daidala: words on letters

the (ever-evolving) economist

Do you read it? I try. Problem is, this weekly’s so full of good stuff that it takes me a month to finish each issue. Do the math, and you can see that I’m behind faster than you can say “Bushwhacked.” They pile up in the corner, and as unopened copies rise toward the ceiling (how many can I stack before they fall?), so does my guilt: Jon Coltz, serial tree-killer. I’ve taken to an alternating strategy of subscribing one year, atoning the next. Been through several cycles now – seems to work for me, anyway.

Incredible magazine, this. Despite drawing from the work of dozens of correspondents, it nonetheless has the amazing ability to speak with one, unified voice – a voice that often lies at the intersection of self-important and smart-ass (oh, those cheeky captions) – but that is mostly just plain smart. One doesn’t read about Vladimiro Montesinos or medievalist gatherings in Kalamazoo in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, you know. This just in: Moby reportedly reads it too; there we have it, then!

Pretty little magazine, as well; with the recent, major redesign of The Economist – only the fifth full overhaul in its 159-year history – the magazine finally appears comfortable in its clothes. Its identity crisis (loosely paraphrasing Britney: no longer a newspaper or journal, not yet a magazine) has up and vanished, and with that, it has metamorphosed into an ultimately readable, accessible, and timely record of the international mise-en-scène.

But what has The Economist been, and, more pertinent to this post, how has it looked as it has evolved? Well, if you turn back a century, say to the issue of Saturday, July 2, 1910 (1), you find the masthead emblazoned in textura, and learn that it was, at once, a “Weekly Commercial Times, Banker’s Gazette and Railway Monitor: A Political, Literary, and General Newspaper.” More of the cover was occupied by advertising than by real content; and the table of contents itself was crammed into a quarter-page box, but then again, the issue comprised only 50 pages. The text face (2) looks a lot like Phemister’s Old Style speaking in a Bookman sort of dialect; note the departure, however, for figures used in the tabular material.

The masthead, layout, and look were little changed 10 and 20 years later (3, 4, 5, 6) – indeed, the design was essentially frozen for its first 90 years – although by 1930 the Old Style was replaced by a Scotch Roman, and text figures gave way to lining; but the really big changes that The Economist was to see in layout and letterform would begin four years later. Starting in 1934, then, we have a very different publication; the claustrophobic compartmen-talization of text, tables, and ads gave way to a redesign that allowed some breathing room; white space would not be used this liberally in the magazine again for another 70 years. Although registered as a newspaper (as it is, apparently, to this very day), it resembled one far less. Blackletter banner was replaced by sleek inline, and titles of lead articles were set in Perpetua writ large (7, 8).

This showy use of Gill’s 1929 masterpiece was, however, of limited duration; in the early 1950s, vestiges of it remained only in section titles and in the table of contents, and the bold layout de-evolved into an arrangement that was just downright bland (9). Truly, of greater typographic interest during this period were three “emergency editions” of The Economist that were printed – or rather, typewritten – as a result of a compositors’ strike. The first of these begins:

This emergency edition has accordingly been produced without any type-setting whatever. We are painfully aware that it is only a token issue, but we take some pride in being able to preserve the tradition of unbroken issue in a week that marks our 107th birthday...It is perhaps natural that we, as the victims of the dispute, should feel aggrieved against the union, who were its initiators. But even apart from this natural bias, we think any fair-minded person would deem the course of action taken by the London Society of Compositors to be so devious and disingenuous as to deprive them of any right to public sympathy. We have no better friends than the compositors who set our pages week by week. But their union leaders would do well to observe that it is possible to get along without any compositors at all (10).

A forerunner of the flag that is used in the present design appeared a few years later; Perpetua was retained in section titles (set in caps) and Plantin continued to be used in text and subtitles (11, 12). But The Economist, in anything like the present form, did not appear until the late 1960s. Although the body still used newsprint, this new era of the magazine introduced glossy, illustrated covers, a full contents page, and the photocaption chicanery that remains a hallmark of the brand (13, 14, 15).

A sort of typographic promiscuity marked the magazine over the next two decades; in the early 1970s, section titles appeared in Univers and text in Baskerville (16). In the late 1970s and early 1980s, headings and text employed Helvetica and Times, respectively (17). There was a brief fling with Goudy Old Style in the late 1980s (18), followed by a change to the eponymously titled font, Economist (later, Economist 101), with Frutiger for section heads (19).

According to Erik Spiekermann, “The original Ecofont was designed by Gunnlaugur Briem, the only type designer from Iceland. I don’t know what that looked like anymore. Then a Mr Patel redid it, sometime in the late 80s. When I first saw The Economist, the type looked very uninviting. It was too tightly set, and there was too much noise in the letters, too much fuss. It all added to a very dense, grey page.” It is true – character collisions and near-misses abound, especially in the italic, and the letterforms themselves are dark and busy.

For the 2001 redesign – a comprehensive undertaking engineered by Spiekermann, and a focus of his recent talk at AtypI Vancouver – much of the work centered on altering the text font, christened Ecotype in its new form: “The text face was cleaned up and made to resemble the bold weight a little more. The italic was also changed, but not as much. The digital work was done by Ole Schäfer in the space of a few weeks. This new face is exclusive to The Economist.”

As you can see in a partial comparison of Economist and Ecotype (20), the redesigned face did indeed shed some of the noise and fuss, such as the skyward-pointing terminal in the lower case g; in addition, the axis of the Roman characters was shifted from 7 degrees to nearly vertical, and the serifs were reshaped to subtend an angle close to the horizontal. In the italics, Spiekermann and Schäfer softened the curves and shortened the serifs, and they lessened the slope by about 3 degrees. The numerals, too, were treated to a needed cleansing: the 1 now looks less like a dotless i, and the zero has been made monoline, not at all to be confused with the lower case o.

Spiekermann also changed the titling face from Frutiger to his own Officina (21, 22) and added a subhead Ecotype face: “We decided to use Officina as the ‘information’ typeface, for navigation, captions, tables, intros, etc. When the heavier weights were deemed too ‘goofy,’ we made a cleaner version, now available as ITC Officina Display. They used Frutiger Light for headlines, and we changed that to the bold weight of Ecotype, which we had redesigned."

But Spiekermann orchestrated more than a simple font transplant. As you can see in these comparison images (23, 24, 25, 26, 27; courtesy E.S.), he made the magazine much more readable and accessible by adding white space back into the mix and by expanding the table of contents from one page to two via the liberal use of graphics and article titles with clarifying subtitles. Much more color now illuminates the features and figures; key articles are no longer merely outlined in a box, but printed on a field of blue, and graphs and tables are eminently decipherable. To those of us who were subscribers at the time, the change was immediately apparent and most welcome.

In understated fashion, the Editor of The Economist introduced the new design: “Good design, like good writing, should blend into the background; it should be the servant of editors and readers alike, not their master (28).” Had the redesign been heralded via photocaption, however, I wonder whether an opportunity for cheekiness on the part of the editorial staff would have provided a temptation too hard to resist: “Hoary old magazine gets a new dress.” Or something like that. But the real question may be, did Moby notice?

30-November 2003

ff alega: defining techantiqua

Its technicality belies its unadorned beauty; its modernity conceals its classical roots; and its simplicity disguises it as a mere skeletal substructure. But this is no bag of bones; with Alega, Siegfried Rückel turns Gill’s form-norm on its side, and the result is a unique hybrid of a face whose characteristics blur genre boundaries and whose eminent readability, notwithstanding its novelty, may just force us to reconsider our criteria for a good book font. Here, Siegfried discusses the sans-serif branch of Alega, which is distributed through FSI.

JC: Alega is a non-traditional text face: It possesses a unique, technical character, to the extent that some of the glyphs (e.g., the upper case Q and X) stray far from the archetypal forms; yet I perceive it as having a palpable warmth and familiarity. How do you feel these qualities are conveyed?

SR: Alega is a technically constructed type. Most technical types leave a cold impression owing to their clear and austere forms. In contrast, Alega has letterforms that – apart from some exceptions – tend to the forms of an antiqua. This means that there doesn’t exist a quadratic or rectangular a or u that fits in a prefabricated framework, but rather that the individual characters are well-balanced and proportioned and create more or less the impression of antiqua signs from a distance. The italics in particular have the characteristics of a handwritten typeface.

Nonetheless, there are some characters that have nothing at all to do with antiqua forms. These work to the effect that the typeface differs from traditional types. Above all, there are glyphs like the uppercase X that are reminiscent of cave drawings or of primitive African art. In creating these, the normal strictness of a traditional type is livened up. A most important aspect, however, is the soft curveform that dominates all letters. All letter endings are softened, and most interior shapes consist of curves. All of this, combined with the well-balanced letter proportions and different line thicknesses, lends this warm impression to Alega.

JC: In your notes on the FontFont site, you mention the motif that is present in the lower case – particularly in the b, d, p, and q – taking the form of a 90-90-115-65° polygon. How did you conceive of this form and its implementation?

SR: I discovered this shape by experimenting with some fun faces in connection with a totally different type; I was of the opinion that it would be possible to create a totally new typeface. After some experimentation I defined the forms for b, d, p and q. On basis of these forms I adapted all other letters. I did so because this 90-90-115-65° polygon affected me so much. I had the impression of the ultimate, technical form for the aforementioned glyphs.

JC: Your letterforms are non-traditional, yet you’ve issued all of the complements – text figures, small caps, a wealth of ligatures – that are needed for traditional, careful book work. Was it your intention to create a new book face?

SR: Yes – I intended right from the beginning that Alega shouldn’t be just a new typeface, but a very useful font for demanding typography.

JC: You’ve noted also that Alega could be used for anthroposophic typography. Are you a devotee of Steiner, or were you schooled in the Waldorf pedagogy?

SR: My only point of contact with the doctrine of Steiner is the fact that Joseph Beuys – a well-admired artist – has incorporated anthroposophic thoughts into his works and texts. Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that Alega is very suitable as a new interpretation of anthroposophic typography.

JC: The Greek fonts were released very shortly after the Romans. Why did you choose to draw a Greek face, and did you encounter any problems – or uncover any new insights – in doing so?

SR: The Greek version was planned right from the beginning. I’m always disappointed when a good design concept is undermined by the substitution of an unsuitable face for text in another language – for example, when there is no Greek version of the selected type for the Greek text on packages or in instructions. Besides, I am simply fascinated by Greek letters. When I am in Greece I have fun deciphering Greek words even though I don’t read the language. And there you notice that there are only few modern Greek types.

