Regular readers will not that I continue to push back against the dire warnings that e-books will replace print books. My resistance comes not because I’m a bookman (which I’m not) but because sweeping, generalized statement leave out so much.

Everyone points to how cars replaced horse-drawn carriages, but there are so many examples where a new technology did not replace previous methods. Yes, e-books will shift print books, publishing, and booksellers in new directions but that doesn’t mean the eradication of print.

In the 1800s the public lecture was a popular and effective way to convey information. Radio did not entirely replace the gathering of individuals to hear someone speak. Cinema did not replace theater. DVD replaced VHS but not movie theaters. MP3s replaced CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, & vinyl but none of that replace live concerts.

Moving-going, attending concerts and lectures: those are all communal activities but reading is not. In that way, reading is more akin to the solitary viewing of a movie at home or listening to music on an iPod. Yet, when we go to the movies, or sit through the performance of an opera, we process that experience in solitary ways, as individuals. Part of our sensory experience may feed from the audience (particularly at a rock concert) but much of our pleasure at enjoying movies in a theater or a classical concert stems from the environment of the theater and other perceptions. Who is not annoyed at that guy talking two rows over? (And, honestly, I do have to say that I can think of very few lectures that I have enjoyed in person. For that, please, please just give me the lecture on YouTube.)

There are ways that we interact with books through typography, design, and the format of print itself that are so successful that it’s practically transparent to most. For many books – and I don’t say all – print will remain the most effective medium because the book itself has a form that suits our senses.

In a decade or two from now, with advances in digital displays, this will certainly change but I still doubt that even by 2025 we will have seen the complete absence of print books. I know I must sound like a Luddite to all those who are convinced that everyone – right now – should be reading books on their iPhones.

What I do expect is that digital media will create new forms of interacting with a large body of textual and image-based material (the common ingredients of books), ways that go far beyond what we see with the current generation of e-book reading devices. Yet, the capabilities of rich Internet-based digital media have been with us for more than a decade now and, honestly, we’ve not seen a very significant shift towards utilizing this new media in creative and impactful ways. For that, I do blame academia and publishing. There’s a lot more that needs to be done and it will probably come about with the generation that was born into a world where digital media is not considered “new”.

We need to learn what it means to write with digital media.
We need to learn what it means to read a digital text that is not an e-facsimile of a book.

Have you ever felt some unstoppable desire to do something? I get that once in a while and I let it grow until one day I just can’t do anything but that that I’ve been craving for: it could be to paint, to draw, always something handmade.

Lately, I’ve been feeling the need for handmade stuff (stuff = letters, miscellanea, doodling, etc) to maybe start introducing it into my usual designs, I think that it could produce some interesting results.
So I started a Fileteado Porteño workshop. The maestro fileteador is Héctor Rapisarda and here a couple photos of the class & his beautiful letters on the blackboard.

& some of the letters I’ve done during the class:

If you want to see some more Fileteado Porteño, there’s a flickr group with very interesting pieces.

*The star ornament on the side of this post is from the free font Lucky Charms by Blue Vinyl

Don’t forget this is Argentina, a state university, miserable salaries, hundreds of thousands of students (300,000 students at the University of Buenos Aires), old buildings, etc.

Of course we love it, that’s why we do it. Last Friday the Teachers Unions were on strike and we decided to support the strike since at the end, it is for a better education to everyone, for us, for the students.

Despite our support for the strike, we decided to have class anyway, but a different type of class than normal. We had the students bring in their first assignment TP 1 (Trabajo Práctico 1/Practical Work 1): The finished monogram with a series of variations and a grid. After receiving all the works the students were going to have a theoretical class with slides to learn about the next assignment.

Due to the strike we decided to go to school and receive the works, after that we stayed working on the results of TP 1 and the head of Type 2 gave a little talk to the students explaining what the strike was about.

Here’s how we grade:

First, all the teachers get together with the head and establish the parameters for the grades. From those parameters, each teacher sets the standard for their group (remember that we are 5 groups of 33 students & 2 teachers to each group). Then we compare each group’s standards with each other and set the grading structure.

Briefly Class 1: Each student’s assignment was to make a monogram for an Argentine comedian.

This will be a typical review class: As soon as the students get to the classroom, each one with a few home-printed mock-ups of the monograms, they go to a corner of the room and tape all the works to the wall. They also bring their chairs and notebooks and we all sit in a semi-circle in front of the works.

Someone choses a work (usually its me because nobody wants to be first) and critique it: we see what works and what doesn’t. The designer of the work tells why she chose that font, what changes she did to the font, what concept supports her design, and what problems she encountered.

The idea is to guide her so that she herself finds the best way to improve her work. After we are done with one work, we take it from the wall and then that student picks someone else’s work and says why she chose it and it goes on and on until the wall is empty.

In the process all the students can participate, and the idea is that they can take advantage of everybody’s work and answer the questions that are common to many. Sometimes we get into very interesting discussions that make this the best part of the class.

Apart from the resources that the students want to look for, we provide them with apuntes or notes: a few pages with material indirectly related to the topic. In the case of this assignment, they received three. Here a bit of the notes:

Apunte 1: Parts of the letter

Apunte 2: Raices Typographic

Apunte 3: Typographic variables

The new academic year in Argentina has started! (Yes, schools in the southern hemisphere are on a different schedule than all of you in the northern part of the world; here in Buenos Aires university classes run from the end of March to mid-December ).

The course actually started April 4th and my idea was to post after every class (classes are on friday from 2 to 6pm) but since we always get together with the other designers at the end of the class to have coffee and talk type, I get home late and tired, so the postings will be Saturdays.

The class began with all the typography students together (Type I & Type II) for a presentation of the course Tipografia Cátedra Gaitto by Jorge Gaitto -the head of the cátedra. (In another post I’ll have to explain how the cátedra system works). There are a lot of people in both courses: 380 students enrolled in Type I & 170 students in Type II (and yes, you need to pass Type I to get into Type II).

Type I is typography basics, and the course ends with the creation of a font.

Type II (which is what I teach) is about doing things with the type, basically Editorial Design. The course starts with a series of exercises that lead to the actual book & magazine design which is featured later in the year. The course ends with the design of a publication.

We divided the 170 students of Type II into 5 groups with 2 teachers each, and as the result I’m in charge of a group of 33 students. The head of Type II (Carlos – my mentor) introduced the team and talked about the kind of work we’ll be doing during the year and then assigned the first work to the class: TP1: Monograma.

Finally, I get together with the students in my group and we spend some time talking about typography: ligatures, monograms, logotypes, font families, variables, and the concepts for developing the work. Each student’s task is to design a monogram for one of ten historical Humoristas (i.e., dead Argentine TV comedians). The next class will be correción of mock-ups. (Off-hand, I forget how to translate correción into English).

At 6.20pm we were still talking about design, type, etc….