"If I Have Seen Further it is Only by Standing on the Shoulders of Giants."

As I was contemplating what my thesis statement would be, and how to approach my topic of Typography, I kept getting stuck. I skimmed the books cited in my bibliography several times with no success. I finally was able to pin-point the reason for this writer's block; I realized that I did not understand the holistic history of typography well enough to understand all of the specifics and jargon within the books. So I Wikipedia-ed "typography," and only got random examples from different cultures from different time periods, but nothing chronological or all-encompassing.

I wondered (with slight exasperation) how I was going to be able to digest all this information in such a short time! Then it hit me. I learn the best when I can tangibly experience what I am learning! For example, during the last unit where we split into our cultural groups and translated a sentence into our specific languages and then switched our work with another group, I was able to finally understand (on a small scale) how incredibly difficult the translation/transcription process is! Everything from the medium, to the writing utensil, to the limited knowledge available, to decoding and encoding, every little factor plays a role and can affect the entire outcome. I would have never truly understood or appreciated the this process, without first experiencing it.

I have realized that so much of my education has had so little tangible experience to really solidify the things I am being taught. Often the things I learn go in one ear and out the other. Or from my brain onto paper, and never really making it to my long-term memory. This has been so bothersome for me the last year or so, because I am quickly realizing how important it is to learn as much as you can! Whether it is learning vicariously by listening to your friend tell about a personal experience, your mother teaching you how to make bread, a business man sharing simple tips on how to spend and save money wisely, a sunday school teacher telling you the chronology of church history---you will most likely need to remember and recall it someday!!! It is SO important that you listen closely and try to hold on to that knowledge! I can't tell you how many times I've known that I have been taught something, but have totally forgotten the important details--not because that is a human thing to do, but because I didn't listen well enough. And if I would have listened, I would have been able to teach someone else something new! (The times where you really kick yourself is when non-members ask you certain questions that you know you should know the answer to, and you miss that missionary moment because you chose not to pay attention!) 

Anyways, my point is that I want to get the most out of my education. And the way I do that best is by hands-on experience! So I came up with an idea! To really understand typography--I need to do it! I need to experience the difficulty of carving out letters and printing them on paper. I need to get my hands dirty. I need to let my hands feel the flow of writing with a calligraphy pen. I need to experience. And then I will understand what typography is all about. As all of these thoughts and ideas started piecing together, I had this vision of formulating a thesis statement that would be supported and illustrated through typography itself; my point would prove itself though this art medium! I presented my plan to Dr. Burton and Dr. Peterson, and they were SO kind to let me take this idea and run with it!

So off I went!

1. Step One: Got carving tools
2. Step Two: Went to 5 different craft stores looking for some sort of rubber or linoleum to carve into. Fail.
3. Step Three: After several hours, I searched for "rubber sheets" on Google, and found that hardware stores carry them in the plumbing section! Who would've thought?
4. Step Four: I spent hours and HOURS online looking at fonts and trying to figure out how I was going to implement them into my project. 
5. Step Five: Researching typography for several hours
6. Step Six: Writing and re-writing several thesis statements that would be able to perfectly convey (along with the typography) the idea I had in mind.
7. Step Seven: Carving out my thesis statement (using the fonts I found online) in the rubber, and failing miserably. 

Okay, enough of the list. I am going to explain in detail how this all went down. So I attempted to carve out my thesis statement. It went well at first until all the letters started to get bigger and bigger and more and more crooked as I went along. It was an EPIC FAIL! I, being a perfectionist, struggled with this. This is not what I had envisioned! I could not allow my beautifully thought-up project to look so hideous! So I tried again. And again. And again. Each one progressively got worse. After several more hours, I developed an extreme appreciation for the inventors and artists of moveable type. They published entire, practically flawless, sets of scripture without a computer. And I am not talking about just one word, but a lengthy book and books upon books! And I couldn't even write one sentence! I marveled at their talent. I was dumbfounded. I consider myself a very artistic person, and I have never once, in all my 22-years, doubted my artistic ability, but I just could not do this.

