A mountain of tedium

I am glad I am not a typesetter, but I sort of wish I was....

In this post;

• What I have learned about typesetting

• Managing time and focus

• Regaining my brain after too long at a screen

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I finished typesetting the first chapter of the second edition of Vinciness and then had to go for a run.

This was not a noble act of discipline. It was not part of a carefully managed hustle-bro morning routine. It was more like getting up from the desk and realising my head had turned into a tray of loose screws.

Type. Set.

The chapter had moved from manuscript into the paperback layout. The margins were set. The page numbers were working. The chapter title had found its place. A few bad line breaks had been fixed.

Typesetting is a mountain of incredible tedium. Draining like like an unending tax return. Unable to be sated like a mosquito bite that feels so damned good to scratch. Each action and decision has a significance.

Learning from the pros…

Typesetting can make you feel ridiculous because the work looks so minor from the outside. When I agreed to take Vinciness on, Jon Hotten had sold it to me as ‘a bit of light typesetting’.

This was a challenge that I was keen to take on but hadn’t fully appreciated; the tax is real, mentally and physically.

You are not bowling twenty overs into the wind. You are not doing hill sprints with a coach yelling at you. You are sitting in front of InDesign, adjusting small things that almost nobody will ever consciously notice.

It reminds me of the kind of tiredness that comes after cricket. You’ve only stood at slip, bent down, offered solid advice to those far more talented than you for a number of hours - but you’re stuffed.

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Thanks for having a read. This is all about Vinciness, a book by Jon Hotten that I’ve provided creative and design work to. Check out the first edition here.

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The other thing you are not doing, is writing. The stakes of getting out of the way so the writers craft can do its best work are high. In this case they are multiplied by my passion for the text.

Typesetting is not about finding the big idea. It is about staying with the small decisions long enough for the object to improve.

A line runs badly; you fix it. Then the next page shifts. You move that too. Then you look again, move it back, and wonder whether the first version was better. The work becomes a cycle of effort, correction and review.

I hate it and love it all at the same time. Of all the areas of specialisation in graphic design I’d love to have been a specialist in, type setting would be it. The mind-bending quagmire of science, maths and visual language hovers over a designer while they shoehorn a writers story through the reduced tracking of serif and extenders.

You are never truly satisfied with results, but you are truly pleased. Like running an unending marathon, you can at least admire your splits.

The real challenge is that the mountain of small decisions can infect you with maddening tedium. It can be like accidentally listening to talk-back on SEN; you can begin to get hung up on the infinitesimal and lose sight of the bigger picture.

In sport, the cycle is train, recover, repeat. The body can’t be expected to keep improving without rest. You learn when to push and when to stop before the work turns to rubbish.

A ‘mountain’ I run up as a part of my typesetting routine.

After a couple of hours on the first chapter, having a run was essential; good vibe chemicals produced by the body, fresh air and looking at the horizon. The clarity afterwards was genuinely remarkable. I mentioned it to (at best) half-interested wife.

‘That’s nice dear’

It prompted me to map out the coming week of typesetting with some targets to hit and with exercise built into each session.

Vinciness is one of the main projects for the studio at the moment. It’s become a literal and figurative sprint of work; laying out the time available, actioning work and building in time to step away.

The mantra of this project has become: Work, step away, return, improve.

Hope you’ll join in for the result. More artwork implementation coming next week.

You can pre-order a copy of the paperback edition of Vinciness here in Australia and here in the UK.