Serif and sans serif
September 24, 2001 | 12:00am
Why am I in a week during which much of Western civilization as we know it seems to have been reduced to smoldering rubble on the south end of Manhattan – thinking of letters and letter-shapes? I don’t know, but I am. In my mind, I see letters – not even words – etched into marble, stenciled on signs, digitized on electronic screens, printed on paper.
I suppose, from my writer’s point of view, that this is what civilization means to me: letter and script, word and language. Babylon survives in cuneiform, Rome in the chiseled Ms, Cs, and Vs of its numerals, and China and Japan – at least to most of us – in inscrutable menus promising scrumptious delights.
When I think of New York, I think of banks, and bank-names graven in Garamond; when I think of London, I think of the London Underground, and of Tube-station signage executed in that distinctive roundish font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916 (named, not surprisingly, Johnston).
Call it a writerly bias: typography to me is a frame of mind, a way of literally shaping one’s words for public presentation. If words wore street clothes, this is what they would look like.
There are many ways of dividing the world, and one of them is to think of choosing between serif and sans serif. (The "serif" is the little foot or flourish that letters can display, say on the base and the shoulders of the letter "M," or the upturned palms of a "U"; sans serif simply means, in French, without serifs.)
Serif typefaces like Garamond and Bookman evoke Old World elegance and grace, and do date back to a time, centuries past, when the adornment of letters was an art in itself. The serifs, however, are more than decoration; they define the letters more sharply, and thus improve the overall readability of the text, with less confusion to be had between an "h" and an "m" and an "n." Thoughtfully designed books – or books meant to provoke thoughtfulness, like good poetry and fiction – generally use serif fonts, to anchor the eye and the senses.
On the other hand, sans serif fonts like Futura, Arial, and Helvetica convey modernity and impact, speed and soundbite. Events become news and goods are sold in sans serif – the typographical expression of the German Bauhaus movement of the 1920s, which extolled the beauty of utility and emphasized clean, geometric shapes.
Verse and prose narrative favor one form, and mass media, the Internet, and advertising the other. Not surprisingly, my computer displays this split personality: my word processor defaults to New York 14 points (a concession to aging eyes) while my browser employs Arial and the slightly rounder Verdana. I will never use sans serif in any book of mine – but will not mind it on the badge of a Mercedes-Benz Kompressor (the classic old VWs, characteristically, used a serif font and even script for their badges). If I am to have a gravestone (a small one, as I shall be burned to cinder), I should like the letters to be etched in Garamond, or at east nothing funkier than American Typewriter, which I favored in one early writerly phase.
I was introduced to typography at age 13, when I began working on the staff of our high school paper, and discovered the wondrous variety of fonts and typefaces in the press: indeed, in letterpress (these were the days before offset printing became standard), whereby molten lead was poured hissing into molds that produced blocks of mirror-image type, inked with a roller, and pressed flush against a fresh sheet of newsprint.
The process itself was magic, but never more so than when that sheet was lifted, the black ink sharp and shiny against the matte white paper. At that instant, metal, pulp, and pigment joined to make meaning: a string of words that might have moved a heart, or changed a nation. And the real beauty of letterpress was in its feel: you ran your fingers on the back of the paper and felt the imprint of each letter, as if each one had been personally and emphatically stamped in a kind of reverse-braille.
The press we worked in had a book of typefaces that I learned to commit to memory: Bodoni, Bookman, Times, Caslon, New Century Schoolbook, and, yes, my favorite Garamond. All these names had histories I had yet to know (Garamond, for example, was "considered the leading typeface of the Renaissance and early Baroque," according to my on-line guide at www.redsun.com, and was designed by the Frenchman Claude Garamond, 1480-1561). I had yet to encounter the word "colophon," that little story at the beginning or the end of a book giving the facts of its publication, including the typeface used and its maker.
Barely a boy, and handed a veritable bag of toys, I played with all the typefaces I could get my hands (or, rather, the typesetter’s hands) on; not surprisingly, our school paper began to resemble a cross between a university diploma, a greeting card, and a restaurant menu – Bodoni here, Univers there, 48 points bold here, 36 points itals there.
Only much later – perhaps under the influence of penury and necessity, when we had to stencil and mimeograph manifestoes and assorted political treatises for the insurgent Left – did I begin to appreciate the virtues of simplicity. Typographically at least, revolution led not to romantic chaos but to almost neoclassic order, epitomized by the neatness and the evenness of the Courier font favored by Ang Bayan, the official organ of the Communist Party, which we so admired and emulated in the newsletters and flyers we churned out of our HQs and UG (underground) houses. The only departure from this soldierly efficiency was the lettering performed on logos and streamers, which employed letters resembling fat-bellied flames, tapering off to crackling wisps at the top; the idea was fire, revolutionary fire, and the typography gave body to the spirit. (There was a lot of romance in the prose, often disguised as hardnosed Marxism – but that’s another story.)
