The Crystal Goblet by Beatrice Warde

    I partially of agree with what Beatrice Warde says in her essay about invisible text. She is right about how body type should be invisible because the audience needs to understand what the words mean not what they look like. As she puts it "type well used is invisible as type" (1). Meaning the ideas and the conversation the words are visible and not the forms of the words themselves. She uses the wine glass as an example to say this. The wine glass must be invisible in order for the wine amateurs to speculate on the wine its self. Where I do not agree with her is that type in its forms and lines are in themselves beautiful and so should be used just to show off what they really are. The fine differences and subtleties of for example Caslon or Baskerville separate them as their own and I believe that this makes them unique just as any other well made type. Type can show off the meaning of a by just the change to italics or to bold or by colour or the angle among other things. It is the balance of when to show off the beauty or the type and when to show of the meaning of the word that should decide how text be used.

   What I tried to show with my picture was the fact that type should be invisible if the meaning is not important to show through reading it. But if the text is important than the look of the type than it should be readable. If you can see it there is "invisible" text in the background just dark enough that is gives off the meaning of being invisible while still being seen.