Jala, often, schranz shallows a leash on here where you at.
Did you know that an Italian an at symbol is called kill, Chilla
a snail or German often schwantz a monkey tail and in Taiwan
where I'm from, we say shall Shew a little mouse.
I learned that and more in this book, by Michael arndt snails
and monkeytales a visual guide to punctuation and symbols.
Hello. Hello everyone.
A good afternoon, good morning, good evening, wherever you are
in the world. This is another edition of
design future live from aiga, the professional association for
design. My name is Li Chen Wang and I am
here today with our very special guest Michael arndt who is an
award-winning graphic designer and author based in New York
City. He is known for a signature
minimalist. I'll and in his spare time he
can be found online. Correcting other people's
punctuation. 'S.
And he's also coming to us from his apartment were, which he
shares with his dog, Clooney and Cat Greta.
So we might have an animal visit later, which could be fun.
But today, we're going to talk about Michaels new book, which
is coming out on March 22nd in North America.
It's this book. You can see here, both holding
it up snails and monkeytales, a visual guide to punctuation and
symbols. So Michael, thank you so much
for joining us today. Thank you.
Thanks. Sean Payton here.
So why don't we start with the title of the book is, it's kind
of a animal-themed book, but the book is really about symbols and
punctuation. Can you tell us about the
backstory of the book title? Sure.
So, I'm so I lived in Italy for four years.
After college, I taught English and one of my I taught English,
I'm sorry, two adults. And one of my students was
manager of a supermarket chain and even skin me, the And he
said your trailer as I killed her because, like, that's not
part of your name. Like and he's like, and I knew
that meant little snail. I like, when you mean he goes,
yeah, the little at symbol delay in the circle.
It's a killed. Sheila, and I thought he's just
being cute, but that that is what Italians call they call a
little snail or Kyoto Lena would be little and you can use either
one. And so that's when I first
learned of it that was years ago, decades ago and then when I
did the book and looked it up and it seems like in pretty much
as Michael Bay roots. As in the Ford pretty much,
we're the only ones have a boring name for that symbol.
Every other language seems to have some kind of cute and
Charming name. So in Italian, its future, in
German Itzhak insurance is also called La Mirada.
It's another type of monkey a little spider monkey that kind
of has a long curly tail. So they use both the most I
could find out is that in Swiss German.
Nazis applesauce is more preferred, but they're both seem
to be used and the Dutch, I don't know the Dutch word for
it, but the judge also call the monkeys do.
Yeah, in Taiwan where I'm from. It's a little mouse show.
Yeah, sure. So feel like it's all sorts of
like, animalistic sort of things, right?
And that makes sense because it's strudel in Israel, right?
Which is funny, because a friend of mine was from Israel.
My LinkedIn said, that's right. She's a, which is interesting
because it's not Israeli food, but, and they do the, I looked
up the Hebrew characters and they translator 8, it basically
goes through struggle and Evil. Ders.
Yeah, and then in Swedish it's cinnamon bun.
Countable, and the one I don't get is, it's a little duck in
Creek about hockey. And it's a little dog Sebastian
in Russian, which I'm not saying the dog or the further.
We see the dog. Yeah.
Or the duck duck. Seems strange.
Very cool. Well, it's zooming out a little
bit. How did you decide to write a
book on punctuation? Symbols because there's so much
cool stuff going on in typography, in general, and
language in general, and we often sort of don't notice the
punctuation, unless it's it's wrong.
As you mentioned, you like to correct other people's
punctuation. So, I focus a whole book on just
the punctuation symbols, right? Well, it kind of makes sense of,
you know, as a graphic designer. And then if you do my own
history. So I love language, I love like
that study, five different languages like Japanese French
Spanish. Italian, of course English and I
taught Italian. So I mean, I taught English in
Italy so that really sensitize me to language and the details.
I also in my work, I also do freelance work in the
pharmaceutical industry. So every little scientific
notation every little commas space, period, mark is really
important can change the whole meaning that they can be Deco
project. So that kind of Me very
eagle-eyed about punctuation and then it's typography.
