THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID

THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

I found this on David Carson's website
I thought it was amazing and needed to be shared with you all, especially after my comments about dyslexia earlier in the blog.
I noticed that all of these words are readable, probably because the first and last letter of each word are where they should be. What do you think?

software wars

Quark vs. Indesign....GO!!

(personally i started out with quark, and i thought it was pretty easy to learn. when i tried to learn indesign i found it difficult. i know that people say indesign is the best because it's got so many cool features, what do you think?)

Size in Type

I have been thinking about this topic for quite some time. As a growing number of baby boomers and others of older generations are being targeted in advertising and etc, how does this affect typography. I have notice dealing with clients especially ones over 50 that they simply can't understand and/or read type that is under 12 pt or that is in many different styles. How does this change our approach as designers? It seems the growing trend is almost a "smaller is better" approach recently, but is this really effective? Should we be shifting towards trends or manipulate our designs so people of an older generation can read them?

It all comes down to impact, how much impact are we having on that growing market if typography is shifting smaller and smaller yet the majority of the population is getting older and older?

Alphabet Soup

Sorry I'm late with this post everyone, but I hope it was worth the wait...

As I was looking over my typography books for ideas, I came across this page in "Thinking with Type" which prompted my post.

It reads:

Typography made text into a thing, a material object with known dimensions and fixed locations.
The French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who devised the theory of deconstruction in the 1960s, wrote that although the alphabet represents sound, it cannot function without silent marks and spaces. Typography manipulates the silent dimensions of the alphabet, employing habits and techniques -- such as spacing and punctuation -- that are seen but not heard. The alphabet, rather than evolve into a transparent code for recording speech, developed its own visual resources, becoming a more powerful technology as it left behind its connections to the spoken word.

“That a speech supposedly alive can lend itself to spacing in its own writing is what relates to its own death.” -- Jacques Derrida, 1976 (Thinking with Type, pg. 67)

What I think is the most intriguing is the sentence about the alphabet developing its own visual resources rather than evolving into a code for recording speech. I read this as the author interpreting the alphabet more as a visual stimuli, which has made text into a thing, instead of a means to record our verbal expression. Do you agree with the author's statement? Do you think our written language is more visual than auditory, and is that a positive or negative thing?