Thanks to a certain documentary, fonts are front and center in many conversations and blogs. While digging around I found this older post that outlines the history and battle between the now gone-Hollywood-font Helvetica and it’s newer MS born brethern Arial.These are the kinds of conversations I wish I could fill every dinner party with.
Category Archives: Type
Font finds
Through an amazing web of links and referals I wound up at an old thread on Cameron Moll’s blog from August of last year.
The subject of the post is “Typefaces no one gets fired for using”. If you’re in the market for new fonts or some variations on some old favorites, check out all of the recommendations left by the commentors. Lots of good rec’s.
Of course, it’s almost as fun to guess what kind of project these folks must be working on to recommend some of the more “display” (i.e. outlandish) fonts.
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“Distinction is the key…”
Wise words that I need to remember. I just finished reading an 2006 interview with Paul Buckley, Art Director at Penguin. He said they crank out 600 covers a year! I can’t imagine the scheduling nightmares they must have.
Buckley spoke directly to something I struggle with with every title:
“…tend to flood the market with books that have huge, foil-embossed type, and instead of these getting your attention, they actually fade into a sea of sameness – or if they do catch your attention, you might feel like you are being yelled at in some cheap, aggressive way. Certainly typography is a beautiful medium and large type can be gorgeous, but there are so few books out there that achieve this…”
“That’s why distinction is key, and not big type.”
It’s so easy to just make the type big and hardline the contrast. It makes the authors happy and marketing happy and it “pops”. But it’s amazing how small and faded that same cover appears when you’re in the store looking at it amongst the competition.
By the way, I stumbled upon the above interview while trying to catch up on a couple of the Flickr groups I like, Magic City, Typography and Lettering and Book Design, when I chased a rabbit that led to the article.
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Talking shop
A post over at fade theory points us to an interview with Gary Hustwit, director of the now-playing Helvetica documentary. Pretty cool. I sure would like one of those posters!
