We humans, are builders of expectation. A difficult sentence? Just think about what I really mean. What are we actually doing when we are learning? I'd say we were building experience, because it isn't useful to learn from something that only occurs once. After all, we'll never need to deal with it again. But building a hefty stack of predeterminations is actually quite useful.
How do you determine the sex of a baby? Colour coding! How do you know where to cross the road? You learn that cars stop at crossings, and deduce from that! But here is the interesting question. How do you, when in a bookstore, separate childrens litterature from adult literature, self help books from novels and so on? We actually filter out what we are looking for on the basis of what we expect to find. Isn't it marvelous?
We paint these expectations upon everything we see around us. People, clothers, cars, books, roads, buildings (how separate a bank from a kindergarden), and well... nearly anything we can think of.
I wanted to write about books and texts, because I love them. And I'm not sad to say that I actually judge a book by it's cover. The quality hand craftsmanship containing the words are important. In one sense we can say that these two together are what makes up the medium. All written text of course has it's landskape, livingroom or humble abode in various ways (of expression) shapes (of container) or form (the two).
I'm sure your imagination has started to spin by now, and your thought supersede this text by at least two paragraphs: So alow me to skip them
So, if it was so important to have Alice in Wonderlad betwen it's covers, and not some mathematic manual, (which, by the way, the author was completely competent to manifacture,) why don't we take more notice of a well done cover, or suiting fonts and so on?
Well, because, if the typographers, illustrators and publishers have done their job well. You won't notice! (How is this, you say.) Well, because, they were only filling out the blank space of your anticipation.
(Are you implying that I will only notice if there is some innovation?) Not exactly:
Now that your conciousness has been raised to this curious effect, you are more likely to enjoy a well chosen font, the subtle nuances to a book covers or a intelligently picked font. While innovation makes it's own lasting impression, (for good or for bad,) we are now able to enjoy good craftsmanship when we notice. The next time you feel that you really want to read one of the books on your curriculum, or are really dulled out by a classic. Perhaps you'll think over. Would been more or less accessible to me with ather layout?
Chances are, you might.
