Writing on Clay

After reading Baron's chapter "Writing on Clay" I never realized how much effort that it took to write something when clay was what you wrote on. Having to flatten the clay, then find a utensil to write with, followed by figuring out how to write what you want on the clay. And oh boy if you mess up... This is where I begin to think about what we had to say about revisions and that they really did not happen. Once you got what you wanted down that was pretty much what you had.

I think that just being able to write, even if it was not great, was deemed a very prestigious skill. So who cares if you had a few mistakes (where was my high school teachers and why was I not around in this age!?). Writing is intertwined into everything that we now do that it is an essential skill to have some what perfected, boring or not. You have to have the skill.

Could you imagine if your scratch pad was clay? That would be funny, "Alright class get out your scratch clay to show your work for the ACT."

From clay, to paper, to screen, the art of putting the letters on a page has transformed so much.

I think that this brings us back to Helvetica. The design of the letters is an art. Maybe one that we poke fun at, but someone did have to take the time to design each letter precisely as well. So we are not writing on clay, but we are now writing on screen. If you told someone that a hundred years ago, you would be called a witch, and what do we do with witches?

I guess from this chapter I have understood more of the "art" behind writing.