Oct 8

00

MCSWEENEY’S ISSUE V

A Review

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It just stands there – nude, silent, without hype or menace – it’s beguiling.

On the way in, the half title page touches its fingers to the lips of would-be critics, but the effort is weak: we’ve already brushed past.

The usual rivulet of thought in the preliminaries – such giddy fun in Issue II – now feels forced, the marathon line lengths merely irritating. Impatient readers will move on, missing out on the declaration that, with heroic courtesy, the text size in the issue has grown by seven tenths of a point.

On first glance, the multi-columned, “more complete” table of contents brags of exquisite complexity that isn’t there. The columns are machine-gunned by dotted leaders, an unwelcome memento of the typewritten page. Ostensibly an aid to navigation, such noisy rules vibrate, overpowering the logic of baseline, column and white space.

More irksome is an abbreviated classification system, its legend buried off in the corner like a poorly drawn map that demands the reader scurry back and forth just to understand its symbols.

There are myriad atrocities that software will, left to its own devices, inflict on text, and it’s a tad embarrassing that this issue of McSweeney’s takes grim pleasure ridiculing some of these (outlining, underlining, false italicization) while blindly letting others run rampant.

The word text, along with textile and texture, derives from textus, Latin for cloth. For centuries competent typographers have laboured to craft text blocks of meticulous evenness and rich texture, surfaces welcoming effortless navigation, attractive enough to draw the eye but capable of invisibility once being read. The path to this ideal begins and ends with an understanding of typographic structure, and of what happens when it’s pushed aside in the interest of questionable goals.

Type functions best, its crucial texture most likely to stay intact, when spacing is consistent. Of course words vary in length, so to fill up the lines in a column of justified text, the spaces between words need to be elastic. As gaps increase, the cloth becomes moth-eaten, the structure falls apart. Of the many fixes for the problem, software – set to cruise control – will employ the most idiotic and artless of all: arbitrarily inserting space not only between words, but within words. While pockmarked text is irritating, spacing within words is an assault on the reader. Thankfully software can be tweaked to prevent disasters like the second column of p 22: a train wreck, an industrial accident, a chemical spill of words.

On the matter of introducing space within words, Frederic Goudy said, “a man who would letterspace the lowercase would steal sheep.” But added space is essential whenever letters elbow each other as they stand in line, which means strings of capitals, small capitals and numerals.

Small capital letters designed to commingle with the text face (here MF Benton’s Garamond 3) are an integral component of text design, and readily available, only a few clicks away. But on these pages the software has been instructed to “make” small caps, which in feeble digital logic means squishing down full-sized letters, forging capitals that, while small, are stripped of the visual strength required by the subtly complex interoperation of form that type demands. False small caps, thought by those who use them to add toniness, are the typographic equivalent of a rented polyester tuxedo: redolent of the failures and disappointments of previous wearers.

McSweeney’s employs the fine technique of marking the beginning and resumption of text by setting the first phrase in small caps, albeit of the distorted variety. A further mistake is not letterspacing the ersatz small caps, which are now not only pale, wan and bloodless but also shoehorned in a row. When the software (sweating, grunting) rends apart a line in a lunge for justification, plain text is ruined by spacing while the caps get none. Subheads now and again have been set with adequate breathing room, but endure the squish as well.

Errors abound: use of hyphens to indicate a range (Mon-Fri) instead of a proper en dash; unspaced full capitals for abbreviations and acronyms within text when nondisruptive small caps are right at hand; titling numerals when text numerals are available; no sign of ligatures; use of the lowercase ‘x’ in place of a dimension sign; egregious cheating with superscripts and subscripts by mangling text-size characters down to parodies of their intended form; apostrophes and quotation marks (!) representing feet and inches; roman punctuation adjacent to italic text; unnecessary collisions between parentheses and letterforms.

American style manuals insist that dashes within sentences be as long as the point size of the text (one em), with no space fore and aft. Em dashes, like double spaces after a period, are a regrettable souvenir of Victorian typesetting, when compositors, who were paid by the line, liked to puff up their text as much as possible, textual integrity be damned. McSweeney’s goes the Victorians one better by using em dashes with spaces on either side, carving canyons between phrases.

Quibbles aside, Benton’s Garamond 3 is a fine choice, even as it is jostled, bruised and humiliated at the hands of software (is suffering behind the switch to Times New Roman on p 17–18? Could it take no more?). But there’s a more complex dissonance on these pages.

From a graphic design perspective, a dollop of Victorian eccentricity could be just what’s called for. But it’s not happening, not least because of the choice of typeface: a mid-twentieth century revival of seventeenth century designs. It’s sometimes useful to think of typefaces as machines, and Garamond 3, in capable hands, is a sleek, tuned automobile compared to the filigreed steam engines of late nineteenth century type.

Rules and boxes throughout grab for ironic historicism, but mainly just get in the way; and the gesture feels bogus, like Natalie Cole helping herself to her father’s songs. Imprisoned in this fussy latticework are folios and running heads, which should be immediately accessible when needed, and otherwise invisible.

One could dismiss this hamfisted ornamentation as runoff from the because-it’s-there school of design, but in it one sees a deep sort of insecurity: the insecurity of garish accessories and stifling cologne, of tanning beds and complicated haircuts, of a desperate desire not to seem boring.

People know how to read. If the writing is innovative and engaging – if it’s any good – tarting it up will only detract. And graphic design does have its uses: most frequently it is called upon to add value to the valueless, to flog junk to those who don’t need any more junk, to aid in declarations of allegiance to consumer tribes. Does there need to be a McSweeney’s brand? A McSweeney’s lifestyle?