Euan wanted to open up the standard “A4 Portrait, Times / Helvetica” page by looking at page dynamics. The terms ‘Design’, ‘Art’ and ‘Beautify’ were discarded in favour of the populating of a village or town with visible and invisible networks, relationships and facilities. Paul Klee’s “Pedagogical Sketchbook” (the Weimar Bauhaus) offers insights which Euan used to open up the subject. These, with short demonstrations to encourage lively text-image relationships, and detailed work on text and paragraph spacing, showed some ways to let the writer’s ideas flow easily into the reader’s mind while the designer remains invisible. “My Granny could have done that” is the watchword.
Some useful classic books are:
Ruari McClean: ‘Thames and Hudon Manual of Typography’ [Thames & Hudson]
Oliver Simon: ‘Introduction to Typography’ [Faber & Faber, Pelican]
Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger: ‘Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works’ [Adobe Press]
Jan Tschichold: ‘The Form of the Book (essays)’ [Lund Humphries]
Hugh Williamson: ‘Methods of Book Design’ [Yale University Press]
