Work

Publication Design

Year: 2019

Words Blurb

The arrangement of words in a paragraph has been similar for an extended period of time. From the beginning of the Glutenberg Press machine, the typesetting for characters, words and paragraphs was set to a standard that printing followed along the years. Over this period of time, there are articles to the existing typesetting method that suggested a revitalisation of typesetting or promoting the advantages of the current method.

With an aspiration to review the aforementioned articles and assess the need of renewing the current typesetting method, the writers contributing to this book compared two articles on the existing typesetting method based on their design background. The writers brought their expertise to the table with their individual insights to typesetting methods.

The articles in this book all based on the idea that typesetting should focus on readability to communicate the thoughts and idea of the article rather than using unique and distracting typesetting that steer the readers away from the information to be communicated in the article.

While the invisibility of typesetting remains crucial, a revitalisation of typesetting seemed essential in the view of the writers. The current typesetting is hugely based from the Glutenburg era with few changes and being adopted into all consumer forms of text editing software. Despite we are accustomed to such typesetting, our writers all agreed on a review but remain the existing invisibility.

The arrangement of this book, therefore, followed on the stress of readability from the writers. The references from the writers are set as footnote to the side. It has not been easy, especially in academic writing, to find the reference from the end but referring to the paragraph a few pages before. To minimize the difficulty of such event, footnotes are placed to the side of the paragraph to easier referencing to the said ideas while not disrupting the reading sequence of the paragraph.

The arrangement of the paragraphs is also applying a similar readability concept. While symmetry paragraphs are more visually satisfying to see, the commonly used “hyphen” in aiding the process is sometimes disruptive for readers to read through the leftover words, especially for readers with minor reading difficulties. Therefore, with “readability for the mass” in mind, an asymmetrical layout is adopted to enhance the overall flow for reading the essential ideas from the article and extend the invisibility of typesetting in disrupting the communication of the article.

From the 22 writers who have contributed to this book, we aim to bring insights to the existing typesetting method that is adopted widely to the society and initiate an industry-wide reviewing and brainstorming process in the area that furthers readability to the general public and minority group who have difficulties in reading. With such aspiration in mind, we aim for the broader picture in communicating knowledge to more people worldwide and more diversely in enhancing the progression of knowledge of human kind.