12. nov. 2026 · @Christopher Haanes

It is perhaps inevitable that I am constantly pondering how we choose, consciously or unconsciously, to present text. I am, after all, a calligrapher, and 36 years of making handmade letterforms, teaching, and working with typography and book design shape the way the mind perceives things.

I live in a country that got the art of printing some 160 years after our neighbours: Denmark and Sweden had their first presses in the 1480s, Norway not until 1643. That is a long time, and I believe it still shapes our lettering, type and book culture. Politics plays a part too: we had no nobility to speak of, and no large universities.

Modern movements also reached us late. For as long as printing meant lead type, before phototypesetting in the 1970s and the digital revolution after it, new typefaces and ideas had to be physically acquired and moved, and that alone delayed how quickly a small country absorbed cultural impulses.

So: a thin tradition, and modern impulses that arrive a little later than on the Continent. I ask myself whether there is an underlying problem, and what the situation is today. Not in the glitter, the graphic effects or the language of advertising (‘target groups’, ‘identity platforms’), but in the parts of typography that are functional, and to most people nearly invisible.

The inside of the book

We can start with the inside of books: the title page, the contents page, the margins, even the colophon. How are they treated? Here is my admittedly bold claim. We focus on the immediate impact of the book cover, judged from a vague sense of taste and what it evokes, while the typography inside, at least in text-based books, is treated haphazardly. We seem to believe it can more or less typeset itself, and that no competent person needs to make the choices.

It is as if we bought clothes where the hidden parts, the lining and the seams, were the weak links: poorly made, badly crafted.

The title page

So what makes it badly made? Take the title page. Advice is there for anyone who looks: Jan Tschichold’s The Form of the Book treats the title page as a case study in typographic design, and offers much good advice. As few groups of text as possible, as few type styles, as few sizes: that sums it up. In practice this demands a great deal of fine-tuning. True small capitals; a titling face with finer hairlines for the larger sizes; the arrangement centred on the type area rather than the page, since the inner margins should be narrower than the outer; and the top and bottom of the title page aligned with the top and bottom of the type area.

The colophon

A colophon is set mostly in upper and lower case, so it is natural to use oldstyle figures, which are made to sit among lowercase letters. They mirror the ascenders and descenders of the minuscules: the 3 descends below the line, the 8 rises above the x-height, the zero sits at the x-height. Small capitals do the same job for abbreviations and names, so they do not shout from the line.

Not long ago I took part in a Facebook conversation where, to my astonishment, a prize-winning Norwegian book designer questioned the use of small capitals and oldstyle figures in a colophon. He could not see what they were for.

Who does the typesetting?

I cannot remember when I last saw a well-designed title page in a Norwegian book. My guess is the early 1990s, when Terje Langeggen was an active book designer. He never got the recognition he deserved, nor enough commissions.

Who does design the insides of books? Most of the time, simply the printer; it comes as part of the package. Trained typographers? Hardly. Would a professional cost too much? I think that is a myth. Printers could employ better-skilled typesetters, but I believe there is a more important reason: education.

For many years I taught lettering and typography to graphic design students, and I watched that teaching being cut back, year by year, until what had once been spread over more than a year was boiled down to five days. I was even told, more or less, that I could not grade assignments too low, since the students had paid to be there. I have written about this at length in an earlier article. [link]

When a prize-winning book designer cannot see the point of small capitals, and a degree in graphic design can be had with hardly any typographic training, how can a typographic culture thrive?

The hidden craft

Every craft has parts that lay people do not see, whether it is a teacup, a typographic letter, a house or a book. We have clouded the craft of typography and book design by channelling all our energy into its arty, creative side, the part visible in the marketplace, however badly made it may be. Too often we might as well replace the word ‘creative’ with ‘haphazard’.

Publishers could respect the literature they deal with and present it in a dignified way. They could consider the book as a whole, and employ professionals to do the typesetting, including the fine-tuning of its inside. Schools could employ teachers who can teach the basics of typography: the choice of a legible and beautiful typeface, the margins, the use of small capitals and oldstyle figures, the fine-tuning of spacing. Readers feel the difference even when they cannot name it. That is part of the secret of the craft.