| On Book Design and Its Text Typesetting for ‘Eve Series' |
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‘Eve Series' is a collection of paintings and essays in collaboration between two writers, which consists of visual works such as photos, paintings, object of arts, sculptures, and written works such as poems, tanka (a Japanese fixed form of verse of thirty-one syllables), novels, and essays. Premise given by the editor to me as a concept of the series at the beginning stage was that each issue of the series should have independent standpoint, while having its consistent features throughout the whole series. A series of issue generally requires a fixed format, provided that it may be defined as a regular publications designed in a regular format. Since in each issue of the series, however, there appears different visual works and writings by different artists, I thought that giving the regular format to the series might be an impediment. Therefore I formed an idea that the choice of typefaces, text composition and its rule, disposition of folios and running heads including questions of their utility, and total layout should not he decided in advance, except such physical functions of being a book as A4 size format in 32 page-extent, saddle binding in thread-sewn, title page, colophon page. Having started from composition of various matters of the first issue entitled ‘THE FLORIST AT THE BACK OF THE CEMETERY', with considerations of continuity and discontinuity at the same time in the following nine issues, that seemed rather unplanned, I found that these flexible set-up of specifications worked well in the succeeding issue in adding ever-changing variety and peculiarity to the series. Choice of Typefaces for the Text The choice of typeface for the text must be priority in producing the printed matter, because it is an initial step in actual production processes that will be encountered after building up the total image, and that pre-determines features of a book and visual elements of total book design. Choosing one typeface out of many is, I think, the most difficult in book production and every kind of printed matters as well, but the option gradually becomes limited as a matter of course when the amount of text is more than a certain limit, depending on conditions of legibility, readability, degree of accommodation of our eyes to the typefaces, various kinds of characters, and output devices available. In ‘Eve Series’, those restriction of choosing typeface were next to nothing, as the editor requested us to select a typeface in accordance with the text or characteristics of the total format. The criteria for choice of typeface in ‘Eve Series’ was set up to reflect one of these important matters: details of text and visual presentation materials, or the form, or intention of the artists, which may vary in each issue. Typical typeface chosen from the above conditions is Mincho-tai face that has been recut and standardized since the art of letterpress printing was introduced to this country. But the ground for choosing one out of various version of Mincho-tai faces without these conditions was quite limited, and the option at once were reduced. I experimented to set tanka in the first issue both in a Mincho-tai face and in a kind of Nantai Kaisho-tai face, the square style of Chinese characters that especially retains some features of handwritten form. But for refinement, these faces with quiet and monotonous taste have been excessively standardized and given elaborated technical hands to them, therefore not only they could hardly suit the exposed emotion and a trace of physical sense of reaction observed in written manuscripts, but also a kind of noise heard from them were finally faded away. What I mean by ‘noise' in this context is not an actual extra hindrance caught by our ears but an essential factor from optical point of view. Then, after seeing the specimen pages set in a few typefaces, I selected one face, which seems a little negative approach. I dare to say that I had to do so because of a lack of variation in Japanese typefaces for text composition. Suppose there were ample typefaces in Japan, just like ones in Latin alphabet categorized in Venetian, Old, Transitional and Modern, I could take another ways. A typical example in choosing a typeface without going through a process of elimination can be seen in ‘EXCERPT FROM KINUGINU (DAWN SONG) WRITTEN ON A FAN’ in the eighth issue. The employed face is called ‘Naniwa’, one of the digitized Japanese characters selected from ‘Waji Revision 9' series freshly designed by Mr. Kin-ichi Imada, a type designer, who as his model of ‘Naniwa’ revitalized the characters once used for the text of ‘Joruri (a Japanese traditional ballad drama)' in the middle of Edo period (1603-1868). ‘Waji’ Revision 9' is an epoch-making project in the short history of Japanese typeface design, and should be valued not only as a highly motivated recutting of existing Mincho-tai face in metal type, but as revitalization of characters in order to use them for printed books as one of our contemporary text typefaces. The model of