It's there. When she blow them up, they just
become so beautiful. There's and the variety if you
look at asterisks for example there's a spread my book that
has a whole field of asterisks and if you're listening to the
podcast your own see it, but the variety present is just so
beautiful. You think I'm here it is.
Those are all real Asterix. I didn't modify them in all
different typefaces and sometimes they look like little
stars, which is what the word means asterisk from some
athletes costs increase, which means Little Star.
So if you think of astronaut asteroid, the aster flower Belle
comes from the Greek star. And that's what this will stars
are a little snowflakes to. I liked the ones that look like
snowflakes. That's right.
Yeah. Because they can have anywhere
from five points up to 10th even there's so many little stories
in here and backstory so only can have time for a few today
but I feel like the one about the pound sign or the hashtag is
very much like relevant to internet culture, I guess,
because we're using these hashtags every day, but it
actually goes. Our back.
Like, I remember them unlike the telephones, but then even before
that. Right.
There's a whole history. Can you tell us a little bit
about that story for sure. Yeah, it goes back to ancient
Roman times, so the word Libra that the kind of go back, I love
it and Balaji to that's this book is equal parts and analogy
who Parks history, equal parts, grammar is reports typography
and design. So I in this book, I try to come
up with where the name comes from and then how the symbol
developed the visual mark, And how they kind of interweave and
how that is related to the usage.
So we would the pound sign that comes from the word lever which
in Latin was a scale. It was a the kind that like you
think of the scales of Justice or a scale at a fruit market in
Europe, where they wait, tomatoes and grapes.
It's basically a balance. So if you think of the zodiac
sign Libra, it's from the constellation that looks like a
scalar balance. And in fact in Italian Libra
zodiac signs call. Balam show called the balance
and attributes of Believers are quality balance equilibrium when
you hang something. It's the past participle pain
that I think of pendulum. Something that swings from a
chain, or a rod. That's the past tense is on
though. So, Libra.
Pondo was the weight of something.
How did to be measured? So, that was equivalent to
Commerce. So, it was always a physical
weight was also Terry value. So the Libra, the L part was
abbreviated to just a land became the sign for the British
pound and starting to make sense.
Right home? They'll be came round at the L,
became the initial that became the little Mark and also it can
hold. Exactly.
And then also the leader, which is no longer in use at the two
lines through it. Which by the way, was an old way
of showing the abbreviation for a little horizontal line
through, which is called a Title, by the way, which is also
the name for the Little Dot above the eyes, and the Jays I
learned. So the L became the Lira
symbols. Well solely propone do was the
start of the pound sign Calera, sign the constellation, and our
pound system, basically in English, and that's why the
British pound is abbreviated l. So, we then abbreviate lb.
So if anybody wanted, why they go to the grocery store and they
The elbe period, like that's not a py where they'll be
compensable. That's what comes from from some
from Libra. So in, let's fast forward from
the ancient Roman times to Medieval describes would be
doing everything by ink providers.
Yeah, laughter I'm sorry. The parchment and, you know,
after reputation you can start to take shortcuts.
So they be with your grill pans and the vertical Strokes of the
I'd be would become two vertical strokes and then the bottom
stroke of the bowl of the be was a horizontal and they loop
around with their pain and finish it off with a upper
vertical stroke. And that eventually simplified
into what we now know. As the hashtag sign the pound
sign on the telephone, which is still called the downside, but
it looks nothing like it. I'll be to the untrained eye but
now that you know, the story, it does then in the 60s Bell,
Telephone was came up with a touch-tone phone so that the
rotary dial and they had I've had 12 square grid and they had
no the 10 numbers, 0 through 9, and then they have to use
leftover, they use, the asterisk for one for the Starkey, and
they need a symbol for the other one.
