Published on <a href="http://ift.tt/2oIybg1">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> SPECCTR 
A meditation on typography, design, and consciousness.
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Trapped in a prison of practical thought we often forget the wonder that surrounds us. This can be the designer’s dilemma more so than anyone’s.
The design process, in general, requires a constant focus on detail. At the end, when you arrive at the whole, you’ve lost the ability to see it. You struggle to unsee the jumble of flaws and limitations and hope that fresh eyes will spot your intent. Familiarity breeds contempt. Can anything be as familiar as that which you have created?
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Typography can seem especially familiar. It is everywhere, and it is practical. It’s easy, when working with type, to let any concerns for beauty be eclipsed by its overwhelming utility.
<blockquote>Who cares what it looks like? People can read it…</blockquote>
To break out of the routine, let’s pause, and consider what type is; let’s reclaim its wonder, and infuse some awe back into the design process:
Type is the highway on which thought travels from one conscious mind to another; typography is the architecture of the throughways of consciousness.
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Digital tools and digital mediums, have given designers great capability to decide whether the road is difficult and dreary, or effortless and beautiful.
Our tools were not always so sophisticated.
Before shaping bezier curves and cascading style sheets, we carved wood and molded tin. Before typography, we penned calligraphy. Before calligraphy, we composed songs, fables, and drew on cave walls. Such toil to offer a glimpse of the light inside our heads.
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Existence is a lonely endeavor. The movie in your mind has an audience of one. Our life is a steady stream of flawed attempts at communicating our experience to other human beings.
Language and visual arts, like drawing, painting, and film are the primary ways we do this.
With language, we learned that we could equate the noises we make with our mouths, to the ideas we have in our heads. With art, we realized we could sketch our internal life so that it is recognized by a fellow human. More than 5000 years ago, we merged art and speech to start drawing pictures of the sounds we make. We invented written language.
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<blockquote><a href="http://ift.tt/1FvLAja">Calligraphy</a> is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a broad tip instrument, brush, or other writing instruments.</blockquote>
Written language is the first information technology. We turned fleeting thought into permanent markings capable of being sent through time and space. In the future, the markings could coalesce into fleeting thought once more in another’s mind.
We learned to imbue symbols scratched in stone, carved in bark, and inked in parchment with the contents of our consciousness.
Calligraphy is the design of these scratches, carvings, and pen strokes.
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<blockquote><a href="http://ift.tt/13Hjivu">Typography</a> the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed.</blockquote>
Two thousand years ago the Chinese progressed from having to painstakingly draw out each thought-bearing character to automating this process by carving type out of wood blocks, inking it, and pressing it onto fabric and paper.
1600 years later, Johann Gutenberg used type made of lead, tin, and antimony to build his printing press and launch the age of mass-produced thought.
Typography eclipsed calligraphy as the primary way we craft symbols to send one’s thoughts.
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Today working with type is the most sophisticated it has ever been. At the same time, type shows up on billions of digital screens all over the world and delivers its information-payload into the minds of billions of people. With great power, and reach, comes a responsibility to do good work. With each enhancement we make, we increase the bandwidth of thought and the pleasure with which it is consumed. The throughways we architect are fast and beautiful.
Despite the tools at our disposal, the way we work with and talk about type can be challenging. This is a consequence of type’s history in print, and its present on screen. It’s why we measure type in em, px, pt, and must keep ppi or dpi in the back of our mind. We labor through this print-screen duality to reach our audience, wherever they may be.
We’ll talk more about that in a future post…
by <a href="http://ift.tt/2oIybN3">metamitya</a>
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<a href="http://ift.tt/2oIpHpi">Marks, Mediums, and Minds</a> was originally published in <a href="http://ift.tt/2cAqCpx">Prototyping: From UX to Front End</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Marks, Mediums, and Minds

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