The Typographic Experience
Being passionate for typography is for some people like being passionate for mathematics: we may well wonder what is creative about that? And yet, typography is an art which – in the same way as graphic art, design, architecture, painting or sculpture – follows a number of rules. When we say typography we mean the way you mold the characters, which starts with designing the fonts, extends to combining them into words and sentences and finishes with page layout of documents or complete works. It is always a pleasure to read documents which are well written, without semantic or grammatical mistakes, or abbreviations you cannot understand; and including the correct accents and punctuation signs. However, it is always a challenge in our various professional activities to respect the sum of the traditional rules. It is the same with typography.

The development of computers made it possible to vastly democratize the technical art of typography, but the result of this state of affairs has been the multiplication of documents using without good judgment and with an approximate sense of aesthetics, fonts that nowadays are available in large numbers on our computers. Every day we all use Times, Helvetica or Arial, without worrying unduly as to these fonts’ story and the rules governing their use. This is an important issue for software developers and font designers, as the characters must both be light and practical and offer comfortable reading; where the concept of beauty must not be confused with that of goodness and usefulness. Hence the importance of typography, which is the major focus of attention when developing software. This edition is therefore about pure typography, featuring Swiss typographers who are in the public eye. Certainly a difficult topic, but take care not to become hypnotized by the absorbing power of the letter or as Jérôme Peignot would say: “fonts only reveal their secrets and beauty to those who look at them with attention.” As usual, your reactions and suggestions are welcome.

13 July 2005

Return