This has kinda been covered

http://www.typophile.com/node/29708

I second Patty’s motion. Lets not have another one of those conversations; I already had to send a flaming email to some gibbering Marxist at Cranbrook this morning…

”...what you [people] think is social responsibility in our job?”
There was another thread, previously linked to from this thread, that discusses s.r. in general graphic design, but that thread, though it ranged from Sinatra and the Pharaohs to Ethics and the CIA, left little room for type. I think, in general, responsibility has more grip on g.d. where the end result is “in sight”.

Different kinds of responsibility may be found throughout the spectrum of type design, from those working on complex systems of fonts for the typography of rich but unseen documents, to those working on the perfection of the letters for a single word they know all too well. Are you talking about type design, or graphic design?

”..how do you bear this responsibility (if there is such a thing) in your daily work?”
I don’t purchase print products as much as possible. I force myself, activity by activity, to use digital alternatives, improving them and propagating appropriate improvements to others as much as I can along the way.

“Are there (historical) examples, that (kind of) support your arguments?”
What argument? :)

Cheers!

’The social responsibility of an [x]’ topics that seem to pop-up seem to not really depend on what [x] is. Isn’t social responsibility universally social responsibility regardless of what particular industry/product one is in?

It means not designing custom fonts for Monsanto, Halliburton, or Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

Isn’t social responsibility universally social responsibility regardless of what particular industry/product one is in?

That depends on whether or not one sees morality as relative or absolute. And more often than not, the answer is probably going to be no.

“That depends on whether or not one sees morality as relative or absolute.”

Right. The question depends on one’s opinion of that statement...not what one does for a living.

First – thanks to everybody!

David – you’re right, now that I saw the other thread as well it might be wise, to either close my thread (like James kinda suggested) or to push it into the type-direction. To me the latter would be more satisfying, since the “end result” will actually be type. To give it a try – Gerard Ungers Gulliver is an attempt to create a typeface, that is economic. In other words it safes paper and thus trees. Behind it’s design there was that “ecological” concept and out of this idea Gulliver was born. I think this is an example what social responsibility COULD be... What do you think?

@ aluminum. Of course – everybody is socially responsible. But how does this manifest in your/our work. Do we as typedesigners or typographers have an impact?

Oh! And thank you very much patty for showing me this interesting thread. I really was looking if there is allready something but did not find it... Wrong keywords I guess. Thank you very much!

I think this is an example what social responsibility COULD be... What do you think?

I think that before you start worrying about what it could be, worry about whether it exists at all. Read up on Immanuel Kant and Ayn Rand’s ethical systems—deontology and objectivism, respectively—and then start to think about social responsibility again. Ethical notions really don’t have much value without some kind of solid foundation underneath of them.

Quite apart from Gerard’s motivation for Gulliver, type designers have been trying to cram more words into less space and make it look bigger from day one.
So you have to separate intention from effect from bullshit (pardon me, I mean marketing).
Is it really responsible to hype the newest biggest Airbus as being environmentally friendly?

Something else to consider is the difference between environmental responsibility and self-preservation. In other words, I don’t recycle because I care about polar bears, penguins, the River Ganges, or my (potential) children. I do it because screwy weather scares me.

James: the screwy weather scares the polar bears, too.

Thanks Nick – that would have been my next question. The intention and probably a need for this – let’s say invention – are relevant. Otherwise one can interpret social responsibility into everything.

@ James – Hahaaa :-) Nice said! And of course true... Of course its a big difference between responsibility and “survival” but the effect is probably the same. In other words, I don’t care WHY people care about the environment – as long they do. Jared Diamond wrote this very nice in his “Collapse”. He had to work with some global players and they had other motivations than penguins and polar bears – so he had to argue on another level but the results were quite remarkable. Thanks for the reading suggestions – I’ll check that out.

@Alaskan – Social responsibility could also mean to teach those polar bears swim long distances, preferably southwards... But I guess the penguins wouldn’t understand this as very social responsible... :-)

Thanks a lot!

I have not read “Collapse” yet, but I’m planning to do so when I can follow the title into vacation time.

I agree with the purpose of Gulliver, it is an old purpose, i.e. before news on the web was practical, lot’s of volume publishers of tomorrow’s garbage sought narrower (and smaller) fonts for purely financial reasons. But today, with trees not used much for paper, (volume publishers of daily publications normally use recycled pulp of some kind), the current frontier of typographic activism is elimination of printing day-after-use garbage altogether. Or at least, that’s what I think.

On another trail, there is a problem with thinking that “your fonts” will only be used for environmentally friendly purposes if they are at all suited to print use. But Nick says: “Is it really responsible to hype the newest biggest Airbus as being environmentally friendly?” If you don’t then you’re standing at the corner of No-Travel and Don’t Move. I don’t travel much because my carbon footprint can’t come with me, so it is pure burning man to go away without a dire need. However, I know lots and lots of, people will be doing so regardless of my private concerns... so why not root for a more efficient aeroplane?

And, I see no difference between relative and absolute morality, they are both 8 letters, and are usually about the same width.

Cheers!

I’ve been wondering how to apply the cradle to cradle concept to typedesign for some time now. Any thoughts on this?

Artur

I think trying to adapt the enormously broad concept of social responsibility to the rather narrow field of type design may not be the best use of our time. The use the fonts are put to (or who buys them) is usually way out of the hands of the designer. I mean one can hardly place your fonts off limits to, say, republican presidential candidates. In other words, aside from designing custom fonts for big oil or pharmaceutical companies it’s hard for me to think of a way that a type designer can be socially irresponsible, professionally. And since the wider idea of socially responsibility in graphic design has already been covered in another thread...

