by vshepherd | Jul 14, 2012 | typography
Craig Mod, in his lecture Designing for the Future Book talks of his love of the own-able tactile qualities of the book. He begins is talk of an experience while traveling, of both he and his companion, both opening back packs and pulling out the same book in a romantic and completely random coincidence. Pulling out Kindles he contends would not have the same romanticism. He feels that books are bounded and digital books boundless. That the bounded tangible book feels familiar to us. Largely his talk is about the in between time in technology where books begin to look like books on digital readers. He also shows us the DynaBook sketched by Alan Kay in 1968 which looks very similar to hand held readers today. The one in the image is a cardboard prototype. For more on Craig Mod http://craigmod.com/ One of the concerns of the digital book is the lose of, or marginalized, the cover. Another is the typography. Joe Clark, in his post for A List Apart, declares “The internet did not replace television, which did not replace cinema, which did not replace books. E-books aren’t going to replace books either. E-books are books, merely with a different form.” This I find encouraging because while we must embrace the future – I still want to hold my book, have it fall on my face as I drift into sleep, aline my book shelves. Yet we can only carry so many books with us, and so with technology I will move forward. Eventually. Joe Clark offers that many of the fine details of typesetting will be handled...
