Response to Thinking With Type

In Thinking With Type, there was a quote that stated, “Text can be solid, liquid, body or blood.” Why blood? I understand the solid, liquid, and body. The “blood” part, however, took a little longer to understand. For some reason, I paired the solid and body form of text together. I do believe that they are different. In the reading, it said that text in body form is so much more that just text. It includes pictures, page numbers, headers, footers, etc. Instead of looking just at the text, the reader must look at all the details that surround the text. This is the entire body of text.

When looking at text in the solid form, I see the typical page in a book that has all the same margins and spacing. Text in solid form is very uniform. I believe it is looked at as a solid because when in a uniform format with margins and the same spacing, it looks like a solid being. The text becomes somewhat of a block of letters.

Text in liquid form is more abstract. The spacing is customized and the margins perhaps have a wave to it. By utilizing these formatting abilities, the text can actually gain phenotypic properties of liquid. Perhaps text in liquid form does not even fill up a full page. Maybe it just trickles down the page in a small wavy line. I like the liquid form of text because it allows a little bit more freedom than solid and body. I know that one could be abstract with solid or body forms, but I think that it would be a little bit harder. Maybe in order to be artistic with text in solid and body forms, the artist will create something like the picture on page 62. It is an actually body formed by words that are overlapping creating an actual solid body form.

Now on to blood… What does this mean? I interpreted it as something that is truly a part of you. This is a creation that came from the artist’s deepest darkest places of creative ability that when it is placed on paper, it is like a part of you is taken from your body and set free.

I thought that the point of typography is to “help readers avoid reading” was quite humorous. The point is true. When looking at my textbooks and books for school, the bolded words and italicized words are always what I jump to first. It helps outline the entire subject that the reader is trying to learn without having to spend time going through all of the fluff.

Another interesting tidbit that I came across was the Kerning effect. It was interesting to me that when the typed text tries to be too uniform, the spacing between some letters actually cause spacing that looks awkward and takes away from the uniform effect that it is trying to achieve. Even with the Kerning scaling applied, to me some of the letters still did not seem in line. Maybe by modernizing text, we are still unable to make it look completely proper.