Lack of fluency is certainly a handicap when you want to design a face of another language or type system. When you cannot read or write the language you are inevitably dependent on having the type tested for its legibility by a native speaker. Even so, I’ve noticed that although you have to consider some important aspects of the other written language you can go much further than is done usually (i.e., you can depart from the traditional forms).

But my interest in foreign types in general is reason enough for me to create a Greek version. In the same vein, I began to design single signs of the Chinese type system in the manner of Alega and with the help of a Chinese calligrapher. But this was a just-for-fun project and won’t be worked out in the end.

JC: To the best of my knowledge, Alega is your first commercially available typeface. In what ways have you seen it used so far? Do you plan to expand the face further, or have you moved onto new forms?

SR: At present, Alega has mostly sold in the USA, and so I haven’t seen many examples of it in use. As mentioned above, I am occupied from time to time with the further development of Alega; a Turkish version is planned. And at the moment, I am still working on the revision of the seriffed version that will come out soon as part of release 33 of the FontFont library.

Originally, I didn’t plan to develop a seriffed version, but then I began to try a few possible transformations of the basic idea. The result convinced me to the extent that I showed it to the FontFont type board, whose members were also enthusiastic about the idea. So a totally independent type was created – one that can be combined easily with the sans-serif, but that also offers new possibilities for use. Of course I have other type projects in mind, but at the moment it is not clear which one I’ll begin with.

22-October 2003

*Added 28-October: Be sure to Check out Siegfried’s own, wonderful site that features more detailed and comprehensive settings of Alega as well as a sneak preview of Alega Serif.

helvetica and her vinyl boots

I just knew that Aimee Bender had it in her; it was abundantly clear to me that she was one of those non-typographers with typographic sensibilities. (What should we call such people, anyway?)

In her first, remarkable novel, An Invisible Sign of My Own, painstakingly hand-crafted numerals play a prominent role, as do perfect circles; and in a world where font dominates the common parlance, Aimee actually throws in typeface. There was no denying the evidence, then; all I lacked was the proverbial smoking gun. And then one Sunday morning this past summer, it literally landed on my doorstep.

The New York Times Magazine, June 22, pp 17–18. There is Aimee, leaning against her kitchen sink; snapshots of her night table, refrigerator door, Freud doll, and closet cum office complete the photographic pastiche. The interview questions comprise the peculiar and the prosaic; the interest lies wholly in Aimee’s answers. For me, the high point occurs just past the halfway mark, in response to what she does between writing projects:

...I have a file called “Fonts,” where I make up different stories about fonts in the different fonts. They’re like Helvetica, who is this fully realized person in my mind. Helvetica and her vinyl boots.

Being who I am, this got my blood pumping hard. I was curious, and so I emailed; and within days, Aimee wrote back. In addition to being one hell of a talented writer, she is kind, unassuming, and generous; after all, she sent the font stories, replete with a plea for editorial assistance. I happened to like them just the way they were, and so I left them alone. Here are five.

06-October 2003

prologue

Last year around this time I wrote to him and asked if he would do it. Ballsy, perhaps; but I thought gee he’s going to be in town anyway and gosh why keep him all to ourselves and boy it’s been several years since he did their font but they’re still using it every month in every calendar and well, wouldn’t it just be nice?

He wrote back within an hour: “Certainly.”

That was too good, too soon; for I hadn’t even called the venue yet to see if the auditorium was open that night. I dialed, and fortunately, it was. I got lucky – a second time.

Over the next several months, he and I exchanged sporadic emails. I asked:

What will you be speaking about?
Who will go first?
Slide projector or an LCD?
Is there anything special that you require?

This last one met with an immediate, one-word reply: No. I smiled, and called a university colleague to relate the irony. Several years previously, she and I had helped to arrange a visit by a prominent neurologist-writer who insisted on:

a $15,000 honorarium
an auditorium temperature of precisely 67.5° F
an assortment of freshly-cut carrots and celery stalks
communication only via his personal assistant

The prominent type designer required only a slide projector.

Months passed laconically; then, time superscripted exponents of increasing magnitude. Suddenly, we were at a week and counting. At a family gathering in Michigan, I found myself desperately in need of catharsis. I told my brother-in-law, “I’m introducing him. Just a couple of minutes, mind you, but 350 people and all. I’m pretty nervous about this.” He told me that, earlier in the year, he had given the keynote address to 10,000 people at a physics conference in Japan. That comforted me, sort of.

Yes, I faced the wonderful, horrible prospect of introducing him. I had asked him, after all; who better to do it, they said. You’ll do fine, they said. Not a big deal – up and say a few words, they said.

I was completely, utterly, terrified.

And yet, I was not at all surprised at the assignment. In fact, I had, for many months, thought it might just come down to this. Washing dishes, waiting at intersections, watering the lawn, I would try out short phrases like, “Type is everywhere: in our telephone books, in our newspapers...” and “He is an artist and a craftsman, and like his father before him, an historian...” So it’s not like I was unprepared or anything.

Though the event occurred just two months ago, my memories of the days beforehand are merely stroboscopic snapshots of pre-conference busy-ness and bliss, set against a subsonic score of general malaise. Could someone else do it? I really don’t deserve it. Who am I, anyway? Some Midwestern provocateur-wannabe with a penchant for FontFonts and alliteration, that’s all. But to no avail; destiny wanted my ass, and that’s all there was to it.

I remember peeing many times that day. Hand out a few badges and programs. Pee. Welcome to Minneapolis. Pee some more. Why do we pee so much when we’re nervous? Surely not just to mark some porcelain urinal on the third floor of a hotel men’s room. C’mon evolution – catch up already.

Anyway, sometime late in the afternoon, but well after having established firm rapport with my favorite trough (second from left, Kohler, pink soap cake slightly askew, loose handle), I exited the restroom for the nth (I’ll guess high teens) time to find him just on the other side of the door.

I had pre-assembled an internal pastiche from the various descriptions I had received. Tall, they said. A perfect English gentleman, replete with untarnished accent. Sixties, but youthful. And so he was just as I had imagined.

Pleasant pleasantries, and then, “But how do you plan to get to the venue tonight?” The reply: “Would you be kind enough to give me a ride?”

Surreal. See illusory, 976.9: dreamlike, unreal, phantasmagoric. 976.10: hallucinatory, mind-blowing.

Unbelievable. See complex, 799.4: convoluted, labyrinthine, fucked-up.

799.4 + 976.9 = some seriously fucked-up, mind-blowing shit. Not only was I introducing him, but I was driving him to the damn venue.

I thought briefly about returning to my favorite hideaway once more – this time, to vomit – but I feared that this might violate the sacrosanct, strictly urine-based bond, and so I held it all in. Besides, in a moment I would have to pull in front of the hotel lobby where he would be waiting.

The venue and the hotel are separated by 10 blocks, or 5 minutes. That’s a blinding rate of 120 blocks per hour; even so, as we blew past cafés and hotels, he’d say, “I remember that” and “I stayed there” and “Was that there before?” He had taken in much of the city, you see, when he was here eight years previous to work on the typeface, and he had not forgotten.

I dropped him off at the front door; it was six o’clock, and we had an hour to go. Better to be safe, right?

Inside, I caught up with him and said, in full-on, feigned nonchalance, “I’ll be doing your introduction tonight – is that okay?” Approval granted; last step before lift-off. But Houston, we have a problem: all my clocks are wrong; time is screwing with me once again. It seems the parabola has up and mutinied, inverting itself on me. Do you read? Over.

The engineers at command central all laughed at me. “Hey, you asked for it, sucker!” And then they went home.

T-minus five minutes. Standing-room only; I’ve just heard that there is a line 75 people deep out the door; they might not get in tonight.

Four. Three. Two. One.

Lights dim. Representative from the venue speaks briefly, and then I hear my name. It’s super slo-mo time, now, and I can feel John Madden tracing the path from my seat in the front row to the stage. He marks the podium with a large X and says to Al, “Do you hear that? Boom, boom, boom! Sounds like the kid’s got a giant subwoofer wired straight into his left ventricle!”

I took the two, rumpled sheets on which I had typed the introduction – every word of it – out of my pocket, and I laid them on the podium. I looked up and saw...nobody; I was suddenly alone, or so it seemed. The lights were all on me, leaving none for them. And so I didn’t need to imagine them naked, for it was as though they had all up and gone. A little less terrified, I began to speak.

It was an out-of-body experience, through and through. I was perched up somewhere in the rafters, looking down; sometimes at me, but mostly at those whom I worshipped and feared. Strangely, from up there, I could see everyone and everything so plainly, and I’m pretty sure I looked at them all.

I said his name, led the applause, and quickly got offstage. I exhaled slowly and deeply – a touch-your-toes, Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon exhalation, if you know what I mean. The air left not just my lungs, but also my feet, legs, arms, shoulders and head.

When I looked up, I realized that he was already several slides into his presentation. I suddenly stopped selfishly obsessing about my two-minute predicament, and understood that now, and only just now, the thing had begun in earnest.

19-September 2003

dear you

It’s been too long – how are you? And how are things out west? I hope that all is well. Life is about the same for me. Nothing’s changed all that much – still staying up too late and waking up too early – still eating a bit too much and not exercising quite enough.

To say the truth, though, I have been a bit more upset than usual. Not quite myself – a little more tense and anxious. A little more insecure, maybe. Or uncertain. It’s just that – and please don’t be angry with me for what I’m about to say – it’s just that I don’t know where we stand anymore. We had a relationship once – a healthy, affirming, energizing relationship – one that may now be going nowhere. I feel that we’re at an impasse, and I don’t know if things will ever be – or can ever be – the same again.

I fear that you must take me for granted now. But it wasn’t always like this. I remember when you used to send me little surprises in the mail – your spring 1997 Type Guide, for example. And though your message was oddly redundant throughout – abcdEFGH&123 – I pored over it and never tired of reading it. To this day, I’ve kept it in a little red file that I’ve simply labeled, “Adobe.”

But a short time later – and inexplicably – you began to charge for your missives; and I paid, of course. I was in too deep at that point; I must have fallen under your spell, I guess. Besides, twenty-five dollars didn’t seem like all that much. But when I think about it now – that I had to give you money up front to afford myself the opportunity to spend even more on you – well, that’s when the tide began to turn. What’s worse is that, though your messages grew longer, and were printed on finer paper, they retained that eerie internal repetitiveness: “Letters have tone, timbre, character...,” you wrote. (I thought you were such a poet!) But it was only upon finding that these words weren’t even your own (you had apparently lifted them from some other guy named “Robert”) that I began to wonder if you had ever loved me – or if you were just using me.

