![]() ![]() If the distance between letters become larger than the distance between words, meaning is disturbed. Good typographic work will rely upon a sensible distribution of space. Letters form words, words form sentences, sentences form blocks of text, blocks of text relate to one another, headings relate to blocks of text, sub-headings relate to both headings and blocks of text, foot notes to the blocks of text. If a letter gets closer to another visual element, like the edge of the page, it will break away from this bond. A letter which is closer to another letter creates a bond several letters close to one another may form words. Are we able to treat spaciousness with more respect, and less like dead meat?Ī principle of proximity is useful in working with letters. There have been instances in which the space around a block of text has been treated as a space for contemplation. One may suspect that the reason is a lack of awareness of and respect for emptiness or spaciousness, giving it a low status. Animal skin, used as writing material for hundreds of years, in comparison, certainly wasn’t cheap either. Publishers have argued that paper is costly, and that the page is filled to the brim with text for this reason. Japanese, Chinese or Arabic margins have been handled differently, conditioned by differences in the writing systems themselves (like differing directions of writing and reading). Proportions of margins have been very diverse over the years, from relatively compact scrolls in Egyptian, Hebrew or Greek, to Medieval or Renaissance manu-scripts. Often visual modes of expression will be termed ‘quiet’ or ‘noisy’ –Īs if silence and spaciousness share common ground. The typographer or calligrapher will handle this whiteness and blackness in the same manner that the musician handles pauses, tones, rhythms. Likewise white paper comes in all kinds of tinted whites ivory, cream, blue-grey etc. The same can apply to a black printing colour. Black stick ink which is often used in Japanese or Chinese calligraphy, is often tinted one way or the other in the colour scheme towards blue, or red etc. We may question both blackness and whiteness. Word images may be inverted, so that the word comes across as white on black. Nonetheless a musician will handle silence (the pauses) in the music, regardless of noise, for example from the audience, that may fill the pauses (with sound we may call music) et cetera. O n listening to the silence following a sound, we may register that the silence isn’t silent, but that it contains sounds – and we may conclude that silence, in a sense, doesn’t exist. ![]()
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