I say buy compact fluorescent lightbulbs, use public transportation and vote. Donate some of your earnings to causes you believe in. Carry around a reusable tote bag. Give an old lady or a pregnant woman your seat on the bus. Don’t buy gold or diamonds. Avoid fast food restaurants and chain stores - try to eat locally produced, organic food. Don’t eat chilean sea bass or other threatened fish. Keep after your elected officials, urge them to vote responsibly. Shut off the water while you brush your teeth. Try to avoid products made in countries that don’t have good employment or environmental practices (such as China). Take to the streets to support causes that are important to you. Don’t force your daughter to undergo female circumcision. The list goes on.

“Do we as typedesigners or typographers have an impact?”

You as a human have an impact. As a type designer, I dunno...be sure to use recycled paper note pads for your sketches and don’t make fonts for the terrorists. But, really, I’m struggling to come up with any type-centric issues regarding social resposibility.

the current frontier of typographic activism

What are the maths of paper vs. pixels?
With the rollover rate of hardware upgrades, and the energy costs of server farms, not to mention all the digital pages that get printed out anyway, I suspect that digital has a larger footprint than print.

Do flat-panel LCD screens use more power than CRT monitors?
Why isn’t “standby mode” illegal?

why not root for a more efficient aeroplane?

I would if there were a cap on emissions.
But reducing the rate of per-mile pollution is being used to greenwash an increase in overall travel miles, and overall pollution.

The current Toyota TV ads for their “green” cars make me sick, showing a guy driving and “making the planet safer for his children”. Take transit dude, or get on a push-bike.

The type industry has already had an impact: fonts are now ethereal digital phantoms; they take no resources to propagate, sell, store or use. They can be used purely in digital output media, they can be recycled (look at the lifespan of digital type compared to other software), and they create no waste when they are deleted. The ultimate green product! ;)

USING type (i.e. typography) can take advantage of waste-free or socially responsible methods, but it’s hardly the province of typographers to insist on socially conscionable media, methods or materials when the publisher, writer, soda-pop company or TV conglomerate calls all the shots.

In other words there isn’t really a meaningful link between social activism and type design. My cooking skills, my spending habits, my recycling strategy, My political affiliation, can all carry on without influence on, or from, my work as a type designer.

To patty and aluminum: I completely see your point and I somehow agree, but... You say, that as an individual I have an impact. And you say, that this has nothing to do with our trade. But what I ask myself is, why is it then, that these questions about social and environmental responsibility etc. so often pop up in discussions with people involved in type- or graphic-design?
To me it looks like there are two things relevant here. The first is, that we work with mass-media on a daily base. We know exactly how powerfull these information channels are and we spend a lot of time in making them accessible for people to get a certain information. We have kinda control how this thing is going to look like, but we rarely have control over the content. This can – in some cases – lead to frustration.
The second thing is, that our trade has certain, lets say “artistic” aspects. Artists tend to be critical and idealistic.

If we look back in time many typographers or graphic-designers have become autors themselves. They know the channels, they have contacts to publishers and printers and they know how to make printed stuff – to me it’s only logical, that sooner or later some of them start to write.

Considering these things I could imagine, that there IS something to discuss about this topic in relation to our trade.

To the discussion of the green cars... I agree with David – as long as we can not assume, that everybody acts responsible and instead of the car takes his bike, we must assume, that they use the car. So if this car runs with a very low petrol usage compared to the average, this might be a big success... And in that relation it actually might be a green car. Allthough, Nick – these ads make me sick as well... :-)

Good Night and thank you guys!

>Good Night and thank you guys!

Be sure to turn out the lights, as Thatcher once said.

Oh – to Arthur... I just got a grip on cradle to cradle, but did not dive into it deeply yet. But this might be interesting – thanks.

“I suspect that digital has a larger footprint than print.”
Then I guess you’re just fine with your paper world. Do any daily papers in Canada come with a calculator built in?

“The current Toyota TV ads for their “green” cars make me sick”
You like Momma Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear Hummer ads better? Join the fiction of these ads: imagine that after the guy’s dropped the kids at school, he picks up a carload of evironmental activistas, takes them to a remote spot where the bus don’t go, and lets them beat up on illegal whalers.

Cheers!

…he picks up a carload of evironmental activistas, takes them to a remote spot where the bus don’t go, and lets them beat up on illegal whalers.

In my imagination he leaves them there, they starve to death in the woods, and I go most of a summer without an infestation of Greenpeace volunteers begging me for money every time I walk the dogs.

Here is somebody selling a “green” font:

http://printgreener.com/product.html#font

They make it sound like they invented “condensed”.

“why is it then, that these questions about social and environmental responsibility etc. so often pop up in discussions with people involved in type- or graphic-design?”

Guilt.

The world of graphic design, for the most part, is an industry based on pure consumerism. While one could argue that there are all sorts of non-consumerist areas of graphic design, without consumerism, we just wouldn’t be that large of an industry.

And, of course typographers depend a lot of graphic designers, so there’s that ecosystem.

To get back to the guilt issue, I think the issue is that we talk a lot about it because we are indirectly helping destroy the planet by doing what we do...help sell crap.

I think there are two mindsets that ’commercial artists’ can have, neither being any better/worse in my opinion:

1) We are what we are. We help companies make money by providing better designed products, services, and advertising. The specific product/service is irrelevant, our only job is to help the customer meet their goals.

2) We are a major decision maker on what succeeds and fails in the market place. We as designers should make a conscious analysis of every client and product we work with and establish if it’s socially responsible for us to work with that client and/or/product.

Marketers have the most guilt. Designers next in the chain of command. I don’t think Typographers need to carry much guilt, as they are rather removed from the actual commercial message, IMHO.

...after the guy’s dropped the kids at school...

Children should walk (or cycle) to school.
Car advertising should be banned, like cigarette advertising.

>Try to avoid products made in countries that don’t have good employment or environmental practices (such as China)

With all due respect, I think this view is rooted in an ignorance of what is going on in the world, an ignorance shared by most Americans, and represented most glaringly by Lou Dobbs on CNN.