Did you ever love me? Did you? I can think of times when you gave in remarkable ways and then took away (multiple masters). And I so clearly recall you “reinventing” yourself to serve me better – something about OpenType – and how you treated me afterwards. I remember your strange words: “No upgrades.” Why did you heap such cruelties on me? It was as though I had to get to know you all over again. And so I did; or at least I tried.

Don’t get me wrong – you really were – and are – the best. That sweet little a of yours (in your Garamond) is perfection. And your color, your body clearance – your many arms, legs, ears, and even tails – are all anatomical marvels. Do you remember how I’d set you down on the page and we’d just wonder at the multiple f ligatures we could achieve together? And how sometimes, we’d try it old-style, just to bring back fond memories? You gave really good product, but what I had to go through to get it!

I just wish that life could be as simple again... In the past, the only thing that stood between you and me was my Type on Call CD. But then you began to use some sort of Download Manager – an unwelcome, omnipresent chaperone – whose presence you required for each of our exchanges. And now you’ve gone and overhauled your Basics package in an attempt, I suppose, to hook me on what I’ve already paid for – but at a much lower price. I can’t help but feel as though I’ve been kicked in the ass a hundred times, only to hear you exclaim afterwards, “Oh, so sorry, love – I only meant to do that once.”

And so you continue to tease me, to laugh at me – as you perhaps always have. There are others out there, you realize, who don’t engage in these games, who freely send me their letters, who play it straight. Is it too late for you to change? Please try – for me – okay? We’ve had some really good times, and I don’t want to believe it’s all over – not just yet, anyway. Think about it.

Love,
Me

06-September 2003

alcuin and euler: of minuscules and maths

One: Anatomy and taxonomy

Consider them individually, as I, and perhaps you, have always done. One, a minuscule named for Charlemagne’s scribe, the abbot of Tours (735–804), was first drawn 17 years ago by Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse (see Zapf von Hesse, Bindings · Handwritten Books · Typefaces · Examples of Lettering and Drawings, 2002) and issued in digital form in 1991. The other, a super-family of mathematical fonts that comprises Roman, Greek, fraktur, and script forms, was named for the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) and is the product of a two-year collaboration between Hermann Zapf and Donald Knuth (see Knuth and Zapf, AMS Euler – A New Typeface for Mathematics, reprinted in Chapter 17 of Knuth, Digital Typography, 1999).

Consideration of the two faces together is likely a novel proposition: Although both were conceived in the Carolingian spirit and drawn in the same studio, they have lived in very different worlds from the start. While Alcuin drifts freely throughout the PostScript plenum, AMS (American Mathematical Society) Euler is largely confined to the small sphere of TeX/LaTeX. Yet when their Romans are set side-by-side, a remarkable resemblance of one to the other is immediately apparent; whereas some glyphs are akin to brother and sister, others are more like identical twins in different clothing, or perhaps more appropriately, like husband and wife in matching rompers.

It is only fair to say that, while Alcuin is intended for text use, the Roman of Euler merely comprises a set of math literals: letters not intended for use in text, but rather in mathematical formulas, denoting not word parts but constants, scalars, vectors, and the like. Nonetheless, a study of the two in tandem is meritworthy; in doing so, we may better understand how two highly similar faces – contemporaneously crafted by arguably the most influential espoused typographers of the twentieth century – can serve very different purposes.

There are of course some differences between Alcuin and Euler, and these are described here and are shown in the accompanying figures. The most conspicuous contrast between the lower cases of Alcuin and Euler lies in a fundamental difference of forms in the a and g: two-storey in the former, and single-storey in the latter. Another notable distinction is that the ascenders of Euler are considerably shorter – 85% the height – than those of Alcuin. Other differences are:

The serifs are generally sharper in Alcuin than in Euler
Serifs at stem bases of letters such as d, h, and i have a greater angle to the horizontal in Euler than in Alcuin
In the letter e, the angle of the crossbar to the horizontal is greater in Euler than in Alcuin
The serifs at the stem apexes have a greater angle to the horizontal in Alcuin than in Euler
The dots over i and j are smaller and are raised higher in Alcuin than in Euler
The axis angle from the vertical is greater in Euler than in Alcuin

Salient differences between the typefaces in the upper case are fewer and appear more restricted to the fascia:

In Alcuin, the serifs on stem apexes are angled to the horizontal; this is a motif throughout the upper case
A motif pervasive in Euler is the presence of foot serifs on stem bases
There is a tendency toward unilateral serifs on stem apexes in Alcuin (see, for example, I and J), and toward a mixture of both unilateral (H, K) and bilateral serifs in Euler (I, J, L)

In the creation of Euler, Knuth and Zapf “decided that the new font should have a ‘handwritten’ flavor” (Knuth, Digital Typography, p345). To this end, particular attention was paid to the numerals, and it is perhaps here where we see the biggest differences between the two typefaces. The authors continue: “...there was a chance that Euler’s own handwriting would inspire some feature of the design. And indeed, it turned out that Euler often made the top of the numeral zero pointed instead of round. However, this is a common characteristic of handwriting in general...” It is true: Nowhere in Euler is the appearance of handwritten forms as prevalent as in the numerals.

In order to digitize Euler and prepare it for book and manuscript use, much more work was necessary than was originally foreseen; six years passed from the time Zapf completed his drawings to Euler’s first appearance in print. And most would agree that the result was well worth the wait. But curiously, and perhaps sadly, we rarely see Euler in use. What is it about this typeface that gives authors and publishers pause? Why – relative to other mathematical fonts – is Euler so seldom employed?

Two: Aesthetics and semiotics

“Gentle reader: This is a handbook about TeX, a new typesetting system intended for the creation of beautiful books...” So begins the preface of Donald Knuth’s, The TeXbook, the canonical guide to the use of Knuth’s seminal form of TeX – what is now known as “plain” TeX (Knuth, 1986). The importance of TeX and its variants to the publishing community – particularly, but not limited to, the scientific community – cannot be over-exaggerated. In any bookstore around the world in which you will find mathematical texts – the imprints of Chapman & Hall/CRC, Springer-Verlag, and John Wiley and Sons foremost among them – you will see the fruits of Knuth’s typesetting system, and you’ll feign to deny that these books, regardless of their particular subject matter, are indeed beautiful.

But upon further inspection, you note that these texts – however beautiful in appearance and varied in content – are eerily similar, almost as though a single book designer bore a heavy, unwavering hand in the final formatting; and rather than co-optimizing design and content, he or she stubbornly or perhaps lazily gave a common look to all.

Strange as it may seem, this is more or less just what happened. In the early 1980’s, Leslie Lamport developed a suite of macros for use with TeX, and he called the resulting amalgamation LaTeX. This program’s raison d'être is to facilitate even further the formatting of documents, particularly journal articles, reports, and books, enabling authors to attain beauty via simplicity; and LaTeX is now the flavor of TeX that most authors – who happen to serve double duty as book designers – use.

In his guide to the program, Lamport writes, “With LaTeX, you don’t have to worry about formatting while writing your document,” and, “As you are writing your document, you should be concerned with its logical structure, not its visual appearance” (Lamport, LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2nd ed, 1994, p7). Though I am a frequent user of the program, as well as an unabashed champion of the user’s guide, these statements have long worried me; the LaTeX approach, one of “logical design,” generally seeks no middle ground – one where aesthetics and content can co-mingle. Rather, the macros of LaTeX operate as though on autopilot; and so we have literally scores of beautiful books that all look pretty much the same.

Further compounding this morphological monotony is a relative homogeneity of letterform: Virtually all documents processed in TeX/LaTeX are done so in its native lingua franca face, Computer Modern. And indeed, there is utility in this uniformity: On a practical level, leaving the defaults in place, not only in TeX but in any word-processing program, facilitates document sharing among users; and in a manner that serves the commonweal more subtly, but perhaps more profoundly, redundancy of font and format increases the transparency of both; over time, the signal-to-noise ratio of the content is maximized.

But what if you want or need to explore the flexibility of type and typesetting within TeX? A particular hobby – or more frankly, a perennial struggle – of mine in mathematical typesetting lies in arranging novel, harmonious cohabitations of Roman and Greek letterforms on the page. Amicable Greco-Roman admixtures exist, of course, but they may quickly lose their allure when one contemplates the extra work required to make them sing with one voice. The existence of Euler, in the absence of any expressly crafted companion face, provides an opportunity to take up the struggle once again. And so what to marry with Euler; how efficiently would this new union communicate mathematics; how aesthetically compatible would this union be; and might this novel combination shift or change the meaning of the mathematics signified therein?

Knuth found a pairing; the debut of Euler was in a book called Concrete Mathematics (1989) that Knuth co-wrote with Ronald Graham and Oren Patashnick, and in which the text face was a Knuth-designed slab-serif called, fittingly, Concrete Roman. With no intention of denigrating Knuth and his colleagues, I’ve always found this to be an odd, immiscible couplet: a slab/typewriter Roman with (mostly) a Carolingian Greek. But not everyone shares my view, of course. At the end of their article on AMS Euler, Knuth and Zapf include an excerpt of an email from University of Chicago statistician Ronald Thisted that addresses both efficiency and aesthetics in Concrete Mathematics: “Incidentally, I find the result of the typography and design to be the most readable technical book I have seen in some time. I am usually fatigued after reading a few pages of most books, but I was able to read all of Chapter 1 without my eyes wandering” (Knuth, Digital Typography, p363).

So it’s a problem of personal aesthetics, then. My own concern – generally, for what is beautiful and harmonious on the printed page, and specifically, for the compatibility of Euler and Concrete Roman in the textbook, Concrete Mathematics – leads me to believe that Euler could be better served. But is that all? At a deeper, and possibly more complex level, does a math book set in Concrete Roman/Euler “say” something different than another whose semantics and syntax are identical but whose letterforms differ? Does the redesigned Smithsonian, which now uses Hoefler Text and Gotham, mean what it did a year ago, when it “spoke” in FB Village and PMN Caecilia? More broadly, when the font changes, does the message remain the same?

(Incidentally, even as I am working through this post, I am typing in 8 pt Verdana with a column width of 3½ inches – thus giving my drafts nearly the same look as the final product rendered in HTML. If instead I were to pound away in 12 pt Times New Roman, it would be akin to doing a dress rehearsal in the wrong costume.)

