Fascinations

My apologies. I promised to write a series of blog entries reflecting on WAFL. And I have been writing them - several in my head. Editing. Discussing them with a few people at NetApp.

I believe this is known as writer's block.

I have been reading Designing Type by Karen Cheng. I have to make a confession - I am totally fascinated by typography. As a kid, I bought a small Excelsior printing press with three drawers of fonts from a friend for $25 - it unfortunately is long gone. Early in high school I had the opportunity to go to the Newark Star Ledger (a local newspaper) and watch what I recall to be their Linotype machine in action. Later in life I took an interest in small edition books from presses like Trillium (now Electric Works) - books such as Sandow Birk's and Marcus Sander's modern reimagining of Dante's Divine Comedy.

I'm slowly reading Cheng's illuminating text on the "general issues of type design." Because it is quite an enjoyable read. Spare in exposition, dense in information, and a model of clarity. An inspiration shall I say for me to overcome my writer's block?

I got stuck on the letter 'O'. I never considered it carefully. To quote from Cheng's chapter:

Designing a capital O today involves both objective and subjective rules. First and foremost, the capital 'O' in a serif typeface should always be circular or oval. Rectangular, square, diamond, triangular or 'free' O forms are not legible, since readers of the Roman alphabet have long been conditioned to recognize an O by its symmetry or roundness.

It proceeds from there for several pages with examples from the major families of serif fonts that illustrate the variety within the design constraints of the letter. It is then onto the letter 'E':

The E is the logical letter to design after the O. The E sets several critical factors for the entire font: the proportional system, visual centre, vertical stem width and serif and bracket style.

As I made my way to 'D', I was struck by the near inevitability of the design of a typeface once you choose the starting point. And the conceptual integrity that arises as you innovate within the chosen constraints of the design rules.

It struck me that my attempt at distraction from my writer's block led me back to consideration of the basis for the original design of WAFL. Dave Hitz reflected back ten years later that Mike Malcolm laid out three critical components that WAFL had to enable:

• RAID
  
• Write Optimized Layout (reallocate on write)
  
• Delayed Write Allocation (battery backed RAM)
  

Within these constraints, Dave proceeded to design a new file system. Years later, looking back, I was struck by the inevitability of what Dave created. And the integrity of the design.

Is this how you slip past a writer's block? Let me curl up with the serif capital 'B'.

Comments

[Daniel Holmes]

From the little I've read about typography (articles, not books) it seems more interesting than one would think. I did watch the online preview for the documentary about the type that rules the world. You probably have the DVD right? http://www.helveticafilm.com/

[Brian Pawlowski]

Thanks for the pointer to the film! I'm obviously behind on comment moderation:-)