And the supposedly, The Story Goes that the designer engineer
was a fan of Dora the athlete. And so he called the symbol they
act of thought, and decided to use it with the kind of brought
it out of hibernation, putting on the kinda, on the telephone
became the pound key. Well then, 2007, when Twitter,
Was coming to life. The pound sign took on hashtag
meaning, they kind of designate channels of information and so
it's had a long history and I will head saddle on names but
all comes from labor, labor Bomba.
Long story. It's longest ones up.
I just picked up one out of the hat.
But yeah, I feel like there's something to like these things
that we think about as like really modern and contemporary,
like the hashtag red, which is so prevalent in social media,
but it has this literally ancient history to Roman times.
And, and before we were also talking about this, in our
pre-interview chat about almost like a return to like pictograms
or Your grams whatever the term is, right?
Like almost like hieroglyphics, back of our age with Emojis,
which folks who watch the little promo video I did for this
interview saw you know use the monkey emoji and the mouse
Emoji. Talk to us a little bit about
that like this return to pictograms in a way or this kind
of Full Circle. Well, yeah, so I like when I
study Japanese, I learned that there's three.
When the reasons I study was to learn their, their character
system, just from a typographic standpoint and I was fascinated.
Learn. They have the use the Chinese
pictographs, which they called kanji.
Literally Chinese characters Chinese letters and then they
have to phonetic alphabets. And that's, that's very
interesting. And actually their history is
not very different from our own history.
It's basically pictographs become phonetic letters, but
then sometimes they return to being pictographs.
So it's funny how like, like a tech stock people will write
before and they'll write the letter b and I'll write the
number four. Not the word itself, but
phonetically, you get it. You understand what's happening
with Percy you with the letters c or C you to with it to number.
Yeah, emoticons there was an ad for the Ellen Degeneres Show few
years ago on the. So, with on the bus stops and it
basically was a Rebus, basically, it was a word and
then I had a little picture RAM and a word and it was a whole
thing. You can read, but it's basically
happened just emojis. Like, that's really interesting.
We really are Really do seem to be going back to like a visual
culture of pictures. And I think that because of the
internet, the internet and video on Instagram, social media, and
experiencing that, all that a picture can a picture's, worth a
thousand words, right Soldier. And then because of that people
are loosening up on their grammar and punctuation.
And punctuation doesn't take this as important, a role as it
didn't in my generation. So that's what's Curious.
I had to leave. To end of the book for that it's
like, where is punctuation headed?
How we kind of rivet howling which I do product?
Because it does Surfer, he's more focused, and it's
beautiful, and it's interesting and it's, it's it clarifies
information. So as a designer that's
basically why I'm really interesting, filtration is how
it how it could be used to help clarify the message.
Right. I think that's another thing
where we've seen like, either a full circle or a pendulum swing.
I don't know what the best visual metaphor for that is, but
that point about how we're losing punctuation and some
contacts right? Especially in texting and maybe
generationally are in different groups.
Like if you put a period at the end of something that you type
in a text, it could appear like a little like passive-aggressive
or a little bit, just aggressive aggressive in that sense rather
than just a neutral. Like, okay, this is the end of a
sentence kind of way, but then we also Do some of the context
of the Nuance, right? Were you say a word out loud,
right? You can imbue it with emotion,
but if it's typed out, you don't really know from the context
unless, you know, the person and the situation and all of these
other, right? And I think the most curious one
on that is exclamation point. So one of my pet peeves is over
using exclamation points. I mean, I'm in a list as you
said in the beginning. So that applies to punctuation
as well, one exclamation point really is enough.
Take this sentence exclamatory. It's a superlative.
I mean you can't really get more than an exclamation point.
You've already maxed out your excitement or your loudness.
So who's to say what the right number is ever going to ask
start add in 2 3, 10 11. There are a lot of funny quotes
from old writers about from people saying you should only
use one punctuation in your whole lifetime, one like
summation point. You know like that one says you
should never use it, use it only if you're crazy.