Well, if the medium is indeed the message, as McLuhan so famously claimed, then the answer is a resounding no! But surely you knew this already. Take, for example, the short, rather direct command – an invitation if you will: “Kiss me!” It is set here in two very different typefaces. If you were to return to your desk after a coffee break to find this phrase – set in Pastonchi (above) – taped to your monitor, you might well be tempted to take your budding office romance to the next level. Set as it is, there is little ambiguity; distilled to its very essence, it says, “I want you now; come over here and kiss me this instant!” Instead of imploring you with Pastonchi, however, suppose your office mate – with some inexplicable intention – decided that Blood of Dracula (below) – in red, no less – might be a nice font selection for this missive. How would you react? You might think, “Kiss you? In dripping blood? Hey, I like you and all, but I’m not ready for Billy Bob and Angelina redux just yet.” In short, the message is confusing: The door to a kiss has been opened, but what lies beyond?

Admittedly, the dichotomy I’ve drawn here is much more extreme than that between Euler and Computer Modern, but the point holds: When the typeface changes, so does the message, and so might the interpretation. Semioticians – scholars who are interested in signs and symbols and their functions – might tell us that, with regard to our example, while the fundamental form (cf. Plato) of the letter and word pattern – or the signifier as linguist Ferdinand de Saussure called it – is the same in both cases (“Kiss me!”), it appears differently; and therefore the concept, labeled the signified, may differ markedly (see top figure; see also Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1959, p66; and Helfand, Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture, 2001, pp105–110). But what if the context changes? Say that, instead of espying the latter of those two messages during the workday, you receive it in the evening at your Halloween office party. The exquisite timing might just heighten the excitement and arousal, not to mention the cathartic pleasure the inevitable kiss provides.

We need to extend Saussure’s model of the sign (comprising both signifier and signified), then, to envelop it within context (bottom figure), and thereby acknowledge, as is proper, the dependence of both signifier and signified on environment and circumstances. As Eric Gill wrote, “...there is also a norm of letter clothes; or rather there are many norms according as letters are used for this place or purpose or that. Between the occasion wherein the pure sans-serif or mono-line (block) letter is appropriate & that in which nothing is more appropriate than pure fancifulness, there are innumerable occasions” (Gill, An Essay on Typography, 1988, p47). Robert Bringhurst puts it more succinctly: “Typography exists to honor content” (The Elements of Typographic Style, 2002, p17). He also says, “Good typography is like bread: ready to be admired, appraised, and dissected before it is consumed” (p49). But baking good bread requires a certain amount of tinkering and hard work before one gets it right. In order to use AMS Euler, one must obtain the required package and then go about the task of playing matchmaker for it – finding a companion roman and then scaling one or the other to achieve equal x-height. And this, one could suppose, is a reason Euler finds so little use.

A second reason is tied to semiotics and relates to a phenomenon we might call “sign dissonance.” If the relationship between the signifier and the signified is ambiguous (i.e., the Greek beta in Euler may or may not be understood to represent the beta, and from a statistical/mathematical perspective, may therefore be misconstrued as something other than a parameter estimate in a linear regression equation), then readers may not fully understand the text. Fear of sign dissonance – and a desire to promote its opposite – what might be called “sign confluence” – is perhaps another reason why some avoid Euler.

But there are few things as good to eat as freshly-baked bread; and so it is with the use of Euler. In my opinion, it is well worth the extra work and the slight risk in order to produce beautiful text. Near the beginning of this post I wrote that a study of Euler and Alcuin is worthwhile in hopes that we may better understand how two highly similar faces can serve very different purposes. It is also worth our time and energy to scrutinize them in order to find out how they may work together. And indeed, a little experimentation shows that they can work together very well.

I am of the opinion that more rigorous experimentation with Euler, as well as with other fonts that hold promise vis-à-vis mathematics must be prioritized in the coming months and years. The expansion of character sets via OpenType and unicode allows for this, as do recent extensions of TeX and its variants. While a manuscript on 17th century mathematics is nicely set using Computer Modern in the context of an extant LaTeX document class, its content may be honored more justly using a face and a format that, at once, avoid anachronism and promote aesthetic harmony. Simply put, we seem to have eschewed art in favor of technology; can we not add it back into the mix?

Three: Physiology

Allowing Alcuin and Euler to function in concert within the confines of LaTeX requires a bit of work on the part of both, although Alcuin will receive the lion’s share. Because the .fd, .tfm, and .vf (font definition, TeX font metric, and virtual font) files for Alcuin are not publicly available, you will have to create them yourself; here’s how:

Make copies of your .afm and .pfb files. If you are working with the light weight of Alcuin, as I am, change the name of your .afm file to one that will work with the program fontinst; the moniker uall8a will do.
Run fontinst on uall8a.afm. Doing this will generate a series of .pl and .vpl files, as well as the necessary .fd files.
Execute the program pltotf on each of your .pl files, and run vptovf on your .vpl files; this step generates .tfm and .vf files. After doing so, you may delete your .pl and .vpl files.
Move the newly-created .tfm and .vf files to the appropriate folders in your fonts directory within your TeX program. Also, move your .fd files to the base folder within your LaTeX directory.
Change the name of your .pfb file to uall8a and move it into the type1 folder of your fonts directory.
Add the following line to your psfonts.map file, either within dvips (if you will view your documents using GSView), or pdftex (if you plan to use pdfLaTeX): uall8r URWAlcuinT-Ligh "TeXBase1Encoding ReEncodeFont" <8r.enc
Call Alcuin in your LaTeX file by adding the following line to your preamble: \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{ual}

Now to add Euler to the mix; fortunately, this is a speedy step:

If your LaTeX installation is a relatively recent one, you should have built-in support for Euler in the form of .tfm and .vf files, as well as the necessary font binary (.pfb) files. If you lack these files, you may obtain them from the American Mathematical Society’s website.
Obtain the either the euler or the eulervm packages from CTAN and place in your base folder.
You will want to scale the x-height of Euler to match that of Alcuin. An inelegant, but effective, way to do this is to change the second entry in the \DeclareMathSizes command, corresponding to the text size you are using. For example, if you specify 12 pt text, you may want to change \DeclareMathSizes{12} {12} {9} {7} to \DeclareMathSizes{12} {11.7} {9} {7}.
Call the euler or eulervm packages by adding \usepackage{euler} to your preamble. Refresh your format files, and you should be good to go.
If, in testing, you find that the Euler fonts are just a tad light in weight compared to Alcuin, you may wish to call the 7 pt masters, rather than the 10 pt masters.

It may be interesting to note, finally, that Charlemagne’s scribe was also a prominent mathematician; indeed, he is best remembered for his mathematical contributions. Perhaps, then, Euler and Alcuin were meant to be used together.

19-August 2003

dyana weissman: on the brink

Talking with experienced type designers invariably gives me a rare sort of thrill. The skills they possess are breathtaking, if not altogether frightening; their typographic corpuses speak – and more than occasionally constitute – volumes; their accumulated knowledge reaches far beyond typography, stretching well into the realms of history, language, and culture; and sometimes they can speak just as deftly about wood, metal, and photo type as they can about digital.

But if my conversations with veterans are thrilling, my exchanges with novice designers are an order of magnitude more; they launch me headfirst through sentient states both lofty and low, landing me smack-dab in the center of an emotional muddle that comprises overwhelming excitement, burning envy, sheer awe, incredible curiosity, and immense pride. Young designers have an enthusiasm and a passion for the typographic arts that are exquisitely palpable; they bear the mark of minty-fresh educations and are eager to put them to good use; and though newly indoctrinated, their young minds are yet malleable and receptive. Indeed, they are about to embark upon incredible, indeterminate journeys; none of us knows which roads they will take, just as none of us can deny that their futures are whatever they will make of them.

Dyana Weissman is one of these young typographers of whom I write. A graduate of RISD, and a freshman designer at The Font Bureau, she actually appears to have taken Casey Kasem’s weekly benediction to heart; with feet firmly planted, she seems to have a clear idea of where she’s headed, or at least of what she wants to achieve. Though just 23 years old, she shows signs of being on the brink of something great; and as exciting as it will be for her to experience, it may well be much more so for us to watch, and to cheer her on as we do.

JC: Dyana, what is your background and training in typography?

DW: My mother used to do freelance graphic design, so there were always computers and type specimens lying around. I took a class during my foundation year at Rhode Island School of Design on typography. The teacher told me, “of everyone in this class, you got bit the hardest.” I was nuts about it, and I went on to major in graphic design. During one summer, I decided to stay in Providence, and I took a job as a hall monitor for the pre-college kids. It was a terrible job, but I was rewarded with money and a free summer class, which was a little counter-productive because I was up all night – until about five in the morning. I decided to take Cyrus Highsmith’s type design class. It was only two weeks long, but it lasted from eight in the morning until five or six at night, and I couldn’t get enough. I think that I slept about three hours a day, but I was so enthusiastic about it, I just kept going.

After that I was pretty sure I never wanted to do anything else, so I tried out other areas (just to make sure there wasn’t something else I was as interested in), while keeping in touch with Cyrus. During my senior year I took an internship in which I began to digitize a Scotch Roman that I should be finishing soon.

JC: What do you do at The Font Bureau?

DW: A designer gives me a project to work on – either a custom job or something we’re thinking about releasing – and I do what I can with it. When I’m finished, he or she helps me to see what I’ve done wrong. Lately, I’ve been checking the spacing and kerning on a retail typeface, as well as making a display version of one of our Readability Series faces. I’ve also helped to expand two fonts out right now, Nobel Extra Light Condensed and Extra Light Italic. Nobel was designed by Tobias Frere-Jones; naturally, he gets the big credit. I’ve also started doing a lot of typeface identifications; someone will email a jpeg or tiff of a typeface that they desperately want. I really love doing these, since I get to prowl through the specimen books and test my knowledge. It’s a great way to learn, because I begin to see what the subtle differences are between faces – what separates FontFont Bodoni from ITC Bodoni, for example. Plus, while searching I often find an interesting typeface that I never would have come across otherwise.

JC: What are you especially good or bad at in type design?

DW: For a while I was getting pretty good at making Central European character sets. I haven’t gotten too many of those lately, though. One thing I need to work on is catching the details; just when I think I have everything done, I look again and see glaring mistakes. I’ll have named a file wrong or made a curve happen too fast. Sometimes this occurs after I’ve already turned in a proof, which of course, is never impressive. But I want to get everything perfect.

JC: Why have you chosen to become a type designer?

DW: I decided to become a type designer simply because I love it. When I first drew letters in Cyrus’ class I felt this thrill that I was actually accomplishing something. And it’s just what I like. I like that it is simply black and white – I’m terrible with color. I also like that it is just about beautiful lines and beautiful shapes, and about finding the relationships between them.