If you want to boycott such goods, you are going to have to also avoid every product made in poor countries, and by illegal migrants to the US. For a start all computers, which have many components made abroad and in developing countries. For example Intel’s huge new plants Chengdu. Read here about Intel’s factories around China, including in Chengdu. Chengdu is especially favored because it is in the poor interior, and there will be low cost, high quality labor for many years. So if you want to boycott Chinese goods, you can basically shut down your computer and close up shop as a designer.

For a more informed view of the situation, I would highly recommend going to Beijing and Shanghai and Chengdu, as I have, and see the life there and talk to people there about how life has changed for them. In the past 20 years people who were formerly quite poor are now living middle class and prosperous lives. Shanghai is like New York City and Beijing like DC in the feel of their prosperity. Though most of China is still poor, we are talking about a transformation in the lives of as many people as the entire population of the US. This is a tremendous blessing to a huge number of people. And this has been built on trade to the US and Europe.

Do you really want to impoverish the Chinese by shutting down their trade with the US and Europe? Oh, and the Chinese government holds huge portions of US bonds, underpinning our economy, so our economy will collapse along with theirs, when we all stop buying Chinese goods. So you will wreck the lives of both Chinese and Americans. Will Lou Dobbs then be happy? I don’t think so.

There are serious abuses of workers, denials of political rights, and environmental problems in China. But to only focus on these is to be ignorant of the reality of the tremendous blessings of globalization. The grinding, desperate poverty of most of China and South Asia are now at long last being progressively remedied. This, and not only the evils that also have gone along with globalization, need to be recognized for an ethically sound reaction to the situation.

OMG!

The GreenPrint font hype is so absurd. As is the crappy font. Can’t wait for the bloggers to shred that. It’s not even April 1!

For what it’s worth, it seems a little pointless to create a font like this since better designed fonts like this (i.e., condensed) already exist, they just aren’t labeled “green”. A better idea might be to create a guide to choosing and using existing fonts following the same principle. For example, if you use any font at a 10% smaller size, it will use almost 20% less ink for the same amount of text. Creating a “green font” seems like a gimmick.

Children should walk (or cycle) to school.

my poor little cousins! they’d have to ride 5 miles to and from school on the interstate.

With all due respect, I think this view is rooted in an ignorance of what is going on in the world…

I think that can be said for a lot about leftist notions of social responsibility. The same goes for people who act smug about driving hybrid cars because they don’t realize that the energy used creating and transporting the battery makes a Prius inherently worse for the environment than a Hummer. And that’s before the batteries start getting old and need to be collected, transported, recycled, transported again, and so on. Or all the people who protest the World Bank and IMF for not forgiving their loans to poor nations, because they don’t realize that most of the World Bank and IMF money to poor nations is either a grant or loaned interest free, and the interest-collecting loans go to projects in countries that can afford it. And don’t even get me started on the people who demand that the US government pull out of Iraq and invade Sudan.

I would be a much transformed designer if I could figure out how to care more about my clients and their needs rather than my work and how good/bad it makes me look. Yes there are physical things you can do, such as buying the power for your computer from an alternative source, blah blah. But I think dialing back our own self-importance about 300 notches would be a great start. In other words, our relationships leave the most room for improvement.

In other words, our relationships leave the most room for improvement.

Very true, but how many clients really want that kind of relationship with their designers as opposed to the number who just want the designer to bang out an ad without having to be told to make the logo/image/whatever bigger?

Neat topic. I’ve always felt a certian social responsibility as a designer to maintain the beauty of our environment. Without all of the things mankind has added to the environment, Earth is a beautiful place. We are human. We make stuff in an effort to make things better. Whatever we create, whatever we add, it should, at the very least, NOT be hard on the eyes. If it cannot be incredibly beautiful, it should at the very least be neutral (which is sometimes better). Lots of us make every effort to make that happen. This is where I curse computers and technology. While some of us use it well, lots more of us (us being everyone, not limited to professional designers) make incredibly ugly stuff with our personal computers and garbage up the whole picture. It’s everywhere.

Sure, there was bad design when everything was printed on a C&P, but not everybody had a printing press in their house.

I think it comes down to education. What we’ve got here is a social responsibility to educate the general public about design and help them gain an understanding of what is good and what is bad, and why it matters. A more widespread, generally accepted respect for good design...a world where everyone valued beauty more than speed and profit...is the ultimate goal. It seems like an almost impossible task.

I feel a social responsibility to be both proactive (positively noting good design to people other than fellow designers, i.e. “the choir”) and openly critical of everything that is ugly.

Like that “green” typeface linked above...UGLY. And if we cannot agree that it’s flat out ugly, we should at least be able to agree that it’s not as beautiful as other previously existing typefaces that serve the same purpose. Therefore, in an ideal world, in a socially responsible world, nobody should use it. Someone destroy it before it destroys us.

Whew! Nothing like a good tirade to get the juices flowing...I better get back to my socially responsible work before my boss catches me jagging off with this post!

Koppa, I agree that we have an inner need to fight ugliness, or as the Vignellis would put it, vulgarity. But I think that we have to be very careful about viewing that as a responsibility, especially when it comes to educating the public. There’s a fine line between a teacher and a dogmatist, and a designer who tries too hard to shape the world into utopia can end up engaging in totalitarianism. Tschichold warned of this in his responses to Max Bill, discussing the way his experiences with Nazism affected his outlook on this stuff.

Agreed.

Okay...this is going to sound ridiculous, but yesterday I started some text book “basic” powerpoint training (because I was told I “need it”). The book tells you everything you need to know about all of the different things you can do with the type and the layout of a slide. However, nowhere does it say anything about WHY you should (or should NOT) use these tools.