But so attitudes have changed because Back in 1970, we used it
so rarely that it wasn't even didn't even a married.
Its own key on the typewriter, you had to type a query and then
you had to backspace and type the dumb quote, that straight
up, and down line, that also served as the past to be the
single quote and opening and closed.
And now we can't seem to get a great, a single correspondence,
even business correspondence with exclamation points and it's
exactly what you said, somehow, it comes across as cold.
Or unfriendly. Take the even done studies where
there seems to be a gender gap there to where women feel more
compelled to use exclamation points.
So as not to appear to two to four more cold and I found that
really fascinating bad, but fascinating, I find myself using
it a lot too. I feel like I'm just like
naturally enthusiastic. I want to get that across and
right. Yeah, I'm not, I'm pretty
low-key. So I don't like loud noises.
I don't like a lot of visual clutter.
Sure. So that extends into my
punctuation and that's, that's another thing.
I'm sure a shit is absolutely expressive.
You can, you can tell the style of a writer by the punctuation
of the use. I mean, so fun, graphic study
project that someone did and they took famous writers like
Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson, John Steinbeck, and they took
out all the words and just let the punctuation and see the
pattern how dense that that punctuation was How many
promising? Exclamation point Christmas
period. So let's go back like even
further back into like I guess prehistory ropey beginnings of
history when people started writing stuff down because just
to be clear, like, originally writing didn't have punctuation
right in a leather, right writing systems.
It was just letters or pictograms and things like that
and so punctuation emerged at a certain period of time in
different writing systems. Why do you think that is like
white? How did punctuation?
Um I guess at the time it was an innovation when it was first,
that's right developed over centuries.
So in the book, I started out with this bread which again if
you're watching the podcast you will be able to see it but it's
Greek boustrophedon. So boustrophedon me knocks means
Ox the Turning of the ax, the ax, plow pattern, so back, 2,000
years, 3,000 years, obviously people out with their accent
Farmers, most people found their own food and they Left to right.
Right to left all day long all day long back and forth every
single day. So that was such an ingrained
Movement Like motor skill and their brains.
That's the way they wrote, they wrote left to right.
And then the next line they would write right to left
instead of having to go with your hand and go all the way
back. And not only that, but the
letters were backwards. And when they went right to left
so it became very hard to read. Secondly, there were no spaces
between letters or words or paragraphs.
So it's more difficult to distinguish words, everything
was capital letter and there's no punctuation was just one
continuously. It's kind of like looking at 20,
we doing this on. 315 yesterday was Friday.
So if you look at a string of high numbers, where the numbers
just keep going on and on and on, and on no break after this
one doesn't. that's what reading boustrophedon was like just one
big long string of Interest members so reducing wasn't much
writing because, you know, Iris was probably the first, right?
And then Parchman the middle of the Middle Ages, and it wasn't
really available to the masses. So any writing was done in stone
chisels and Stones was honestly grandparent things inscriptions
on buildings and and laws and tablets and the common man,
probably did not a reader. So the original punctuation came
from Greek speechwriters when they were trying to tell that
order were to stop where to take a pause.
They would put little bat In in the, in the words are in the
margins. Even and those are called basis
or in Latin sticks units, there are three of them.
There's the comma the with a K Petty, all those like a period,
the boys and the colon with a K and they actually didn't refer
to the punctuation, I referred to the phrases themself, a short
phrase, like calm actually means believe it means to cut off like
a small small. Living in Greek and colon means
a limit something. If you think of your colon in
your, in your, in your body, that's sort of an extension or a
limb of your digestive system and the period means orbit of,
you know, a circular motion. And it referred to the actual
amount of text. It was basically a phrase, a
sentence, or paragraph or a complete thought.
And so, those marks referred to that and in turn how long, a
pause, the order should leave this a I'm The mid sentence but
I'm changing my thought I've ended a sentence or even a
longer pause attended a paragraph.
