This is an old book, written in 1931 by a man who was famous in his lifetime and notorious in the 1980’s. But it was new to me, and has made me think hard about how we write about things. Let me explain:
Eric Gill was an artist, sculptor and typographer, who is perhaps best known for the font Gill Sans, which is a favourite of mine for a reason which is somehow indefinable. He also did a lot of sculpture work which many say is very fine, but on which I can express no opinion.
In this slim volume, which he typeset himself in a font of his own design, Gill spends a lot of time discussing the differences between the work of the artisan and the work of the industrialist. He uses punctuation in new and interesting ways, such as using one of these ‘¶’ to denote the start of a new paragraph, and employing the ampersand ‘&’ and the word ‘and’ in quite different ways, depending on the context.
As a mild font nerd, I found the first half of the book educational, because Gill develops a theory about the evolution of lettering which was new to me. Lettering is distinct from ‘Font’ because before typesetting there were no fonts. People learned how to hand write the Roman, Italic and Greek alphabets (and later Germanic), and sculptors carved to imitate handwriting.
Later, printers carved out pages to emulate the written page – for profit and faster reproduction. Later still, type faces evolved to help publications differentiate themselves from the crowd. Times New Roman was a new font, based on Roman developed for the Times newspaper.
The second half of the book delves into the technical, looking at ways of setting out pages, books and fonts from a design point of view, finishing with a call to abandon the written word altogether and make everyone learn shorthand.
Throughout the work, Gill’s underlying thesis is that the work of the craftsman is noble, but undermined by the work of the industrial producer. For example, a craftsman can hand make a work that is excellently produced by dint of massive effort. But the work might be mass-produced to nearly the same standard for a fraction of the cost.
Gill also drives at the notion that the rapid uptake of moveable type means that increasingly people can choose whatever typeface they like for their work, regardless of the æsthetic, readability or usability concerns that might be considered.
One can only imagine what Mr Gill would say if he knew about digital typesetting.
Because, in a very real sense, he is right. Our technology has made it very easy to set a page in any way we feel like. Frequently, I think we just pack the information in regardless of the usability of the finished document.
Of course, from a tender response point of view – the customer does not always help. When formats are specified, or worse, the answers are requested in a spreadsheet, there is little scope for the artisan writer to shine.
I use the word ‘artisan writer’ purposely – because in a world where you can make any sort of writing look good using technology, eventually the key difference becomes the ability to transmit your message in writing.
And that’s where I come in.