Tradition and Transparency: Why Book Design Still Matters in the Digital Age

Designing for the Internet can be a wonderfully enlivening experience for the graphic designer. But it can be an equally frustrating experience for typographers, as their control over typeface, word spacing, justification, and the other myriad details that define a well-crafted printed page is reduced to the most rudimentary choices. This article will examine this apparent disjuncture by first briefly outlining the historical separation between the trades of graphic designer and typographer and then discussing some of the advantages of having the designers of electronic interfaces become familiar with book typography traditions and of having electronic reading interfaces support basic typographic practices

Blowing the crystal goblet : transparent book design 1350-1950

In 1932 Beatrice Warde delivered to the British Society of Typographic Designers what has since become one of the most recognizable statements about the design of books: “The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible.” In it, Warde defines good typography as a crystal goblet, “because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.” Her address argues that the true art of designers is the creation of transparent interfaces which allow readers to imbibe deeply of the intellect captured within the pages of the book without external distractions. Warde’s ‘Crystal Goblet’ is fundamentally contradictory. Typographers must strive to make themselves and their work invisible so that only the voice of the absent author speaks through the text; but there is no voice, only words on page produced through a great deal of human labour at a specific moment in history. But, Warde did not create her metaphor; she adopted existing imagery from the Western tradition. Nor was she the first typographer to do so. The writings and work of those involved with the creation of books has, since before the invention of the printing press, revolved around attempts to create ‘perfect’ communicative interfaces – books which allow the reader an unobscured view into the mind of the author. The resultant page is that with which we are most familiar: a block of black Roman-style text on a white or off-white page with blank margins. This study tracks the rise and influence of the ‘crystal goblet’ motif, the dream of perfect readability, in the discourse of those directly involved with the creation of books: scribes, printers, type-cutters and typographers. It postulates transparency, or perfect readability, to be the primary motive underlying the actions of those making books, but does not assume all printers in all times have been motivated by the same forces or to the same extent. Rather, it traces the thread of transparency through many incarnations and examines the social and political factors underlying each permutation and how new elements are introduced into the discourse without completely erasing all traces of the old. Chapter One studies the Italian Renaissance and how the writing style of a small group of humanist scholars comes to dominate the printed book of the sixteenth century. Chapter Two begins with an examination of the perceived decline in typographic practice in the seventeenth century and the subsequent emergence of both writings about typography and of a new style of Roman typeface: the Modern. Chapter Three deals with similar events in the nineteenth-century – first there is a perceived decline in and then a revival of printing standards. Chapter Four discusses the reconciliation of machine- production and traditional practices in the early to mid-twentieth century and the unsuccessful challenge to traditional typography posed by the Bauhaus and other Modernist schools of design

There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Book: Experimental Interfaces for Reading Illustrated Books

Different readers approach a text in different ways and for different reasons, so designers of interfaces for electronic reading and scholarship must strive for flexibility. Eric Gill’s illustrations for the Golden Cockerel Press invite exploration into the social function of erotic texts, public versus private reading, fine book-making practices, and more, and we hope to provide the tools to allow scholars to engage with these texts in their multiplicity. There may also be readers who just want to read the texts and look at the pictures, and we need to make sure we do not ignore their needs. Most importantly, there are, or will be, readers who want to interact with the texts in ways that we cannot imagine, and we need to do all we can to make this experimentation possible

There’s more than one way to skin a book: Experimental interfaces for reading illustrated books

Different readers approach a text in different ways and for different reasons, so designers of interfaces for electronic reading and scholarship must strive for flexibility. Eric Gill’s illustrations for the Golden Cockerel Press invite exploration into the social function of erotic texts, public versus private reading, fine book-making practices, and more, and we hope to provide the tools to allow scholars to engage with these texts in their multiplicity. There may also be readers who just want to read the texts and look at the pictures, and we need to make sure we do not ignore their needs. Most importantly, there are, or will be, readers who want to interact with the texts in ways that we cannot imagine, and we need to do all we can to make this experimentation possible

Introduction, Feminist War games? Mechanisms of War, Feminist Values, and Interventional Games

Feminist War Games? explores the critical intersections and collisions between feminist values and perceptions of war, by asking whether feminist values can be asserted as interventional approaches to the design, play, and analysis of games that focus on armed conflict and economies of violence. Focusing on the ways that games, both digital and table-top, can function as narratives, arguments, methods, and instruments of research, the volume demonstrates the impact of computing technologies on our perceptions, ideologies, and actions. Exploring the compatibility between feminist values and systems of war through games is a unique way to pose destabilizing questions, solutions, and approaches; to prototype alternative narratives; and to challenge current idealizations and assumptions. Positing that feminist values can be asserted as a critical method of design, as an ideological design influence, and as a lens that determines how designers and players interact with and within arenas of war, the book addresses the persistence and brutality of war and issues surrounding violence in games, whilst also considering the place and purpose of video games in our cultural moment