And so those names we still use today, it's comical and in
Period and that's where they can come back and take your page
with this. Then they went through Evolution
throughout basically Medieval Times is when things really
started to amp up with punctuation, when the monks
started to describe if you're easily and then Gutenberg came
along and the printing press and then it just all took off and
There was a need for conservation as more and more
people who were reading, that is a fascinating story that I guess
that makes sense. Because you think about a period
like being a dot in punctuation, but like a period of time, for
example, right? It's more about the duration for
so that I guess that makes sense.
Now to me, like, why we go and punctuation itself, the word
comes from Putin, which means giving a puncture like a
puncture wound. It means adopt a little all, and
that sort of all comes in the little like, Like when I design
my men with Seoul station. So we start with a circle and
when Deimos think they throw the crippled kid so it's a formal go
from there. And that's where punctuation
started start with just about a q 3 dots, actually herb.
I feel like we can get so deep into this.
Like the book is actually really accessible and we've shown a few
spreads already, but I think it works well for both like
beginners. Like you could give this to like
a student or somebody who's like a long time designer and Really
into typography and all of this sort of stuff.
Can you tell us a little bit about your process because
you're both writing and illustrating your own stuff.
So can you tell us how you think about this when you're
approaching sure? So it is called a visual guy
better a night. We went back and forth on how to
subtitle it and I was pretty clear.
I wanted it to be called a visual guide because that's
really the inspiration behind it.
I wanted In that well we live in an information age right and
recently. So and I mean even Instagram is
no when we just still images it has to be video.
Now we want to be visually entertaining and I would argue
that the general public is more visually stabbing than it was 20
years ago as a result. So I wanted something to appeal
to the younger generation. Most of all because of the ones
who are out of issuing punctuation, almost militant
about it. No, we're not going to put
period. Here know, I understand.
You know what? Who cares?
If it's you are why are you are, or why are you possibly Ari?
Gold doesn't matter? Yeah.
So I thought if I made something visual cuz I'm a visual learner
and readers myself, I don't like a lot of times I like to look
at. I learn visually and I'm
attractive visual thing. So I said, if you can make
something that's visual that it did, they make punctuation sexy
even old Dynamic simple accessible and that the visuals
tell us Worried. So every page is basically more
like an infographic, you know? And there's very little text, I
wanted all my son heads to just be one line, a lot of the all
the paragraphs are copied to fit within a circle and possible or
one little paragraph and all playing on that Circle, classic
black, and red, and white and you can go anywhere in the book.
You don't have to it works chronologically, but you can
open to any spread read that spread.
Pause it and have your lesson for the day or your enjoyment
for the day. You get a complete story with
every spread, it's almost like a little infographic poster.
That was the impetus behind the design.
So when I design design, it visually first with no words.
I just designed like any night. I would what's the message?
And how can I best communicate that.
And the fewest means possible. So I would lay out the page.
Keeping in mind what spread might go before it or after it
for sequence and Rhythm. And then I would add The way, an
ad person who works, this is more copyright in than than
written written. So I would add the copy just to
help explain the visuals and Morris captions rather than the
actual text that could be read like a novel.
And so that did frustrate my editor a little bit.
I think because most are, is want to receive a manuscript
right in Microsoft Word and handed it will check and and see
the whole story at a glance. Well, I didn't have the words
until I have the visuals and I basically like presented book.
I like to design it pretty much fun, the back cover even down to
the copyright page. So now I know everything is
going to work, everything's going to fit, everything is
cohesive and included everything, and there's no
surprises and also because it is so visual, I won't know the
words until I've actually designed every page.
So that was my process and I think it shows in the finished
book when she think it ends up being a very visual book, it
does. It almost feels like like an
expanded version of those informational slide shows on
Instagram, but look form. Like a little bit more like
information dense because it's like, it's a bigger Square
obviously, than a phone. But it does feel like that where
I could like, you can enjoy it from beginning to end, or you
could just kind of pop in. And there's a story or As I
spread about a specific thing. So it works as like both the
reference and something you could read cover to cover and
it's like very bite-sized in terms of like if you want to
graze or if you want to really like binge, eat on typography
and rightly. So and I am before, I did the
podcast, I reread the book cover to cover, just to refresh my
memory. It's exactly quickly as well,
like you can probably read the whole thing in 20 minutes, half
an hour. Any, but it's good to go.
