First off, let me begin by saying that this is not about avatars, emoticons or leet. That is a discussion for another day, be it good or bad.
Perhaps ‘Internet’ would not be the appropriate word or vice in this situation, but it has indeed been a severe assistant to the ongoing threat that typographers need to be aware of.
Type over the past 20+ years has been having a significant decline. Be it the on-going war between the comma and apostrophe vs foot and inch, or the missing-in-action m and n dashes. Most users, bloggers and general public are, I’m sure, unaware of anything what I’m talking about.
The problem isn’t so much that the appropriate glyphs aren’t available, it’s that they are not the default. For instance, as I am typing the draft for this on my iPhone, the auto correct is applicably adding apostrophes for my isn’ts and I’ms but by default, it is using the foot ’ character. This is even with the appropriate glyph on the keyboard layout, and periods being placed in for double spaces (brought forward from typewriter etiquette).
So how this started. Going back to the initial design of the QWERTY keyboard back in 1874. This layout design did not contain several of todays standards simply for spacing and manufacturing reasons, including the 1 and the zero key to name a couple. The apostrophe was converted to what was and to this day is the foot glyph. The reason being is that when matched with a period, it becomes an exclamation point, when doubled, it simulates the inch glyph. With the average person’s knowledge of typography, the foot glyph could easily represent the apostrophe and therefore not require an extra key.
This went on throughout the years of the keyboard designs. The truth of the matter is, in the research for this, I haven’t been able to find even one sample or version of a keyboard layout that uses the true apostrophe without using alt commands (Windows alt-0146) or dead key commands (Mac option-shift-]).
While typographers that came from the cast metal type era were continuing to use the appropriate glyphs were applicable, deep in the dark, dank garages of parents houses, something was slowly coming to light that would change type forever. In 1984, MacPublisher was released allowing those privileged (and wealthy enough) to have the capabilities to own a computer now had the, what I’ll call ability for lack of a better word, to set their own type and layouts without the need for a press. With the advent of the laserwriter in years to come and the growing popularity of businesses getting these new WYSIWYG machines, more and more people were able to do what they truly never understood: communicate.
So now that computers are in full swing, Aldus has given both designers and the general public a way to produce layouts, without the need of a typesetter, type design made a drastic down-turn spiral. No longer did we have the elegant ligatures, the delicate hanging punctuation, the differentiation between the 3 different dashes. All the rules were out the window now. Periods were trailed by double spaces because fonts were monospaced on a typewriter and teachers were never taught about font character spacing, if you quoted somebody, they were given double dashes because than M-dash was to elusive of a character, and the completely non-existant method of kerning and tracking.
PageMaker finally got some decent upgrades throughout the years but still lacked the complete capabilities of the average designer and typographer team. Sure you could produce a page layout at a fraction of the time but the control and file make-up would make todays printers scream.
Once QuarkXPress came out, Aldus finally had competition that would push them to innovate. QuarkXpress 1 thru 3 was in many people’s opinion was a much stronger asset and tool for users. Typography was getting stronger but was finding new and more difficult problems to overcome. One of which that is to this day, a serious problem for many legacy Quark files (and for anybody using Microsoft applications), the faux faces. The ability to take that Frutiger face at bold condensed and make it into italics. Just thinking about it makes me cringe. For those of you who are wondering why this is, it’s because when a type designer creates the face, there are thicknesses and angles that are done in such was that when altered and shifted angles or fattened up for bolds or condensed by simply squishing, these change and the type looses it’s initial intent. Some might argue that it is the designer using it that determines the communication intended by the face, I say it is the designers responsibility to know what a particular face communicates.
QuarkXPress 3 was a long runner, approximately 7 years! It lasted through the developments of windows, multi-language versions were developed, and it had support for libraries. But soon enough Adobe, who was the inventor of PostScript and being the standard output method of production software, decided to get in on the action. They purchased PageMaker and threw around several versions but could never really compete with the already leading standard, Quark. They decided that with all designers already using their other products; Illustrator and Photoshop, in conjunction with their competitor, they needed to bring something out that did more that just simulate the exact, and outdated competition. InDesign was born. No longer were artists now relying upon converting files to multiple formats, keeping original editable layer files, converting to JPG and EPS files which flatten and destroy information. With Quarks deep and rich typography tools for the time, InDesign did lack some new innovations. It was simply a new skin to PageMaker and a few native application support features that caught the eye of many design houses.
Now without getting into a giant history of the Quark and InDesign wars, lets just leave this branch off at: while Adobe’s InDesign went deeper into innovations and tools for printers (Opentype support, export to PDF, early OS X migration, enhanced stylesheets, GREP find and replace…) and print publications, Quark took to the web. It seems they felt that that was the way of the future and where they could make an impact. This is a great segway to web but lets take a few years off. Back in the late 90’s when most people were still using dial-up, sites that wanted to maintain users needed to concentrate new technologies and bringing images and eye candy to the populace. This is generally known as the Web 1.0. People weren’t too interested in standards or consistency but rather learning and getting into this new medium. Web 2.0 was the initial start of the big boom. Sites started to create rules and regulations. These included standards and new technology, one of which was CSS. Unfortunately one of the main browsers out there simply would not comply. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the top browser for most users using the Internet on both Mac and PC tried to create it’s own coding and languages. By doing so, delaying and even up to this day lacking in even the basic capabilities of many of the other browsers that we’ve only now come to use almost as much. CSS, although very versatile and innovative, hasn’t made too many strides in typography. Sure it can now use line height, character spacing and the many uses of lists but in order to truly grasp hold of your typography on the Internet, you must create an image of it. Doing so creates load time, lower quality, less search-ability, and many more problems. For one, the justification is limited to left, right, centered, full and full-left / full-right with all the glory of being able to drive a truck through the last 3. The problem isn’t so much that doing character by character adjustments, it’s the complexity and requirements that it takes to do so. With the up-coming Web 3.0 design, hopefully some light will shine on the digital type era. With print getting scarcer and scarcer (PC Magazine will be halting their print publication), people are looking to the Internet and digital formats for the future. As it stands right now however, my stance is we will NEVER be rid of the printed form. It may change. It may adapt. I’ve been following E-Ink since first year college but people still need a medium that the can grasp in their hands. It’s a tangible sense that we crave. Sure, it may not me actually printed on a sub-straight but design will always remain different between print and screen. Signs, large publications, white papers, reports, they will all need hard copies and therefore print will always be around.
Here is what I throw out there to all designers: Let’s take the new Web 3.0 and make it print ready. Push for software companies to make it easier and to develop new and more efficient ways to control type on screen. Let’s take back design from the average person and show them why not everybody had printing presses when they originated in the early 1040 AD (China, not western but that applies too).
Thank you to Wikipedia for the date clarifications.
If this ever get’s to Lynne Truss, I’m sorry for all the extra punctuation. Please feel free to correct me.
