For my final project in Advanced Typography Class, I reinterpreted the fascinating little tome The Ten Commandments of Typography / Type Heresy: Breaking the Ten Commandments of Typography by Paul Felton. As the title suggests, this book looks at the rules of “good” typography and then turns those rules on their heads in the way of experimental typographers.
For my own interpretation of these rules, I chose to theme my book as if it were a collection of pages torn from different cookbooks. Each commandment and corresponding heresy are interpreted by the same recipe, with very different-looking results.
Also, the inner pages are die-cut in a staggered way so that the commandments can be read in sequence. As the pages are the turned, the list of heresies builds up in the same way. If I reproduce the book, I would like to lay very slightly translucent pages between each spread, so that list gradually “fades out.” As it is now, I feel like the layered list distracts from the page being looked at.
This book is difficult to photograph, so I’m including the digital version of each spread (minus the cutout). Click to see them larger!
| Commandment I Thou shalt not apply more than three typefaces in a document. |
heresy i break the fetters imposed by the use of only three typefaces… the lord gives fonts, so use as many as you desire |
| Commandment II Thou shalt lay headlines large and at the top of the page. |
heresy ii let thine eyes be seduced by the hierarchy of type… bolder fonts, even at the same size as body copy, will attract the eye first |
| Commandment III Thou shalt employ no other type size than 8pt to 10pt for body copy. |
heresy iii do not forsake smaller or bigger sizes, for their irregularity can make text appear ever more alluring |
| Commandment IV Remember that a typeface that is not legible is not truly a typeface. |
heresy iv be seduced into trying new and expressive typefaces, and break free from the security of traditional fonts |
| Commandment V Honor thy kerning: let white space be visually equal between characters. |
heresy v treat kerning with total irreverence and expose the devious space between letterforms |
| Commandment VI Thou shalt lay stress discreetly upon elements within text. |
heresy vi entice the reader to sample the delights of your text, for what the lord wants hidden can be full of pleasure |
| Commandment VII Thou shalt not use only capitals when setting vast body copy. |
heresy vii do not forgo the liberal use of capitals within your text, for the geometric letterforms may provide diabolically good outcomes |
| Commandment VIII Thou shalt always align letters and words on a baseline. |
heresy viii the lord designed letterforms to stand side by side, but there is no harm in their being lured away from each other |
| Commandment IX Thou shalt use flush-left, ragged-right type alignment. |
heresy ix yield to the temptation to align text in unusual ways |
| Commandment X Thou shalt not make lines too short or too long. |
heresy x lure the reader down unfamiliar paths by varying the length of your text |
This assignment confirms what I’ve always known – I struggle to break the rules! Though I did it technically, all the right hand pages are still pretty clean and traditional-looking. Another hurdle to overcome was using InDesign, Illustrator, AND Photoshop (for the template, type layout, and aged effects respectively) in the process of every spread. It can be done… but it requires a lot of planning. Finally, I underestimated the challenge of hand stitching all of the pages together, breaking several needles in the process! All of the exploration was fun nevertheless.
