A Salon with Scott-Martin Kosofsky at the Type Directors Club
Tales From the Borderlands of Typographic Experience
A typographic perfectionist talks about the architecture of complex books for complex times
Hypertexts are nothing new; the desire to keep multiple strands of related text together on a page goes far back into the era of manuscripts. In print, there are already examples by the 1480s. If you’ve ever seen a page of the Talmud, with its interlocking blocks of type on every page, you may have wondered why it was made that way and how it was constructed. More to the point: What do these books have tell us about the possibilities for today’s books, both in print and, especially, new forms of e-books, or even the design and typography of business and sci-tech manuals? Quite a lot, says Scott-Martin Kosofsky, who will talk about some of his recent breakthroughs and experiments, reviving and reinterpreting old ideas and working out new ones.
Best known for his Judaic work, Scott lives near Boston, where he designs, edits, produces, packages (and sometimes writes) books in a number of areas, including some excellent photography books, and also makes many of his own types, including some new Hebrews that deploy new technology for the automated placement of the notoriously complicated diacritical marks used in Bible and liturgy. His first variable-page-size e-book was recently published by Nextbook; it also marks the debut of a new Hebrew type he made with Matthew Carter, based on 16th-century originals. Scott is immediate past president of Boston’s Society of Printers and Hebrew type consultant for Adobe Systems.
TDC members: free
Non-members: $20
Students: $15