So, it’s not that I think I know exactly how everything should be, or that there is an absolute right or wrong. It’s just that too often we don’t take the time to explain WHY we do things the way we do them. I’ve seen it happen in my department. The “client” asks, “Why are we using this typeface?” The answer is, “Because that’s our brand typeface.” The client remains confused and the designer comes across as, as you say, dogmatic.

To summarize, if it’s necessary, education is not simply saying, “This is the way it is.” It is explaining why we do things the way we do them. And if we don’t know why, if it’s all subjective, then it’s just fluff. I feel a social responsibility to help others (and myself) understand why. Hey...I guess that make me some kind of why guy!

@Koppa
Did you see the Rule or law thread?

“I think that can be said for a lot about leftist notions of social responsibility.”

Why use the word ’leftist’ in there? It can be said for all notions of social responsibility.

“The same goes for people who act smug about driving hybrid cars because they don’t realize that the energy used creating and transporting the battery makes a Prius inherently worse for the environment than a Hummer.”

Except that that is neither necessarily true, nor takes into account the long-haul picture.

social and environmental responsibility, unfortunately, is a) Highly complex b) highly politicized and, as such c) easily spun.

Haven’t read the Rule or Law thread, but just checked it out and it looks very interesting. Thank you.

Now if only I can find the time to read it....it’s a doozy!

William Berkson the NeoCon... Go over to your local library and read up on ’Trade Deficit’, add to that, Communist China. Come back here to this thread, and try to sound just a little more intelligent/enlightened, ok?

Thanks.

>William Berkson the NeoCon... try to sound just a little more intelligent/enlightened, ok?

I am not a NeoCon. Also, name-calling and insults are a poor substitute for relevant facts and arguments.

Also the guidelines for this forum specifically request: “please refrain from any personal attacks of other typophile members on these boards.”

@ James Puckett

Making the client the problem is exactly what I’m hoping to avoid. No the customer is not always right, but all too often I’m ready to tell my buddies how lame the client is, and how they are keeping me from glory, when the same effort spent communicating with the client would be better stewardship of my words, time and ability.

This is something I’m really trying to work on in my job: how can I be excellent? Yes, make beautiful *things*. Yes, make functional *things*. But more important, how do I treat the *people* I work with and for? Even if they are difficult. I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time in my career worried about the first two, and relatively little worried about the last one.

The point is not whether your ideas about social responsibility come from the left or the right. The point is to educate yourself and be socially aware and try to lead your life in accordance with what you believe is important socially (politically, environmentally) rather than to either blindly consume or rationalize behavior you know is wrong. Nobody gives a damn what a type designer believes to be socially responsible. The only way to make yourself heard is through your vote and your dollar (or euro, yen, whatever). And your voice.

And of course each of us can only do our best. Here’s a quote - and forgive me if I’ve put this up before - I may have:

Artists and poets are the raw nerve ends of humanity.
By themselves, they can do little to save humanity.
Without them, there would be little worth saving.
-Jimmy Ernst (son of Max)

Why use the word ’leftist’ in there? It can be said for all notions of social responsibility.

Probably true, but there are big differences in leftist notions of social responsibility, rooted in pluralistic philosophies, and the notions of the right, which stem from individualistic philosophies and evangelism. So far this thread hasn’t really delved into the latter.

Of course, I have warped views of all this stuff because both sides send their respective bullhorn and sign toting annoyances out to tie up traffic in my neighborhood every time they get pissed off about something. At some point I may convert to Catholocism just so I can go live in a quiet monastery on top of a mountain and not hear about politics for a few decades…

Thanks to WB for those sensible comments on China.

Nick: The power needed for an LCD screen is about 1/3 to 1/2 of that for a same-size CRT. Plus they take up a tiny fraction of the landfill space, and they recover quicker from standby and waste less power doing that, too. Also, if you’re in a warm climate where air conditioning is used, LCDs give off much less heat which would otherwise get compensated by more AC. Perhaps there are other issues with the materials involved in the screens themselves or the manufacturing thereof, but LCDs seem to be “greener” than CRTs.

Note: Plasma displays also use more power than LCDs (not in use much any more for computers, but a significant consideration for TVs). C-Net reviews cover power consumption for TVs, btw. HDTV standby power consumption can be as low as a third of a watt or as high as 75 watts, so it’s well worth checking.

On another point entirely: “I mean one can hardly place your fonts off limits to, say, republican presidential candidates.”

Actually, if you own your own type foundry and set your own license terms, I expect you can! You ought to check with a lawyer before you put it in your EULA, but I would be surprised if this runs you afoul of any civil rights issues or anything. It could be equally used to not let your fonts be used by any political group or party you happen to dislike. Whether it’s a wise move or not is another question, of course. Few businesses that are essentially retail refuse to sell to anyone on the basis of their politics.

Cheers,

T

” ..more AC..” !?

Roll down the windows and let the wind blow back your hair (or not).

Nick’s idea, (not Nick), is flawed by the notion that you can only use your computer for work, or some thing. Once you have a computer, however, continuing to purchase paper products that that computer can display, is...carbon fat.

Cheers!

>carbon fat

I like reading ink on paper, so I’ve googled a bit on paper manufacturing to try to understand its carbon dioxide impact. Though it is a major consumer of energy, it doesn’t seem to be a particularly bad net producer of carbon dioxide, and it may become completely carbon neutral.

Trees themselves eat carbon dioxide, and are a sustainable resource, when properly managed. They are a crop like any other, except that they take longer to grow to a point where they are used for paper, housing, and furniture.

