I agree that typography could be an exact science, but I think starting with mathematics would be the wrong choice. Rather, it would be better to devise perceptual experiments and back fit a mathematical model to the results.
The excellent LAB color space was created this way. Scientists used experiments - for example the MacAdam ellipse to measure what colors are distinguishable - then backfit a model to that. It involves a bunch of cube roots and funny constants, not something you'd reach from a standpoint of mathematical purity. But it works really well.
So if you were looking at rigorously defining typography, I'd look at quantifying how spread out a pattern of ink needs to be before it looks smaller (aligning I and L might not be the leftmost pixel). I'd also look at quantifying some of the gestalt laws of grouping.
Edwin Land also made tremendous contributions to color science through empirical measurements and finding the deeper "mathematical" models[1]. Besides his scientific achievements, he was a real renaissance man, a tour de force of human intellect. Unfortunately, Josef Albers's pseudoscience[2] and artistic non-sense get most of the credit[3] when it comes to color theory.
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize Albers in this context, and this particular critique seems mostly like pedantic nitpicking at a fairly concise non-technical book; he wasn’t trying to establish a detailed technical model, but rather to teach artists to think. (“The book does not begin with optics and physiology of visual perception, nor with any presentation of the physics of light and wave length…. What counts here—first and last—is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision—seeing.”)
His book and teaching method are all about learning to work with colors through direct experience. To that end, he made students do numerous small projects with colored paper, etc.
(Have you read Albers’s book? I would definitely recommend it, with the proviso that you actually try to do Albers’s recommended exercises, which are really the important part of the book, instead of worrying too much about the text. Reading Albers’s book straight through is like reading a math textbook straight through without doing the problems.)
If you want to call Itten out for nonsensical babble though, go right ahead.
I read Josef Albers' Interaction of Color years ago and I've also bought the iPad app. I've been disappointed by both.
The problem is that "experiential" teaching without any scientific explanation is inadequate and misleading. Teaching part is where you explain the students - why. It is perhaps the approach in art colleges where rigorous science doesn't matter.
The problem stems when Josef Albers made scientific claims which go unquestioned as the factual basis for his cool color experiments. That is wrong and that's exactly the kind of nitpicking we need to do. What you call 'Pedantic nitpicking' is necessary and essential to the scientific process.
It is rather misleading to start the book with "The book does not begin with optics and physiology of visual perception, nor with any presentation of the physics of light and wavelength…. What counts here—first and last—is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision—seeing." and then go on to explaining his experiments using false claims (which again are highlighted and detailed in Alan Lee's criticism).
Anyhow, even if I am considering Josef's Interaction of Color from an artistic standpoint, he simply points out the cool illusions without any follow up on how to use/implement his concepts. I find it as a casual book that sits on the coffee table, not on my work desk.
You’re approaching the book the wrong way. The original came with a big pile of colored papers. You are supposed to spend dozens of hours over the course of months doing careful visual study of various arrangements of them. If you don’t do the exercises in the book you’re not going to get much out of it.
Albers is not dogmatic. His purpose is not to prescribe a particular style or method. This is not a recipe book. He wants his students to explore deeply and learn how colors interact by spending a whole lot of time looking at them carefully, and then develop their own methods and styles.
The book is not supposed to be about “scientific progress”. It’s supposed to be a pedagogical tool aimed at artists. If you want a technical explanation, you are looking at the wrong book.
It sounds like you wanted to read a technical color science book. There are plenty of those out there, pitched at various audiences.
I know what you're saying - I've done a few of his exercises and using the iPad app makes that very easy to do. Literally, simulates the same experience of getting the $200 edition with all the color plates. Drag a shape over another and see the effect.
Color is relative. Got it. What else does it offer?
>> The book is not supposed to be about “scientific progress”. It’s supposed to be a pedagogical tool aimed at artists. If you want a technical explanation, you are looking at the wrong book.
I understand and I wish that was the case! However, the popularity of it and its fame as a text book (see Amazon reviews) combined with his claims of explaining how brain perceives color - indicates that it is used as THE color theory reference. I have a problem with that.
> indicates that it is used as THE color theory reference
That’s just not true though. These Amazon reviewers apparently have no idea what they’re talking about. People looking for color science books, or even for dogmatic advice about how to make color combinations (most of which is bullshit, but anyway ...) have many other books to study.
Your criticism is kind of like judging a book about meditation techniques for being neither an answer to all of your life’s problems (despite Amazon reviews claiming so!) nor a complete psychology textbook.
The problem isn't that he used color to make interesting new art. I think he explored new areas of color which were not known before - and I applaud his artistic efforts.
However, Josef Albers went beyond his art to make false claims about color theory, how the human brain perceives color and made broad generalizations - based on anecdotal evidence and intuition. He went unchallenged for the most part. See the criticism linked in my original post.
I just checked the book "Color for the Sciences" that you had mentioned. I think I am going to purchase this one! Thanks.
The CIELAB color space was an attempt to make an invertible and fast-to-compute (for simple hardware devices in the 1960s) approximation to the Munsell color space (a lookup table carefully constructed by studies and expert adjustments done by the Optical Society of America in the early 1940s).
I agree with you. But I'd like to point out that the color specifications and audio response ranges we have are pretty much an exact science despite being informed by human experiment. Human experiment is not at all exclusionary to a topic of study being an exact science; it just makes the truth harder to discern. We are still coming up with new color spaces that claim to match the human range better, after decades of research.
Regarding typography however, I argue that there are a multitude of concerns such as readability, aesthetic, and sustainence of focus. People will have different preferences and rankings for which concerns should be most optimized. Thus, the science of typography may need to be parameterized by the context of the text and what it is going to be used for.
The excellent LAB color space was created this way. Scientists used experiments - for example the MacAdam ellipse to measure what colors are distinguishable - then backfit a model to that. It involves a bunch of cube roots and funny constants, not something you'd reach from a standpoint of mathematical purity. But it works really well.
So if you were looking at rigorously defining typography, I'd look at quantifying how spread out a pattern of ink needs to be before it looks smaller (aligning I and L might not be the leftmost pixel). I'd also look at quantifying some of the gestalt laws of grouping.