Rock

to the
Well!
ABCDEFGHI
JKLMNOPQR
STUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklm
nopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 Regular 50/40, 45, 50pt

~`!@#$%^&*()_-+=[{}]\|:;”’<,>.?/
¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬­®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿
ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊË
ÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞß
àáâãäåæçèéêë
ìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ
ıŁłŒœŠšŸŽžƒ
Rock to the Well
ˆˇˉ˘˙˚˛˜˝Ωμπ–—‘’‚“”„†‡•…
‰‹›⁄€ℓ™Ω℮∂∆∏∑−∕∙√∞∫≈≠≤≥◊ Regular 25/28pt
v
 Rock
to the
Well:
A Rockwell STD
Type Specimen Book

Designed by Miranda Petrosky Text by Robert Bringhurst

2 3
 1.1 FIRST PRINCIPLES It takes various
forms and goes
Bold Condensed
25/14pt

1.1.1 Typography exi sts to honor content.

by various
20/14pt

THE GRAND DESIGN These principles

apply, in different ways,
names,
Condensed 20/24pt

THE GRAND DESIGN to the typography

of business cards,
including
Bold Condensed 30/36pt

THE G R A N D DESIGN instruction sheets

and postage stamps,
serenity,
C
as well as to
Condensed 40/48pt

In a world rife with unsolicited messages,

Bo
editions of religious
Like oratory,
music, dance, typography must often draw attention to scriptures, literary liveliness,
on ld
calligraphy -like classics and other books
anything that
lends its grace
itself before it will be read. Yet in order to
be read, it must relinquish the attention it that aspire to join
their ranks.
laughter,
Con
grace and joy.
Bold Condensed

dne
has drawn. Typography with anything to say
15-25/14pt
to language -
typography is therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque
Bold Condensed
20, 30, 40/20, 25, 30pt

dne
an art that can transparency. Its other traditional goal is Within limits, the same principles apply even to stock

es
be deliberately
misused. It is a durability: not immunity to change, but a
market reports, airline schedules, milk cartons,

s
craft by which clear superiority to fashion. Typography at its

ed
the meanings best is a visual form of language linking classified ads.

d
of a text (or timelessness and time. Condensed 18/30pt

its absence of Condensed & Bold Condensed 20/17pt

meaning) can be
clarified, honored One of the principles of durable But laughter, grace and joy,
like legibility itself, all feed on
and shared,
or knowingly
disguised.
typography is always legibility;
another is something more than legibility :
meaning, which the writer,
the words and the subject, not the
Condensed 15/14pt
some ear ned or unear ned interest typographer, must generally provide.
that gives its living energy to the page.
Condensed & Bold Condensed
10, 15, 20, 25, 35/14, 18, 20, 28pt
Bold Condensed 15 &18/15pt

In 1770, a bill was introduced in the English

Parliament with the following provisions:
Condensed 13/13pt

4 5
 pographer’s task natura
which hum
40/30pt
Dozens, then
The function of ... all women of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree, hundreds, then

little changed.

The original purpose of type was simply copying.

16pt
thousands of
have car
whether virgins, maids, or widows, that shall ... impose upon,
typography, as seduce, and betray into matrimony, any of His Majesty’s
The tools have altered over the copies were
I understand subjects, by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial
printed in
tolessthan
comp
it, is neither teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high heeled centuries, and the exact degree

is still to give time

Li
shoes [or] bolstered hips shall incur the penalty of the of unnaturalness desired has
to further the
a
extremes.
law in force against witchcraft... and ... the marriage, upon varied from place to place and
power of witches conviction, shall stand null and void. 10/11pt
time to time,
nor to bolster scribe
e illusion of Letterforms a f fe c t ion,
typograph
would
But humble texts, such but the

g
the defences
of those, like as classified ads or the that honor and i ntel l igence, character of
elucidate what k nowle dge need to
task finish
hasone. alw
this unfortunate telephone directory, the essential
humans see a nd s k i l l.

uperhuman
may profit as much as transformation
parliamentarian, and say deserve Typography
been to
anything else from a good between
who live in terror
of being tempted typographical bath and a
to be honored in is a link, and
their turn. Well- it ought, as a
manuscript This
excuse for

ht
and type

peed and
and deceived.
The satisfactions
change of clothes. And many
a book, like many a warrior
chosen words matter of honor,
deserve well- courtesy and
has scarcely
changed. a somew setting texts

unnatural ed
of the craft come or dancer or priest of either chosen letters; pure delight, to in type has
these in their be as strong as
12/14pt
disappeared.
sex, may look well with some

amina - and
from elucidating,
turn deserve to the others in the In the age of
and perhaps even
ennobling, the text,
paint on its face, or indeed
with a bone in its nose. 14/15pt
be set with chain. 13, 15, 17/13pt
a protective s photolithography, digital
scanning and offset

superhuman begins
not from deluding
the unwary reader
with
The job of the typographer was to imitate the scribal hand in of artificial or printing, it is as
easy to print
Writing
to the powe directly from
a form that permitted exact and fast replication.
by applying scents,
t he ma k i ng of
8/9pt
paints and iron , foot pr i nt s handwritten
atience and
stays to empty
prose.
the leaving of signs . the writing
15, 20, 25/20pt from texth
copy as

