Imagination while reading?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by beppe

simply and plainly ridiculous, not you dear friend, but your statement. The fine art (repeat art) of typography is liquidated like this. Pfui! there you go, Manunzio, Bodoni, all the work on design of characters, the composition, the choice of paper, the balance of the page. The fine art of bounding.
All this liquidated with few words. under the superiority of what, of whom ...

The statement is perfectly true for silent typography:

[Ea]

Originally Posted by beppe

simply and plainly ridiculous, not you dear friend, but your statement. The fine art (repeat art) of typography is liquidated like this. Pfui! there you go, Manunzio, Bodoni, all the work on design of characters, the composition, the choice of paper, the balance of the page. The fine art of bounding.
All this liquidated with few words. under the superiority of what, of whom ...

Horror. Horror vacui.

Ah. No.

Or, it depends.

Lets compare it to, say, personal style and looks. Very elegant people are often dressed and groomed in a way so you notice them, not what they wear or their hairstyle, just that you are meeting an attractive person.

If we step back to typography, then I would say that the best of it, the most elegant, is that which disappears and helps and support the reading process. I.e. become invisible - while still making a great difference.

Beppe, I think you would appreciate this; the very best make-up that makes women beautiful is invisible to the viewer. He sees only her. Or the reader sees the story.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by tompe

The statement is perfectly true for silent typography:

I am sorry, I am not familiar with the term.

Psst. that page tells about eating and drinking habits of your ancestors

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Ea

Ah. No.

Or, it depends.

Lets compare it to, say, personal style and looks. Very elegant people are often dressed and groomed in a way so you notice them, not what they wear or their hairstyle, just that you are meeting an attractive person.

If we step back to typography, then I would say that the best of it, the most elegant, is that which disappears and helps and support the reading process. I.e. become invisible - while still making a great difference.

Beppe, I think you would appreciate this; the very best make-up that makes women beautiful is invisible to the viewer. He sees only her. Or the reader sees the story.

You touch my heart, with that cute umbrella. I concede. With a smile and curtsy.

By the way that book, that is a pleasure to read as it is so well printed, so that evry word can be savoured, coming from The Archibishp of Upsalla, deals with something that you might be interested. in.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by beppe

...Attachment 56265...

I'd love to get my grubby paws on that just to copy the woodcuts, although the first shown appears to be from Jost Amman's Book of Trades, in which case I already have it. Is it available digitally?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by beppe

simply and plainly ridiculous, not you dear friend, but your statement. The fine art (repeat art) of typography is liquidated like this. Pfui! there you go, Manunzio, Bodoni, all the work on design of characters, the composition, the choice of paper, the balance of the page. The fine art of bounding.
All this liquidated with few words. under the superiority of what, of whom ...

Horror. Horror vacui.
Attachment 56265
this is a page of a book printed in 1958, by bona in 900 copies. This is number 886. It is the history of D'Olao Magnus archibishop of Upsalla of th costums od the Northern People. it appeared in Rome in 1554 (printed in Basel in 1567.

Reading it gives a lot of pleasures. More than just the words.

I said "content," not words.

I maintain my opinion that typography is *not* supposed to draw attention to the layout or the shape of the letters, but to allow reading to be a pleasant experience.

Highly ornamental and carefully-structured layouts are still supposed to draw attention to the contents, not the typography itself, in the same way that good architecture works to invoke certain feelings in the person in the building. A person should think, "wow, it seems so bright and open in here," not "wow, look at the height of those rafters, and the windows are angled to fill the corners with light." A person reading a well-designed, heavily-formatted page should notice the key details on the page (names of sections, pictures attached to certain meanings) and that the reading was pleasant... they shouldn't consciously think "centered all-caps text, how nice."

Good typography makes the contents memorable; only typography geeks should notice the details. (I suspect that MR forums draws more than the average number of typography geeks.)

Or, what Ea said: even very ornamental typography is supposed to draw attention to the text, not itself. The reader should leave the book thinking, "wow, every era was clear and distinct in my mind," not "the first page of each chapter had numbers covered in scripty ornaments."