JC: What do you perceive to be some problems with type design as a career choice?

DW: Piracy is the first thing that springs to mind. With the state of the economy and the mindset that some type users have, it is so easy for them to pass around fonts as though designers didn’t spend hundreds of hours on them. Another problem is that the average person simply knows nothing about typography.

JC: What kinds of faces do you want to design?

DW: Good question – I have become very interested lately in calligraphy and in script faces, which is odd, because a year ago I would have told you that I hated most script faces. I’m digitizing a script right now, taken from Lucas Materot’s work. Apart from that, I like very thick, chunky stuff. Slab serifs are so cool. I love, love, love TheSerif by Luc(as) de Groot. The heavier it gets, the better. Clarendon has this funky, '70s federal building quality to it that I like a lot as well.

JC: What do you think type design needs most right now?

DW: Type simply needs to be better understood. First, people need to be aware that type design is an actual, legitimate occupation. Second, designers need to learn how to use type better.

Most of my friends from high school crack lame jokes and think that what I do is pointless. A few of my college friends – people who graduated with me in graphic design, even – think that I don’t have a “real job.” They think that graphic design is the only important thing, and that type design is just a facet of graphic design. They don’t realize that we have our own conventions and societies all over the world. A few of these friends even steal fonts and talk about it openly, as though I’m not there. They have no idea what goes into making a typeface and how important typefaces are.

And as most people reading this blog are aware, there is horrible design assaulting our eyes everyday. While there are, of course, much more important things to worry about, I still can’t help noticing the misuse of type everyday. There are so many signs and logos in Boston that just make me want to cry.

JC: Where does type design fit in with your goals in life?

DW: I will always want to be drawing; why would anyone stop? I’ve talked to some designers who have been in the business for a while, and they tell me that they’ve started to grow tired of it, and that it becomes the way to feed their kids, and so that’s what they live for. At 23, I’m certainly not ready to settle down yet, if ever...so my career had better be my main focus. It would be nice to get the Peignot award, but I have a long way to go before I can imagine that being a possibility; although you only go as far as you allow yourself to go. So why not? I’ll go for the Peignot. Otherwise, in a few years I’d like to have travelled more and seen the world. I think that if I ever save up enough money (and courage), I’d like to live in Italy and draw type there. But I like Boston far too much to ever think about leaving.

05-August 2003

itc bodoni: 16 of 20

It seems to me that digital type foundries “go live” at the rate of about one per week. There’s a nearly constant stream of emails and announcements to the effect that someone somewhere is licensing something and has opened wide the URL and turned on the SSL and it’s therefore time to choose and charge.

I wish I had a decent handle on all this, but it’s kind of like watching a troupe of jugglers who keep adding more balls and torches to the mix. (How many are they tossing up now? I dunno – a whole lot!) Indeed, I feel guilty and irresponsible as a result of my sloppy accounting; after all, I consider myself a certified voyeur in this field.

At the very least, I should duly note and append each opening to the long list; were I fully self-actualized, I’d unquestionably celebrate every one of these announcements. We in our tight little domain, whether we be players or peripherals, almost share a necessary compulsion to root for one another. Noblesse oblige, so they say.

But then, every once in a blue moon, there’s a communiqué that transcends mere noteworthiness; truly, one that plants a deep and immutable footprint in the fresh pavement of Albert Gore’s very own superhighway; in short, really big stuff. And as the bytes land in our inboxes, jaws drop and eyes pop as we join in a transcontinental chorus of “Huzzah!”

Well on Friday, my friends, we had ample reason to sing our song, for the renowned type designer Sumner Stone premiered his long-awaited online font shop, to be found at stonetypefoundry.com.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Mr Stone, let me tell you what I know. Oh, he’s a polymath to be sure – the rare sort of designer who blurs the distinctions between the Greek ideals of paideia and techné. He is at once an artist and a craftsman; a mathematician, calligrapher, designer, and teacher. He worked first for Hallmark, did a short stint at Autologic, then was Director of Typography for four years at Adobe. He established the Stone Type Foundry in 1990.

Stone is not, relatively speaking, the prolific sort; but his work is influential and important. Enough already; open your favorite browser and examine his wares. You’ll see:

1. Arepo – Stone’s serifed display face which is compatible with Stone Print, SFPL, or Cycles (conspicuously absent)
2. Basalt – An all-caps font used initially for signage in Stanford’s Green Library
3. ITC Stone – Archetype of the digital era’s dawn; a superfamily of serif, sans, and informal fonts; read about it in Stone’s article in Fine Print on Type (pp 136–139)
4. SFPL – A trizygotic triplet of Cycles and Stone Print, having roughly the width of the former and the x-height of the latter; developed for the San Francisco Public Library
5. Silica – Stone’s humanized slab-serif in six weights
6. Stone Print – An economical, unadorned serifed face

And finally, you’ll find a link to ITC Bodoni, a typeface that many consider to be the truest digital interpretation of any Bodoni available. In crafting this revision, which was made publicly available in 1994, Stone supervised a team that consisted of Holly Goldsmith, Jim Parkinson, and Janice Prescott Fishman. The foursome voyaged twice to Parma, Italy and used Bodoni’s posthumously published Manuale Typografico (1818) as the definitive reference (see D.B. Updike, Printing Types, 3rd ed, v2, figs 308 and 309, inter alia). They subsequently drew six-point and 72-point masters. Interestingly, the cut of ITC Bodoni that is perhaps used most often – the 12-point – was not designed directly but rather is the result of an electronic interpolation between the small and large sizes.

The ITC interpretation is exactly what we were taught a Bodoni could not be: readable. (For a monthly attestation, see How magazine.) It’s a Romantic face, but reads more like one from the Renaissance. ITC Bodoni entirely lacks the stasis – or in Dave Farey’s words, the “hard geometry” – of other digital versions, such as Bitstream’s. And in contrast to FF Bodoni Classic, which is another faithful interpretation, the ITC issue is far less showy. Its contrast between thick and thin strokes isn’t as great, its serifs aren’t as exaggerated, its x-height is less petite, and its numerals are decidedly no-nonsense; a Bodoni that’s just a bit rumpled, perhaps, or as Stone says, “grouchy.”

And so it goes; another little type foundry has made its foray into online commerce. In this case, however, there are few unknowns: the goods are top-notch and we’re all darned familiar with the proprietor. Big news indeed, then, and it’s not too late to join the chorus.

27-July 2003

joie de vivre

Big gulp (à la pdf).

25-July 2003

the conference

Oh I know another of those dreams that just seem so real bounces around in my cranium all day check in I still hear myself talking about him with you and gossiping about you with them I actually got to meet him while he looked nothing like I expected you appeared almost exactly as I imagined she was a bit older while he was much younger and I confess I cannot tell you everything some is much too personal to reveal hmmm elevator up down up down ding listen clap learn revere laugh eat spend up early down late it blew my mind apart and put it back together and blew it apart again you said I knew what you meant brilliant check out as days weeks months pass memories of you and he and she will intertwine mesh meld blur whatever the case it was blissful exhausting dizzying exhilarating and while it feels like it really could have happened I’m now convinced it was all just a dream.

21-July 2003

pas de blog: snotty repartee

Honestly! I never thought your blog would last this long. Will wonders never cease?

You’re really too kind, Sir. But certainly, you know about the logarithmic perception of time; as we grow older, it all becomes increasingly compressed.

Oh, you must have misunderstood me! I was merely expressing amazement, and I received a science lesson in return! Though my attentions to you may be unwelcome, I’ll tell you this: I’m entirely familiar with everything you have written, and I’ll have to say that I still don’t understand daidala. What are you trying to do with it, and where are you headed? Is it some sort of typographic journal? Is it a venue for your attempts at humor? Do tell!

If I’m confusing you, then I sincerely apologize. Truth be told, I just write down whatever’s on my mind. And after the workday is over, and after everyone else in the house has gone to bed, I often focus on type.

Dear me, late night trysts with a cathode ray tube! That must be hard on your poor family, slumbering without you. And on your unfortunate employer as well, having to accept the proposals, findings, and conclusions of a sleepy statistician! But plod on nonetheless, you idealistic, martyred soul. I’m curious, however – and of course, I mean no offense in the least – but why don’t you just keep a private journal? You know – your own special place for your own special thoughts – and leave serious discourse on type to the experts.

If you had truly been reading – as you claim – then you would know that daidala is, at least in part, my own attempt at a personal – albeit public – education in type, and you should also be aware that this attempt is yet in its nascent phase. But to answer you more directly, I’ve never proclaimed any authority on the topic. I do feel that I possess some knowledge that might be useful, however, and knowledge hoarded is knowledge wasted.

Ingenuous generosity itself! How endearingly diplomatic; how convincingly coy! Lest you attempt to charm the pants off of me a second time, please allow me back up a step and ask the really relevant question here, which is: With all of the other excellent, well-informed sites on typography, is there really a place for your daidala?

Fair enough, I grant you; a question I ask myself, as a matter of fact. I strongly believe that the best way to advance the discipline of typography is through dialogue – or via polylogue – if I am permitted to invent a more descriptive term...

I’m fairly certain you didn’t invent it, o wishful, wordsmithing theoretician, but go on...

Anyway, through polylogue, which I would define as simultaneous communication by many participants on several, related subjects, and with one, overarching aim. Typophile, Typographica, TYPO-L, and Speak Up allow for this – nay, provide for this, actually – by engaging participants forum-style. My site, on the other hand...

Is – I suppose you’ll tell me – a monoblog, as opposed to a polyblog, and as such, offers nothing of the kind...

As I was saying, my site is, for all intents and purposes, a monologue – yes, a monoblog, if you will – a vehicle for one-way communication. I’ve thought about pursuing a Movable Type-based weblog; more seriously, I’ve also contemplated – on more than one occasion – just calling up Stephen and inquiring very nicely whether I might somehow become a fourth wheel in his operation. But then monoblogging has its advantages, too. I can write about whatever or whomever I wish, more or less with impunity. By going solo, I’m a bit freer to learn and to make mistakes, and if I don’t want to write about type, I don’t have to.

Which is patently evident! You write about your college teachers, about selling shoes to schizophrenics, about disco music you happen to fancy; and most bothersome of all, you sometimes don’t write at all for weeks on end. A major concern of mine is, as pertains to one, particular feature of your site – your “twenty more” Textism rip-off – that you seem to have become ensnared in the trap of (1) fall in love with font, (2) proclaim your love of said font to world, and (3) make GIF of beloved font using silly excerpts from Shakespeare or Jane Austen. On one level, at least, it seems to me you’re really nothing but a type whore. In fact, you want to score with the entire FontFont catalogue, don't you!