Also go back the thing I like about it is like you said, it's
simple for beginners for the novice, he even an English as a
second language. People would say, oh how do I
use a not yet familiar with quotation marks?
Delete because we used EMA's are we don't vote material that way.
They can find something in it or people really don't know how to
use a comma or a screen like how to put it in a possessive which
is confusing sometimes. But then my editor said, you
know what? There's at least a dozen people.
Take off the top of my head. I'm going to give this to allow
them to editors, and writers, and colleague.
So it's got that level of information resource, so you
really Bridges. Those two worlds of like the
visual designers and the writers and editors kind of coming
together around these what seemed to be my new show but you
really give us this real historical context.
Oh yeah. Yeah, that was that was the
goal. So I hope I achieved it.
It's kind of my philosophy in general about design.
I like things to be Italy, attractive and engaging.
You know, thinking assign a highway or poster that has to
grab your attention and half a second.
It's got to be visually arresting, but then, as you read
it, there's got to be information that keeps you
reading it. It makes you want to read it but
then also, will you pick it up a year from now, or 10 years from
now and discover something new. I love that I feel that time
release design. And I think it's like The Wizard
of Oz. I've seen that People most
Americans bring up a pizza with pepperoni like this movie.
Can you can remember it's not every year every time I see it I
know some other level of depth to it.
Some other kind of interesting meeting or concept of moving in
and that's what I hope to do in my design.
It's I call it deceptively simple.
There's a lot of things that's like oh it's just this and then
they're like oh I didn't look at the how about that?
Is that and that so I'm hoping that I'm further reads people
say. Oh okay then See that the first
time, I love that time reliefs design.
That's, I think that's a great principle for us to Think
Through when we're writing something or, or designing
something ourselves. So, as a final question, do you
have any parting words or messages that you want to give
to our audience today about punctuation about the Pac-12?
It comes out next week, Tuesday, you can group your now, the fact
that that's, that's my, that's my Shameless pitch for that.
I love punctuation. I think it's beautiful.
Approach on this was like an Alice in Wonderland, you know
down the rabbit hole where you kind of like start exploring and
get deeper and deeper into like really, I think interesting
trivia and unknown facts In terms and also what I did was I
took the words, I like small type.
I'm glad I don't always get to do that with my clients.
So the type is fairly small still very legible but compared
to the punctuation. So I want to reverse that
proportion, that leadership kind of like handsome window.
Land for all son, she was Tiny and nothing else was large.
So you have these huge exclamation points.
Really are awesome to be holder. You have these like older size
periods are like meter-sized, pessimists, and I think that
makes it exciting and it makes people say, you know what, I
never realized. That's what these shapes up to
look like, for example, like, in the beginning, there's a page
just on periods and people just has no, no sooner.
Did I establish it? Comes from the word for orbit
and circle, then I kind of mix it up and I showed them actually
a period and a, on the face can be a square to be an oval can be
rectangle, can be a diamond, it can be organic shaped.
And most people won't ever notice that if they're not a bad
mood, I know that they had never blow up type that large.
I just wanted to people to get interested in this kind of
hidden world that everybody uses everybody.
See we all have since we could read but most people don't
really think about well thank you for reminding us to pay
attention to these literally small details and blowing in a
bump into large proportions. So we notice them.
We are curious about them dig deeper into the history.
I've been live with Michael aren't here, author of snails
and monkeytales. A visual guide to punctuation
and symbols can get it wherever you, get your books on March
22nd, as a check out the book and Michael, thank you for
joining us. Thank you, everybody for tuning
in today as well, or for hosting tomorrow morning.
To Care by everyone.