The distinctive thing about the paper industry is that for energy it burns a lot of wood chips for fuel. This is relatively carbon saving as this US government report explains (C stands for Carbon dioxide production, E for Energy):

“The paper industry makes extensive use of wood byproducts as an energy source. Carbon dioxide emissions from wood consumption are considered to be zero, because the carbon that is emitted has been sequestered recently, and the regrowing of trees will again sequester an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. Consequently, the paper industry has a relatively low C/E ratio, at 37.4 and 36.5 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent per quadrillion Btu in 1991 and 2002, respectively. In contrast, the primary metals industry, which uses large amounts of coal and other carbon-intensive fuels (e.g., electricity), has a high C/E ratio: 68.2 in 1991 and 68.7 in 2002.”

This stuff about carbon neutrality of wood burning may just be industry BS, but at first blush it makes sense to me. Further, they are doing research to create plants that produce all their own energy from wood chips, making it net carbon neutral. This will also save the manufacturers money, so I think they are serious about it.

The really nasty thing in paper manufacturing is not carbon dioxide production, but rather the use of chlorine to bleach the paper, which leads to serious chemical waste products that sometimes end up in rivers. (Sulfur is another serious problem also.) The industry spends a lot of money to contain these problems, but evidently should do more. However, these don’t seem to be technically unsolvable problems, so government regulation and industry innovation could deal with them. So the problems with pollution from paper manufacturing don’t seem insurmountable.

Oh, and I read that 36% of new paper is from recycled paper...

And after all that, trees still make for really crappy paper.

This stuff about carbon neutrality of wood burning may just be industry BS, but at first blush it makes sense to me.

I think that the numbers probably work as long as sustainable forestry is practiced, ensuring that the carbon pumped out by the burning is being sucked up by new trees. Given how many managed forests have been created just to serve the needs of paper and furniture industries in Europe and the USA, it could be legit.

But I don’t get the impression that paper companies in Asia have moved beyond just clearcutting land and spewing out crap paper, and there are still some US paper producers who make a pretty big mess. But now that printers and paper vendors are working with the FSC and going green, it’s getting a lot easier to stick with paper products that aren’t so bad.

Does anyone know much about the current state of hemp-based papers? I remember that the hemp producers in Eastern Europe were working on some really promising stuff a few years ago that would have made hemp papers suitable for use in high-speed presses, but I haven’t heard anything about it lately.

“So the problems with pollution from paper manufacturing don’t seem insurmountable.”

Bill, I’ve been through this as you have said better. The issue, though is that the process: a newspaper leaving the editor’s work station, landing in it’s plastic bag at the end of my distant road, and making its journey back through recycling... is considerably more fat than the paper it’s printed on. And even if I lived right next to the plant, and could take a copy right off the line, read it, and put it back into the recycling line for tomorrow’s news, what would my computer be doing?

“I like reading ink on paper” too. But it’s not what I like or dislike that is the active ingredient, it is the creation of better options for billions of people to get the news without the print. And most of those billions live way way way outside the neat and trim Wisconsin-fostered view of forest products management, I grew up with, and you cite.

Cheers!

And most of those billions live way way way outside the neat and trim Wisconsin-fostered view of forest products management

and often in areas where paper isn’t recycled, so better they read on their laptops anyway.

I like reading ink on paper and get the Times delivered every day (and a TON of unwanted advertising blow-ins). I’m painfully aware of how much paper waste I generate. But we can only do our best as I said earlier, and if my newsprint consumption is offset by my not owning a car and using compact fluorescents then it’s a start. I’m not ready to have maggots living in my garbage creating mulch just yet. And my laser printer sits idle most of the time thanks to pdf workflow (sorry EULAs).

I go to FreeRice.com when I’m waiting for files to FTP. It allows me to feed the third world and my ego at the same time.

This seems to go very much into the field of environmental responsibility, which is very interesting and urgend as well, but I think this is a topic for everybody – not only (type-)designers. This was also mentioned above – it’s not entriely related to our job.

To me SOCIAL responsibility as a type designer could go in another, actually more obvious direction. “We” design typefaces and readability is a word that we use on a daily basis – but what is readability? There is very few scientific literature available about this topic and if there is something, then it is written from scientists from other disciplines such as psychology.

“We” are making type – so should not we try to come up with an explanation? Shouldn’t it be our goal to come up for example with solutions for dyslexia problems? I think of publications from Gerrit Noordzij (Das Kind und die Schrift) or Ungers “While you are reading”. Try to find other publications from typographers or type-designers... There might be a few, but not as much as there could be in my eyes.

Shouldn’t it be our goal to come up for example with solutions for dyslexia problems?

Only if someone can foot the bill and we want to do the work. Designers are not slaves, born to address the needs of others simply for the sake of doing so. We’re human beings, and our goal should be to do whatever makes us happy without harming anyone or being financially dependent on unwilling benefactors.

Only if someone can foot the bill

money is always a difficult thing when talking about social issues – that always has been a problem and i guess will always be. I think not much would happen in social and environmantal belongings if the first question would always be about money. But of course we need to eat something as well, but if you’ll write a book about this I promise I’ll buy one :-)

Designers are not slaves, born to address the needs of others simply for the sake of doing so.

Of course – I’m not expecting one to spend hours, days, weeks months... to do research, scientific analysis, writing and designing on a topic, that is completely out of his interests. But I wonder, that there seems to be no interest at all in these things, since these questions seem essential. And if we claim to be experts in designing typefaces and these typefaces are made for reading, it only seems logical to me, that we might want to find solutions for people that have problems with reading.

I have to add, that I am not saying, that we can solve problems like dyslexia only with type-design, but there’s a chance to improve some things and it’s absolutely in our field of profession. Or am I completely wrong with this?

I think not much would happen in social and environmantal belongings if the first question would always be about money.

Are you serious? Starbucks has an executive who does nothing but environmental projects because every time they find a way to reduce waste they save money. Binderies suck up every scrap of paper in the place to sell to recycling plants in China. Hell, American public schooling only got good when captains of industry wanted smarter workers. The invisible hand gets a lot more done than you give it credit for.

