Not forgetting words
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045355 |
| Date | 01 February 1995 |
| Published date | 01 February 1995 |
| Pages | 145-146 |
| Author | Peter Kruger |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Industry Musings
Not forgetting words
Peter Kruger
Multimedia Consultant
Like
Wired,
Ray Gun
is one of those magazines which doesn't fit easily in any one
place on me newsagents' shelves — shifting each month to a new section as the
shopkeeper
tries to
work
out
whether it is
a
pop,
leisure or
even an arts
publication.
Claiming to be the 'Bible of Music and Style', Ray Gun also heralds the 'End of
Print'. Inside, each article consists of text which is either
blended
into or superim-
posed on
pictures.
Disjointed
paragraphs in a
variety of typefaces —
some
of which
are
barely readable —
are
produced in
a
collage
format.
The overall effect
is
one of
a desktop publishing system which has crashed, sending its contents to the laser
printer in a random format. Despite the content being difficult to read it can be
assumed
—
as
it
has reached issue 23
—
that the
magazine itself is
read.
Ray Gun's
prediction of
the end
of print betrays its
own
belief
in
having discovered something
new
and
exciting.
Exciting it may
be,
but throughout
the
eighties artists in Europe,
in particular Wulf Rheinshagen of Germany, were producing work which now
looks strikingly similar
to the
magazine
pages
designed by David Carson.
Whereas a few years ago a maga-
zine such as Ray Gun would have
stood little chance of being
taken
seri-
ously, now experimentation with text
is becoming
commonplace.
It is
tempt-
ing to
attribute this new
style,
which is
spreading to mainstream publications
and
advertising,
to a growing
illiteracy
rate and a decline in reading amongst
the
young.
This may be too simplistic
an argument and ignores the fact that
the audience for Ray Gun is probably
more sophisticated and enlightened
than the one which read
New Musical
Express
during the sixties. A signifi-
cant
shift
has taken place in the way we
use the
printed
word.
This arose out of
the use
of desktop computers
and
scan-
ners which use combinations of im-
ages
and
text to create dynamic publi-
cations. The barrier between images
and text is becoming blurred. As text
— which after all is
a
symbolic repre-
sentation of
a
picture —
was the
origi-
nal image compression technique, the
combining of the two is sometimes
seen as a step
backwards.
For the user, text can be a frustrat-
ing medium: there is a feeling that it
never quite matches up to expecta-
tions, that something is missing. It
seems that during the reduction from
an image to
a
symbol there were com-
promises or even omissions which
have left the user with an imperfect
means of communicating. Some in-
adequacies of text
are compensated
for
by using a range of typefaces (it has
been argued
that if
text was such a
per-
fect means of communicating a mes-
sage,
why
do we need so
many fonts?).
The Apple Macintosh, its advanced
graphics bringing desktop page make-
up capabilities to even the smallest
publisher, triggered widespread ex-
perimentation with
the form and
appli-
cation of text. And the experimental
style at which Jane Metcalfe's
Wired
has taken repeated stabs is now being
attacked with
an
axe by
Ray
Gun.
So is this the end of print?
Well,
was photography the end of painting?
There are, now, more people painting
than there were before the
invention of
the camera. If
you
add the number of
photographers to the number of
com-
mercial painters, there are probably
more people
around the
world making
a living from reproducing images than
there ever have been before. What
photography did for painters was to
free them
from
the
obligation to repro-
duce
an
image
as a
facsimile:
once
this
could
be
done with
a
device
there
was
no longer the reliance on the artist.
Consequently they were not then re-
stricted to creating on canvas merely
what
they could see by
eye.
Those who
use text
have,
through
the
public's ex-
posure to multimedia, been given the
freedom to deconstruct and experi-
ment with a medium which is no
longer relied upon as a sole means of
communicating a message. Perhaps
difficult to appreciate while
in
their
in-
fancy, many of
the
new mixed medi-
ums
or
multimedia
are
highly
sophisti-
cated and as technology develops may
offer
a
degree of
expression
unimagin-
able with conventional, pure text or
pure televisual communication.
•
So
what will
happen to
words?
• Will we stop reading?
• Will we stop writing?
• Will
a
reduced attention span
make the paragraph extinct?
These
are practical
questions which
worry educationalists and politicians
alike,
and cause hysteria in the
press.
It
seems quite clear that advances in
technology will alter radically
the
way
the written (or typed) word is used.
Media such as Internet will encourage
the
use
of text
even
while
more
sophis-
ticated services
are
available.
The rapid spread of English (or
American) will
continue,
and as it does
the language will evolve into a form
which will become increasingly un-
recognisable as Queen's English. For
example, adoption of English by Ger-
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 1995 145
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