Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!shelby!portia!mouser From: mouser@portia.Stanford.EDU (Michael Wang) Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop Subject: Re: Typography--Was Re: ventura Message-ID: <2706@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 4 Jun 89 09:22:35 GMT References: <4058@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> Sender: Michael Wang Reply-To: mouser@portia.Stanford.EDU (Michael Wang) Organization: Stanford University Lines: 85 Uh oh, here we go again! In article <4058@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) states that: > I am not schooled in book design, but I really don't see what special > expertise is involved. I designed and printed one book and helped with > another, using TeX in both cases. I just looked at some examples as > models for the first version, then screwed around with the formatting > parameters until it looked nice. Being impressed with the advice > in the TeXbook that one should have the design done by a professional, > I took my drafts to the publisher and got comments and advice, which, > however, turned out to be quite trivial. I doubt that book design > is even much of a craft, much less a science (as some seem to be > contending). Greg, just because in your one case you didn't find formatting a book very difficult doesn't mean that anybody can do it, and that book design is a simple task. There are a number of reasons why your argument isn't convincing to me. 1) Just because your publisher didn't make any non-trivial recommendations doesn't mean that your book couldn't have used some changes. As other people have stated, there are many books being published now that have terrible designs; not all publishers (and designers) know what they are doing. 2) You had the advantage of using TeX, which takes care of many of the tasks a book designer normally has to worry about, like watching out for widows and orphans; making sure lines are being hyphenated properly (not too many hyphens in a row, etc.); making sure large chapter headings are properly kerned; using hyphens, en-dashes, em-dashes properly, substituting ligatures in the text where needed, etc., etc. Now it is great the TeX does all this stuff for you, but unless you fully understand what TeX is doing, you probably won't be able to apply these concepts outside of the TeX environment. For example, do you know how to properly space large words in all caps? This is actually a very difficult thing to do properly. Do you know what widows and orphans are? 3) Copying somebody else's formatting and ideas is a good way to learn about general design principles. But, unless you understand why the original designer made all those design decisions, you will never be anything more than an imitator, unable to solve design problems creatively and originally. 4) "...screwed around with the formatting...until it looked nice." That is a very interesting statement. Though I get the impression that you are good at picking out "nicely" designed documents from "poorly" designed documents, that doesn't mean that everybody can. I know people who think that a simple flyer to look "nice" should have 4 different typefaces in 2 or 3 styles each for a total of around 10 fonts. Now I know you wouldn't think so, but making the implicit generalization that everybody knows what a "nice" document should look like is, I feel is incorrect. 5) Book design is only one small area in the field of typography and graphic design. Just because book design seems simple to you doesn't mean that other areas are simple too. In one simple example, creating pages that contain multiple columns, I feel, is much more difficult than creating single column pages. I know you didn't imply this in your message, but since the dicussion has moved toward document design in general, I thought I would mention this point. Finally as a disclaimer, let me say that I'm not a typographer or a graphic designer. I am, like many other people, somebody who got interested in DTP and have grown to enjoy producing "nice" looking pages from my computer. However, unlike many other people, I have spent a lot of time learning about typography and graphic design by reading, talking with experts in the field, and taking classes. I feel that, though the basic knowledge about typography campared to other fields (such as programming), may be easier to learn, to be really good at it takes just as much time, effort, and skill. -Michael Wang +--------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael Wang | Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 | |--------------+------------------------------------------------------------| | ARPAnet, BITNET, CSNET, Internet: mouser@portia.stanford.edu | | UUCP: ...decwrl!portia.stanford.edu!mouser AppleLink: ST0064 | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+