Mostly Legible with Strong to Severe Readability
In 1932, Beatrice Warde compared the function of typography to a transparent crystal wine goblet, in which "everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it is meant to contain." She continued: "Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas."
After Warde, typography has been compared to everything from bread to theatre to a jelly jar, but in my experience, if typography is like anything, it's the weather. Typography expresses our (un)predictable patterns of communication and cultural climates. It's familiar enough for small talk -- don't you think this font should be bigger? -- yet a force that most people, even designers, feel is outside of our immediate control. And, like the weather, typography's presence is not always desirable.
In meteorology, "visibility" refers to the measure of distance that can be seen clearly at any given time and the transparency of air, whether day or night. In typography, "visibility" remains a highly debated condition, subject to seasonally shifting cultural events that determine how foggy or clear the perception of language is at the moment. But in the mind of Beatrice Warde, visibility was apparently reserved for wine and men. Why else would she have used the inconspicuous male pseudonyms Paul Beaujon and Paul Grandjean to publish her provocative beliefs about reading and printing, including the first edition of "The Crystal Goblet"?
Joshua Trees for v. issue 2