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Visual Communication

The Space Left for the Initial

·6 min in full, in the book·PagePerfect Journal

Also available as a typeset book

In a book of essays printed before 1960, the first letter of the first paragraph is often three or four lines deep. Ask a designer why and you will usually be given psychology, and the psychology most often borrowed for the answer has been failing to replicate since 1930.1 The initial has a better case than that, made from its history and from the craft of setting it, and this essay sets it out.

The rest of this essay is in the book

It goes on to cover:

  • Interrupted tasks and their replications
  • What pops out of a display
  • The rubricator’s hand
  • No chapter on initials
  • Why these essays open flush
  • How to set one, and when to leave it out

About the book

Notes

  1. MacLeod 2020, Zeigarnik section, replication history: Schlote 1930; Hovland 1951; Alper 1952; Butterfield 1964; Van Bergen 1968. Grade A attaches to the negative claim, which rests on a systematic historical review of the replication record. Van Bergen’s seven attempts gave a recall ratio of 0.88 against Zeigarnik’s reported advantage, and fewer than a third of the 44 attempts she reviewed reported the effect. Zeigarnik was born in Prienai, then in the Russian Empire, and did the work in Berlin; we could not verify the label “Lithuanian psychologist”, so it has been dropped. Evidence A: strong or direct evidence.

Sources

  • MacLeod, C. M. (2020). Zeigarnik and von Restorff: The memory effects and the stories behind them. Memory & Cognition, 48. doi.org

Further reading