5 ms·

> he taught me to respect the historical development of typography, as well as to disdain uninformed experimentation for experimentation’s sake. Why not? I thi

• pavlov 9y ago
  That quote initially rubbed me the wrong way too. But I think it should be understood in the specific professional context: a typographer shouldn’t be making their work unnecessarily “visible” by experimenting at the expense of the content. (I guess the father would have abhorred the brief mid-‘90s wave of intentionally obfuscated digital type.)
• pm215 9y ago
  I think the word 'uninformed' here is key -- after all, the entire concept of the font being discussed is an experiment (of the 'what would happen if we look in this gap in this classification system?' kind). But it's not an uninformed experiment, it's one that arises from knowledge of what's been done historically, which is why it's interesting. Uninformed experimentation would be more likely to just reinvent some previous idea, badly. (Not that recapitulating previous work is inherently bad; but the idea of an informed experiment would be to recapitulate some development knowing that that was what you were doing.)
  • omeid2 9y ago
    I somehow missed that. It makes a lot of sense now. Thanks!
• posterboy 9y ago
  Because that time could be used for informative study. edit: and because fun is sinful, obviously, as is smiling, talking unless asked to, ... or eating apples from a certain tree.