Let me make another silly confession: when it next came time to go to graduate school in America (where, if you haven’t figured it out yet, a good number of former Maoists eventually find themselves), I chose a school with a nice crisp logo and a typeface I could live with; thumbing through a catalogue of school seals, I was convinced that the University of Michigan was one such institution that took its signage seriously, and so perhaps could be trusted with my artistic education.
More usually, we don’t lead our lives as haphazardly as that, and thankfully so. We Pinoys revel in crazy-cut pastiche and mix-and-match, but we like to claim a mastery of method in our madness. Not for us the neatly funneled traffic of Western streets and boulevards, the pleasant cadences of classical-music radio hosts, the subtleties of calibrated silences. Our national punctuation mark is the exclamation point (in 72-point Arial Black) – better a rack of them than just one, with a question mark or two thrown in (in some gaudy italic) to spice up the expression. Not for us the chiseled Copperplate of 200-year-old institutions; our fonts are as fresh and ragged as yesterday’s paint, which it probably was – on the signboards of jeepneys and carinderias, or the polished butts of new Toyota taxis dedicated to "Jhun-Jhun, Marybeth, and the Macansantos Family."
In this the Filipino has gone ahead of even the most avant-garde Western designer, who a few years ago seemed obsessed with making letters as ugly and as unreadable as they could be, producing what would be called "grunge" typography – famously used in the opening credits of dark and messy movies. Our signmakers and sign painters are much neater and brighter than that, but you always see the brushstroke and you often get a signature, however miniscule, as if to say: "I, Potenciano Garamundo, 43, sign painter, of Laong-laan, Manila, inscribed these words upon this vehicle, making it truly unique in the universe, as I am."
If you have a free afternoon or a weekend to spare (or if you have time on your way to or from Baguio), may I suggest that you drive yourself and the kids or take the bus to Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, not to munch on the sugarcane but to visit the new Aquino Center.
Just recently opened, the Aquino Center is everything a presidential library and museum should be – dignified yet wide open, spacious yet intimate. It brings the lives of Ninoy and Cory Aquino within the reach of ordinary citizens (those, anyway, who can make the journey and afford the entrance fee of P50 discounted to P20 for students).
A 20-minute video precedes a tour of the exhibits; for many young Filipinos, this may be their only chance of hearing Ninoy Aquino at his best, as senator and exile. Even the chilling few minutes of his arrival and murder on Aug. 21, 1983 have been lost to most Filipinos under 20. It’s all there in the video. The exhibits themselves deal with Ninoy’s and Cory’s careers, the centerpiece of which is Ninoy’s bloodied shirt, which cannot fail to elicit a gasp or even tears from the onlooker.
The Aquino Center was designed by architect Dan Lichauco, and is exemplary and impressive in its tastefulness and its blend of the modern and the traditional – a truly world-class edifice we can all be proud of. Two budget hotels stand within walking distance for overnight visitors and conventioneers. The Center is open Monday to Saturday, 2-5 pm.
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.
I suppose, from my writer’s point of view, that this is what civilization means to me: letter and script, word and language. Babylon survives in cuneiform, Rome in the chiseled Ms, Cs, and Vs of its numerals, and China and Japan – at least to most of us – in inscrutable menus promising scrumptious delights.
When I think of New York, I think of banks, and bank-names graven in Garamond; when I think of London, I think of the London Underground, and of Tube-station signage executed in that distinctive roundish font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916 (named, not surprisingly, Johnston).
Call it a writerly bias: typography to me is a frame of mind, a way of literally shaping one’s words for public presentation. If words wore street clothes, this is what they would look like.
There are many ways of dividing the world, and one of them is to think of choosing between serif and sans serif. (The "serif" is the little foot or flourish that letters can display, say on the base and the shoulders of the letter "M," or the upturned palms of a "U"; sans serif simply means, in French, without serifs.)
Serif typefaces like Garamond and Bookman evoke Old World elegance and grace, and do date back to a time, centuries past, when the adornment of letters was an art in itself. The serifs, however, are more than decoration; they define the letters more sharply, and thus improve the overall readability of the text, with less confusion to be had between an "h" and an "m" and an "n." Thoughtfully designed books – or books meant to provoke thoughtfulness, like good poetry and fiction – generally use serif fonts, to anchor the eye and the senses.
On the other hand, sans serif fonts like Futura, Arial, and Helvetica convey modernity and impact, speed and soundbite. Events become news and goods are sold in sans serif – the typographical expression of the German Bauhaus movement of the 1920s, which extolled the beauty of utility and emphasized clean, geometric shapes.
Verse and prose narrative favor one form, and mass media, the Internet, and advertising the other. Not surprisingly, my computer displays this split personality: my word processor defaults to New York 14 points (a concession to aging eyes) while my browser employs Arial and the slightly rounder Verdana. I will never use sans serif in any book of mine – but will not mind it on the badge of a Mercedes-Benz Kompressor (the classic old VWs, characteristically, used a serif font and even script for their badges). If I am to have a gravestone (a small one, as I shall be burned to cinder), I should like the letters to be etched in Garamond, or at east nothing funkier than American Typewriter, which I favored in one early writerly phase.
