Space. The emptiness around us. An emptiness, full of things and life. We use the space to move around in. To travel and go places. From birth, we claim tiny little pieces of space to grow taller into adulthood.
We use space to expand ourselves to build bigger homes, more neighborhoods, bigger cities, endless freeways. We also need space to develop our minds and spirits. Space offers the freedom to investigate discoveries, experiences and view points. Space stimulates the brain. Space is the place where all is potential and all is actualized.
When we talk about space, we automatically talk about place. From place, the idea of space can be conceived. Being on a specific place tells you that you are ‘here,’ rather than ‘there.’ The enclosure of the difference between the here and there, is the space that separates them.
Looking for definitions of space, I found a description of the way hunters and gatherers use and move around in various levels of space: a large area is divided in smaller parts. The ‘home range’ limits the area of regular movements and activities. Within the home range, the ‘core areas’ are the areas which are most used and inhabited. In these core areas, ‘owned’ territories are defended and identified by rules and symbols of particular groups from others. And, by an agreement of rules, a ‘jurisdiction’ offers a temporary ownership of a territory. On the one
| | hand, the proportions of the places of the home range, core areas and territories, depend on natural conditions like climate, rainfall or resources. On the values and life-styles of the inhabitants on the other. It seems that space is present on any imaginative level. External and internal, space is infinite and microscopic simultaneously. Space is scalable.
What does that mean to graphic design and typography? If space is scalable, in total and detail, it becomes essential and of equal importance of the positioning (place) and behavior (interaction) of elements within its context. A composition of elements is the arrangement and stress of the enclosing distances between them. In other words, adjusting the external (and internal) space between elements changes their behavior.
When I think of a composition, I think of any arrangement with, or at least an attempt for, an exact balance of elements within its contextual defined space.
In our western-materialistic perception, we are so used to looking at objects only. We arrange our environment based on the placement of artifacts, without a sense of a broader context. The quality of great graphic design or great typography lies in a fine balance of the presence and absence of what we see and don't see. Which one defines the other?
| | Still very clearly I remember the provocative words of my drawing teacher to draw the space surrounding models and objects, rather than the models and objects them selves. To me, it created an awareness of the dependence of their existence within their environment. One could not exist without the other. In a typeface, the beauty of a character is not primarily based on how it is constructed or drawn, it's its balanced composition of internal and external space. Like a well balanced letter spacing creates a beautiful word. The balanced use of column width, gutter white and margins creates a beautiful page. Like well chosen words, articulation, punctuation and pauses, create beautiful writing.
If space is the potential of all that can happen, it's the place for imagination, it's the playground for the mind. It is the place where the designer can expose other than the obvious or established thoughts, view point or direction. It's the place for innovation and renewal. It's the place for expansion and progression.
Space is protective. Space is frightening. It's comforting when it's familiar. It's disconcerting, when it's unknown. Space is the flexibility, or the fixedness between bodies, minds and properties. Space is the medium between what is and what is not. Welcome to Tribe 03!
Max Kisman, August 2003. | Back to Intro
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