Are typographers and type designers really black-and-white thinkers? Are they really so conservative as to think that text in books, periodicals, newspapers and other print, including the text on your laptop, tablet or mobile phone, should always be black? There’s plenty of color in the print media, at least in illustrations, and occasionally we come across a color headline. Traditionally, texts in manuscripts were written in black, or nearly black, ink. Gutenberg’s invention did not make it easy, technically, to print a second color. So from 1450 up to now, text has mostly been presented to us in a single color: black.
But this is going to change.
Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- All Categories
- 37 Introductions
- 3.5K Typeface Design
- 743 Font Technology
- 1K Technique and Theory
- 569 Type Business
- 428 Type Design Critiques
- 523 Type Design Software
- 30 Punchcutting
- 126 Lettering and Calligraphy
- 74 Technique and Theory
- 52 Lettering Critiques
- 451 Typography
- 282 History of Typography
- 111 Education
- 58 Resources
- 469 Announcements
- 71 Events
- 102 Job Postings
- 145 Type Releases
- 150 Miscellaneous News
- 255 About TypeDrawers
- 51 TypeDrawers Announcements
- 109 Suggestions and Bug Reports
Color will be the new Italic. Color will be the new Bold.
Mark van Wageningen / Novo Typo
Posts: 9
Some time ago we asked ourselves the question: ‘Why do type designers traditionally think in black and white?’
Why indeed? The world is colorful, the web is colorful, Hollywood does not produce any black-and-white movies anymore… Only type designers continue to think in these restrictive terms. Typographers today are living in the Golden Age of design. Software for designing a book or a typeface has never been so simple, and it is also easy accessible to almost everybody. Examples of archetypal typefaces or books are visible online. Modern printing techniques and software techniques allow us to experiment with a wide range of possibilities. From paper to a computer screen or from a two-dimensional model to a three-dimensional prototype. The results of these experiments can be shared via all kinds of social media with anyone anywhere in the world. We are intrigued and fascinated by all these new possibilities and we would also like to share our experiments with the rest of the world.
(Preface by Gerard Unger in Novo Typo Color Book, text and design by Mark van Wageningen)
We invite you to join the discussion and share thoughts with us. Follow the project via https://www.facebook.com/novotypo/ or via http://www.novotypo.nl/
Tagged:
6
Comments
For example: Look at the headings Contents, Preface, and Introduction in your book. They should be a single colour. The three-coloured drop capitals are fine, but three-coloured headings are just gaudy. I would not even want to read the book if it was laid out like that.
Effective use of colour may well help to communicate a message, but mixing three colours in a single glyph is just distracting. It might work in a logo, but not in text that needs to be read and understood.
This is more than enough colour to make the word stand out:
For example, here is a comparison between a very decorative approach to music typography and a more classical design:
Decorative:
Classic:
Personally, I love both of these designs for different reasons, but I would NEVER seriously publish (or use myself) any music using the decorative design because it's not as readable as the classic design. Musicians want to be able to immediately recognize the music. If they can't, they'll never use your scores. This is a high hurdle to get over, culturally.
Just my 2 cents.
Perhaps this depends a bit on the excessiveness of the message. Some of today’s world leaders excessively color their speeches and unfortunately don’t fail miserably. I think that we should see Mark’s publication above all as a basis for discussion, reflection and… fun. When I see his texts posted here, it is all quite relaxed, I think.
I think that Bob would have loved Mark’s color fonts to make his point in color.
The skill of the user can be used for good or evil. When we supply tools, we supply for all, even those with whom we disagree.
I only supply our exquisite fonts to decent customers of high standing.
I don't know if you're here just to sell your book, to sell coloured fonts, or to sell the idea, but I think you will find it hard to convince typographers that they need to add coloured type styles to their fonts unless you can come up with some much better examples of chromatic glyphs in real-life use.
I receive a free journal called Faith Initiative, which uses colour liberally in its publications for headings and for page backgrounds, but the body text is all black. The only piece of text that could use a chromatic font might be the logo, but that's more easily done with graphics as it requires gradients.
I would not say it's been easy enough.
> if the colour detracts from the message being conveyed, then it's use is inappropriate.
Which of course applies to anything. In fact to me most Italic designs also distract from the message being conveyed.
And I think it’s absurd to think that color will become common for presenting text. That’s as arrogant as designers in the 2000s who thought all text would be presented as expressive postmodern layouts like those found in the books of Howard Stern and Mark Danielewski. Readers read because they’re interested in the content written by the author, not because they’re interested in masturbatory layout novelty. Color might become common in headlines again (where it has come and gone plenty in the past) but it’s not going to become much more common in text than it is now.
Having coloured type styles, or multi-coloured type styles, is not going to make using colour any easier. Far from it; it will make it more difficult, and documents will break if one wants to use a font without coloured variants. Applying colour to text is as easy as selecting it and clicking a colour swatch, or applying a character style.
How easy it would be to use color in fonts depends of course on the interface. I agree the current ones are lacking.
So one always have to be careful about relying on color to convey information - for example, if you use green-on-red for emphasis, it might have the opposite effect: a substantial part of the general population simply see it as redacted.
I am also of the opinion that legibility comes first - ornamental to the extent of sacrificing legibility isn't.
But it's not too hard to imagine more than two dimensions to glyphs (yes, to an expert this is simply a fancy way of saying layers, and they will still register two-dimensionally). Despite the declarative tone, as a purely conceptual piece, it's an exercise that yields some intriguing results. I doubt we'll be changing how we read anytime soon, but a little typographic exploration can be an amusing diversion.
So, not much market-driven demand for huge change there.
Colour will never be the new bold.
When one uses colour for contrast, one usually bumps up the weight.
That’s because colouring type doesn’t make it bigger, which bolding does, and also makes it less clearly defined.
Color can produce meaningful contrast, but for type it is always weaker than boldness.
On the other hand, apparently my house is “powered by Rogers” (internet service provider), so anything goes.
I think it's great that it has become technically possible to include multiple colors in fonts more easily, but I don't see it becoming much more than the niche that it already is in terms of what people actually want and need.
I suspect red was used not because it's second-best in contrast to white, but because it's a great contrast to black. Also, it's cheap to manufacture (which is why barns are red).
BTW according to @John Hudson red was (is?) "formally" used in Ethiopia for emphasis in text.