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by beppe

You touch my heart, with that cute umbrella. I concede. With a smile and curtsy.

By the way that book, that is a pleasure to read as it is so well printed, so that evry word can be savoured, coming from The Archibishp of Upsalla, deals with something that you might be interested. in.

I'll be darned! Now that you mention it, there is an umbrella in that picture!

[Ea]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Now that you mention it, there is an umbrella in that picture!

Can you see the pink Sony Reader then? A request by astra.

Perhaps it's time to consider another avatar now that it's getting a little colder again.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Ea

Can you see the pink Sony Reader then? A request by astra.

Perhaps it's time to consider another avatar now that it's getting a little colder again.

I didn't even notice she had another arm! My focus kind of stops a few inches below the right elbow!

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I said "content," not words.

I maintain my opinion that typography is *not* supposed to draw attention to the layout or the shape of the letters, but to allow reading to be a pleasant experience.

Or, what Ea said ...

I am content also to agree with you, dear friend. I must admit that my post had a tint of polemics: I grew up in a town that is one of the siege of the fine art. I am satisfied of the small ripple in the pond that my little rock has caused.
PS numbers covered in scripty ornaments tend to give a kitschy impression indeed.
PPS "wow, it seems so bright and open in here," summarizes it perfectly.

Coming back to Ea's parallel with beautiful women make up (maybe my main hobby, not the make up of course), I imagine one of our Southern beauties, with her rich hormonal flow, with un-plucked brows, It might add a kinky touch to her looks, but in this case, the absence of make up would be definitely noticeable. See my reply below.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I ...

sir Lord William, your faithful Jester is always ready to amuse you. Ah, I see that you are already properly "amused". I will leave you with your new toy, then.

[Joseph Mitchell]

This talk about what goes on in someone's mind while they read is pretty interesting, and I had to think about it a lot while writing my novel. A character in the book has the ability to speed read, absorbing text at an incredible rate with full comprehension, with the maddening caveat that the knowledge gained in this way will disappear completely overnight, leaving only the memory of what he was thinking about while he read the words, separated from the original context, like an annotated book with the main text erased, leaving only the annotations.
Personally, I don't usually see what I'm reading as a movie, but I do picture most of it in my mind as images or short 'movie clips'. I see what the author is trying to describe, filling in details as needed. Reading these posts gives me some insight into why some authors use plain talk to describe a scene, while others focus on using flowery descriptive prose. The prose writers see the words and how best to string them together, while the plain talkers see the scene and try to describe what they see. I'm not trying to generalize too much, just making a quick observation based on what I've read here.

[runtmms]

I'm jealous of all of you who get the full blown movie visual in your head. I sometimes get storyboards, but usually just a sense of place. I definitely hear voices. (That doesn't really sound right...) That's probably why I prefer dialog driven books.

The maddening part about the voices thing is Harry Potter. I've read all of the books several times, and also listened to all of them while driving - they are wonderfully read by Jim Dale. Now when I read them I hear his voice in my head.

-M

[Ea]

Originally Posted by runtmms

...
The maddening part about the voices thing is Harry Potter. I've read all of the books several times, and also listened to all of them while driving - they are wonderfully read by Jim Dale. Now when I read them I hear his voice in my head.

-M

Stephen Fry has read the British version, it's quite good.

[WT Sharpe]

I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books. I'm waiting to see if they make them into a movie.

[jes1]

I thought I pictured the story, but after reading though this thread, I think I just sense the story. I am in the story and feel what is going on. If that makes sense

I am with Dreams on this. I immerse myself in the story and feel it, but I don't necessarily see it. If the story captures my imagination, I often continue it in my mind after finishing. I might imagine what happens right after it ends, or may think about what happens several months or years later. Or I might place those characters into the events of a different book and try to figure out how they would have changed that story. It is a fun way to spend more time with the characters I have come to know and care about.