The arts and crafts movement - Essay Example

First Sur Short Critical Analysis about Arts and Crafts Movement Morris’ text “The Ideal Book” discusses critical attributes concerning page layout of a text with his primary concern being the balance between presentation and the spacing within texts of arts. According to Morris (1893), a page should be clear, easy to read, have a proper design with proportional margins and should avoid extra spacing. These are the guidelines that he considers fundamental to the practice of art. The author perception on an ideal book is because of the type of printing that existed in 1843 that was primarily for communication in adverts and was a practice of the unskilled people.

According to him, the text designs during that period were not professionally acceptable thereby calling for the stipulation of rules governing document design and presentation. I think Morris’ concerns regarding the white space existing between letters and words as well as the margins of a text concurs with the ideology of many modern art movements in today’s text presentation. However, some art movements such as expressionism, impressionism and realism have little to borrow from Morris and their pieces of work are advanced and complicated with each striving to display uniqueness in content.

However, I strongly concur with Morris’ view on the criticality of achieving proper text layouts in pieces of work involving texts, paragraphs or fonts. It is because his prescription enhance the appearance of a piece of artwork. I also support his notion as it forms a fundamental basis for deriving other styles of art. The author seems rigid in his view of an ideal book given the explicit rules he outlines. However, in today’s printing the fonts, paragraphs and spacing of texts may be very casual depending on the targeted reader.

In fact, technology and the accessibility of information make the strict protocol of text structure less significant. In conclusion, design rules Morris stipulated may be suitable today in book designs as well as flyers, posters, websites among others. Additionally, arts and designs may be used for different intentions but all graphic designs need to be as professional as possible. In other words, excellent design is products of the well-planned process making every design artistic. The technology advancement is existing in the printing world currently makes Morris’s design rules prominent and open for continuous improvements.

Reference Morris, W. (1893). The ideal book. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.