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Cover: Enlargement from ‘Saving face’ Letterpress, 2003, 376 x 326 mm.
by Dennis Y Ichiyama

Jacket: Composition with Wood Type. Design by HDR Visual Communication

Contents

Editorial Hans Dieter Reichert & Mike Daines

Much to stimulate the senses, visual, tactile and aural in this issue, as we push ‘sensual typography’ beyond a preoccupation, amongst other publications, with erotica.

Helmut Schmid writes about the Swiss typographer and teacher Robert Büchler. He is a pioneer of modern typography and a contemporary of Emil Ruder, with whose work Büchler’s bears comparison, and with whom he was a fellow campaigner.

Frank Armstrong’s article explores in depth the relation between typographic and musical composition, presenting a fascinating study that amplifies his quote from Leonard Bernstein: ‘the best way to “know” a thing is in the context of another discipline’.

While commentators discuss the ‘designer as author’ as a contemporary phenomenon, Steven Heller uncovers the career of self-taught Merle Armitage, who worked at this role for over 40 years, beginning in the 1930s.

Meanwhile Martin Gamache proves the proposition that a graphical approach to cartography, employing devices familiar to the illustrator, can transform mapping. And proves it with stunning visual examples.

A residency programme at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, on the shores of Lake Wisconsin, provides almost tactile images, around which Dennis Ichiyama spins his description of the course and its results.

Hans Dieter Reichert & Mike Daines

Robert Büchler – typography at the edge Helmut Schmid
Hearing Type Frank Armstrong
Image from article Image from article Image from article Image from article Image from article

Since the invention of movable type, typography has been a relatively static visual language of letterforms embedded in passive two-dimensional surfaces. However, digital technologies have recently enabled designers to create kinetic typography, letterforms moving fluidly within four dimensions: a virtual three-dimensional space and time. Unfortunately, traditional methodologies for understanding typographic design, based on principles of two-dimensional visual composition, are not adequate for students learning to create dynamic time-based visual communications.

Film, a medium that integrates audio and visual components, provides a model for the macroaesthetics of kinetic typography: structure and narrative. Music would seem to be an excellent paradigm for the microaesthetics: visual and temporal properties, syntactic relationships and interaction between visual elements moving through both space and time. Could analogies between music and typography provide the foundation of a new methodology for perceiving and understanding both kinetic and static typography?…

Frank Armstrong

Merle Armitage – books of his time Steven Heller
Alpine mapping Martin Gamache
Contemporary Visions in Wood Type Prof. Dennis Y Ichiyama
Lexicon – An A–Z of digital typefoundries (D–F) Editorial team

©2003 Bradbourne Publishing Ltd.