Stop already with the terms of endearment! If I understand you correctly, it’s true – I do admire the letterforms first and foremost. But I haven’t always been a moony-eyed monomaniac. I became interested in all of this via Knuth and TeX. Several years ago, out of sheer necessity, I had to produce clean, mathematical copy, and so back then, I was more interested in typesetting than in type. But this is now, and daidala is largely concerned with typefaces and the people who make them; I haven’t settled back into typesetting, nor have I ever really examined it from a purely design-related perspective. I recall hearing a performance of La Bohéme on the radio several years ago, and one of the commentators said something like, “La Bohéme is the first opera people learn to enjoy, because it is so accessible. Then, once their palate becomes more experienced, they begin to appreciate the complexities of other operas...” Well, I can tell you for certain – and without apology – that my La Bohéme phase is still in high gear. Chapter 10 of my copy of Bringhurst is easily my most dog-eared, yet I’ve never tackled chapter eight. Moreover, I’ve tried – and failed – to read Gerrit Noordzij’s Letterletter no fewer than five times. Parenthetically, and with all due respect, would someone kindly tell me what in the hell he is saying? For the most part, I can only read any book on type if it’s got nice pictures of different letterforms on most of the pages. So you see, I haven’t really begun to think about typography – outside of mathematical typography, that is – in terms of setting type on the page in anything but a relatively rudimentary manner; someday, surely, but not yet.

Well, I can say I’m even more disturbed – and disappointed – than I was before we began. You’ve actually convinced me, on occasion, that you had at least a few scholarly bones in your body, but now you tell me that you essentially like looking at letters. The skeleton of a simpleton, and a calcified brain to boot! All in all, here’s how I view you and your weblog, and kindly permit me to be blunt.

You’re asking for permission only now? Gracious soul, the floor is yours!

You’re fundamentally a Pollyanna; you view the world of type and design through some very rosy glasses. One of your greatest faults is that you seem to like everyone and everything in the world you write about, and with such a perspective, you have no edge.

No edge? Okay, so I occasionally give off warm fuzzies. Is that all?

Indeed it is not! Listen carefully. You desperately need – in the forthcoming year of daidala – to take a stand on things, to develop sound arguments, even at the risk of being wholly wrong or of causing offense. You must think more clearly about fundamental and topical issues in type. If you do already, then show it. If you don’t, then start. A little more Hrant, John, Mark, and Kent. Hell, even Bill will do in a pinch!

Like, boumas with attitude?

The bouma already comes with plenty of attitude, as you are undoubtedly aware; but yes, something like. You would do very well to begin, however, with beefier brains and bigger balls.

That’s a very nice visual; thank you for that!

You’re quite welcome. Oh – one more thing: Learn some HTML, for Christ’s sake.

I’ll stick to brains and balls for now, thanks...

20-June 2003

profound reflections upon the imminent, one-year anniversary of the birth of daidala

gibber-gabber, chitter-chatter
prittle-prattle, tittle-tattle
spout off, hold forth, spin out
bibble-babble, yadda-yadda
yakkety-yak, blah-blah
gush: logomania
slush: logorrhea
flux de mots and flux de bouche
clack, cackle, clatter
blither, blather, blabber
gabble prattle nather babble
prittle gibble twaddle twattle
guff, gas, hot air, and patter
verbosity, prolixity, fecundity, redundancy
digression, discursion, circumlocution, diversion
rambling, roving
wandering, meandering
and in closing,
mock humility,
platitudinous gratuity,
and a dash of typographic superfluity

14-June 2003

talking about ff kievit with mike abbink

I have my pet theories about type, as you undoubtedly do too. Mine warp and mutate more-or-less continually, and at present, I regard myself a utility-based gestaltist. Fancy that! So what do I mean?

Well, I happen to view typefaces not in terms of a few, select characters, but as whole blocks spanning 0 to 255 (and beyond), the virgule as important as the ampersand as important as the Z. Designers who produce book faces perhaps share this perspective. If a face is thoughtfully and carefully designed, the whole is indeed much more than the sum of its parts; but if reduced effort is applied, the net result may be much less. That’s the gestalt part; it forms the metaphorical trunk of the tree. Utility, then, comprises all of the branches and leaves.

Sincere efforts at crafting book faces may assume a gestaltist perspective and do well to have utility as a central aim. I’ll define utility as the sum of three factors:

1. identifiability, or unambiguity – that is, the ease of identification of each of the letters, numbers, and other glyphs in the face; also, the canonical or archetypal nature of their forms

2. interoperability, or cohesiveness – the manner with which the different glyphs work together on the page and truly constitute a single typeface with one, unified voice

3. the inclusiveness or completeness of the face – the extent to which it has all of the necessary components for setting text well: small caps, text figures, and ligatures among them; through all of Bringhurst’s secondary level and at least part of his tertiary (v. 2.5, p54)

Only the third component of utility is somewhat quantifiable, yet certainly open to debate; the first and second are more qualitative and subjective. It’s no trivial matter to take qualitative sums, but again, for schematic purposes, utility = identifiability + interoperability + inclusiveness. For me, then, a truly good book face is one that possesses maximal utility; it must score highly on all three factors, and therefore, it occupies the upper right, rear space in this figure.

But how many typefaces actually do maximize utility? Clearly several serifed faces, but markedly fewer sans-serifs. Of the latter, however, one that springs first and foremost to mind is Mike Abbink’s FF Kievit. Admittedly, I thought it rather plain when it was first introduced two years ago. That only shows the extent to which I missed the point! Kievit is a strong and unpretentious, yet ultimately versatile sans-serif face, and that is precisely what Abbink intended to produce.

As modest and unassuming as Kievit is, its story nonetheless deserves to be told.

JC: A couple of years have passed, now, since Kievit was released. Has the way you feel about the face changed at all?

MA: Sort of; I guess it depends on how it’s used. There are times when I feel Kievit really works well and other times when I think it needs a bit more character or something more unique; but after all, it was the intent to create a very neutral typeface with no real character other than its lack of character (if that makes any sense). Kievit is meant to take on some characteristic or personality from the environment it’s used in, kind of like the Woody Allen film, Zelig. If it’s in a formal environment, then it feels somewhat bland; if it’s in a more exciting environment, then it has more life. Overall I’m pleased with Kievit and just want to focus on some other fonts I’m working on.

JC: What was your reaction upon seeing Kievit used as the main text face in the 2002 FontFont catalogue?

MA: I had no idea that it was going to be used until Erik Spiekermann told me the new catalogue was at the printer. I was very pleased of course, and I hope people respond to it well. Hopefully it will last as long as Meta and Info did. I think it’s a good place to use a typeface like Kievit. It really shows how neutral it can be, but it also shows that in the right environment it can take on a bit of personality.

JC: On the Method site, you mentioned some of your goals with Kievit: to produce a face without character...to achieve extreme legibility. I imagine that this would require a great deal of discipline and restraint. How did you manage to keep focused on the canonical forms, and were any letters/styles especially difficult?

MA: The typeface Frutiger was an inspiration for Kievit. It has the same kind of restraint that I wanted to achieve. I just wanted to add the humanist (oldstyle) characteristics and proportions to improve legibility.

A digital lifestyle magazine/newspaper called DE:BUG in Germany uses Kievit for all the text, and when I saw they used 6pt text it was still very legible. It was nice to see it in the context of something real. It was the first time I saw Kievit used in such a text heavy format. Christian Schwartz recently told me that he and Roger Black used it for headlines and text in the redesign of ADWEEK as well, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks/works in that setting. I think DE:BUG and ADWEEK will be good case studies for Kievit. It really shows the legible nature of the face.

While designing Kievit the focus was on the stroke of the letterforms; I just tried to keep each letter free of elements other than a somewhat even, simple stroke. I always like to think of it as having the skeleton of an old style, but the flesh of a modernist typeface (like Frutiger). I really learned a lot about drawing letters digitally because Kievit needed to be refined to achieve the goals for its modern side. The humanist side was less challenging since it was more about the basic shape and structure.

JC: The path to Kievit’s release was perhaps somewhat sinuous. Could you describe: (a) the decision to hire Font Bureau (FB) to assist in completing the face, (b) your interaction with Christian Schwartz, and (c) your eventual decision to release the face through Font Shop International (FSI)?

MA: I don’t think of it as sinuous; it was just a matter of finding help to complete the font for a client that was interested in using it as their corporate typeface. Kievit was complete in the regular weight (roman, italic, small caps, and italic small caps) and needed a black version to interpolate some other weights. The only way to get the font done for the client was to get help and FB was recommended to me by Tobias Frere-Jones. I chose FB over FSI because they were more cost effective at the time. Christian was a major help of course, and my interaction with Christian was good; I only got a little frustrated early on in the process. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to talk about the details of a letterform over the phone. Overall, it was a good experience and one I would like to continue with other fonts, but it’s probably not the kind of work Christian wants to do.

My final decision for FSI came in the end; I had worked at MetaDesign for three years and Erik Spiekermann had encouraged me to get the font finished for FSI. He had seen the progress on Kievit for years and was hoping to have it in the FSI collection. There was also a time when I thought I would release it myself and start a foundry with another friend of mine (Josh Distler), but in the end I went with FSI. I still struggle over this idea with Josh; part of me wants to have a foundry, but going with someone like FSI makes it a bit easier on the workload. I never really discussed releasing Kievit with FB although they asked what my intentions were when Kievit was done. At the time I was not sure and that’s what I told them.

JC: The shiftype site currently shows an interesting sample of some of your recent work. Could you tell us more about it?

MA: I have a font in progress that I’m calling Router. It has a long way to go, but I’m hoping I can get something out to the public next year. I’m excited about this one and I hope it turns out well. It’s based on some routed letters I’ve seen on address and name plates in the Netherlands. There will be a sans and serif version if I can ever get the time to finish it. I’m further along with a font called Milo, which should be finished in the next 6–8 months. It’s quite a utilitarian letter with short ascenders and descenders. The forms are a bit more mechanical and stiff, but with a hint of character this time.

JC: How has your the nature of your work changed since you moved to Apple, and in what ways do you interact with type there?

