Robert Bringhurst Lecture

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- AXIONET -dot- COM>]

On Saturday, June 6th, Robert Bringhurst, the writer of "The Elements of
Typographic Style,"
gave a free lecture at Simon Fraser University on the history of font
design.

The lecture did an outstanding job of showing not only the connections
between typography and
other arts, but also between typography and society as a whole.

Bringhurst himself is a well but soft spoken man in late middle age,
tall and still very active in
his movements. A poet and a some time collaborator with Bill Reid, the
great Haidan artist,
Bringhurst is obviously an artist and an intellectual, but not an
academic one.

These days, that makes him unusual. It also explains, I think, the
source of his strength as a speaker .
He makes the same kind of jokes when he speaks as when he writes (for
example, he said that a 1921
painting in which 3 women stare out blankly at the viewer was obviously
anticipating television, and
the book on one woman's lap was obviously a pre-publication copy of  "TV
Guide"), and, unlike
hardcore academics, he's not afraid of analogies.

In fact, his entire lecture could be called an extended analogy.

Describing each era of typography, he started with a painting from the
period which showed a person
with a book. He then explained how the details and style of the painting
showed the concerns of the age, and
how those concerns affected the way that people read. Once those
concerns were clear, he would
show a slide of a typical font from the era, and show how those concerns
were reflected in the font
and in the page design.

By the end of the hour, I was left in no doubt that typography and
design have always - and must
always - change to reflect the reading needs of the audience.

For the first time, I had a strong feeling (as opposed to an
intellectual conviction) that typography was
not a petty concern, but an integral part of culture and technology. Bad
design, Bringhurst said at the
end of his lecture, was simply another of the many forms of pollution
that we have had to endure in the
last two hundred years. Improving design, he implied, would improve our
lives in the same way that
cleaning a local river would.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the reception after the lecture because
spring house-cleaning had left my
eyes half-closed with grit, so I didn't talk to Bringhurst or hear more
from him.

However, I'm left wondering how well technical writers have adapted
typography to their readers' needs,
and how we could do more along those lines.

I'm also left with the suspicion that we haven't done nearly enough yet.

--
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
(604) 421-7189 or 687-2133 x. 269
www.outlawcommunications.com

"some people wear their heart
up on their sleeve
i wear mine underneath
my right pant leg
strapped to my boot"

-Ani DiFranco, "Outta Me, Onto You"