Futures of the Book

The erroneous belief that a new medium will completely replace a previous one is nowhere more evident than in discussions surrounding the emergence of electronic text. Having pre- viously fended off the challenges of the phonograph, motion picture, radio, and television, in the early 1990s the book was seen as finally having met its match in the computer and the internet. In his 1994 book, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, bibliophile Sven Birkerts bemoaned, “The stable hierarchies of the printed page—one of the defining norms of the world—are being superseded by the rush of impulses through freshly minted circuits” (1994: 3). Birkerts was responding to literary theorists such as George Landow (1992) and Jay David Bolter (1990) who saw the networked electronic text, with its relative ease of publishing and modification postpublication, as liberating authors and readers from the shackles of the printed book. They believed printed books would, in the near future, only be read by those “addicted to the look and feel of tree flakes encased in dead cow” (Mitchell 1995: 56). The book could not hope to compete against the computer, and its death was surely at hand. Except, as we now know, it was not

Action Plan for Stroke in Europe 2018–2030

Two previous pan-European consensus meetings, the 1995 and 2006 Helsingborg meetings, were convened to review the scientific evidence and the state of current services to identify priorities for research and development and to set targets for the development of stroke care for the decade to follow. Adhering to the same format, the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) prepared a European Stroke Action Plan (ESAP) for the years 2018 to 2030, in cooperation with the Stroke Alliance for Europe (SAFE). The ESAP included seven domains: primary prevention, organisation of stroke services, management of acute stroke, secondary prevention, rehabilitation, evaluation of stroke outcome and quality assessment and life after stroke. Research priorities for translational stroke research were also identified. Documents were prepared by a working group and were open to public comments. The final document was prepared after a workshop in Munich on 21–23 March 2018. Four overarching targets for 2030 were identified: (1) to reduce the absolute number of strokes in Europe by 10%, (2) to treat 90% or more of all patients with stroke in Europe in a dedicated stroke unit as the first level of care, (3) to have national plans for stroke encompassing the entire chain of care, (4) to fully implement national strategies for multisector public health interventions. Overall, 30 targets and 72 research priorities were identified for the seven domains. The ESAP provides a basic road map and sets targets for the implementation of evidence-based preventive actions and stroke services to 2030

Impact of NHS 111 online on the NHS 111 telephone service and urgent care system: a mixed-methods study

Background: The NHS emergency and urgent care system is under pressure as demand for services increases each year. NHS 111 is a telephone triage service designed to provide advice and signposting to appropriate services for people with urgent health-care problems. A new service, NHS 111 Online, has been introduced across England as a digital alternative that can be accessed using a website or a smartphone application. The effects and usefulness of this service are unknown. Objectives: To explore the impact of NHS 111 Online on the related telephone service and urgent care system activity and the experiences of people who use those services. Design and methods: A mixed-methods design of five related work packages comprising an evidence review; a quantitative before-and-after time series analysis of changes in call activity (18/38 sites); a descriptive comparison of telephone and online services with qualitative survey (telephone, n = 795; online, n = 3728) and interview (32 participants) studies of service users; a qualitative interview study (16 participants) of staff; and a cost–consequences analysis. Results: The online service had little impact on the number of triaged calls to the NHS 111 telephone service. For every 1000 online contacts, triaged telephone calls increased by 1.3% (1.013, 95% confidence interval 0.996 to 1.029; p = 0.127). Recommendations to attend emergency and urgent care services increased between 6.7% and 4.2%. NHS 111 Online users were less satisfied than users of the telephone service (50% vs. 71%; p < 0.001), and less likely to recommend to others (57% vs. 69%; p < 0.001) and to report full compliance with the advice given (67.5% vs. 88%; p < 0.001). Online users were less likely to report contacting emergency services and more likely to report not making any contact with a health service (31% vs. 16%; p < 0.001) within 7 days of contact. Thirty-five per cent of online users reported that they did not want to use the telephone service, whereas others preferred its convenience and speed. NHS 111 telephone staff reported no discernible increase or decrease in their workload during the first year of operation of NHS 111 Online. If online and telephone services operate in parallel, then the annual costs will be higher unless ≥ 38% of telephone contacts move to online contacts. Conclusions: There is some evidence that the new service has the potential to create new demand. The service has expanded significantly, so it is important to find ways of promoting the right balance in numbers of people who use the online service instead of the telephone service if it is to be effective. There is a clear need and preference by some people for an online service. Better information about when to use this service and improvements to questioning may encourage more uptake. Limitations: The lack of control arm means that impact could have been an effect of other factors. This work took place during the early implementation phase, so findings may change as the service expands. Future work: Further development of the online triage process to make it more ‘user friendly’ and to enable users to trust the advice given online could improve use and increase satisfaction. Better understanding of the characteristics of the telephone and online populations could help identify who is most likely to benefit and could improve information about when to use the service. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN51801112. Funding: This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research programme and will be published in full in Health Services and Delivery Research; Vol. 9, No. 21. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information

The UK medical education database (UKMED) what is it?:Why and how might you use it?

The development of UKMED has not been directly funded by but has received support from the General Medical Council and Medical Schools Council as well as staff time from all participating organisations.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data