Publishing peeves

Last week I made mention of a pet peeve I’ve nursed all these years: the practice of some publishers and graphic designers of superimposing text over graphics to the extent of rendering the text barely legible. It’s something that’s been done by professionals and amateurs alike; I’ve seen it in both glossy coffee-table books and high-school papers, perpetrated with a blithe indifference to whatever the words may be saying.

You can forgive it in high-school poetry, where the artists (if not the poets themselves) try to invest the poems with more gravity than they possess by setting them against silhouettes of trees and waves rolling on the shore. (We’ve all read–or maybe even written–those cheesy poems, the ones that go: "When you left / I was bereft / and tried to remember / that day in September / How we laughed in the rain / and forgot all the pain / etc. etc.")

But in coffee-table books and glossy magazines meant for a more discerning readership, it’s inexcusable, although again I can see how it happens. The art director and maybe even the editor fall in love with a certain look and forget that the publication was meant to be read more than it was meant to be seen. In these instances, unless the magazine or book is specifically devoted to images, editorial judgment should prevail in favor of the primacy of the text, and therefore to its readability.

The plain honesty of black letters on white or off-white paper is hard – if not pointless – to improve upon. Call me an old fogy if you will, but when I write something I expect the reader to respond to it not because of some graphic sleight-of-hand but because of what the words say and mean. Appropriate illustrations and sensitive or even sumptuous layouts should enhance, but not overwhelm, the reading experience.

This brings to mind a few other peeves I have with regard to publishing (and here I’m talking about print, not online, publishing, about which more, later).

Another sure sign of the addled amateur is the proliferation of fonts and font sizes, especially in a book that isn’t even trying to challenge the conventions of typography and design, as a cutting-edge magazine like Wired might. I can remember, again from high school, what fun it was to pick fonts and typefaces from a catalog at the letterpress print shop and to throw Bodoni, New Century Schoolbook, and English Gothic into the same page; later, we had those Letraset rub-on letters to play with, at a time when a font like Arnold Bocklin seemed the coolest thing to use. I can imagine what it’s like when a young author or designer (or just as likely not young but an old, unknowing one) discovers that his or her computer has 1,000 fonts stored in its memory, and decides to use half of them all at once.

There are fonts meant for body text and fonts designed for titles; fonts for more traditional material and fonts for avant-garde publications (including those scratchy "grunge" fonts that were all the rage a few years ago, now thankfully out of favor with all but the most juvenile designers). The best use of fonts, I think, will present the text neutrally, so our minds can decide how to interpret it, rather than incline us – except in very subtle ways – toward an opinion or an attitude. Printing poetry in italics (except when they’re being quoted within a longer work of prose) lends the lines a preciousness they might neither need nor deserve. In other words, trust the art of your words, not the artiness of how they look.

Also, if I had my way, all magazines would lie flat when opened. If I put it down on the table so I could read it or glance through its pages while taking a call or working on my computer, it should comply forthwith and bare its inner pages to me without even trying to snap shut like a clam or resisting to lie on its spine. (Incidentally, this is one of the chief virtues of Moleskine notebooks, which I extolled in a column some time ago; there are notebooks aplenty in the stationery market, and many far cheaper than Moleskines, but few – if any – will open like Moleskines just the way you want them.)

Too many magazines today are stuffed with subscription cards and other promotions. Most of these cards won’t even come free when you try and shake them out of the magazine, which I used to do with every new copy I got of, say, Macworld or the Smithsonian Magazine; instead, they’re wedged or sewn into the binding, obliging you to yank them out with deadly force or to live with them as artificial, semi-permanent bookmarks.

That brings me to the inevitable observation that many of today’s magazines are thinly disguised catalogues, profusely illustrated with advertisements for the latest and greatest in clothes, cars, computers, watches, lipstick, and what-have-you. The articles? Well, let’s call them extended captions, breakers between one advertising section and the next. (Like someone said of ice hockey, "A hockey game broke out in the middle of a brawl!")

