→ July 17, 2023 | Reading time: 4 minutes | Permalink
I just spent the major part of my Sunday getting Zettlr to work well as a distraction-free[1] writing interface, complete with a monospaced face and appropriate fore-ground-back-ground colours. (#000 and #8a8a8f for now. AND now I am noticing the octothorpes turning into jellyfish-blue tags.) I digress. Suffices to say working around blaming one’s tools takes way more time than coughing up 5K for that sweet single-device iA Writer license. I must say it is time well spent, except that it meant time away from my girls[2]. Conflict. I digress.
At some point in the five years (5!) spent on teaching pilgrimages[3], I realised almost all of the conceptual, nuanced typographic choices can be made with a deliberate extension of gestalt’s principles. Seen in that (to me) new light, the needless — but fun! — debate over ‘rules’ disappeared, and a demonstrable set of checks-and-balances replaced them. I felt an appropriate amount of self-pity at having taken so long to ‘see’ it. I’m trying to convince self the most appropriate penance for something of this magnitude, is to write a book about it. Considering how productive I have been with side-quests recently, it is only wise to use thisbloghere as a way to publicly commit to finishing the thing (including ink, paper, thread, staples, blades, and all) this year.
I have a rough outline in progress, as well as a few to-do checklist items. (Just making them up as I type, really. This is blog-post as performance. It is a potent mess.)
- Must be shorter than Jost Hochuli’s excellent ‘Details in Typography’. Around 50 pages. [4]
- Pages must work like slides. (Not wordy, have illustrated examples.)
- Discuss the principles in detail, referring original texts as much as possible. I have been using the Khan Academy video as a refresher for students all this while.
- Use a typographic problem to discuss a principle. This can be tricky; so not set in stone.
- Talk about lists. Talk about alignment. Talk about letterforms.
- Use Indic examples. Use bilingual examples.
- Use examples from KL11’s work. Some vulnerability there.
- Limit discussion to practise. Not a philosophy book.
Now that we have got that out of the way, here are some ‘asks’ to the 35 (R says; I say 3–5) readers of mine.
- If you have come across specifically gestalt-driven discussions of layout/typesetting problems, please let me know.
- Also tell me what you think of putting another rainforest to pulp for such a thing. Sensible?
- How are you?
- My email ID is abhijith@keyaar.in and I would love to reply to all the emails you can throw at it.
So this, is what I ‘eventually’ want to do: make books. Ink and pixels. It’s also been too long since Dekho and WID and MT.
[1]: Distraction-free implementation takes a while to get right. The right balance between focus and isolation is tricky at best. I see why iA is expensive. Safe to assume Ananthu has been a power user of Zettlr for a while, so I’m going to talk to him about this.
[2]: Chellam turned 2. R bow-tied and scarfed her. Our friendly neighbourhood-ish chicken-stall guy gave us so much extra parts the fridge is having a hard time. We believe she is famous in the town for coming along on all trips.
[3]: There is a link to some of the material at exif/teaching Justincase. ‘Infinite-Gestalt’ is what we had (unanimously in the way dictatorships are run) christened a Typography2 course in 2022.
[4]: Girish introduced us to the book. Short, to-the-point, fresh.
Links
While binge-skipping through Lincoln Lawyer behind an unmanageable large Figma file, came across this beautiful Mattiel Song. Forest has been good company. Such beauty everywhere on the internet. Here is ‘ Introducing the Concept of Radical User Friendliness in Web Design.’