Thomasina’s last waltz

Sleeping Beauty: The Program

I have six minutes till pumpkin hour (yes, I know that’s the wrong fairytale) so no time to comment on the production in this post. But I do have time to say this:

Thank you, oh publications people at the Australian Ballet. For the first time (at least since the 70s) you have given us a program book that fits in a girl’s handbag. You wouldn’t believe how happy this makes me – how deliriously and irrationally overjoyed I am. Yee ha!

It’s a handsome number, with no compromise in its scope.

I’m just going to say one thing, which in no way diminishes my joy but which might have spoiled it if I were 15 or 20 years older: the body copy font is just too small. It’s 6.5 point by my reckoning (the embedded quotes are even smaller!) and although, unlike in concerts, there’s no need for it to be read in semi-darkness, it really wants to be at least 8.5 point or 9 point. For two reasons: the obvious one is  legibility and reading pleasure; the other one is to avoid the page design looking as if an A4 design has simply been shrunk down all round to fit the new size.

Oh, and since I’m griping (joyously, of course): it would be so nice if the cast sheet, when folded in two, fit nicely inside the book without jutting out. After all, we’re being encouraged to sit these new programs “snugly” on our bookshelves, and the cast sheet is an essential record of the performance and the dancers seen, so we’ll want to keep that pretty snugly too. If 20mm were trimmed off the height of the cast sheet it would be perfect. Actually – wicked thought – I could do that myself: there’s a band of sponsor logos across the bottom… Ahem.

Now comes the nerdy complaint, which probably I and maybe two others will be making: those of us who keep our program books and actually plan to take them down to Croydon to get the bookbinder there to make them into annual volumes will be wondering why, oh why, couldn’t this change of program format be kept until the beginning of the 2010 season? Now I’ll have to bind the first three programs from 2009 in one book and keep this final one to be bound with the four from 2010 (assuming the format doesn’t change again). “Grr” is the customary response, I believe.

But ignore the whinges (especially the nerdy one). This was quite the nicest surprise of the year.

If you had to choose

A meme courtesy of composer Daniel Wolf, via the world-changing blog. In the ancient tradition of memes, I make my own variations and spell Handel’s name auf Englisch, the way he would have liked it.

1. Bach or Handel?

2. Haydn or Mozart?

3. Beethoven or Rossini?

4. Strauss or Richard?

5. Puccini or Verdi?

6. Debussy or Ravel? 

7. Mahler or Strauss?

8. Schoenberg or Stravinsky? 

9. Prokofiev or Shostakovich?

10. Porter or Sondheim?

Bonus round:

1. Astaire or Kelly?

2. Eliot or Yeats?

3. Joyce or Mann?

4. Hitchcock or Welles?

5. Duchamp or Picasso?

6. Futura or Gill Sans?

7. Ballet or Opera?

Punching out the pronouns

Shifting to a different “enthusiasm”…

A few months ago I came across a nifty business card from an Australian company that does office design work. Two pictures speak, I would say, about two thousand words.

 

It's time

I have a November ritual, now approaching seven years old. I write off to an architectural bookshop in Seattle, Peter Miller, and order Pentagram Classic Typographic calendars: a small one for the office, a huge one for my hallway at home.

These are beautiful. No pictures, just a single typeface per month, with a small paragraph about the typographer and the origins and heritage of the face. (This month it's Skia, developed for Apple in 1994).

The Pentagram blog points out that the used months make very nice wrapping paper. It scares me to think that I was doing this long before they mentioned it.

Seven multiplied…

Prima la musica has extended a voluntary tag to the Seven Things About Me meme, the rules of which are noted at Score Desk. As I understand it, the facts are intended to be a combination of the random and the weird.

1. Childhood ambitions and their inspirations: pirate (Treasure Island), submarine captain (Navy open day), pilot (too many Biggles books).

2. Irises. Always. Nothing but.

3. Recorder, viola, harpsichord – instruments on which I never had lessons but which I somehow found myself playing. Viola was the first instrument that I played on the stage of the Sydney Opera House.

4. Musical theatre. My first musical love. There was a time when I could sing all the songs from just about any musical you cared to name. There are still times when I’d rather hear Sondheim than Mahler. [I’ll drink to that.]

