Jennifer O'Malley's Profile

It helps if you don’t know Italian and look only at the visual pattern.
Conventional printed typography aims to create a particular economy of
attention, but, since this economy is so ubiquitous, the basic reality of
reading, we have long ago ceased to notice it. Print wants us to concentrate on
the content, to enhance and protect conceptual thought. It does this by
filtering out all the signals that might interfere with such thinking. By nature
a silent medium and, for people of my generation at least, best read in a silent
environment, print filters out any auditory signal. It also filters out color,
prints only black on white. By choosing a single font and a single size, it
filters out visual distraction as well. Typographical design aims not to be seen
or more accurately, since true invisibility is hard to read, to seem not to be
seen, not to be noticed. We don’t notice the verbal surface at all, plunge
without typographical self-consciousness right into the meaning.