Typesetting for Glass

Just as I was in University studying a rather unique combination of subjects, Computer Science and Printing & Photographic Technology (yes try fitting that on the top of your exam paper when they left enough space for the word: Geography), the desktop publishing revolution was in full force. This was for me very exciting, in my first year we were outputting directly to bromides at £5 a printout (which was a lot of dosh in 1989) and then the next year playing with QuarkXPress on a Mac. At a similar time I was playing on a PC with Windows 1.0. I remember my excitement when the letter “i” only took up the width that it needed. Proportionally spaced fonts.

What I didn’t realise was that there were many who opposed DTP. Yes it was much cheaper to create professional-looking newsletters and yes even books, but those in opposition were horrified at the lack of good kerning, gone were true small caps (hey what’s wrong with making the uppercase letters smaller – and for that matter why on earth are they called uppercase…), figures turning into numbers and were all monospaced capitals and the list goes on, but for a kid fresh out of university this was incredibly exciting for me. By my final year, I had a PC running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and my trusted HP DeskJet 500 (which I would refill with Parker Quink) and was DTPing away!

I accidentally fell into the profession when I finished University since I needed a job for six months to save up for making Aliya and fell upon Alpha Creative Solutions in Sale, Manchester. Well, as they say, the rest is history. I’ve been typesetting more or less consistently since while at the same time fulfilling executive roles in companies such as the Jerusalem Post and Koren Publishers Jerusalem.

Of course DTP as it was once called caught up to traditional typesetting and anybody familiar with Adobe InDesign knows that with the right typefaces, there is very little typographic compromise. Yes there are still some programs who have better control like PowerPublisher and Ventura, but overall, InDesign has become the de facto standard and there is balance in the typographic world. Books are again beautiful (well some are) and although some will argue (correctly imho) that the art of typesetting is being lost, there are still some of us who practice the art (or perhaps somewhat of a science) and produce really great looking print books.

Enter the iPad and the Kindle.

I’m not actually sure what came first, the Kindle or the iPad but it’s not important. The statistics are dazzling. The number of people purchasing books that are read on a glass or plastic screen is dazzling. We cannot ignore this phenomenon. Anybody who says that the future of books is ebooks is mistaken. To quote Ilan Greenfield, the publisher of Gefen Publishing House, “eBooks are not the future. They are the now” and he is right.

What is interesting is how the same arguments from 25 years earlier reappear. Look at a Kindle book, and how the text is presented. After the initial wonder that we can change the size of the text, suddenly the typesetter inside me wonders about rivers and leading and it doesn’t take long (about five milliseconds) for me to wonder about kerning, tracking, ligatures, optical margin alignment, small caps, text figures aarrggghhh, I’m looking at Notepad on my PC!

This felt like a step backwards when I wrote this article in 2013: the Kindle books I was seeing gave me far less typographic control than print layout. The situation has since improved. Kindle’s Enhanced Typesetting supports features including kerning, ligatures and improved spacing, though a reflowable book still has to adapt to the reader’s screen and settings.

Well I guess I can’t control everything.

Interestingly, Apple’s iBooks Author offered a partial answer at the time: a way to design books in its .ibooks format, alongside EPUB titles sold through the iBookstore. This is now historical advice. Apple no longer updates iBooks Author and directs authors to Pages; a new project should be planned around its intended readers, devices and supported format.

Renana Typesetting worked with the .ibooks format during that period. If you have a book you wish to typeset for screen or paper, please feel free to get in touch to discuss the requirements of your project.