But I wonder, that there seems to be no interest at all in these things, since these questions seem essential.

I don’t get the impression that there is no interest in these things. But the basics of human comprehension of text are a very new, very esoteric science, and the details can only be guessed at. For a designer to work on this stuff would really require a lot of study and interested partners. The Clearview team pulled it off with highway signage, and it could be argued (as I am in my research) that Spiekermann (among others) has done similar stuff with superfamilies designed for use by large organizations with varied needs.

>But I wonder, that there seems to be no interest at all in these things, since these questions seem essential.

Rolandillo, I don’t think you have been following Typophile discussions much. There have in fact been many long—some would say excruciatingly long—discussions of these issues, in which a number of us are very interested. See the Typowiki on readability, which has links to a few of these discussions.

>> Children should walk (or cycle) to school.

> my poor little cousins! they’d have to ride 5 miles
> to and from school on the interstate.

I cycle 10 miles a (school)day taking my daughter to and from school. The school has over 1,000 students. We’re the only ones who bike regularly.

If we required that any transportation choices be at least 10% the efficiency of a bicycle, it would give motorists trouble (without taking into account fuel; accounting for fuel, I don’t think any gasoline-powered car could even be within a tiny fraction of a percent as efficient).

Overpopulation.

pbc

“Also the guidelines for this forum specifically request: “please refrain from any personal attacks of other typophile members on these boards.”

Think twice before taking cheap shots at folks who aren’t on this forum William... ”... an ignorance shared by most Americans, and represented most glaringly by Lou Dobbs on CNN.”

So while you’re over at the library learning all about the perils of Trade Deficits, especially with countries like Communist China, see if you can grab a copy of Dobb’s book, ’War on the Middle Class’, and give it read.

What qualifies you to insinuate that Lou Dobbs is an ignorant man William?

No insult intended...

I cannot believe you are defending Lou Dobbs!

Are you serious?

Well, yes... kindof. I mean you defenitly have a point. If there is an obvious return on investment, there is always money, that’s for sure. and as I mentioned earlier – I apreciate the effords made in this direction no matter what’s the cause. But what I am talking about, are the issues where the return of investment is not so distinct. There the problems of getting money for such projects is always difficult. But getting the money is not the point of this topic. let’s talk about the object and forget about constraints – at least for now.

Rolandillo, I don’t think you have been following Typophile discussions much.

your right! I’m not so frequent due to time management problems :-) But actually I’m not talking about discussions in internet forums. It is obvious, that readability is a big issue. Probably my explanation was not that clear. We all discuss a lot about these things, and I guess we all are very intersted in it, but what I’m talking about are publications based on a scientific research. That’s what I miss. And my question is if not our trade is responsible for coming up with solutions here, who else should do it? I bring up the dyslexia example again... We know, that this is a psychological phenomenon, but do letterforms or the way children learn to write play a role here? My opinion is, that Type-Designers should be interested in this and I don’t mean each and every individual, but the trade as a whole. It’s clear, that not everybody who designs typefaces want to deal with this. But I just wonder why so few seems to be interested enough to start studying this topic together with psychologists... I think this might be very interesting, no?
I don’t do it myself, so no worries I did not mean to judge anybody. And the last question would be – could something in this direction be social responsibility related to typedesign?

> my poor little cousins! they’d have to ride 5 miles
> to and from school on the interstate.

Planning and zoning are an issue. City councils are in the thrall of sprawl developers and highway engineers (as opposed to bikepath engineers). They build subdivisions which discourage any mode of transportation (not to mention walking) other than the car.

But young parents also have the choice to live within walking distance of their children’s school, and they don’t make that a lifestyle priority.

Rolandillo, I think you are right that things directly involving our professional and personal activities are where our greatest impact and greatest responsibility lays. In personal relationships and in what we choose to do professionally.

Personally, I think one of the delights of type design is that is so innocent. As Ale Paul wrote, it is an act of optimism to try in an often very ugly world to add a little beauty and utility to it.

>What qualifies you to insinuate that Lou Dobbs is an ignorant man William?

I don’t think that qualifications are that important, since you ask, I will tell you. I did my PhD in history and philosophy of science under Karl Popper, who was knighted by the British for his book “Open Society and its Enemies”. It reflects his intellectual reaction to his personal experience (in Vienna) of the rise of Communism and Nazism, and is a defense of the Western tradition of liberal democracy. Popper is regarded by many as one of the great thinkers of the last century.

Popper was so to speak my introduction to political philosophy, which I have also taught. Though I have not published in this area, I am author of two published books, many academic articles, and a third book now submitted to publishers.

My wife has a PhD from Harvard in development Economics and worked and consulted for the World Bank for 30 years. She has worked in poor countries in every continent, except in Eastern Europe, spending three months out of every year abroad. Our dinner table for over 30 years has been an on-going discussion of problems of world poverty and development by friends from every corner of the world with personal experiences of their home countries. As for experience abroad, I lived in London for five years while in graduate school, and I have visited my wife’s home country, a middle level developing country, 6 or 7 times. One of my daughters was in the Peace Corps and we visited her last year while she was living in a mud hut in a poor village in one of the poorest countries in Africa. We talked with both poor folks and those in the intelligentsia of the country.

A bit over a year ago I spent a month traveling widely in China. I speak a little Chinese, and my wife is fluent, so when things got complicated she would translate for me. We travelled for two weeks with a Chinese couple—the wife had never been out of her village—2nd class Chinese tourist style, and traveled for another two on our own. We talked to people continually: to the poor, to young professionals, to a business mogul, and to college professors.

I will address the sins of Lou Dobbs in another post.

But meanwhile I’ve explained my background as it relates to knowledge of globalization. Since you think qualifications are so relevant, Neil, what qualifies you to insinuate that I am unintelligent and unenlightened?

