To write without a pen
by Andrew Byrom

+ 1 Introduction

We are at a pivotal stage in the development of typeface design. In recent years there has been a huge increase in the number of new typefaces which is doubtlessly an effect of the new labour saving processes of our digital world. But type has become cheap both in a financial sense (today you will see fonts being given away on disks with computer magazines) and in the sense that they are often 'cheap and nasty'. Looking at the vast majority of new typefaces that are showcased in typographic journals such as X-Height and U & Lc they seem almost direction-less; they would not have even been classed as typefaces fifteen years ago. They are 'anarchic', pseudo-modern illustrations that may or may not represent the alphabet, but are seen in the same light as all of todays typography because they are accessed through the same process; the tapping of a key on our keyboards. Quite rightly, with their new found freedom, todays type designers are breaking all the 'rules', but they are not replacing the old rules with their own new ones.

"Today, there is an urban street-stomped road-kill kind of font which is challenging legibility; it's more violent." David Berlow - U & Lc (Fall 1994)

1-2
David Crystal; The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1971)

3
Antonio and Ivana Tubaro; Lettering (1992)

I am looking for a direction for my type designs. I am considering the fundamental goal of typography; to visibly communicate language. Yet my aim is also to design a typeface that reconsiders the relationship between verbal language and the alphabet. To do this I have to consider characteristics shared by all aspects of communication.

It may seem that verbal language and the alphabet barely have a relationship; they are almost divorced - a separation that perhaps will never be reconciled. We do not normally speak when we are reading or write how we speak. The content of speech, if transcribed into a visual form, would be vastly different from that which is created straight from the mind, via the fingers, to the page or screen. Writing, and to some extent reading, can be seen as a singular activity whereas with speech there must be a receiver in ear shot and there can be unlimited sender/receivers. "Speech is timebound, dynamic, transient - part of an interaction in which, typically, both participants are present, and the speaker has a specific addressee (or group of addressees) in mind. Writing is spacebound, static, permanent - the result of a situation in which, typically, the producer is distant from the recipient - and, often, may not even know who the recipient is (as with most literature)." 1 The spoken word contains private codes of meaning that are dependent on our social circumstances and background. These need only be known by a minimum of two people. Whereas the written word repels private codes. Even when writing to a close friend it is almost impossible to do so in the same mode as talking. The formal structure of writing is so ingrained in us that we only seem able to write in public codes. "Writing can only occasionally be thought of as 'interaction', in the same way as speech (exceptions include personal correspondence and, more importantly, the growing field of computer interaction). It is therefore not surprising to find differences emerging very quickly when languages first come to be written down." 2

This first written language was Sumerian around 3000 B.C. The Sumerian letterforms took their shape from the indents made by different instruments, for example reeds on small clay tablets. This writing system began with pictogram depictions of visible objects, but this process made the standardised form of characters difficult and subsequently more abstract forms developed. Sumerian writing cannot be said to be translating speech into a visual form for they were only really drawing things that could be seen.

The depiction of the spoken word came about with the Ph¦nicians and the first alphabet, around 300 B.C. Here the symbols still derive from pictograms but it is the sound they represent that give them meaning. "The first letter of this alphabet is a simplified head of an ox; in Phoenician ox is 'aleph' and thus the symbol indicates the sound of the letter a." 3

By 900 B.C. the Greeks had adapted the Ph¦nician alphabet. They had added consonants and vowels and where the Ph¦nicians had written from left to right (the Bustrofedic system), the Greeks originally wrote to the left then to the right "in a ploughing style" (Sinistrose system) and eventually from left to right (Destrorse system) as we do today.

The Romans adopted and adapted this alphabet to reflect the principles of their architecture, basing its geometric structure on the simple forms of the circle, square and triangle and creating what is now called Roman Square Capitals. It was through the Romans informal writings that a calligraphic version of square capitals developed which lead to a less precise and more flowing style of writing called Roman Rustic Script. Here the capitals begin to be affected by the pen used to create them and the mimicking of stone cut letters begins to become less evident.

Around 300 A.D. a new script, Unical, was developing which introduced small letters (half Unical). Half Unical derived from the notes made by scribes in the margins of manuscripts. It is an important development in the history of handwriting because it was from this time that the style of writing became inseparably linked to its author. The shape of each letter was for the first time not taken from a pre-designed model, but from the result of rapid and flowing strokes that come from the quill on new a material; parchment.

There have always been models for handwriting, but because of its informal and everyday use the emphasis now is not on the quality of its form but if it can be read.

There are many obvious differences between verbal and visual language, but I aim to reconcile them in an attempt to create an alphabet design that reassesses its verbal relative.

What is Typography?