I am among the last generation of copywriters who sat with art directors and designers as they sliced into type galleys to hand-kern letters, adjust word or line spacing, or piece together new words and sentences.

“Can we cut seven characters out of this copy block?” they’d ask, and I’d take up the challenge, think of another way to say the same thing in the same voice using not only seven fewer characters but also only the words and characters already typeset.

It was the final, laborious polish on the mechanical, and it was a team effort.

Now it seems there’s less sweat equity in the way copy looks. And that’s too bad.

Why accept an imperfect line break, a stray widow or orphan, or a repetitive word stack when the solution might be a minor re-write? As a copywriter, I think anything that enhances the visual appeal of copy, makes it more inviting, is worth doing.

It’s not just about legibility. It’s about fine-tuning the details to create great work.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Advertising, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.