5. Fifteen. The number of years I collected and devoured concert and theatre programs before realising that someone must be paid to write and edit these things. And normally I’m so quick off the mark…

6. My handwriting? I taught myself as a kid. From a little book Dad owned called Good Handwriting and How to Acquire It (1954). I share with Winsome Evans the view that it is simple courtesy to write in an æsthetically pleasing hand, and with the Chinese and Japanese the idea that calligraphy is an essential item in the scholar's toolbox. Oh, and I'm a typography nerd.

7. I think the most exquisite sound in the world is the scratch of a quill scribing on vellum. Clearly Peter Greenaway thinks it’s pretty special too:

I join the cowards of the world by also suggesting that, if the whim takes you, you may consider yourself tagged. Don't have a blog? Make a facebook Note instead.

Huzzah!

The creator of this game is making it progressively more difficult, so I'm posting my score now, before it becomes too embarrassing.

[Edit: The Font Game is now hosted by i love typography.]

Typography and music

An irresistible musical analogy from a typographer.

I look for unevenness, for letters that are over- or under-weight, for any inconsistencies that might flag the flavor. Every letter must be independently legible so that if it is seen out of context it will not be misread. Finally the entire alphabet must be ‘in tune’…. The oboe is the first instrument you hear when a symphony orchestra begins to ‘tune up.’ The oboe gives the pitch. It has great penetration and can easily be heard by all the other instruments. Now comes a surprising coincidence: the letters O B E in the word OBOE and the lowercase letters o b e—or preferably o d e—are, by the nature of their design, key letters that give the pitch to which other letters of the alphabet may be tuned. O B E and o d e carry a big load in determining the character of a style. They are not dramatic shapes like a or g or s, but they sound the pitch clearly. First they must be in tune with each other, then the remaining letters should be in design harmony or in artistic balance with these three. All must be in tune.

Edward Rondthaler, Life with Letters, as they turned photogenic, 1981.

Link: eXtreme Type Terminology | i love typography

Letters are things, not pictures of things

“The shapes of letters do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscences. No one can say that the O’s roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or of a girl’s breast or of the full moon. Letters are things, not pictures of things.”
Eric Gill
Creator of Gill Sans and the London Transport typeface.

Priorities

clipped from www.recedinghairline.co.uk The large-type heading for each section contains an example of a typographic mistake; if you can see what's wrong in each one before reading the explanation below, give yourself a pat on the back. Then examine your life priorities.

Or you can just go ahead and check out the ten typographical mistakes that everybody makes...

Q is for…

This month on NaBloPoMo the theme is "letters". That can mean correspondence, of course, and my guess is that this is the inspiration most participants will follow. But for the typography nerd, letters can mean only one thing. I'm beginning with my favourite letter of all, which also happens to be the "first" letter on the QWERTY keyboard. 

I love its round form, combined with the flourishing possibilities of the tail. Lower case can be fun too, especially in any hand based on 16th-century scripts, like this one:

For me the letter Q offers a quick way to decide whether I like a typeface or not. Because almost without  fail if the Q is gracefully formed and perfectly balanced, then I'll like the other letters. And if the Q isn't right then it doesn't bode well.

Take the font you're reading now (Georgia) – I'm not entirely fond of the way the tail of the Q descends from the middle of the main letter. But there isn't a lot to choose from in the TypePad set and Georgia wins because it also has old style numerals, which sit within the x-height (1, 2) and have descenders and ascenders (5, 6).

But the possibilities for Q are endless, as this tiny sample reveals:

My preferences are mainly clustered at the top and left; at far right is one of my least favourite Qs of all: Times New Roman. The disappointing Q just above it is Bodoni, which is actually a font that I like very much. Bodoni would be so much better if it had a Q like Modern No.20 (the Q at bottom left). The lowest Q of all (Bell MT) should in theory fall in the favoured group, but the balance is wrong, with tail weighted too much to the left; just above it to the right is another that I'd like a lot, except it looks like the tail has been thrown at it and just missed (it's Calisto MT). The large watermark Q is Monotype Corsiva – very elegant. And among more formal faces I like Baskerville's (top left).

There's another reason why I'm fond of Q. It's the letter behind the question mark, beginning with "q" as a shorthand for the Latin word for question (quaere).