Crewdson's "New Series"

Now this is what I’m talkin’ ’bout, baby! This is meaty stuff — pure Crewdson. It leaves me hungry for more.

Kent, I can only infer that your remarks are being made on the basis of the interview...

If you'll look again, you will see that the "meat" of the interview was provided by Robin. He surely deserves some credit for satisfying carnivorous appetites.

Andy planned the dinner, set the table, and served the meal (all in splendid fashion) but let there be no mistake about his role in the process.

And here's a taste of "pure Crewdson" in all its glory: "Now more than thirty years on from its first publishing, Hyphen Press has brought out a reprint of the book."

- What is the subject of this sentence?
- What is the object of the sentence?

Obviously, Andy does not understand that Hyphen Press was not the thing first published/publishing 30 years ago.

The sentence should have been written something like this:
"Now more than thirty years since its first publishing, the book has been reprinted by Hyphen Press."

Hello? Editor? Is there a grammarian in the office? Syntax for the editor, please.

Andy's prose is remarkably tight. But anyway, much more important than postured pedantism is content. New Series is austere in mien (refreshingly so), but will undoubtedly become progressively richer in insight, both as a vehicle as well as a source. Very old-school, but with a decidedly 21st century soul.

Onwards and upwards, baby!

hhp

Hmm. Let’s see how many times we can use the word baby in this entry.

Did somebody say baby? :D

Are you sure we're allowed to say anything at all in public about this public Web site or its publicly-identified author?

Joe, are you still taking "credit" for the cessation of L&S?

hhp

John, you’re right — of course, Robin provides the substance in the interview. I didn’t mean to overlook his sizeable contribution. But great interviews don’t happen by themselves, regardless of the brilliance of the subject. Both parties deserve credit.

As for that cumbersome adverbial clause, what can I say? Every writer needs an editor (and sometimes even editors need editors — there’s content editing and there’s copyediting).

So he slipped up. It’s not the most egregious error in my book. I don’t think we need the grammar police to go bust in his hard drive and arrest him for misplaced referents. I’m willing to cut the guy an occasional break if he’ll keep publishing well-considered articles that I want to read.

so, DownerVOLT@aol.com, where can we find your brilliant blog. I suppose your site is error free and abounding in items far more observant than Andy's. really, one would think, at the ripe old age of 23, Andy would have perfected his prose.

with the intention of keeping this kind, I will refrain from commenting on choosing AOL for your ISP.

Crewdson is always capable of inspiring me to learn more about typography. And that's a good thing.

The discussion of Gaskill's "A new introduction to bibliography" is an excellent example. Kinross touches on so many interesting themes: how our view of history changes every 10 years or so, the legibility wars, the demise of type measurement systems. Sigh!

I can be a grammar fascist at times. But like Kent, I'm willing to overlook the problem when the content is so fascinating. In fact, I liked Kinross' take on the subject:

>It's hard to view either aspect critically -
>design and writing - if you have that
>commitment of labor and responsibility
> in both.

The grammarian is out to lunch buddy.

And I think Syntax requires a prescription, but I hear it's more effective than Zyrtec.

While DownerVOLT@aol.com reserves the grammarian for Andry Crewdson, perhaps he can be generous enough to book a spell-checker for his associates at emigre.com.

Find the typo @

http://www.emigre.com/EFoIFaiS.php

Worry not. I didn't let Rudy off the hook. His reply was witty. He noted how well his goofs suited Alastair's observations about the history of errors in type specimens.

From: me (the real me, that is)
To: Rudy
Date: July 18
Subject: FYI (specimen spelling)

alluminum -> aluminum
QUINTIN is usually -> QUENTIN or QUINTON
agro business -> agribusiness
(Try "agribusinesses" for fit.)

Don't worry, we never thought we were the only ones ignoring the typo gestapo. Ho ho ho.

hhp

> http://www.emigre.com/EFoIFaiS.php

As an aside, why is that image almost 500K?

They used JPEG when they should have used GIF. This exploded the size, but also created some typical JPEG halo artefacts around the letterforms. Bringing the image down to 64 colors and saving as GIF would have made it... 71K! With no notable artefacting.

Usability is not the same thing as making plain-looking pages... Or maybe "we download most efficiently what we download most often"? ;-) So just keep looking at pages with obese graphics, and eventually your modem will start loading them faster...

hhp

John's right, of course, that Robin Kinross's contribution to the interview of himself is substantial, but one shouldn't underestimate the role of the interviewer who says little. Having beein interviewed by both good and bad interviewers, and having conducted interviews (not so well), I have developed a great deal of respect for interviewers who have done their research, and ask the right questions the right way in the right sequence. I think Andy has done an admirable job, and look forward to reading other interviews that he conducts.

Why is Joe Clark such a monumentally tedious pain in the bum?

Oh pif. We need an agitatrix like Clark to irritate the pious adherents to obviousness and received ideas. Pain in the bum, sure, but hardly tedious.

(Welcome back, Andy: site looks great.)

As long as it's not Hrant?

hhp

I deny being tedious.