an unkown_me

From what I gathered, Warde’s main point in The Crystal Goblet is that words have a strong ability to transfer unique thoughts and ideas from one mind to another. Forming words into legible sentences could potentially grasp a reader’s attention. However, if the words used are written in elaborate and/or decorative forms and types then the reader will likely lose focus on the meaning of the words and only see the beauty of the word forms. The reader would become distracted from the main goal and idea of the writer. Basically what she means is that to get your point across, the type needs to be simple so that the reader doesn’t focus on the text, but rather through it. If reading a story, the reader should be imagining the characters and what they are doing rather than thinking about the way the words on the page look. 

Warde begins The Crystal Goblet by comparing wine to type. She has the reader imagine a beautiful wine glass made of gold and jewels and also a simple wine glass made only of thin, transparent glass. She says that she can judge how you feel about wine by which glass you chose. If you chose the fancy golden goblet, then it is apparent that you do not care about the wine itself because the gold hides the wine it contains, rather than shows it off. She compares this to type by saying that fancy, beautiful type is there only for show and not for the reader to sink their teeth in and to understand the meaning behind it. She goes on to compare the stem of the wine to margins in text, saying that the stem is there to avoid fingerprints on the bowl of the glass and margins avoid placing your fingers over top of text making it difficult to read.

Later on, another very good metaphor is brought up. She compares windows to text. She says that the job of the typographer is to build a window between the intent and meaning of the text and the actual words used to create these meanings. Overly decorative type is compared to a stained glass window. It is beautiful to look at, but that is simply it. It fails to be a purposeful window, because you don’t look through a stained glass window, you look at a stained glass window. Decorative type is attractive to readers, but isn’t looked through to understand the real meaning. What the typographer should do is build a window like the crystal goblet was created; simple and transparent. In typography this is called “invisible typography.” If I window is built to see out of, then most of the time people don’t even notice the structure or design of the window, just what they see out of it. Invisible type is type that is written but not noticed because the reader focuses on the meaning of the words and ideas, not how it is written. Warde believes this is how text should be.

from katymims blog