these are cursive in metal, movable wood types, and characters directly engraved on wood plates, which had never been given attention by Japanese type designers and typographers. I have found, after having set the text in 'Naniwa' in the eighth issue, that the appearance of the text pages matches more harmoniously with the visual materials than I'd expected, having its historical and classic taste coupled with individuality in its shape. And the idea of producing classic printed books called ‘Christian Version (Kirisitan ban)', in the same style as the original bilingual version, could not be brought out without this newly revised typefaces. The typesetting depended on the text as seen in the eighth issue gives another advantage to ‘Eve Series', which has no fixed format throughout. Printer's Flowers It is printer's flowers, ornamental rules in type, that I employed as a device to give the whole series visual consistency. Printer's flowers are types that have less ideographic value, and have survived together with typefaces for book production since the advent of the art of printing in the Renaissance. Their shape and form have preserved distinctive pattern of particular racialfeature and the period flavour, so printers and publishers in the West have kept adopting these ornaments, neither too much nor too little, in their books for about four hundred years. The highest utility of employing Printer's flowers is in its flexibility in which they can be used for display lines or a mass of pattern by combining them in both vertically and horizontally. The usage is so flexible that flowers are practically applicable each other and can be expanded at will, because there is no such restriction as required for typefaces, which helps descriptive form of language to stabilize on printed pages, even though there are no rules and no limitations derived from idioms or custom in the history of printing. The reason I employed some of these printer's flowers for ‘Eve Series' was that the form of those ornaments is considered to be still effective and gives the series its particular value. In my view of using the flowers at the beginning stage, it would be better idea to apply some of them to a border placing around the title in the jacket and to give the series uniformity and a slight variation. But using ornamental flowers ds a border seemed to solicit only the fixed uniformity to the readers and to result in a negative image. Since the fourth issue I have started using flowers as a pattern instead of a border, and this experience became my turning point in that they set me free from that blockade or mannerism, and broaden my outlook to find usability in displaying flowers. I can tell you how I made those flowers: it is, to be short, simply ‘tracing' from ornamental flowers of metal type, but in practice it is not enough to get the complete reproductions. Actually it may not be workable unless you take measure of the size of the, originals and think carefully of the joining parts, length (space), and colour density in combining patterns. And it requires my understanding how the patterns of typographic ornamental flowers should be designed, because shapes and patterns of most of the metal flowers look unclear, which is caused by thee marginal zone, technically so called, that is a certain amount of ink squash, expanded from the outer edges of metal type and slightly distorted depending largely on the quality of paper and control of impression in press work. It may make a different pattern of flowers from the actual ones, if you only trace the originals. It is therefore necessary to recognize the skeletal structure of a stem of plants and the veins of a leaf. Shapes and patterns of printer's flowers, having acquired their forms as a unit pattern through a long history of typography and crossing over fences built between human races, are still attractive nowadays. Whether we can use it or not is left to the hands of designers. There were some influential movements in early twentieth century. For example, a radical statement by Adolf Loos (1870- 1933), a German architect, saying `Adding any decoration deserves condemnation in his famous essay ‘ORNAMENT UND VERBRECHEN', and functionalism in modern design that rejected displaying any ornaments and held simplicity-oriented value. These two performances had, regardless of how we evaluate them, a great impact to the designing printed pages at that time and even after. These movements, on the one hand, had contributed to rise the revolt against appearance of printed pages that had easily followed the traditional style, and vitalize the situation those days, but on the other hand, they came to exclude even well-controlled use of decoration. This means that they attempted to bury the bequest from the past. I don't mean that I deliberately proclaim the revival of using printer's flowers, but there is no definite reasons for our designers and typographers to detest picking up some ornamental flowers out of type cases, if there are opportunities to give life to some extent to the printed pages with printer's flowers. |
Yoshihisa Shirai (Designer) |