made during testing.

 

Students and industry (2)

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Existing OUP designs







This week saw the launch of an exciting new project for Part 2 students in collaboration with Oxford University Press. OUP Education Division’s head of schools design Kate Kunac-Tabinor and designer Fiona MacColl have provided realistic briefs for innovative new covers for Keystage 3 textbooks in Science, English, and French, and they explained the design commissioning process to students on the Editorial Design module as part of the project launch. They’ll be returning to Reading at the end of term to see the results …

Supporting design studies in the EBacc

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Include design

We are the first institution, with Goldsmiths, to support the campaign to include design in the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), a proposed new qualification. Currently, the EBacc will require pupils to achieve a certificate in five subject areas: maths, English, sciences, languages (ancient and modern) and humanities (defined as only history or geography). This formulation has been widely criticised for its exclusion of creative subjects, and sparked a widely supported campaign to include design in the core subjects of the qualification. The list of organisations and companies backing the campaign reads like a roster of design excellence, across the sector.

The case for design’s contribution to the economy was recently made by the Design Commission’s Restarting Britain: Design Education and Growth report, supported by the Design Council and other organisations. Its text makes a strong case for the contribution of the creative sector to the UK economy in terms of GDP, employment, and innovation. In particular, it highlights design’s role in inter-disciplinary skills that are essential for innovation and enterprise. Design is an enabling sector, without which many seemingly unrelated industries cannot function effectively: for example, advances in science rely on design for their commercial application, and successful differentiation. For Typography’s point of view, this is especially pertinent in a global market where using textual and visual information in meaningful ways is increasingly the product itself, separate from any rendering environments.

You can add your support to the campaign here.

 

Typewriters: ‘new technology’ for everyday use

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The wonderful exhibition of typewriters and related ephemera currently on display in Typography’s exhibition area made me look again through my collection of early typing manuals.

Re-reading some of these it is clear that this new technology took quite a bit of getting used to. Pitman’s typewriter manual, first published in 1893, included a ‘specimen of typewriting illustrating, perhaps in an exaggerated form, most of the errors and irregularities to be found in unskilled work’.

The specimen is accompanied by a detailed narrative that draws attention to the defects and how they might be rectified, including irregularity of impression, irregularity of spacing, unevenness at the beginning of paragraphs, unevenness of spacing between lines and slovenliness. There are solutions to working with a limited character set, and examples of changes in language and the use of graphic conventions.

The section ‘Misuse of certain characters’, for example, discusses the use of wrong characters for the figures 1 and 0, and that the former is often written with the capital ‘I’ and the latter with the small-letter ‘o’. It goes on:
‘As the keyboards of machines are but rarely furnished with a complete set of numerical characters, the capital I very naturally suggests itself to the beginner as the best character for the representation of the figure 1, and he sometimes goes on using it for this purpose long after he has become proficient. The lower-case l [el] should be used for this purpose.’

The ‘&’  is mentioned as another character subject to misuse, often substituted for the word ‘and’ whereas it should be reserved for two ‘special cases’: in combination with ‘c’ in ‘&c’ for ‘etcetera’; and in the name of companies as Brown, Smith & Robertson. The solidus ‘/’ is described as ‘properly the sign for shillings, though it may, perhaps, be legitimately used in one or two combinations like o/o for per cent, B/L for Bill of Lading, a/c for account’. An example of its misuse is 4/10/10 for 4 October 1910.

Later typing manuals didn’t need to include examples of poor typing. Instead, as well as technical skills and keyboard practice, they provided instruction on detailed and complex matters of visual organisation. Some of the ‘rules’ for setting things out derived from printers’ and publishers’ house style manuals, but many of the conventions prescribed were determined by the limitations of the machine.

Reading types in Oxford English dictionaries

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Parable type in the New Oxford Dictionary of English

Many of the various printed editions of Oxford dictionaries are now typeset principally in Parable, a typeface designed by Christopher Burke, Research Fellow in the Department. These include the Concise, Compact, Paperback, Pocket, Little, and Colour Oxford Dictionary as well as the Oxford Paperback Thesaurus. Parable is also used effectively in the Oxford Dictionary of English (pictured) – a hefty hardback representing contemporary usage – for the entry texts, alongside Frutiger and Argo (designed by our Visiting Professor, Gerard Unger).

Christopher designed Parable between 1996 and 2002, specifically for use at small typesizes in books such as dictionaries and bibles. It was introduced into the Oxford dictionary range in 2004 by OUP designer Michael Johnson (also an alumnus of the department) when he was redesigning the Concise Oxford Dictionary. At Michael’s request, Christopher designed an alternative italic ampersand especially for the entry ‘ampersand’, because the dictionary’s editors were uncomfortable with Parable’s Granjonesque one. (See more about this here.)

The material book: Reading’s ‘prestigious MA in Book Design’ in the news

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Kathryn Hughes’ article for the Guardian highlights the continued interest in the book as a material object alongside the advent of Kindles, Sony readers and iPads and discusses some connections between traditional methods and new technologies as featured on the MA Book Design programme at Reading.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/02/beautiful-book-covers

This beautiful land around us

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There might be at least ten good reasons to study in Typography, but there’s a eleventh one that we can make no claim to be responsible for. Most universities, if you’re lucky, will have their buildings in a single campus, with some green land in between. Reading is the other way round: the campus is very much a stunning park with a bunch of buildings sprinkled on. And I’m not the only one thinking this: a couple of weeks ago it was announced that the campus was awarded a prestigious Green Flag. According to the press release, Reading is only the second university to receive the award.

The most prominent effect of the campus on the the people working there is its complete domination of the horizon: look out of any window, and instead of the rectangular grey or maroon of buildings you expect to see in cities, you will see the tops of mature oaks and cedars all around you. There is something deeply satisfying in seeing human activity sandwiched between a sea of green and open sky, the rectangular patterns of construction and order being guests in an ancient curtain of leaves. After a few hours staring at a screen half a metre away, the irregularity of foliage over open expanses is rejuvenating.

A couple of days ago I realised some of the students had not been to The Wilderness, nor the Harris Garden (or Dinton Pastures, or the cycling route to Mapledurham, or The Lookout…). Two minutes’ walk from the Department, The Wilderness is a managed natural forest on campus, and  a designated Wildlife Heritage Site. This means that conservation work is carried out discreetly, and the forest looks and feels as if nature is taking its course undisturbed. A bit further on, the Harris Garden is an oasis of plants whose names I never remember, but whose colours and shapes stay in my memory. (It is also a good picnic ground.)

Picnic in the Harris Garden

Picnic in the Harris Garden

Two are my favourite parts of the campus. The open green next to the Library reminds me of checking out a bunch of books when I first arrived in Reading, and sitting under the trees reading (thinking “five down, five million to go”). On the same patch, many years later, I was running behind my kids shouting “you did it! I’m not holding you!” (Like many children, they both learned how to ride a bike in the open expanses on campus, and still spend many hours there for sports.) My second favourite place is the south-eastern bank of the lake, beyond Wessex Hall: it is the best spot for a picnic I can imagine (and one that I am sure would satisfy Will Self’s dad). Having grown up and worked for years in a concrete jungle before moving here, it is still something out of a fantasy that these views are a few hundred steps away from my office.

Picnic games

Picnic by Whiteknights Lake

P.s. My pictures are phone snapshots: they capture moments that jumpstart memories, but not the richness of the view. But this and this do. This beautiful land around us, it’s a privilege.

P.p.s. Normal service will resume now.