Confessions of a Public Speaker (28 page)

Scott Berkun is the bestselling author of The Myths of Innovation, and Making Things Happen. His work as a writer and public speaker haveappeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wired Magazine, Fast Company, Forbes Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and other media. He has taught creative thinking at the University of Washington and has been a regular commentator on CNBC, MSNBC and National Public Radio. His many popular essays and entertaining lectures can be found for free on his blog at www.scottberkun.com.

The cover image is a composite of two photos from iStock and Corbis.
The cover font is ITC Franklin Gothic. The text font is Sabon; the heading
font is BentonSans. The paper for these fine pages is 50-pound Crème, a
perfect blend of moderate porosity (air permeability of less than 15
centimeters per minute), delightful compressibility, and high-performance
ink hold-out ratios, well suited for confessional and memoir
monographs.

And thus, in a few simple sentences, you have now read the greatest,
most miraculous colophon of all time.

You see, what you can’t possibly know is that once upon a time, one
score and 17 years ago, in a galaxy not at all far away, on a planet
indistinguishable from the one you are on now, it was a dark time for
colophons. Few knew what colophons were for, nor who wrote them. Billions
of people finished books every year, denied the sacred knowledge of what
kind of paper had been in their hands and what typefaces they’d read, and
fell into suicidal levels of depression. It was a dark time indeed.

But that year something happened. The greatest colophonist of all
time was born. Her powers were so far beyond mortal comprehension, they
called her the chosen one.

She could identify fonts in 6-point type, while blindfolded and
standing on one foot, from several hundred miles away. With barely a sniff
from her perfect little nose, she could name the inks used on even the
oldest pages known to man. With the slightest touch of her pinkie finger,
and the thinnest slice of attention from her potent mind, she could sense
the weight of any print stock made, and the genus and species of all trees
used to produce them. Her only aids were a small set of magical colophony
tools she’d forged from metals too rare to be known to ordinary men, tools
she kept in a small satchel. A satchel she kept safe by strapping it to
her foot. Legend has it, this sacred satchel was called, to those
permitted to say the words, the
divine
footbag
.

But since her natural powers were unmatched and her force of mind
incomparable, she rarely used those tools nor opened the sacred bag on her
foot that contained them.

To our great sadness, for years she refused to work on any books,
feeling they were unworthy of her world-transforming powers. She wrote
colophons in private and kept them for herself. There were rumors she’d
ghostwritten colophons for J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, but those
rumors were never confirmed.

When she was asked to work on this book, the world shook at the
prospect that she might say yes. Angels cried in joy. Writers considered
being less pretentious. Politicians wondered about committing fewer
crimes. Even the rain made plans to avoid weddings and camping trips
forevermore. It was a wondrous moment of potential for life, the universe,
and everything.

But she said no.

She found us and our ways quite annoying.

Especially our tendency to use single-sentence paragraphs.

And the world wept.

Twice.

And when we did not give up, instead choosing to hound her
relentlessly to work on this book through emails, text messages, and boxes
of homemade cupcakes that said, in 6-point Arial vanilla micro-frosting we
knew only she could read, “Pleeeeze be our colofoonist!”, she became
angry. She knew Arial was a font for lazy heathens, a disrespect to her
talents and her kind. Hell hath no fury like a colophonist scorned. All
too late we realized our mistake, and knew the next time she saw us, it
would be the end of us all.

The next day, as we stumbled in misery through town, knowing all was
lost without a good colophonist for this book, we saw her across the
street, and she saw us, too. We considered running, but there was nowhere
to hide. Her eyes narrowed intensely, in the same terrifying way they did
when she found a mislabeled typeface or poorly sourced cover stock photo.
She pounced off the sidewalk and raced into the street at preternatural
speed and at an angle that defied the laws of geometry, making our escape
impossible. But we did not despair, for she made one mistake. She forgot
to look both ways before crossing. And she was crushed by the oncoming
bus.

It was in fact two buses, one going in each direction, but the
effect on her powers was much the same. The buses—with large
advertisements well labeled in 80-point Helvetica heavy bold, printed on
prepressed sheets of four-color vinyl, produced by a digital printscreen
transfer—flattened her like an
escalope
. Her wondrous
powers were no more.

Emerging from the carnage, bouncing and rolling its way to our feet,
was a small satchel. Could it be? Yes, indeed. It was the small magic bag
she wore on her foot. The footbag had survived. Behold the mighty
footbag!

And it was only through the careful application of those tools,
tools not meant for mere mortals to see, much less use, that the immense
challenges of this colophon were overcome. If it were not for the
sacrifice of the chosen one, this colophon, this book, and this entire
publishing industry we take for granted would not have been possible.
Instead of the glory of this colophon and its related—possibly
fictional—backstory, this page would be empty and you’d forever wonder
about the making of the book you just read. May the footbag, and the
wonders of colophons, stay with us forever. Long live the colophon.