The typeface Helvetica is ubiquitous.
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
NY Times Published: December 5, 2010
LONDON — Cyrus Highsmith set himself a challenge: to avoid the typeface Helvetica for a day. He banned himself from buying anything branded in that font and from traveling on any form of transport with Helvetica signage. As he’s a New Yorker, that included the local subway system. If he happened to come across anything in the typeface, he would look away.
Easy-peasy, you might think, but you’d be wrong. Helvetica cropped up much more often than Mr. Highsmith had expected.
He had known to avoid the Internet, and had taken the precautionary measure of erasing Helvetica from the font menu on his computer. But he hadn’t reckoned on spotting it on the washing instruction labels of his clothes, his television remote control, a bus timetable or the stock market tables in The New York Times.
Another problem was finding a Helvetica-free way of paying for whatever he needed to buy during the day, as the forbidden typeface not only appeared on his credit cards but on the newest U.S. dollar bills.
Why, you might wonder, would anyone take on such a weird challenge?
Mr. Highsmith is a type designer. He embarked upon his Helvetica boycott in the hope of addressing the philosophical question: “Do you need type to live?” But the author Simon Garfield, who included the story in his “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts,” suggests that a more pertinent question would have been: “Do you need Helvetica to conduct contemporary urban activity?” Judging by Mr. Highsmith’s experience, the answer is yes, unless you’re willing to go to a great deal of trouble to avoid it, especially if you live in New York.
The Helvetica boycott is just one of the engaging tales of typographic obsession in “Just My Type.” Many of them involve designers who, like Mr. Highsmith, have devoted their working lives to creating fonts. Others explain how powerfully their work affects the rest of us, the 99.99 percent of the population whom they describe, part-derisively, part-pityingly, as “civilians.”
Like many of his fellow “civilians,” Mr. Garfield discovered typography after becoming curious about the contents of his computer font menu, developing a particular fondness for Mrs Eaves and HT Gelateria. He has published more than a dozen nonfiction books, mostly on science and social history. “Just My Type” is his first foray into typography, making him a very brave man, because the world of type is an intensely geeky one with its own language, rules and rituals, including the popular pastime of denouncing hapless “civilians” for making typographic gaffes.
Take Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men.” He is regularly roasted by type bloggers who can’t understand how a television series that is lauded for historical accuracy when it comes to props, costumes, sets, slang and just about everything else, could be so sloppy in choosing fonts. Likewise, among the “Just My Type” cast of characters is Mark Simonson, an American graphic designer who scores movies for typographic (in)accuracy on his Web site. Both “LA Confidential” and “The Hudsucker Proxy” have been cited for committing the “Mad Men” crime of featuring fonts designed long after the periods in which they were set.
Mr. Garfield makes some factual gaffes of his own. It’s neither correct, nor fair, for instance, to describe the gloriously eclectic graphic designer Alan Fletcher as a “book designer.” “Just My Type” also suffers from his apparent inability to decide whether to write a history of typography or an anecdotal account of its impact on daily life. The result is occasionally confusing, not least because neither the history nor anecdotes are in chronological or any other discernible order. But its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, so much so that it feels mean to moan about as impassioned, warm-hearted and open-minded a book as this.
The historic passages begin with Johannes Gutenberg, the German printer who made books affordable for millions of people by casting the first reusable letters in the 1440s. Gutenberg died poor, having forfeited his printing machinery in a legal battle, leaving the British printer William Caxton to commercialize his innovations in the late 1400s. In this, he was helped by his protégé, the propitiously named Wynkyn de Worde, whose fonts were imitated throughout Europe.
Mr. Garfield then introduces the designers of beautiful fonts that are still used today, such as Claude Garamond in 16th-century France, William Caslon and John Baskerville in 18th-century Britain, and 20th-century Modernists like Paul Renner in Germany and Adrian Frutiger in Switzerland. Having described the painstaking process of casting the letters, numbers and symbols of traditional typefaces in metal, he explores the shift from printed to digital fonts, which are made on computers, and the efforts of Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann and other digital pioneers to create a new genre of typefaces to be read on screen, rather than in print.
Along the way, “Just My Type” reflects on everything from the uproar over Ikea’s decision to ditch Mr. Frutiger’s Modernist classic Futura for its logo in favor of Mr. Carter’s digital font Verdana; to Gotham’s role as a secret vote-winning weapon in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign; to how
Cooper Black can convey one meaning on the cover of the Beach Boys’ 1966 album “
Pet Sounds,” and another on the title sequence of the turn-of-the-1970s British television series “Dad’s Army,” and a third in the corporate identity of the budget airline Easy Jet.
The book also dwells on the importance of the distinction between legibility and readability when it comes to choosing typefaces; the psychology of favorite fonts; and why type nuts love the ampersand symbol, loathe
Comic Sans and are suspicious of
Arial — but how, despite their doubts, Arial Black has become one of the most popular fonts, along with Frutiger, for European soccer shirts. Answer: Because it’s both legible even from the opposite end of the stadium.
stolen from South Willard
The typeface Helvetica is ubiquitous.
