“Design.” Why doesn’t this board have a little icon of a monkey peeing on something or a guy puking that I can put next to that word?
I just watched the documentary Helvetica and it finally brought to fruition my years of hate for “design” and “designers.” These execrable human beings, unworthy of love or even basic respect, combine the most infuriating aspects of Engineers - with their geeky, anorak, boffin, nerdy, dweeby, dorky focus on mechanics and technical information - with the most pretentious elements of Aaaarteeeests, with their mannered, nervous, pouty, prissy style. These motherfuckers make a zillion dollars for doing basic bullshit like putting one color on another or putting a square around something, then they all line up in a circle to make a human centipede of self-congratulatory high-fiving and back-patting. “Brilliant use of ochre, Ernst!”
By the way, every font looks pretty much the same. “This book is typeset in Bluidphart, a font first popularized by Trappist monks in 1525 in the printing presses of lower Tintern Abbey. It’s characterized by its rustic overtones and use of irregular kerning due to the hand-hewn woodblocks the monks favored.” Suck my diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick.
Note; I love Design, just hate “Designers.” When I go home from work, I sit in my Eames Lounge Chair (Palisander and Black Leather; no ottoman). Charles and Ray, now there was a guy and his gal not deserving of a cock-punch.
I’ve never met or heard an interview with any “designers,” but when it comes to typography and corporate logo design at least, I have the utmost respect for what they do. There is so much grace and feeling in a well-designed font, a beautiful balance of craftsmanship and artistry, that it takes a special ambi-brained personality to pull off. People like Zuzana Licko of Emigre (type foundry) or Paul Rand (famous logo designer) deserve to as well known as some of the capital-A Artists of the 20th century.
I used to think fonts didn’t matter, as long as they were readable, who cares. Then I had the experince of writing a proposed statement of work with a few other people. We argued for more than two hours over the fonts, to the point of printing of various sections in different fonts to prove our points. It really was easier to read the thing, both on screen and hardcopy when we got it right.
In memory of that epic struggle I use nothing but Comic Sans and Lucida Console just to see if anyone is reading my documents (I’ve been called on it three times in six years, so I doubt I get that much.
Elegance and form are part of communication. Your font choices say as much about your writing as your tone says about your speech.
Mine, too! But it’s mostly because PageMaker, way back in the primeval forests of the early 90s before Adobe got their grubby little hands on it, was originally made by a company called Aldus, and I spent a lot of time reading their user handbook and teaching myself the program while creating my own (very limited circulation) queer newsletter in the LGBA office on campus.
I’m a programmer, but I have a love of fonts. My current collection is 9426 fonts (which includes variants such as Ultra Bold/Oblique/etc.). I prefer Helvetica Neue to standard Helvetica and boy do I ever love Futura Book.
My mom was a freelance commercial artist in the late 1970’s early 1980’s and used to have linotype rub-on transfers for her fonts - I used to find those just so amazing how beautiful & perfect the lettering was.