about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can''''t capture, and I found it fascinating.
Reed大學在那時提供也許是全美最好的美術字課程。在這個大學裏麵的每個海報, 每個抽屜的標簽上麵全都是漂亮的美術字。因為我退學了, 沒有受到正規的訓練, 所以我決定去參加這個課程，去學學怎樣寫出漂亮的美術字。我學到了san serif 和serif字體, 我學會了怎麼樣在不同的字母組合之中改變空格的長度, 還有怎麼樣才能作出最棒的印刷式樣。那是一種科學永遠不能捕捉到的、美麗的、真實的藝術精妙, 我發現那實在是太美妙了。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it''''s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
當時看起來這些東西在我的生命中，好像都沒有什麼實際應用的可能。但是十年之後,當我們在設計第一台Macintosh電腦的時候,就不是那樣了。我把當時我學的那些家夥全都設計進了Mac。那是第一台使用了漂亮的印刷字體的電腦。如果我當時沒有退學, 就不會有機會去參加這個我感興趣的美術字課程, Mac就不會有這麼多豐富的字體，以及賞心悅目的字體間距。那麼現在個人電腦就不會有現在這麼美妙的字型了。當然我在大學的時候，還不可能把從前的點點滴滴串連起來,但是當我十年後回顧這一切的時候,真的豁然開朗了。