Speaking of these glossies – whether they’re published in Manila or Manhattan – don’t you get the impression that there are really only 24 people or so on this planet or in our little corner of it worth writing about? Don’t you ever get tired of seeing the same names and faces hopping like bejeweled bunnies from one cocktail party or product launch to the next? Some of them aren’t even particularly pleasant to look at, which would’ve been my excuse for parading them in new clothes on the same pages from week to week and month to month.

Thankfully, a few truly good magazines still survive, even within this vapid ethos of celebrity-mania; Vanity Fair, for one, can always be depended on for good, sharp reads; even Oprah’s O magazine offers pages of sensible advice (and at least there’s only Oprah to contend with in it).

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I guess I’m just in a sensitive mood because, last Tuesday, we put to bed the last print edition of Newsbreak, a gutsy political newsmagazine I was proud to have helped edit and to have occasionally written for these past six years. Over that time, Newsbreak built up a reputation for hard-nosed, impartial reporting that left no one in high public office untouched. My friends in the diplomatic corps often remarked how Newsbreak was obligatory reading for them because of its trustworthiness.

That reputation came at the price of death threats and lawsuits for some of the staff; ultimately, the murderous economics of print publishing overtook even our publisher’s best intentions. Newsbreak isn’t dead; it’s living on online at www.newsbreak.com.ph, which is probably the best solution for a magazine in its situation. Online is where most of its readers are at, anyway, and bandwidth is a lot cheaper than paper and printer’s ink.

I won’t be a part of that edition any longer, but I wish Newsbreak’s practically all-female editorial staff the best. They’re first-rate journalists who could teach their male counterparts more than a thing or two about standing their ground and maintaining their integrity in a profession fraught with danger and temptation. With the May elections coming up, they have their work cut out for them.

Speaking of online ventures, I’m glad to announce that I’ve joined some tech-writer friends in a jointly written and edited blog called, ahem, PWIT (that’s for "Philippine Week in Tech"; there’s another story behind it, but go read the blog at www.pwit.wordpress.com). I share bylines with familiar tech names like Adel Gabot (the site’s boss chief), Jason de Villa, Art Ilano, Bernie Janda, and Gary Mercado, among others. All these guys (what, no gals?) are busy people, and what about me, teaching four classes, writing a weekly and a monthly column, and working on four book projects all at the same time, not to mention my own blog?

But tech-blog writing is one of those things that’s turning out to be fun to do as a posse of computer-crazy guys. Like politics, high-tech wars take no prisoners, but unlike politics, nobody dies in them; everything just moves on to version 2.0.1. PWIT is platform-independent; Mac, PC, and Linux geeks are welcome all alike. If you can’t get enough about computers, phones, music players, and other digital doodads from the usual tech magazines (and obviously, we can’t), take a gander at our PWIT. Well, sort of.

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The opening took place last Friday, but it isn’t too late to put in a good word for painter-architect Joven Ignacio’s third one-man show, titled "Aruga: Handog ng Sining sa Agham" at the North Court of the Power Plant Mall, Rockwell Center, Makati City. Co-sponsored by Rockwell Land Inc., the exhibit will benefit the scholars of the Philippine Science High School Foundation Inc.’s (PSHSFI) Godparent Program. That program allows PSHS alumni and friends to support poor but deserving students at the high school.

Young art prodigy Myra Ruth Picart, a junior student and scholar of the Godparent Program, is also showing some of her acrylic paintings in the exhibit.

Ignacio is known for producing paintings of flora and fauna in their unspoiled environment and is a staunch advocate of environmental awareness at the forefront of the emerging field called "green" architecture.

Trained in the UK and in Sweden after his undergraduate studies at the University of the Philippines, Ignacio is involved with the Green Architecture Movement of the United Architects of the Philippines and with the UP College of Architecture where he teaches topical design and rendering techniques. For more information, call PSHSFI at 921-0655. The exhibit runs until Feb. 2.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://www.penmanila.net.