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
NY Times Published: December 5, 2010
LONDON — Cyrus Highsmith set himself a challenge: to avoid the typeface Helvetica for a day. He banned himself from buying anything branded in that font and from traveling on any form of transport with Helvetica signage. As he’s a New Yorker, that included the local subway system. If he happened to come across anything in the typeface, he would look away.
Easy-peasy, you might think, but you’d be wrong. Helvetica cropped up much more often than Mr. Highsmith had expected.
He had known to avoid the Internet, and had taken the precautionary measure of erasing Helvetica from the font menu on his computer. But he hadn’t reckoned on spotting it on the washing instruction labels of his clothes, his television remote control, a bus timetable or the stock market tables in The New York Times.
Another problem was finding a Helvetica-free way of paying for whatever he needed to buy during the day, as the forbidden typeface not only appeared on his credit cards but on the newest U.S. dollar bills.
Why, you might wonder, would anyone take on such a weird challenge?
Mr. Highsmith is a type designer. He embarked upon his Helvetica boycott in the hope of addressing the philosophical question: “Do you need type to live?” But the author Simon Garfield, who included the story in his “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts,” suggests that a more pertinent question would have been: “Do you need Helvetica to conduct contemporary urban activity?” Judging by Mr. Highsmith’s experience, the answer is yes, unless you’re willing to go to a great deal of trouble to avoid it, especially if you live in New York.
The Helvetica boycott is just one of the engaging tales of typographic obsession in “Just My Type.” Many of them involve designers who, like Mr. Highsmith, have devoted their working lives to creating fonts. Others explain how powerfully their work affects the rest of us, the 99.99 percent of the population whom they describe, part-derisively, part-pityingly, as “civilians.”
Like many of his fellow “civilians,” Mr. Garfield discovered typography after becoming curious about the contents of his computer font menu, developing a particular fondness for Mrs Eaves and HT Gelateria. He has published more than a dozen nonfiction books, mostly on science and social history. “Just My Type” is his first foray into typography, making him a very brave man, because the world of type is an intensely geeky one with its own language, rules and rituals, including the popular pastime of denouncing hapless “civilians” for making typographic gaffes.
Take Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men.” He is regularly roasted by type bloggers who can’t understand how a television series that is lauded for historical accuracy when it comes to props, costumes, sets, slang and just about everything else, could be so sloppy in choosing fonts. Likewise, among the “Just My Type” cast of characters is Mark Simonson, an American graphic designer who scores movies for typographic (in)accuracy on his Web site. Both “LA Confidential” and “The Hudsucker Proxy” have been cited for committing the “Mad Men” crime of featuring fonts designed long after the periods in which they were set.
Mr. Garfield makes some factual gaffes of his own. It’s neither correct, nor fair, for instance, to describe the gloriously eclectic graphic designer Alan Fletcher as a “book designer.” “Just My Type” also suffers from his apparent inability to decide whether to write a history of typography or an anecdotal account of its impact on daily life. The result is occasionally confusing, not least because neither the history nor anecdotes are in chronological or any other discernible order. But its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, so much so that it feels mean to moan about as impassioned, warm-hearted and open-minded a book as this.
The historic passages begin with Johannes Gutenberg, the German printer who made books affordable for millions of people by casting the first reusable letters in the 1440s. Gutenberg died poor, having forfeited his printing machinery in a legal battle, leaving the British printer William Caxton to commercialize his innovations in the late 1400s. In this, he was helped by his protégé, the propitiously named Wynkyn de Worde, whose fonts were imitated throughout Europe.
Mr. Garfield then introduces the designers of beautiful fonts that are still used today, such as Claude Garamond in 16th-century France, William Caslon and John Baskerville in 18th-century Britain, and 20th-century Modernists like Paul Renner in Germany and Adrian Frutiger in Switzerland. Having described the painstaking process of casting the letters, numbers and symbols of traditional typefaces in metal, he explores the shift from printed to digital fonts, which are made on computers, and the efforts of Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann and other digital pioneers to create a new genre of typefaces to be read on screen, rather than in print.
Along the way, “Just My Type” reflects on everything from the uproar over Ikea’s decision to ditch Mr. Frutiger’s Modernist classic Futura for its logo in favor of Mr. Carter’s digital font Verdana; to Gotham’s role as a secret vote-winning weapon in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign; to how Cooper Black can convey one meaning on the cover of the Beach Boys’ 1966 album “Pet Sounds,” and another on the title sequence of the turn-of-the-1970s British television series “Dad’s Army,” and a third in the corporate identity of the budget airline Easy Jet.
The book also dwells on the importance of the distinction between legibility and readability when it comes to choosing typefaces; the psychology of favorite fonts; and why type nuts love the ampersand symbol, loathe Comic Sans and are suspicious of Arial — but how, despite their doubts, Arial Black has become one of the most popular fonts, along with Frutiger, for European soccer shirts. Answer: Because it’s both legible even from the opposite end of the stadium.
stolen from South Willard