MA: Primarily I’ve been working on packaging for hardware and software, but have done some other typographic related things since I’ve been here; unfortunately it’s not something I can talk about in detail right now. The packaging is starting to get out there (like the new black Powerbook boxes). There is a great team here now and we’re trying to do our best to improve graphic design. You may have noticed the recent change to Myriad as the corporate font, instead of Garamond. This has led to a specific design challenge within the company as you can imagine. A sans serif is a big step for Apple!

Overall, however, I don’t think the nature of my work has changed. I just wish I had more time to focus on letterform design. I’m very anxious to finish Router and Milo and move on to an oldstyle Kievit. Which reminds me, there is also a slab Kievit in the works and that may be out within the next year (if I’m lucky).

06-June 2003

requests for font recommendations get me a little excited

You say you need a sans and a serif for your students one for book work and the other for poster work well you’ve come to just the right person for I’m nothing if not decisive on these matters now let’s see beginning with the sans I really do like Solex though it hasn’t got the small caps and I do like fonts with all the parts but that may be moot for poster work geez is it good however and darn thoughtful of Gunnar to put Licko at the top what a long thread too right gutsy of him I daresay but it is true she keeps advancing the field and deserves more nods than she gets although selling her pottery online was truly sad but then there’s possibly the most underrated sans of them all which is Academia Jesus Christ I just remembered that the Tiro boys have basically shut down shop for awhile but maybe if you beg pitifully they might bend the rules and sell it to you on the QT and oh shit that means their serifs Plantagenet and Manticore are no longer in the running why oh why did I not act on time major regret then there’s Syntax of course and no I don’t mean the Adobe version I mean that CD with the newly-issued small caps and text figures say what is the difference between the cheaper version and that gold edition they sell for about $300 more is it like those gold albums once-upon-a-time that were remastered now Kievit there’s a typeface six weights all the f-ligatures and text figures it may be the most complete sans of them all more to say about this later oh my God Gill Sans why did I not mention this one first and here again you have to be choosy and go with Monotype because there’s text numerals and small caps to consider but Meta is really comprehensive too and just keeps getting bigger but it is rather ubiquitous isn't it which is perhaps a solid argument for Info that’s a beautiful typeface although I’m not crazy about the Info Office stuff they’ve done recently now Jonathan’s unbelievable Knockout who can argue with that for your sans choice one for the ages Gotham too Tobias is a fucking machine emphasis on machine you silly-billy and he’s pretty smart I’d like to hear his music send me some of your tunes Tobias and Scala Sans is timeless high on the omnipresence factor though with a bit more character than most of these Avenir has a little less character but more true grace than almost any sans I know it's just blissful Scene is striking but then you know how I feel about that one Sebastian Lester is about as nice and skilled as they come speaking of skilled Christian Schwartz’s Bau is stunning I remember oh so well seeing Lines & Splines set in it and wondering what the hell it was and good thing Andy had an About section because it told me then and there you know he still uses it on New Series do you care for Quadraat Sans I sure do quirky as all get out and Bringhurst praises it to the heavens in version 2.5 you know he likes Charlotte Sans an awful lot and so do I but have you ever tried to use Charlotte Serif in text I just can’t make it work for me they used to use it on the menu board at Caribou Coffee and I said to the dour barista there oh you changed your typeface on the menu board and he just gave me a funny sort of look and I said yes it used to be in a font called Charlotte Serif which really looked quite good at 200 pt but now you use one called Agency and it does condense real nicely he just asked if I’d like whipped cream on my white chocolate mocha but while I’m thinking Font Bureau I should mention Agenda it’s incomplete too why can’t they issue text numerals but it’s grown bigger recently and has a bit of that Gill Sansiness to it oh is price an issue because Caspari is a thing of beauty but wait before I move on to the serifs I would be entirely remiss if I did not mention the sans of 2002 which you know to be Neutraface can I have that in OpenType format with a pillow and a chair please okay switch gears a good seriffed text face you know who uses Clifford well somebody should I mean optical scaling and the borders and all my goodness someday and that’d better be soon it will get the recognition it deserves along those stylistic lines you’ve got Hoefler Text heck if you’re going to use the text weight you could get the display weight too for the bigger stuff but perhaps I’m getting carried away you know Janson Text fits neatly into that category as well and you could make your own double f-ligatures if you’re fussy and have some time on your hands why does Linotype have so few digitizations with double f-ligatures is it just laziness I’ll have to say I’m underwhelmed by the digitized Monotype serifs Garamond Fournier VanDijck Walbaum they’re just too light on the page but Dante is one exception there’s something funny about the way the small caps work with the rest of the font but I suppose I could get over that did I say optical scaling well then Celeste fits the bill too with that new small text weight but how’d that kerning snafu get into the FontFont 2000 catalog well I just looked and I saw that it was fixed for 2002 and Matthew Carter’s Miller is breathtaking you know I heard he draws right in Fontographer oh I just thought of one more sans Angie Sans darn nice just two hairs away from regular ol’ Angie now is that one a sans or a serif on the fence I suppose I hear they call them hybrids and now that I’m thinking of JFP I demand to know why the hell no one uses Apolline in this country it’s wonderful I’ve worn out his specimen book ogling it do you think he’d send me a new one and Sabon but should you buy Monotype or Linotype or Linotype-Porchez gosh do you think Linotype will ever sell those gold editions at a lower price or will they sell the faces in single weights how long I repeat how long will they hold these fonts hostage okay I’ve calmed down now of course Scala and Quadraat and oh now that Fred’s on my mind once again will Arnhem ever become available is it available now and then if you have the cash there’s Renard full sample in Counterpunch you know Dean Allen called it something like the first fully realized typeface of the PostScript era I think I know what he meant but I’m not completely sure maybe something about that three-dimensionality say if you write to Peter Matthias Noordzij he’ll send you gorgeous samples of all that TEFF stuff and you get Peter’s own handwriting on the big envelope and it’s really nice he actually writes text figures mine’s so shitty by comparison should we petition him to release Romanée and at the other Dutch foundry one of my absolute favorites is Dorian again pricey but may be worth it for the italic alone print those PDFs and dream away baby Fedra Serif I like the B myself but I’ve always been big on generous ascenders I think they’re sexy maybe I should read some of that Steven Heller typoerotica and get it out of my system and did you see Fedra Greek my he publishes a journal runs a downright scholarly website and makes superbly crafted typefaces did the Raelians clone him too hey what do you think of Eidetic Neo Rod designed it in a car darn novel face and that unicase might offer all kinds of possibilities the tragically underused Stone Cycles Sumner still has no website but Gerard Unger does anyhow you can see it in Type 2 Number 1 kind of a wider Stone Print oh yeah Andy already said that wait what do you think of types by The Foundry for some unknown reason I overlook them but Foundry Wilson is especially pretty the Thesis family sure is versatile serif and sans and half-and-half Hi Luc(as) I’m Jon(athon) nice to meet you but now I’m also overlooking the truly ubiquitous that must be my word of the day Adobe Garamond and Caslon and Minion those relatively transparent faces could really challenge the kids to be creative no I don’t mean to be insulting to Robert and Carol where are you Carol you saw Jeremy Tankard’s project Adobe Caslon from beginning to end yet just completely wowed me and I really liked Warnock too when it first came out it’s got everything and more but I’m still peeved at Adobe for no upgrade deals on their OpenType fonts which is why in the final analysis the faces you need to use are Locator and Proforma I hope I’m being clear but I may change my mind tomorrow.

24-May 2003

daidala?

A few months ago, a colleague asked me, “What is the basis for your interest in typography?” Two thoughts immediately and simultaneously raced through my mind: (1) My basis? What the fuck does he mean by that? (2) This is a question, once I get around to figuring out what he’s asking, that I should perhaps think long and hard about. Well, I thought, and then I thought some more, and I’m happy to announce that the time is nigh; I have an explication, and while I’m at it, I may as well say something about this daidala business as well. Why daidala, and what the heck does it mean?

As you shall shortly see, I’m letting the original sources handle the job; no middleman wanted or needed here. Run a Google search on daidala and you may learn that we link this term denoting artful or skillfully wrought works with one, particular legendary character called Daedalus, the Greek artist and craftsman of archaic times. But I prefer to assign equal, if not greater, weight to a Daedalus – nay, to spell it out properly, a Dedalus – of our time.

As for the former, an entry from Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 92a–l:

a. The parentage of Daedalus is disputed. His mother is named Alcippe by some; by others, Merope; by still others, Iphinoë; and all give him a different father, though it is generally agreed that he belonged to the royal house of Athens, which claimed descent from Erechtheus. He was a wonderful smith, having been instructed in his art by Athene herself.

b. One of his apprentices, Talos the son of his sister Polycaste, or Perdix, had already surpassed him in craftsmanship while only twelve years old. Talos happened one day to pick up the jawbone of a serpent or, some say, of a fish’s spine; and, finding that he could use it to cut a stick in half, copied it in iron and thereby invented the saw. This, and other inventions of his – such as the potter’s wheel, and the compass for marking out circles – secured him a great reputation at Athens, and Daedalus, who claimed himself to have forged the first saw, soon grew unbearably jealous. Leading Talos up to the roof of Athene’s temple on the Acropolis, he pointed out certain distant sights, and suddenly toppled him over the edge. Yet, for all his jealousy, he would have done Talos no harm had he not suspected him of incestuous relations with his mother Polycaste. Daedalus then hurried down to the foot of the Acropolis, and thrust Talos’s corpse into a bag, proposing to bury it secretly. When challenged by passers-by, he explained that he had piously taken up a dead serpent, as the law required – which was not altogether untrue, Talos being an Erechtheid – but there were bloodstains on the bag, and his crime did not escape detection, whereupon the Areiopagus banished him for murder. According to another account he fled before the trial could take place.

c. Now, the soul of Talos – whom some call Calus, Circinus, or Tantalus – flew off in the form of a partridge, but his body was buried where it had fallen. Polycaste hanged herself when she heard of his death, and the Athenians built a sanctuary in her honour beside the Acropolis.

d. Daedalus took refuge in one of the Attic demes, whose people are named Daedalids after him; and then in Cretan Cnossus, where King Minos delighted to welcome so skilled a craftsman. He lived there for some time, at peace and in high favour, until Minos, learning that he had helped Pasiphaë to couple with Poseidon’s white bull, locked him up for a while in the Labyrinth, together with his son Icarus, whose mother, Naucrate, was one of Minos’s slaves; but Pasiphaë freed them both.

e. It was not easy, however, to escape from Crete, since Minos kept all his ships under military guard, and now offered a large reward for his apprehension. But Daedalus made a pair of wings for himself, and another for Icarus, the quill feathers of which were threaded together, but the smaller ones held in place by wax. Having tied on Icarus’s pair for him, he said with tears in his eyes: ‘My son, be warned! Neither soar too high, lest the sun melt the wax; nor swoop too low, lest the feathers be wetted by the sea.’ Then he slipped his arms into his own pair of wings and they flew off. ‘Follow me closely,’ he cried, ‘do not set your own course!’