It got me thinking. Why were they so good??? What did they have that I didn't have? And then I realized that it was actually the other way around: I have something that they didn't have, which is inhibiting (in certain areas), my artistic talents. I have technology that does things for me. It is my handicap. Why would I write my own essay by hand, when I can type it on a computer? Why would I create my wedding invitation by hand when I have Photoshop and Illustrator and templates from the internet to do it for me? Why would I make 400 of them by hand when I can print them out for $70? Well there are many  good reasons, and I am so grateful that I didn't have to make them by hand, but I am also limiting myself to being self-sufficient in this small area of typography. Does this make any sense? If I did not have a computer to rely on, you better bet that I would have better handwriting. After all, perfectionistic me cannot live with imperfect handwriting. :)

And then it got me thinking even more. I realized that we, as a culture and as a country, have stopped looking to the past for knowledge because we have been so distracted and consumed with the exponentially increasing technology that has swept our nation. I see this problem affecting our health, I see it affecting our religious faith,  our oral knowledge, our art, our families. Everything. For example, we think that our highly developed medicine will help relieve us from depression, anxiety, etc. When really, these chemicals are ruining our liver, our serotonin receptors, and actually increasing our depression and anxiety and decreasing our health. Yet when our quick medicinal fixes are not actually working, we forget to look to the past for answers because we think that we know so much more compared to their "primitive" practices. We are not realizing that our pesticides and artificial growth hormones are increasing estrogen dominance which leads to all sorts of physical and emotional health issues, and that hydrogenated fats and high fructose corn syrups are causing digestive issues and heart disease as well as kidney failure.  And the list goes on. But we do not think to look back down the exponential curve when health issues, cancers, and obesity were much less rampant. Of course, at this point, you are thinking, "Well there are medicines that are good!"  Yes! That is SO true. There have been so many discoveries that have saved millions of lives! And it is good!

So this is my point: Technology is a good thing and can be a great thing. But what is NOT good is that we have been allowing it to handicap us by taking over so many of the responsibilities, talents, and work that we used to do ourselves! We no longer have to do calculus by hand when we have a quick Texas Instrument! We no longer have to walk 2 blocks away when we have a car to take us there that much quicker! What do we need our bodies and our minds for when we have technology to replace all that we have? Of course technology has allowed us to make such progress, which is impressive, phenomenal, and fantastically awesome. But we need to make sure that although it may aid us, to not take over to the point where we forget to look to the past for answers as well. Remember the word "holistic" I used earlier? We need to have a holistic view of the world and of history so that we can remain open minded to the technology in BOTH directions (past + future). Without this, we are likely to closed-mindedly continue down this path we are already on. A path of health problems, obesity, laziness, because we would rather rely on technology to be our quick fix rather than letting it aid us in the talents we already have. Make sure that you can do calculus long-handed, make sure that you can walk 2 blocks (and hopefully more, haha), make sure that you are not popping pills to relieve you from the indigestion or issues from artificial hormones or pesticides, etc.

Lets not be prideful in thinking that we are so advanced because of our technology--but lets be humble in remembering that we have this technology because of the knowledge built from the past. This humility will keep us fresh, open-minded, healthy, talented, and self-sufficient.

You might be wondering what this has to do with typography? Well, as I was doing this project, typography seemed to be yet another example, a microcosm, of this bigger issue. It is a medium in which I can explain and illustrate my point. And even more importantly, an experience that helped me realize that I have been handicapped by this in terms of typography. I have not developed a talent that I could have if I wouldn't have relied on my computer so much.

So, let me present to you my final project:

Voila!!!

This reads: " We frequently neglect to acknowledge the past for our current accomplishments, but we would not be here today--if it were not for yesterday. All of our technology has been derived and built from the ideas of the past:

We would not have the computer without the typewriter; we would not have had the typewriter without moveable type; We would not have had moveable type without letters.  We would not have had letters without paper and writing utensils. Writing utensils and paper would not have been invented without language. Language would not have existed without the need to communicate oral traditions. Oral traditions would have not been necessary--except that it was the key to survival."

So yes, it is a little lopsided, and I wasn't the best at calligraphy, but I made this. All-By-Myself! Unfortunately, I utterly failed at carving it out of rubber, but I tried! And I experienced it! (I ended up drawing it out and then going over it in black ink. For the calligraphy part, I used a calligraphy pen and ink--it was SO hard! And it will definitely take more practice before I am good at it! Also ,I purposefully tried to have the fonts (aka typography) reflect somewhat of the time periods and technology I was referring to!). And now, I can appreciate this incredible talent that people once had, and seek to develop it as well. I am determined to use the benefits of technology but not at the expense of losing what once was. I will take the good from both, be open minded, and learn holistically.


Here are some extra photos of the creation process:

Did I mention that I had to do this backwards?