I work in a paperless office - which means, of course we use 50% more paper than we did before we had computers. OK, I made that up, but it is clear that easy access to printers means lots of unnecessary printing happens and it may actually be realistic estimate. At home I print very little because I have to pay for my own paper and ink. I’m not so sure though that this is really the sort of issue that designers should focus on to be ’responsible’.

For me, as a signage designer, I there are some significant environmental repercussions to much of what I do. Choices of type for example... (to try and keep it topical) A typeface that occupies 15% less lateral space than another obviously uses less materials. Choices in substrates, coatings and sheeting materials (though it’s tough to get away from vinyls) and energy sources for illuminated signs can all have an impact. Then of course, there’s the aesthetic impact.

It is difficult to go out into any part of the built-environment and not see at least a dozen signs. The consumption of materials used in sign making is huge and very wasteful. Vinyl and retro reflective sheeting comes in rolls which are fed into a plotters, which cut the letters. All the material around the letters is weeded out and thrown in the garbage. (roughly 75% to 80%). The backing material is thrown out, although sometimes it gets used to wrap or sandwich signs for shipping. These materials can not be recycled because of the adhesive and the non-stick coating.

So, Maybe the use of a condensed typeface will mean less waste goes to the landfill, less demand on petrochemical and other natural resources and less energy consumed. less aluminum, plastic and plywood for substrates.

On the other hand, if my products aren’t readable, then everything about them is a complete waste of time and materials, and in the case of a wayfinding system,. even worse, may put people lives at risk.

On the whole I find it difficult not to conclude that designers (present company probably not included) have been and are very irresponsible. In the face of giant bill boards, whose faces will be stripped off, thrown in the garbage and replaced with new ones every other month, vinyl wraps on public transit vehicles, acres of illuminated signs that run all night in empty strip malls, obscenely wasteful packaging, junk mail that goes directly into the recycling or garbage without even having the elastic bands removed, and on and on - every piece of it having been designed but someone. I’m glad I work where I do. The work may be mundane, but Every now and then I can tell myself it’s for a good cause, and I design for longevity we are less wasteful also.

The idea of being a more responsible designer by being careful not to leave your computer running too long and switching to low energy light bulbs, or even the amount of paper you print off for proofs, or read your email, seems a little trivial. Everyone should do that. Designers are often in a position have a much more significant impact. Getting back to choosing an economical typeface, a difference of 15% of lateral space could mean a savings of tons of aluminum and plastic (literally) and thousands of square feet of vinyl and retro reflective sheeting.

R

That’s interesting Russell. That brings to mind something I read from Hermann Zapf. He wrote that the problem with most street signage is that it is too big for the purpose, and would look much better smaller. I wonder what you think of his observation.

Ok, here’s on Lou Dobbs.

At first I liked what he was doing because although I disagreed with him I liked the fact that he was discussing important issues—immigration and globalization—that everyone else was giving little air time to. But he has become so one-sided and insolent that I can’t stand listening to his show any more.

As to ignorance, he has an undergraduate degree from Harvard in Economics, but you’d never know it from hearing him. He claims to be a champion of Adam Smith and the market place, but with him suddenly all pro free market arguments end with the border. I have heard him deny that they were ever meant to apply internationally. And he insults anybody who wants to apply them internationally.

But the fact is (to use Dobbs’s favorite phrase) that the main point of Adam Smith was to advocate free markets internationally. The “Wealth of Nations” comes from productivity and trade in his view, not from the merchantilistic, protectionist policies that nations were following in his day.

For a factual rebuttal of Dobb’s views on the massive net loss of jobs to ’overseas cheap foreign labor’, here is an answer entitled Lou Dobbs is wrong laying out why that isn’t true.

But my problem with Lou Dobbs isn’t so much with his opinions as with his demagogic approach to journalism. He is not even so much ignorant as willfully putting on blinders. He appeals to fear of foreigners and badgers and heaps insults on everyone whom he disagrees with. The constant string of insults lowers and corrupts the standard of public discourse. This is standard with right wing ’hate radio’, but now Dobbs has brought it to nativist populism. His behavior is just downright loutish.

You also can read a series of articles about his poor handling of the ’leprosy from immigrants’ claim in the Columbia Journalism Review; just do a search on his name at that site.

I do feel that there is a profound ignorance leading to his attitudes. I see in him a lack of sympathetic understanding of foreign countries and people living in them. The increase of wealth in poor countries due to globalization over the past twenty years is one of the great triumphs in the history of humanity. The beginning of a major world-wide conquest of poverty is tremendously exciting and productive, and one of the great stories of our time. How can you cover the issue night after night and miss the most important story? I can only think that a lack of time spent in foreign countries, and the knowledge and understanding that would come with it is a cause. To be completely insensible to this great story, and never mention it is to me a great professional failing.

It is true that other journalists are not telling it either, and more’s the pity. But for Dobbs to cover the issue constantly and not mention the main story—seemingly because it concerns the lives of foreigners—I really find reprehensible.

Also, as the linked article above explains, the loss of jobs abroad is not the problem domestically. The key problem domestically is increasing inequality of income in the US. This started under Reagan, and has continued apace under ever Republican president. But it is true that globalization and the international freer market and have created forces that are enriching the wealthy much faster than the mass of Americans, and leaving the poor behind—though in the US they are indeed materially hugely better off than in many poor countries. The market is a tremendous engine of economic growth, but it also has accompanying evils of cruelty to some and now increasing inequality.

Increasing social inequality in the US is a grave problem that is hurting the US in many ways. It should be dealt with by government action, both re-distribution by taxing the wealthy, and by programs that help all in the areas of in education and health, and especially help the poor.

There is also a serious problem of the undermining of the rule of law by the lack of reasonable immigration laws, properly enforced. But that is another story.

