If my limited knowledge of physics, gained from school lessons long time ago, has enabled me to understand the theorists of general relativity correctly, the motion of our planets around the sun is only apparently circular, but rather a kind of straight line. If one geometrises gravity—which is said to be at the heart of the relativisation of space and time—it is the most direct possible movement of these bodies around the sun. Like the apple that falls from Newton’s tree, gravity does not distract it from its actual ideal—to float strangely and ghostly in the air or on the tree? as it falls, like the planets, it embarks on the journey of its life, performing the straightest possible movement it is capable of on this earth. Or to put it another way: orbiting the sun is a continuous falling, and the solar system is actually a fruit basket full of windfall.
No matter if we geometrise gravity or not, it begins with attraction, not with weight. The body is never free from the fall. We are always in relation to a center we cannot see.
Gravity is a primordial force that carries particular weight among compositional possibilities. Up and down occupy a different position among the senses of orientation than left or right, which has fundamental consequences for top and bottom and the viewing of a composition. While the horizontal reading direction of a line depends on cultural conditioning (left to right versus right to left, depending on the language), reading a block of text from bottom to top is an absolute exception. Left hand, right hand. Two ears, knees, legs and feet. One head, one torso, one abdomen. Our bodies exhibit bilateral symmetry, with corresponding features on the left and right sides, while the head points towards the sky. (Anatomy)
This circumstance informs all aspects of the typeface design, from the architecture of the letters and the design of individual forms and components, to optical corrections (overshoot). Gravity manifests in stroke and proportion. The thickening of verticals, the grounding of serifs, the way curves rest against the baseline—all contribute to how a letter sits or stands.
Title: The Antichrist
Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Translator: H. L. Mencken
Release Date: September 18, 2006 eBook #19322
Most Recently Updated: November 5, 2012
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at pgdp.net
Images: "Arthur Mason Worthington, a page from The Splash of a Drop, 1985. Public domain. Image Archive