I just spent the major part of my Sunday getting Zettlr to work well as a distraction-free[1] writing interface, complete with a monospaced face and appropriate fore-ground-back-ground colours. (#000 and #8a8a8f for now. AND now I am noticing the octothorpes turning into jellyfish-blue tags.) I digress. Suffices to say working around blaming one’s tools takes way more time than coughing up 5K for that sweet single-device iA Writer license. I must say it is time well spent, except that it meant time away from my girls[2]. Conflict. I digress.

At some point in the five years (5!) spent on teaching pilgrimages[3], I realised almost all of the conceptual, nuanced typographic choices can be made with a deliberate extension of gestalt’s principles. Seen in that (to me) new light, the needless—but fun!—debate over ‘rules’ disappeared, and a demonstrable set of checks-and-balances replaced them. I felt an appropriate amount of self-pity at having taken so long to ‘see’ it. I’m trying to convince self the most appropriate penance for something of this magnitude, is to write a book about it. Considering how productive I have been with side-quests recently, it is only wise to use thisbloghere as a way to publicly commit to finishing the thing (including ink, paper, thread, staples, blades, and all) this year.

I have a rough outline in progress, as well as a few to-do checklist items. (Just making them up as I type, really. This is blog-post as performance. It is a potent mess.)

• Must be shorter than Jost Hochuli’s excellent ‘Details in Typography’. Around 50 pages. [4]
• Pages must work like slides. (Not wordy, have illustrated examples.)
• Discuss the principles in detail, referring original texts as much as possible. I have been using the Khan Academy video as a refresher for students all this while.
• Use a typographic problem to discuss a principle. This can be tricky; so not set in stone.
• Talk about lists. Talk about alignment. Talk about letterforms.
• Use Indic examples. Use bilingual examples.
• Use examples from KL11’s work. Some vulnerability there.
• Limit discussion to practise. Not a philosophy book.

Now that we have got that out of the way, here are some ‘asks’ to the 35 (R says; I say 3–5) readers of mine.

• If you have come across specifically gestalt-driven discussions of layout/typesetting problems, please let me know.
• Also tell me what you think of putting another rainforest to pulp for such a thing. Sensible?
• How are you?
• My email ID is abhijith@keyaar.in and I would love to reply to all the emails you can throw at it.

So this, is what I ‘eventually’ want to do: make books. Ink and pixels. It’s also been too long since Dekho and WID and MT.

[1]: Distraction-free implementation takes a while to get right. The right balance between focus and isolation is tricky at best. I see why iA is expensive. Safe to assume Ananthu has been a power user of Zettlr for a while, so I’m going to talk to him about this.
[2]: Chellam turned 2. R bow-tied and scarfed her. Our friendly neighbourhood-ish chicken-stall guy gave us so much extra parts the fridge is having a hard time. We believe she is famous in the town for coming along on all trips.
[3]: There is a link to some of the material at exif/teaching Justincase. ‘Infinite-Gestalt’ is what we had (unanimously in the way dictatorships are run) christened a Typography2 course in 2022.
[4]: Girish introduced us to the book. Short, to-the-point, fresh.

Links

While binge-skipping through Lincoln Lawyer behind an unmanageable large Figma file, came across this beautiful Mattiel Song. Forest has been good company. Such beauty everywhere on the internet. Here is ‘Introducing the Concept of Radical User Friendliness in Web Design.’