Dal volume, di prossima pubblicazione, A Theory of Architecture (di Nikos Salingaros)
Ornamento e scrittura
Per gentile concessione dell'autore riproduciamo il paragrafo 8 del capitolo The Sensory Necessity for Ornament [la traduzione č in corso]
Ornament presents organized information that is entirely
distinct from text as encoded in letters and signs. Ornament does
not communicate a message in written language, but instead in a
subconscious language. I will use the example of typography to
discuss this difference. When early typeface fonts for printing
were cut by hand, they were created with the aim of having maximal
legibility, guided by aesthetic considerations. They were serif
fonts (in which open lines end with a dot or T-stroke), like
present-day Times and Garamond.
The introduction of radically new typefaces at the beginning of
the twentieth century confirms that removing the ornamental serifs
also removes a level of meaning. Sans-serif fonts such as
Helvetica were popularized along with the modernist Bauhaus design
style. They were promoted for their mathematical simplicity. It
has been experimentally established that sans-serif fonts degrade
legibility. People's reaction to these stripped-down typefaces was
strongly negative; so much so that the ancestral sans-serif font
was called "grotesque" by the Berthold foundry, which introduced
it commercially (the sans-serif typeface Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk
eventually gave rise to Helvetica).
The transition from sans-serif to serif fonts shows clearly how
ornament works to make form clearer, sharper, hence more
distinguishable. Classic serif fonts go much further in
establishing a positive emotional connection with the reader. In
(Salingaros, 2000) I argue for the necessity of detail from
hierarchical arguments. It is not just any added detail that
improves the legibility of the font, however. Adding dots or small
cross-strokes anywhere other than at the terminals of open lines
(and even there, at some arbitrary angle) would degrade the
font.
Ornament organizes detail in a very precise and sophisticated
fashion in order to make a larger form more comprehensible.
Adjustments are necessary for a better comprehension of letters.
The most effective serif fonts are vastly more complex
mathematically than a similar sans-serif font. They show
substructure on a hierarchy of decreasing scales. A serif typeface
doesn't simply add end-strokes; the entire font is adjusted so
that new, more detailed elements cooperate to define a coherent
whole. Correcting an old misunderstanding, ornamentation does not
superimpose unrelated structure; rather it is an operation that
generates highly-organized internal complexity. It therefore has
to be extremely precise in order to be effective.
Nikos A. Salingaros
References.
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