Roland,

Indigenous communities and those who work with them deal with a frustrating typographic issue: having few (sometimes no) fonts in which to properly represent indigenous language orthographies. This is roughly the problem Victor Gaultney sought to address in developing Gentium. If you want to design a font to benefit mankind, you might consider supporting some less-common languages. If it’s too much to provide, say, all the Latinate characters in the Unicode standard (plus the combining diacritics, properly supported by each base glyph), you could pick a region of the world and support that (for example, support all the characters used in Pacific Northwest languages). Or, support one or more non-Latin scripts. Whichever languages you choose to support, do your potential linguist customers a favor and support the International Phonetic Alphabet so that we can publish papers and books using your font.

William, from all I’ve read about Dobbs and from watching his broadcasts on CNN, his main concerns with communist China are about fair freer trade, about that trade being balanced trade and of course outsourcing. And his views (from what I know of the man) are global and not protectionist and he views America’s trade deficit with communist China as unacceptable. Look how long it took for China to adjust even a small percentage of it’s currency. And as for China becoming the world’s largest polluter (passing the USA earlier this year), and China military sales and development, I think are also a great concern to Dobbs but those issues only enforce the impact of the trade practices of China, and also to a certain extent the other “cheap foreign” markets too highlight this trade imbalance/outsourcing issue. So I find you using Dobbs as your “ignorance USA” poster boy, offensive.

I’m a product of the Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture and I own several small companies. In my greater family, we own a chain of retails stores that has over one hundred locations. The majority of products sold through that chain come from China and from other cheap foreign labour markets. On the other side of the coin is one of my favorite companies, my plastics company. It manufactures mostly acrylic products for Canada’s retail sector (I started this company in first year uni!). Just last spring it lost a national contract to China. So William I am well aquainted with both sides of China in the global market place, and the global market place in general. And I favour balanced freer global trade.

If you have a problem with Lou Dobbs and his brand of journalism, I suggest you send him an email and have a chat with the man. That’s the intelligent and enlightened way to deal with your Dobbsian ’issues’.

Neil, you don’t respond to any of the arguments against Dobb’s views that I gave or linked to. These are specifically against his arguments on job loss in the US and the evils of the trade deficit.

As to his not being a protectionist. He doesn’t like to be called that, but he never met a trade agreement he likes, and never has mentioned lowering any tariffs as a good idea. So he is one, even though he likes to call it ’balanced’ trade.

I am sorry your firm lost a contract to China, but that is competition. It is brutal and heartless, but benefits the customer. Many firms, as is shown in the link I gave, have figured out how to beat the low cost Chinese labor market by improved productivity using technology. As I said competition also leads to social inequality, which must be addressed by government action more than we have done in the US.

One of the things I think is the social responsibility of all citizens is not to be taken in by sloganeering, and to try to think critically about social issues. That I what I have tried to do on the issue of globalization.

It is pointless going further you if you won’t respond to arguments, but just repeat your views.

However, I would like to point out that no prominent academic economist I know of supports Dobbs’s views. Thomas Friedman, of the New York Times, has talked extensively to people in China and India and the US about this issue, and has written two books on globalization. He is not given to non-stop insults, like Dobbs is, but he did let slip in a talk that he regards Dobbs as as a “blithering idiot” on these issues. I really think the fact that the people who study these issues most seriously dismiss Dobbs’s views should give you pause.

After Thanksgiving, I will post something on a real story of globalization: type design. I think it illustrates how, contrary to Dobbs, the ’global village’ really is overall a wonderfully positive and productive development. Oh and Typophile is an important part of that story.

“But young parents also have the choice to live within walking distance of their children’s school”

Going WAY OT here, but that’s definitely not true in a lot of cases.

In many parts of the US (all?) schools are financed locally. As such, the well financed schools tend to be in high-class/high-priced neighborhoods and the poorly financed schools tend to be in (obviously) low-class/low-priced neighborhoods.

For areas with school choice, this problem gets nasty. What happens is that parents that have the ability to send their children elsewhere, do, and those that don’t, don’t. So what happens is that the schools become increasingly segregated on a socio-ecnomic level. Which becomes a vicious cycle.

In the end, a parent that wants the best education for their child will send them to the best school. The catch is that the best school is likely in a neighborhood that the family can’t imagine affording to live in.

OK, BACK TO TYPE!

that’s definitely not true in a lot of cases.

As I said, it’s a question of priorities.
Choosing to drive/bus your child to a “better” school further away indicates that enabling him/her to walk or bicycle to school is not your most important priority.

“Choosing to drive/bus your child to a “better” school further away indicates that enabling him/her to walk or bicycle to school is not your most important priority.”

Alas ’enabling him/her’ tends to be less about individual family priorities and more about the society at large.

Here’s a different notion of responsibility: are we responsible for understanding our audiences? Should designers be reading Oprah Magazine and watching CSI to understand the visual culture that tens of millions of people take in every day?

Good question James. I’d say a designer should absolutely understand the audience they are designing for.

Does a type designer? Maybe. Though, again, a lot of their work is sent to the audience via proxy of the graphic designer.

…a lot of their work is sent to the audience via proxy of the graphic designer…

Something I often wonder about is how much of our font associations come from design and how much come from use. Mistral, for example, can mean very different things to straight men than to other people because it’s extremely popular with designers of hard-core pornography. Papyrus may have been intended to evoke something in particular at one time, but now has become ubiquitous and stands for cheap design.

But I digress…

“Mistral, for example, can mean very different things to straight men than to other people because it’s extremely popular with designers of hard-core pornography.”

It is!?

*THAT* should be the OP’s thesis project!

Aric:
Nice input! Right – I think this is an interesting direction. Thanks!

Aluminum and James:
thanks guys to bring this back to the topic!

William and Hiroshige:
try skype :-)