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
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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?
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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
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