Typesetting In Between the Letters
Jul. 10th, 2010 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kai_mactaneLong before I learned to program — and long before the World-Wide Web was even a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye — I was introduced to typography by Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas. In his chapter “Variations on a Theme as the Crux of Creativity”, Hofstadter presents a full-page figure that shows 56 different versions of the letter “A”. The 56 fonts he uses show versions of “A” ranging from the spare to the ornate, with every other variation in between.
I’d never realized there was so much variation just in one letter. I was converted into a fontaholic on the spot (though not so completely as my sister, who now designs typefaces professionally for a prestigious font foundry — way to go, sis!). But it’s easy to get too absorbed in the letters.
Like Debussy, who noted that “music is the space between the notes”, I’ve become enamored with the kind of typography that happens between the letters. It’s more important than you think it is, because: It makes your text easier for people to read.
Originally published at Coyote Tracks. You can comment here or there.