I was introduced to typography at age 13, when I began working on the staff of our high school paper, and discovered the wondrous variety of fonts and typefaces in the press: indeed, in letterpress (these were the days before offset printing became standard), whereby molten lead was poured hissing into molds that produced blocks of mirror-image type, inked with a roller, and pressed flush against a fresh sheet of newsprint.
The process itself was magic, but never more so than when that sheet was lifted, the black ink sharp and shiny against the matte white paper. At that instant, metal, pulp, and pigment joined to make meaning: a string of words that might have moved a heart, or changed a nation. And the real beauty of letterpress was in its feel: you ran your fingers on the back of the paper and felt the imprint of each letter, as if each one had been personally and emphatically stamped in a kind of reverse-braille.
The press we worked in had a book of typefaces that I learned to commit to memory: Bodoni, Bookman, Times, Caslon, New Century Schoolbook, and, yes, my favorite Garamond. All these names had histories I had yet to know (Garamond, for example, was "considered the leading typeface of the Renaissance and early Baroque," according to my on-line guide at www.redsun.com, and was designed by the Frenchman Claude Garamond, 1480-1561). I had yet to encounter the word "colophon," that little story at the beginning or the end of a book giving the facts of its publication, including the typeface used and its maker.
Barely a boy, and handed a veritable bag of toys, I played with all the typefaces I could get my hands (or, rather, the typesetter’s hands) on; not surprisingly, our school paper began to resemble a cross between a university diploma, a greeting card, and a restaurant menu – Bodoni here, Univers there, 48 points bold here, 36 points itals there.
Only much later – perhaps under the influence of penury and necessity, when we had to stencil and mimeograph manifestoes and assorted political treatises for the insurgent Left – did I begin to appreciate the virtues of simplicity. Typographically at least, revolution led not to romantic chaos but to almost neoclassic order, epitomized by the neatness and the evenness of the Courier font favored by Ang Bayan, the official organ of the Communist Party, which we so admired and emulated in the newsletters and flyers we churned out of our HQs and UG (underground) houses. The only departure from this soldierly efficiency was the lettering performed on logos and streamers, which employed letters resembling fat-bellied flames, tapering off to crackling wisps at the top; the idea was fire, revolutionary fire, and the typography gave body to the spirit. (There was a lot of romance in the prose, often disguised as hardnosed Marxism – but that’s another story.)
Let me make another silly confession: when it next came time to go to graduate school in America (where, if you haven’t figured it out yet, a good number of former Maoists eventually find themselves), I chose a school with a nice crisp logo and a typeface I could live with; thumbing through a catalogue of school seals, I was convinced that the University of Michigan was one such institution that took its signage seriously, and so perhaps could be trusted with my artistic education.
More usually, we don’t lead our lives as haphazardly as that, and thankfully so. We Pinoys revel in crazy-cut pastiche and mix-and-match, but we like to claim a mastery of method in our madness. Not for us the neatly funneled traffic of Western streets and boulevards, the pleasant cadences of classical-music radio hosts, the subtleties of calibrated silences. Our national punctuation mark is the exclamation point (in 72-point Arial Black) – better a rack of them than just one, with a question mark or two thrown in (in some gaudy italic) to spice up the expression. Not for us the chiseled Copperplate of 200-year-old institutions; our fonts are as fresh and ragged as yesterday’s paint, which it probably was – on the signboards of jeepneys and carinderias, or the polished butts of new Toyota taxis dedicated to "Jhun-Jhun, Marybeth, and the Macansantos Family."
In this the Filipino has gone ahead of even the most avant-garde Western designer, who a few years ago seemed obsessed with making letters as ugly and as unreadable as they could be, producing what would be called "grunge" typography – famously used in the opening credits of dark and messy movies. Our signmakers and sign painters are much neater and brighter than that, but you always see the brushstroke and you often get a signature, however miniscule, as if to say: "I, Potenciano Garamundo, 43, sign painter, of Laong-laan, Manila, inscribed these words upon this vehicle, making it truly unique in the universe, as I am."
Just recently opened, the Aquino Center is everything a presidential library and museum should be – dignified yet wide open, spacious yet intimate. It brings the lives of Ninoy and Cory Aquino within the reach of ordinary citizens (those, anyway, who can make the journey and afford the entrance fee of P50 discounted to P20 for students).
A 20-minute video precedes a tour of the exhibits; for many young Filipinos, this may be their only chance of hearing Ninoy Aquino at his best, as senator and exile. Even the chilling few minutes of his arrival and murder on Aug. 21, 1983 have been lost to most Filipinos under 20. It’s all there in the video. The exhibits themselves deal with Ninoy’s and Cory’s careers, the centerpiece of which is Ninoy’s bloodied shirt, which cannot fail to elicit a gasp or even tears from the onlooker.
The Aquino Center was designed by architect Dan Lichauco, and is exemplary and impressive in its tastefulness and its blend of the modern and the traditional – a truly world-class edifice we can all be proud of. Two budget hotels stand within walking distance for overnight visitors and conventioneers. The Center is open Monday to Saturday, 2-5 pm.
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