“The Designer as Author…” by Steven McCarthy: Chapter 2 Summary
In this chapter called “Writing needs graphic design” author argues about the direct link between writers (poets) and typographic work. He claims these two things cannot exist without each other. The author does his work by expressing ideas, and the typography sends a message to the auditory. Letters became a separate branch of an art design. They have direct features that reflect their pronunciation sometimes. They cannot be changed too much because of the decreasing of the legibility. However, typographers always had enough freedom for their experiments with typefaces. Another McCarthy’s statement was that the text’s design is as important as its sense. The typographer can decrease or increase its readability with the aid of usage of capital letters, font’s size, color, align and other features. Words’ background and location also plays an important role. Their choice often depended on typographer, but
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To show writers’ ability to highlight the sense of the work with word’s visual appearance the author mentioned Steven Hall and his The Raw Shark Texts. Such works were the basis for the “liberature” genre that represents the combination of image and text. Poets used concrete poetry to show both visual and verbal features of the text. This idea was developed on page 72 and further with the description of Piet Zwart, Kurt Schwitters or Steve McCaffery writings. McCarthy used these examples to show that authors can deepen into own works or even to create a new sense for other writers’ texts with the aid of the design. McCaffery used “typestracts” to create “abstractions” from texts. Tom Phillips was used as an example of creation of the new sense for the existed work with the design. The man used Mallok’s A Human Document and put its words in the own canvas. McCarthy called his work a prediction for cloud
The press standardized grammar, spelling and punctuation in works. At the time, books would be copied by monks from the original work. Not only it was very expensive and long to do so, but books would not be identical from one monk to another. Each monk had his way of spelling and using grammar, which could lead to differences in interpretation. Every monk had his own spacing between words and lines, and, often, would not be the same from page to page of the same book. With Gutenberg’s printing press, spelling and grammatical rules soon were recognized and followed. Spacing between words was now the same and lines where evenly spaced on every page. This standardization could be seen in Gutenberg’s 42-line bible. Every page except for the first 10 had 42 lines and used the same font; there were 290 master characters to complete the bible. The printing press also allowed the number of letters on every page to increase by 50%. Those new found regulations of printing allowed readers to interpret authors’ intentions more accurately and made reading a more pleasant activity. Since the movable type press spread all around Europe, those rules soon became common everywhere on the
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
“ The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies” (Zusak 175). The device is used in the evidence of the quote by using descriptives words that create a mental image. The text gives the reader that opportunity to use their senses when reading the story. “Somehow, between the sadness and loss, Max Vandenburg, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed” (Zusak 188). This quote demonstrates how the author uses descriptive words to create a mental image which gives the text more of an appeal to the reader's sense such as vision. “She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whisker coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose” (Zusak 201). The quotes allows the reader to visualize what the characters facial features looked like through the use of descriptive words. Imagery helps bring the story to life and to make the text more exciting. The reader's senses can be used to determine the observations that the author is making about its characters. The literary device changes the text by letting the reader interact with the text by using their observation skills. The author is using imagery by creating images that engages the reader to know exactly what's going on in the story which allows them to
The author’s writing style is that of simplicity but at the same time that of deeper meaning. While the author makes it easy for one to find the symbols and unravel their meaning, the author also adds a whole new weight to meaning behind certain objects and
By being educated at a young age in literacy, I included it in my pottery and also working for newspaper companies strengthened my form of expression. Working in the South Carolina Republican and then later on The Edgefield Hive as a typesetter, it was a good experience helping my literacy skills but I didn’t feel fully indulged. I did it because I had to but also to learn. By understand typography, I was able to understand the science of the anatomy of type. They taught me the use of size, spacing, and placement of typography in order to show hierarchy, direction and attraction. I became to understanding that type is a collective of shapes and strokes. Master Abner 's newspaper did not get a lot of publicity and hit a crisis, which led him to cease publication of the newspapers. Master Abner then moved to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1832. He decided to leave me back in Edgefield and...
This new technology is not without its shortcomings. First, the printing press used limited materials. Next, as Mumford notes, the advent of print led calligraphers and manuscript copyists out of work. Furthermore, as Graff finds, it created “typographical fixity”—material once printed cannot be changed. Finally, mass production was dependent and limited to large markets (Mumford, 95)....
When writing any sort of narrative, be it novel or poem, fiction or non-fiction, scholarly or frivolous, an author must take into account the most effective manner in which to effectively convey the message to their audience. Choosing the wrong form, or method of speaking to the reader, could lead to a drastic misunderstanding of the meaning within an author’s content, or what precisely the author wants to say (Baldick 69). Even though there are quite a bit fewer words in a graphic novel than in the average novel, an author can convey just as much content and meaning through their images as they could through 60,000 words. In order to do that though, their usage of form must be thoughtfully considered and controlled. Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic memoir The Complete Persepolis, took great pains in the creation of her panels in order to reinforce and emphasize her narrative, much like a novelist utilizes punctuation and paragraph breaks. Through her portrayal of darkness and lightness, Satrapi demonstrates that literary content influences, and is primary to, the form.
As little kids when our parents would read to us, we sat there listening and staring at the pictures. We relied on the illustrations to guide us through the story and to help us understand what was going on in the story. Images have been able to tell stories that words can describe throughout the development of human life. There are many different kinds of art that can be used in different ways and can act in different relationships with writing. Although many books rely on images to get the point across, the book Citizen uses images in a different way which forces the readers to look again until they notice.
This paper will argue that the industrial revolution allowed for the proliferation of fonts in the 19th century for two main reasons. First, there was an unprecedented need for new and eye-catching lettering to grab the attention of consumers a new variety of choices on the market. Secondly, the creation of new fonts was more affordable than ever due to the advancements in technology during the industrial revolution.
...ictures for the reader. The similar use of personification in “Snapping Beans” by Lisa Parker and the use of diction and imagery in “Nighttime Fires” by Regina Barreca support how the use of different poetic devices aid in imagery. The contrasting tones of “Song” by John Donne and “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims show how even though the poems have opposite tones of each other, that doesn’t mean the amount of imagery changes.
Piper’s use of imagery in this way gives the opportunity for the reader to experience “first hand” the power of words, and inspires the reader to be free from the fear of writing.
An author’s style of words, sentence structure, and use of figurative language gives an author their own unique style of writing. Although, how an author writes can cause confusion due to connotative use of words and sentence. The author’s style-words, sentence structure, and figurative language can give a reader a description that forms imagery. Also it affects the tone, mood, and theme of the story.
Concrete poetry presents its readers with a unique and often confounding situation. In addition to using language or parts of language in non-traditional ways, concrete poetry also uses elements that are more commonly associated with visual art. However, concrete poetry is not visual art. It is still concerned, primarily, with the use of language, generally to communicate some meaning to the reader in a way that is undeniably linguistic in nature. Concrete poetry is therefore an especially unique genre that draws upon and incorporates many different concepts from a variety of disciplines in order to fill in the gaps left when traditional grammar and syntax are eschewed.
The visual description of a text is the perfect way to wrap the reader’s senses into the story.
Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literary Technologies.” Writing Material. Ed. Evelyn Tribble. New York. 2003. 35- 52.