Page 142 Lorem Ipsum

“GREEK TEXT”

The late Jon Goodchild, who designed the Grateful Dead Family Album, was a book producer of humor and wicked insight. He was the original designer of Rolling Stone in the 1960s and no doubt stories of his wit still circulate among the old guard of that magazine. In the Family Album he found a subject to match his creativity, as can be seen throughout these pages.

He was particularly good at marrying text to image. The example of his use of lorem ipsum placeholder text on page 142 is priceless (see image at bottom of page). Buried in the meaningless Latin sounding text, in English language quotes, is Jon’s take on what is going on in this series of snapshots of Garcia with record mogul Clive Davis. It is Jon’s genius to have left the scrambled text in place.

This gives a new meaning to the “greeking” of text. Such nonsensical usage in book production is incorrectly called “greek” text, as lorem ipsum is actually based on Latin. It derives from the expression “It’s all Greek to me” when referring to indecipherable text. Here are Wikipedia definitions of lorem ipsum and greeking, interesting if only because of Cicero’s amazing meditation on pain.
– Alan Trist, 11/8/15

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Lorem Ipsum

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum (derived from Latin dolorem ipsum, translated as “pain itself”) is a filler text commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation. Replacing meaningful content with placeholder text allows viewers to focus on graphic aspects such as font, typography, and page layout without being distracted by the content. It also reduces the need for the designer to come up with meaningful text, as they can instead use quickly-generated lorem ipsum.

The lorem ipsum text is typically a scrambled section of De finibus bonorum et malorum, a 1st-century BC Latin text by Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical, improper Latin. This is H. Rackham’s 1914 translation….with the major source of lorem ipsum highlighted:

“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing of a pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”

Greeking

“Greeking” is used when a design is being developed but the content is unfinished. One example might be the layout of a magazine article which has photographs but no text; initially, a lorem ipsum text is used, and then the nonsense text is replaced with draft versions as they become available. This allows design and layout to be carried out in parallel with content revisions.

– Wikipedia

When we got to the party at the St Regis Roof, (this fancy restaurant on top of the hotel where we stayed) a bunch of us were seated at a big round table in a corner. I was stuck in the back with no way out. We immediately got pinned in by a mob of people wanting Jerry’s autograph. The girl in the sweater with the curly hair had Jerry sign her arm!!! Billy and Clive Davis were actually playing tic tac toe on the table cloth in the first photo, when Jerry looked up and saw me pointing my camera at them. I love the smile Jerry gave me in the last photo. It was such a happy night and a big accomplishment for Jerry personally to have the movie he worked so hard on, finally done and released for the world to enjoy. -Jerilyn

Photo Credits: Steve and Gary – Guy Cross, David and Hunter – Ed Perlstein, Jerilyn and darlene – Snooky Flowers, bottom – Jerilyn Lee Brandelius