"open" from the inside out
This peculiar string of thoughts unfolded while waiting to get the oil changed on the car yesterday. Seated in the lobby, it struck me how the neon open sign was backwards from within the business. Of course it needed to be if the cars driving past were to get the message within a split second glance.
Then there’s the reversal of ambulance on the front edge of those hoods so that the message can be read in the rear view mirror as the crisis quickly approaches cars from behind.
The analogy here is not tied specifically to type set. Consider instead the entire package of communication. Does it remain bound to the writer’s frame of reference our does it have the transformative flexibility to adapt to the readers’ frame of reference. I’ve noted a great deal of writing on the web these days is falling into stylistic conformity that seems like a stale loaf of bread.
I’m always amazed how the words of a writer like Pausanias can travel through a few thousand years and the questionable translation of academics, yet still they provide a seamless opening into his world, as if handing the reader a fresh loaf of bread straight from the oven, regardless of the vast distances of time and space.
Words are crafted into type not for the moment of writing but instead for the lifting from the window, hood, page or computer screen. It’s all about how the combination will fire neurons within a different skull somewhere down the line.
It’s about the action of the mind, not the jargon of the moment.
The Context of Mystery
"Slowly, I began to see something..."
Artifacts
Lifestream Digest for August 31st