1.1.2 Letters have a life and dignity of their own. that is

12/15pt

recision - to the 25 & 30pt typographically

composed.
10-26/varied 10-20 pt

riting hand. 6 7 45/47pt

 1.1.3 There is a st yle beyond style. Regular, Condensed, Italic, Light, Bold Italic 27pt

Typography is just that: idealized writing. Writers Like music, it can be used to manipulate
themselves now rarely have the calligraphic skill
of earlier scribes, but they evoke countless behavior and emotions. But this is not where
versions of ideal script by their varying voices
and literary styles. To these blind and often
typographers, musicians or other human
invisible visions, the typographer must respond beings show us their finest side.
in visible terms. Rockwell Std Family 12/14pt
Typography at its best is a slow performing art,
In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in worthy of the same informed appreciation
a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton
on the page. In a well- made book, where designer, compositor and that we sometimes give to musical
printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands performances, and capable of giving
of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats.
Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles. similar nourishment and
Light, Regular, Condensed, Bold Condensed, Light Italic, Extra Bold, Bold Italic 12/14pt

pleasure in return.
Rockwell Std Family 18/22pt
Simple as it Literary style, says Walter Benjamin, “is Typography
may sound, the the power to move freely in the length is to literature
task of creative and breadth of linguistic thinking without as musical The same alphabets and page designs can be used for a biography of Mohandas Gandhi
non- interference slipping into banality.” Typographic style, performance is to and for a manual on the use and deployment of biological weapons. Writing
in this large and intelligent sense of the
with letters is
word, does not mean any particular style
composition: an can be used both for love letters and for hate mail, and love
a rewarding my style or your style, or Neoclassical or
essential act of letters themselves can be used for manipulation and
and difficult Baroque style - but the power to move interpretation,
calling. In ideal freely through the whole domain of full of endless extortion as well as to bring delight to body and
conditions, it is all
that typographers
typography, and to function at every step
in a way that is graceful and vital instead
opportunities for
insight or obtuseness.
soul. Evidently there is nothing inherently
are really asked of banal. It means typography that can Bold Italic, Light, Regular,
Bold, Condensed 10/11.5pt
noble and trustworthy in the written or printed
to do and it is walk familiar ground without sliding into
word. Yet generations of men and women have turned
enough. platitudes, typography that responds to
Bold Condensed, Regular, new conditions with innovative solutions, to writing and printing to house and share their deepest hopes,
Light Italic, Bold, Italic, Extra and typography that does not vex the perceptions, dreams and fears. It is to them, not to the extortionist - nor to the
Bold 10/11.5pt
reader with its own originality in a self- opportunist or the profiteer - that the typographer must answer. Regular 8-18 evens/11/19 odds
conscious search for praise. Regular 9/10.5pt

Much typography is far removed from literature, for language has many
8 uses, including packa ging and propaganda.Condensed, Regular, Extra Bold, Light13/12pt 9
 r order of the text, as many
or laye
sections
usician must reveal the 1.2 TA CTICS
1.2.1 Read the text before designing it.
12pt
may need
only hea n
In poetry and drama, a larger typographic
35/33pt

1.2.2 D iscover
palette is sometimes required. 12pt 25/30pt

r order of the music he

the outer logic of
andbutsubhea
runnin
The typographer’s one essential task is to
interpret and communicate the text. Its tone, its

the typogr aphy in the heads as we

tempo, its logical structure, its physical size, all

orms. But the reader,

determine the possibilities of its typographic

reappearin
form. The typographer is to the text as the
theatrical director to the script, or the musician

on eve
to the score. 8/9pt

the listener, should

page or tw
A novel often purports to be a seamless river of words
inner logic of the text. 50, 40, 30, 20/30, 34, 28, 23pt

etrospect be able to
from beginning to end, or a series of unnamed scenes.