As they sped away from the island in a north-easterly direction, flapping their wings, the fishermen, shepherds, and ploughmen who gazed upward mistook them for gods.

f. They had left Naxos, Delos, and Paros behind them on the left hand, and were leaving Lebynthos and Calymne behind on the right, when Icarus disobeyed his father’s instructions and began soaring towards the sun, rejoiced by the lift of his great sweeping wings. Presently, when Daedalus looked over his shoulder, he could no longer see Icarus; but scattered feathers floated on the waves below. The heat of the sun had melted the wax, and Icarus had fallen into the sea and drowned. Daedalus circled around, until the corpse rose to the surface, and then carried it to the near-by island now called Icaria, where he buried it. A partridge sat perched on a holm-oak and watched him, chattering for delight – the soul of his sister Polycaste, at last avenged. This island has now given its name to the surrounding sea.

g. But some, disbelieving the story, say that Daedalus fled from Crete in a boat provided by Pasiphaë; and that, on their way to Sicily, they were about to disembark at a small island, when Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. They add that it was Heracles who buried Icarus; in gratitude for which, Daedalus made so lifelike a statue of him at Pisa that Heracles mistook it for a rival and felled it with a stone. Others say that Daedalus invented sails, not wings, as a means of outstripping Minos’s galleys; and that Icarus, steering carelessly, was drowned when their boat capsized.

h. Daedalus flew westward until, alighting at Cumae near Naples, he dedicated his wings to Apollo there, and built him a golden-roofed temple. Afterwards, he visited Camicus in Sicily, where he was hospitably received by King Cocalus, and lived among the Sicilians, enjoying great fame and erecting many fine buildings.

i. Meanwhile, Minos had raised a considerable fleet, and set out in search of Daedalus. He brought with him a Triton shell, and wherever he went promised to reward anyone who could pass a linen thread thorough it: a problem which, he knew, Daedalus alone would be able to solve. Arrived at Camicus, he offered the shell to Cocalus, who undertook to have it threaded; and, sure enough, Daedalus found out how to do this. Fastening a gossamer thread to an ant, he bored a hole at the point of the shell and lured the ant up the spirals by smearing honey on the edges of the hole. Then he tied the linen thread to the other end of the gossamer and drew that through as well. Cocalus returned the threaded shell, claiming the reward, and Minos, assured that he had at last found Daedalus’s hiding-place, demanded his surrender. But Cocalus’s daughters were loth to lose Daedalus, who made them such beautiful toys, and with his help they concocted a plot. Daedalus led a pipe through the roof of the bathroom, down which they poured boiling water or, some say, pitch upon Minos, while he luxuriated in a warm bath. Cocalus, who may well have been implicated in the plot, returned the corpse to the Cretans, saying that Minos had stumbled over a rug and fallen into a cauldron of boiling water.

j. Minos’s followers buried him with great pomp, and Zeus made him a judge of the dead in Tartarus, with his brother Rhadamanthys and his enemy Aeacus as colleagues. Since Minos’s tomb occupied the centre of Aphrodite’s temple at Camicus, he was honoured there for many generations by great crowds of Sicilians who came to worship Aphrodite. In the end, his bones were returned to Crete by Theron, the tyrant of Acragas.

k. After Minos’s death the Cretans fell into complete disorder, because their main fleet was burned by the Sicilians. Of the crews who were forced to remain overseas, some built the city of Minoa, close to the beach where they had landed; others, the city of Hyria in Messapia; still others, marching into the centre of Sicily, fortified a hill which became the city of Enguos, so called from a spring which flows close by. There they built a temple of the Mothers, whom they continued to honour greatly, as in their native Crete.

l. But Daedalus left Sicily to join Iolaus, the nephew and charioteer of Tirynthian Heracles, who led a body of Athenians and Thespians to Sardinia. Many of his works survive to this day in Sardinia; they are called Daedaleia [or Daidala].

And the latter, you may already know, was James Joyce’s Dedalus – Stephen Dedalus, that is – whose canvas and clay were simply his own mind and body.

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Viking Centennial Edition), we see the chalk applied to Stephen’s blank slate from first thoughts...

When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell. (p7)

Through the confusion, unfairness, and isolation that accompany childhood...

— Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?

Stephen answered:
— I do.

Wells turned to the other fellows and said:
— O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed.

They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar. He tried to think of Wells’s mother but he did not dare to raise his eyes to Wells’s face. He did not like Wells’s face. It was Wells who had shouldered him into the square ditch the day before because he would not swop his little snuffbox for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. It was a mean thing to do; all the fellows said it was. And how cold and slimy the water had been! And a fellow had once seen a big rat jump plop into the scum.

The cold slime of the ditch covered his whole body; and when the bell rang for study and the lines filed out of the playrooms, he felt the cold air of the corridor and staircase inside his clothes. He still tried to think what was the right answer. Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother? What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces? (pp14–15)

Through Stephen’s transgression and associated guilt...

His blood was in revolt. He wandered up and down the dark slimy streets peering into the gloom of lanes and doorways, listening for any sound. He moaned to himself like some baffled prowling beast. He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin. He felt some dark presence moving irresistibly upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself. Its murmur besieged his ears like the murmur of some multitude in sleep; its subtle streams penetrated his being. His hands clenched convulsively and his teeth set together as he suffered the agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms in the street to hold fast the frail swooning form that eluded him and incited him: and the cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal.

He had wandered into a maze of narrow and dirty streets. From the foul laneways he heard bursts of hoarse riot and wrangling and the drawling of drunken singers. He walked onward, undismayed, wondering whether he had strayed into the quarter of the jews. Women and girls dressed in long vivid gowns traversed the street from house to house. They were leisurely and perfumed. A trembling seized him and his eyes grew dim. The yellow gasflames arose before his troubled vision against the vapoury sky, burning as if before an altar. Before the doors and in the lighted halls groups were gathered arrayed as for some rite. He was in another world: he had awakened from a slumber of centuries.

He stood still in the middle of the roadway, his heart clamouring against his bosom in a tumult. A young woman dressed in a long pink gown laid her hand on his arm to detain him and gazed into his face. She said gaily:

— Good night, Willie dear!

Her room was warm and lightsome. A huge doll sat with her legs apart in the copious easychair beside the bed. He tried to bid his tongue speak that he might seem at ease, watching her as she undid her gown, noting the proud conscious movements of her perfumed head.

As he stood silent in the middle of the room she came over to him and embraced him gaily and gravely. Her round arms held him firmly to her and he, seeing her face lifted to him in serious calm and feeling the warm calm rise and fall of her breast, all but burst into hysterical weeping. Tears of joy and relief shone in his delighted eyes and his lips parted though they would not speak. (pp99–101)

Every word of it was for him. Against his sin, foul and secret, the whole wrath of God was aimed. The preacher’s knife had probed deeply into his diseased conscious and he felt now that his soul was festering in sin. Yes, the preacher was right. God’s turn had come. Like a beast in its lair his soul had lain down in its own filth but the blasts of the angel’s trumpet had driven him forth from the darkness of sin into the light. The words of doom cried by the angel shattered in an instant his presumptuous peace. The wind of the last day blew through his mind; his sins, the jeweleyed harlots of his imagination, fled before the hurricane, squeaking like mice in their terror and huddled under a mane of hair.

As he crossed the square, walking homeward, the light laughter of a girl reached his burning ear. The frail gay sound smote his heart more strongly than a trumpetblast, and, not daring to lift his eyes, he turned aside and gazed, as he walked, into the shadow of the tangled shrubs. Shame rose from his smitten heart and flooded his whole being. The image of Emma appeared before him and, under her eyes, the flood of shame rushed forth anew from his heart. If she knew to what his mind had subjected her or how his brutelike lust had torn and trampled upon her innocence! Was that boyish love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry? The sordid details of his orgies stank under his very nostrils: the sootcoated packet of pictures which he had hidden in the flue of the fireplace and in the presence of whose shameless or bashful wantonness he lay for hours sinning in thought and deed; his monstrous dreams, peopled by apelike creatures and by harlots with gleaming jewel eyes; the foul long letters he had written in the joy of guilty confession and carried secretly for days and days only to throw them under the cover of night among the grass in the corner of a field or beneath some hingeless door or in some niche in the hedges where a girl might come upon them as she walked by and read them secretly. Mad! Mad! Was it possible he had done these things? A cold sweat broke out upon his forehead as the foul memories condensed within his brain. (pp115–116)

Could it be that he, Stephen Dedalus, had done those things? His conscious sighed in answer. Yes, he had done them, secretly, filthily, time after time, and, hardened in sinful impenitence, he had dared to wear the mask of holiness before the tabernacle itself while his soul within was a living mass of corruption. How came it that God had not struck him dead? The leprous company of his sins closed about him, breathing upon him, bending over him from all sides. He strove to forget them in an act of prayer, huddling his limbs closer together and binding down his eyelids: but the senses of his soul would not be bound and, though his eyes were shut fast, he saw the places where he had sinned and, though his ears were tightly covered, he heard. He desired with all his will not to hear or see. He desired till his frame shook under the strain of his desire and until the senses of his soul closed. (p137)

And, upon his confession and absolution, his misguided drive toward self-perfection...

Each of his senses was brought under a rigorous discipline. In order to mortify the sense of sight he made it his rule to walk in the street with downcast eyes, glancing neither to right nor left and never behind him. His eyes shunned every encounter with the eyes of women. From time to time also he balked them by a sudden effort of the will, as by lifting them suddenly in the middle of an unfinished sentence and closing the book. To mortify his hearing he exerted no control over his voice which was then breaking, neither sang nor whistled and made no attempt to flee from noises which caused him painful nervous irritation such as the sharpening of knives on the knifeboard, the gathering of cinders on the fireshovel and the twigging of the carpet. To mortify his sense of smell was more difficult as he found in himself no instinctive repugnance to bad odours of the outdoor world such as those of dung and tar or the odours of his own person among which he had made many curious comparisons and experiments. He found in the end that the only odour against which his sense of smell revolted was a certain stale fishy stink like that of longstanding urine: and whenever it was possible he subjected himself to this unpleasant odour. To morti