REVIEW Detail in Typography

themselves. This is truly "sanctioned" Kinross understands modernity to mean annotating and can be really useful. A "an articulate consciousness of action" and favourite literary example is Daphne Marlatt regards it as an unfinished project. This correcting the recipe reproduced in the novel idea underpinned Modern Typography. His Ana Historic. If I ever get around to trying it later essay, Fellow Readers: Notes on Multiplied out, I'll be much more confident knowing Language, offered a critique of a superficial Ms. Marlatt has intervened with pen in hand application of postmodernism in graphic in the copy in my collection. design. The subsequent books of the press have served to articulate these positions. Paul Whitney is City Librarian at the Hyphen Press books are conceived as unified Vancouver Public Library. objects. Many are designed by their authors with an attention to detail rare in English language publications. Christopher Burke, the REVIEW author of Paul Renner: The Art of Typography, went so far as to design a second version of his Detail in Typography: typeface Celeste to increase the legibility of the Letters, Letterspacing, book's footnotes. With such attention to detail, Words, Wordspacing, Lines, it is understandable that Hyphen Press books are well made. Moreover, the books are often Linespacing, Columns printed in the Netherlands or Belgium, where By Jost Hochuli Kinross would argue the standard of printed (Hyphen Press, 2008, £12.50) matter is higher than in the U.K. Reviewed by Owen Williams The authors who publish with the Hyphen Robin Kinross, the founder of the Hyphen Press are often colleagues from Reading's De Press, could be considered an anti-bibliophilic partment of Typography or, like Jost Hochuli, bibliophile. It is not the connoisseurship of members of the Association Typographique ti de pages or the physical nuances ofletterpress Internationale (ATypl). printing that informs his understanding of As a designer, Hochuli is known for having typographic design, but rather the clear and mediated a path between the once-polarized systematic design of tax forms, train schedules methods of Swiss modern typography and and telephone books. This socially responsible the neo-traditional methods of symmetrical approach to design reflects the training Kinross typography. His approach realizes the value of received at Reading University's Department contrast in design, while recognizing a need of Typography in the 1970s. for detail and nuance. Aesthetically he prefers Kinross founded the Hyphen Press in his books light and sparse, but possessing that 1980 with the publication of a second edition particular form of elegance achieved through of Norman Potter's What Is a Designer. He an explicit use of contrast. Though they consolidated the press's reputation in 1992 assume a cultivated audience, his booklets in through the publication of his own book, the Typotron series (1983-98) exemplify this Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History. approach. The books of the Hyphen Press--quiet, Hochuli has written several books on reserved, functional---could be considered typography. Though different in title and particularly English. This approach, however, format, his English-language texts have is not parochial but instead engaged with been very similar in content. Designing Books: the northern and central European critical Practice and Theory, co-authored with Robin traditions of modern design and design Kinross and published by Hyphen, is probably reform. the most distinct of these publications. At a time when graphic designers such Detail in Typography forms part of the as Neville Brody were exploiting the rich press's new series. To date the book has been possibilities of the personal computer translated into seven languages. This edition combined with QuarkXPress and the other is a translation by Charles Whi rehouse of the new graphic design programs, and spoke of 2005 German-language edition published by their work through the dialectical language of Switzerland's Niggli, which also published postmodernism, Kinross was writing, editing Emil Ruder's Typography: A Manual of Design and publishing on modernity in typography. and Josef Muller-Brockmann's Grid Systems 7 in Graphic Design. While these Swiss Mod cover label is hand-painted by Holly Dean, ernist textbooks deal with macrotypography, with each copy "protected from vampires by a Hochuli's book deals with microtypography. tiny cross bound into the front cover." Hochuli explains the difference: Greyweathers Press (www.greyweathers. com) is run by Larry Thompson in Merrickville, 'While macrotypography-the typo Ontario, who has been printing books and graphic layout-is concerned with the ephemera by hand on a Vandercook s-2 r9AB format of the printed matter, with the size proofing press since 2006. and position of the columns of type and illustrations, with the organization of the hierarchy of headings, subheadings and captions, detail typography is concerned with the individual components-letters, letterspacing, words, wordspacing lines and linespacing, columns of text. These are the components that graphic designers or typographic designers like to neglect, Miracle Mile as they fall outside the area that is nor AlexanderMacLeod mally regarded as "creative." Frog Hollow Press, 2008 Unlike other books on the subject such as Miracle Mile (48 pp., edition of 95 copies Willi Kunz's Typography: Macro and Micro issued in two states) is a love story amongst the aesthetics or the Oxford and Cambridge style runners, a story that drips with the mindless guides, Detail in Typography is slim and con sweat of preparation and eventual culmination cise. The method deployed by Hochuli lies in of what is won, but more enigmatically, removing all elements that distract the eye, what is lost. And there is no preparation for then optically adjusting the results to achieve the ending of this story, something brutal a maximum clarity. The practice touches upon but always rooted in MacLeod's rendering elements of orthographic reform. While high of character. The title page features a wood ly aware of the conventions that underlie the engraving by George A. Walker. practice, and deploying a classical aesthetic, Digitally printed on archival 80-pound Hochuli is not prescriptive or dogmatic, but Mohawk Eggshell paper, the Deluxe Edition rather enables the reader to experience the dif (2 0 copies, I 5 for sale at $50) is cased in Japa ference of these optical refinements through nese cotton cloth over boards. The Regular example. In keeping with the book's man Edition (75 copies, approximately 45 for sale date, Detail in Typography is designed with a at $2 5) is Smyth-sewn, with a cover of mould reassuring lightness of touch. made Saint-Armand paper. Frog Hollow Press (www.froghollowpress. com) has been printing and publishing letter press limited editions of Canadian poetry and LIMITED AVAi LABI LITY short fiction in hardcover, paper and chapbook formats since 2001. A sampling of new limited edition books from small and fine-press publishers Between You and the Weather The Vampire and the Seventh Daughter Mary Dalton Larry Thompson Running the Goat Books Greyweathers Press, 2008 & Broadsides, 2008 This Gothic trifle (8 pp., edition of 75 signed Dalton is reaching back to an ancient riddling copies, $60) is hand-printed with cold type, tradition with these 26 little gems, but also using Italian Oldstyle for the text and Goudy engaging in a more contemporary and local Text for the cover, title page and opening lines. one: the oral traditions of her home, where It is illustrated with five linoleum cuts by the riddles and language itself have long been author and printed on Arches Text Wove paper, a form of entertainment. Puzzling and rich, with black Mohawk Ultrafine for covers. The these poems are very much of their place, and 8 .

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