Re page sprea
Research papers, textbooks, cookbooks and other

g
works of nonfiction rarely look so smooth. They are often Some of Douglass Parker’s translations Robert Massin’s typographic

to remin
u
from classical Greek and Dennis performances of Eugene Ionesco’s plays

e her eyes and see

layered with chapter heads, section heads, subheads, Tedlock’s translations from Zuni use use intersecting lines of type, stretched

readers whi
block quotations, footnotes, endnotes, lists and illustrative roman, italic, bold, small caps and full
caps in various sizes to emulate the
and melted letters, inkblots, pictograms,
and a separate typeface for each person
examples. 10/11pt dynamic markings of music. in the play. 6/7pt

t lies inside the words

has been reading. The la r intellectu
neighborhoo
Such features may be obscure in the manuscript, even if they
are clear in the author’s mind. For the sake of the reader, each

theybe happen
requires its own typographic identity and form. Every layer
and level of the text must be consistent, distinct, yet (usually)

ographic performance visitin

harmonious in form. 12/13pt The first task
of the typogra pher
is therefore to r e a d a n d u n d e r s t a n d the text;
the second task is to analyze and map it.
Only then can typographic interpretation begin.
t reveal, not replace,
10, 15, 20/11, 6pt 50/20pt

Novels seldom need such signposts, but they often require typographic markers of other kinds. Peter

nner composition.
Matthiessen’s novel Far Tortuga (New York, 1975; designed by Kenneth Miyamoto) uses two sizes of
type, three different margins, free-floating block paragraphs and other typographic devices to separate
thought, speech and action. Ken Kesey’s novel Sometimes a Great Notion (New York, 1964) seems to flow
ographers, like other like conventional prose, yet it shifts repeatedly in mid-sentence between roman and italic to distinguish
13/14pt what characters say to each other from what they say in silence to themselves.

ts and craftsmen - In the works of

other artists such
as Guillaume
between author and the text
and designer becomes its own
s o m e t i m e s illustration. 10/9pt

icians, composersand
Apollinaire and vanish. Writing
Guy Davenport, merges with
boundaries t y p o g r a p h y,
10 11
 1.2.3 Make the visible relationship between
the text and other ele ments (photographs,

It
This is the beginning, middle and end

Bold
of the practice of typography: choose
and use the type with sensitivity and captions, tables, diagr ams, notes) a reflection The old
compositor’s
The moment a text
and a typeface
intelligence. Aspects of this principle are explored of their real relationship. typecase is a are chosen, two

It
Bold Italic, Light Italic, Italic 20/19pt partitioned streams of thought,

a
throughout this book and considered in detail in chapters
6, 7 and 10. Italic 12/13pt, 8/9pt
The root metaphor wooden
tray holding
two rhythmical
systems, two
If the text is tied to other elements, where do they belong? If there
are notes, do they go at the side of the page, the foot of the page,
of typesetting is hundreds of such
interchangeable
sets of habits, or
if you like, two
that the alphabet

a
the end of the chapter, the end of the book? bits of personalities,

il
Light Italic 10/10pt
information. intersect.
If there are photographs or other illustrations, should they be embedded (or compositor’s
The in Chinese, These subsemantic They need not

c
particles, these bits live together
in the text or should they form a special section of their own? And if the
the entire lexicon)

l
- called sorts by contentedly

L
photographs have captions or credits or labels, should these sit close beside typecase is one letterpress printers forever, but they
the photographs or should they be separately housed?
is a system
of the primary of
12/13pt - are letters cast must not as a rule

ic
on standardized collide.
If there is more than one text - as in countless publications

gi
issued in Canada, Switzerland, Belgium and other multilingual interchangeable
ancestors to the
bodies of metal,
waiting to be
Light Italic, Bold Italic, Italic 10/10pt

countries - how will the separate but equal texts be arrayed? parts. The word
computer - and it
14/14pt
assembled into
meaningful

h
Will they run side by side to emphasize their equality (and form can be combinations,
then dispersed and

tI
perhaps to share in a single set of illustrations), or will they is no surprise that
surgically revised, reassembled in a
different form.
be printed back-to-back, to emphasize their distinctness? while typesetting
instead of rewritten, 16/16pt

Letterforms
tal
These and similar questions, 1.2.4 to become
was one of the the
w h i c h c o n f r o n t t h e w o r k i n g Choose a
typographer on a daily basis,must typeface or word
last farm
crafts to beor firm
have tone,
be answered case by case. The a group of or fort or fork
mechanized, it wasor
t y p o g r a p h i c p a g e i s a m a p o f faces that from, or first
with a little timbre,
ic
the mind;it is frequently also a map of the will honor one of the to be
social order from which it comes. and elucidate
A n d f o r b e t t e r o r f o r w o r s e , the character
more trouble, to
computerized.
become the word
Italic 15/23pt character, just
minds and social orders change.
Italic, Light Italic, Bold Italic 15/15pt
of the text.
pineapple. Bold Italic, Italic, Light Italic 14/14pt Italic 20/20pt
as words and
sentences do.
No matter what their relation to the
text, photos or maps must sometimes
But the bits of information
be grouped apart from it because they
handled by typographers differ
require a separate paper or different in one essential respect from the Bold Italic 30/29pt
inks. If this is the case, what typographic computer programmer’s bits. Italic 12/8pt
cross-references will be required? Bold Italic, Light Italic, Italic 6/10pt
12 13
 1.2.5 Shape the page and frame
the textblock so that it honors and reveals
Whether the type is set Shaping the page goes hand

