This is a book about type and its modern-day equivalent, font. As the author points out, type was a big but hidden part of our lives, exclusively considered by designers, printers, and publishers. If you weren't in the "business," or some kind of business, you probably wouldn't know too much about type.
But computer fonts changed all of that, and apparently, Steve Jobs is the person who's responsible. Oh, the zeitgeist is all about font! Or, perhaps more accurately (or hopefully), it's about design.
Jobs, I understand, took a calligraphy course at Reed College, and while he didn't expect to do anything with that calligraphy knowledge, when the Apple Macintosh shipped, it had a bunch of fonts that permitted ordinary people like me to choose fonts and to consider which fonts they wanted to choose. Before that, the state of the art in the typewriter was the IBM Selectric (Garfield notes that Big Blue was the Apple of its day) and the balls could be changed. The only two type I ever saw was Courier or Prestige Elite. Well, Steve Jobs changed all that.
In Just My Type, Simon Garfield has given us a book that is part a biography of typefaces or fonts, and partly a guide.
For instance, I learned that for several years there has been a movement against Comic Sans. It's one of those fonts, along with Brush Script, Papyrus (!Ow! a former favorite!), which, when used, demonstrates the amateur status of the user.
This is a book that, instead of flouting the received wisdom, explains what the received wisdom is, for the uncool kids.
I found it surprising to learn that the same man who designed Zapfino designed Palatino (Hermann Zapf). Palatino isn't perfectly classical: if you look closely, you can see that the capital P is not closed! But it's very close to Roman lettering, and the addition of a certain expressive style gives it its charm. Whereas Zapfino is both dramatic, bold, flouncy and inconsistent - and, it's everywhere! Brush Script is a "bad" font, the choice of an immature, inexperienced designer, and makes whatever you're working on look like it was designed in the 1950's. But, why is Zapfino everywhere (in the brochure for the retirement community, on the side of the cookie box, and everywhere else) while Brush Script is bad.
Why is Comic Sans so despised? The short answer is that it's overused. (Why is it overused? I imagine because it reminds people of comics, and that there's something warm about it - it reminds me of Charles Schulz lettering for Peanuts.)
And how can Helvetica be so wonderful and so ubiquitous on the one hand, and be regarded as overused by some designers on the other hand? I guess there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
As Garfield points out, type, or font, is everywhere around us. This book will lead you to see it with new eyes and soon you'll be saying under your breath, "That's Zapfino. That's Albertus, I think!"
And, when you have used Calibri for a sign because it just seems to fade into the background and doesn't draw attention to itself, you may, like me, be stunned to read that Calibri, "is a rounded, pliable sans serif with great visual impact."
By the end of this book, you'll agree that fonts are expressive and have personality. I wonder, though, if you might feel, like me, that not everyone agrees on what that personality is.
Yes, and if you loved the documentary "Helvetica," you'll love this, too. Here's something fun: a video promoting Just My Type (this is just the sort of thing I like)(photographed in London and Manchester): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhI2LYDkkZk
And you might enjoy this, too: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole
No comments:
Post a Comment