Category: Culture

What type of newspaper are you?

stnameplate

A day before ST’s latest redesign launch, the typeface for its masthead was changed from Popular (only shred of it left is in ‘THE’) to Big Caslon, said Peter Thomas Williams who was part of the redesign team. While Popular failed to live up to its name, because it was thought to be “western” and “old-looking”, Peter, who is also design editor of my paper, said that the biggest factor when he chooses typefaces in his eight years of working in Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), is actually cost.

While he declined to go into specifics, one can do the math based on price lists online. Purchasing one typeface like Big Caslon for use on up to 1000 computers would already cost more than S$5,000. Considering the ST redesign itself involved about four typefaces, multiply that to the cost of installation for more than a thousand computers in SPH and one begins to see how cost becomes a major factor in his typeface choices.

tabla_logo

It was on such an “extreme budget” that led Peter, who used to work in a design consultancy in Ireland and as a visual communications lecturer in South Africa, to draw the nameplate of SPH’s Indian diaspora newspaper, Tabla, instead of purchasing a typeface. This was based on three different typefaces: Popular and Calvert for Tabla and the exclamation mark from Bauer Bodoni, which he felt looked like the Indian architectural style.

Costs aside, another important factor is the amount of space a typeface takes up, especially for use as body copy. If it is designed for newspaper use, a typeface is usually efficient in its space management, having a shorter x- and y- height (think shorter x and y and applied to all 26 letters) and kerning (space between letters) is even. A typeface that takes up too much space would mean story lengths have to be shortened to keep the same amount of news on a page. “If you choose a typeface that is beautiful but it is knocking off four paragraphs, it is useless.” he said.

A final factor in choosing a newspaper typeface is how intricate it is as newspapers are printed on paper quality that is “like toilet paper”.  Thus, a font with intricate serfis would not come out looking good as the ink is likely to seep causing such details to be lost.

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In the next part of this interview, The Paginator asks Peter how it was like redesigning ST twice, The Sunday Times and My Paper.

We’re so young, have we got time?

When I first began school in WKWSCI, my lecturer showed us Radio Station Forgot To Play My Favourite Song, a rockumentary about the local music scene in Singapore. It turned out to be a final-year project (FYP) by a group of seniors and I told myself my FYP had to be like that — to show Singaporeans another side of their own country.

In my third year, I tried to get the filmmakers down to talk about the film atSingaplural, but unfortunately they were all tied up, so I never got to meet them. As I finally attempt to finish up my own FYP this year, I chanced upon the film again when I was surfing around for local music and found Radio Station by The Padres, the song that played as the film rolled through its credits. After some Googling, I chanced upon one of the filmmaker’s blog, Billy Tan, who wrote a retrospect about the film:

The 3 of us have always enjoyed the compliments over the years but its also a little sad that none of us are within even sniffing distance of the hotshit rockumentarians we were 5 years ago – in fact we’ve all joined the SYSTEM and are civil servants now. If there were still anything remotely creative and edgy left in us, it probably would’ve been shat out of us by now. Sadly, we’re fading away instead of burning out.

In the song Radio Station, The Padres ask, We’re so young, have we got time? and listening to it makes me question how much time I have to grow before I have to take on the world and how much time I have left before my ideals are spent. And as I read Billy’s post, the song ended, There’s no more time… I wondered if I might end up talking like him a few years down the road.

Being Critical of Critique

To offer a critique does not require one to be critical.

This c-word sends shudders down the spine of all creators, conjuring an image of a knife stabbing through the heart of your work and adding a few twists just to make sure it is truly dead. One can never be too sure.

But to be critical does not necessarily mean just disapproving judgements but rather, an analysis of a piece of work to comment on its merits and faults so that people can see its elements and better understand it. Thus, a critique is not about tearing a piece of work apart but rather building it again part by part.

And the reason why we are all so afraid of critique, ableit our fears misplaced, is because everything we do is a part of us, and the greater you love it, the greater you fear losing it to others.