Bold 12pt
in hard metal by every element, e very relationship in hand with choosing
the type, and both
between elements, and every logical

1.2.6 Give full typographic attention even to incidental details.

hand, or in softer are permanent

E
metal by machine, nuance of the text. typographical
Extra Bold, Bold 20/22pt

or in digital form preoccupations.

x
Again, does the text suggest the continuo us unruffled flow of justified prose, or the
continued flirtation with order and chaos evo ked by flush-left ragged-right composition?
on paper or film, The subject of page
Bold 10/10pt

every comma, every (The running Selecting the shape heads

of andIf the sidenotes
text is long onand proportions is
shapes

Bo tr
the page and placing the type or the space is addressed in greater detail in
Extra Bold 8-18/11, 13, 15, 17pt

parenthesis, every
the odd-numbered
upon it is much like framing
and hanging a painting.
pages of
short,
elements are many,
this
or if the book chapter 8.
Some of what a typographer

a
e, and in context, even must set, like some of what
every empty space, are set eighteenth-century
A flush gilded
cubist painting left, ragged
in an multiple right. columns On the any musician must

ld
may be required. play , is simply passage
work. Even an edition of
has style as well
even numbered
frame, or a seventeenth-century pages, they
If illustrations are ragged
and Plato or Shakespeare will

B
as bald symbolic still-life in a slim chrome box, text march side by contain a certain amount of
routine text: page numbers,
value. Letters are left. Leftward-reading
will look no sillier than
a nineteenth-century text from
alphabets,
side, does one take likescene numbers, textual

o
precedence over notes, the copyright claim,
microscopic works the publisher’s name and
Arabic
of art as well as useful
and Hebrew,
England set in types that
come from seventeenth- century are perfectly
the other? And at
does homeaddress, and the hyperbole
on the jacket, not to mention
France, asymmetrically
the order or degree
symbols. Theyin ragged-left positioned on atext, butofwith rightward- the passage work or

ld
prominence background writing that is
implicit in the text itself.
German
mean what they are Modernist page. change? Does
as well as what they
reading alphabets like Latin, Bold 8, 12, 16/9, 11,13pt
the textGreek suggest or Thai, Bold 10, 12, 14/9.5pt

perpetual symmetry,
say. ragged-left setting emphasizes
Bold, Extra Bold 15/18pt perpetual the end, Perhapsshould
principle the
asymmetry, or read: Give full
not
meaningful bits of information. the beginning,
Typography is the art and craft of handling these doubly
A good typographer handles them
in intelligent, coherent, sensitive ways. When the type is poorly
of the line. This
something makes
in it
typographic
attention
to especially
incidental
between? details.
a poor choice for extended composition.)
chosen, what the words say linguistically and what the letters
imply visually are disharmonious, dishonest, out of tune. Bold 10/10pt
Extra Bold 23/27pt
Extra Bold 14/14pt Extra Bold 15/17pt

But just as a good musician can make a heart-wrenching ballad from a f ew banal words and a trivial tune, so the typographer can make poignant
and lovely typography from bibliographical paraphernali a and textual chaff. The ability to do so rests on respect for
the text as a whole, and on res pect for the letters themselves. Bold, Extra Bold 12/13pt

14 15
 1.3 SUMMARY

There are always exceptions, always excuses for

stunts and surprises. But perhaps we can agree that,
as a rule, typography should perform these
services for the reader:

• invite the reader into the text;

• reveal the tenor and meaning of the text;
• clarify the structure and the order of the text;
• link the text with other existing elements;
• induce a state of energetic repose, which is the
ideal condition for reading.

Typefaces: Rockwell Std by The Monotype Corporation

ITC Avant Garde Gothic Std by Edward Benguiat of ITC
Printed in Trustee Hall 108 by HP 5550 Color Printer
Text by Robert Bringhurst
Designed by Miranda Petrosky
16
While serving the reader in this way,
typography, like a musical performance or a
theatrical production, should serve two other
ends. It should honor the text for its own sake
- always assuming that the text is worth a
typographer’s trouble - and it should honor
and contribute to its own tradition: that of
typography itself.
Rockwell Std Family15, 20, 25/23pt