You’ve all likely seen copies of the Free Press, or copies of my papers and handouts rendered in Caslon Pro, Arno Pro, or–most familiarly–Garamond Pro. You’ve seen my clamoring for you to view McDanielFreePress.com using Safari to get the fonts used in the actual newspaper in print form (I said the same for this blog as well). I love fonts. Well, I just thought I’d walk you through this article that appeared in today’s New York Times, a place where during my unemployment, I’m spending a large portion of my day.
“Down With Helvetica: Design Your Own Font”
Yes, I have failed to watch the independent documentary by Gary Hustwit titled “Helvetica”, but I am downloading it now, and will report back to you later. But Helvetica is the shit. So why would the New York Times reporter Peter Wayner be so brash as to bash it with the shocking, revolution-inciting “Down With Helvetica!”. (In fairness the subheading is “When Comic Sans Isn’t Enough, Sites Help Create Custom Fonts”, and you, Readers and friends, also know that I hate more than anything Comic Sans, so all is okay.). Perhaps that’s just because he’s upset his name is close to “Weiner”, which would be funny, you know, to all the juveniles out there, just like me.
That said, it’s a pretty good lede–
So he turned to Mary Mashburn, a designer with an office filled with old type just a few blocks away. Ms. Mashburn set the restaurant’s name, Woodberry Kitchen, with scratched and nicked wooden type from her collection of antique block types and then printed a copy on her old letterpress. She then scanned the result into her computer, where she tweaked a few letters and adjusted some spacing. A new version of an old font was born.
“The fact that the letters were distressed, it was real,” Mr. Gjerde said.
Yeah! Mad points for it being set in Baltimore. But I’m confused about Mr. Gjerde’s comment that “it was real.” I’m not gonna go all philosopher Morpheus on your asses, so stay with me. But what Gjerde wants is something different, presumably not Helvetica, Optima (oh! how I love thee–in a side note, the John McCain has made Optima it’s font of choice in all campaign signage, which I noticed right away yet failed to mention, apparently, again, the NYT beat me to the punch, much to my liberal dismay), he wants something old, not new, yet he wants it to feel new. Basically, a simulated new old font, a new creation–not something real. Something real would be that Mary Mashburn woman designer with an office writing up all his signage by hand. That would be real. But I applaud Mr. Gjerde’s sense that fonts matter.
Anyway, we continue–
I wholeheartedly agree, though I took note back in middle school to switch to a serif font when writing papers, back in the old days of Microsoft Word used Arial as default font, the cheap ripoff of Helvetica (’course, Office 2007 defaults to Calibri, another Microsoft creation). But my being in the newspaper business, and by chance stumbling across the Ban Comic Sans facebook group, provided me with my deeper understanding and appreciation for fonts. The printed page can be a work of art when done in taste, with the right fonts and layout, and I strived to do that with almost every page I designed while at the Free Press. Hopefully, at my AmeriCorps job at ACTION Health in Danville, PA, I’ll get back to designing something or other, as long as they don’t mind me creating some things off site.
Okay, back to the article, though we are running out of interesting stuff–
Mr. Andermack asks clients to copy a collection of words in their handwriting, then scans the letters into his computer and produces a font. The only catch is that Mr. Andermack keeps the rights to resell the font to others. He publishes a collection of distinctive handwriting fonts to ad directors who want to capture a particular style or era. Your handwriting could end up in the next bundle. Exclusive rights cost more.
VLetter sells a collection of historical fonts built by scanning the Declaration of Independence and the letters of John Adams and George Washington — something that might be handy if your idea of the pursuit of happiness is to send memos that look like a broadside fired at a monarchy.
Not much to say here, other than I was thinking of scanning my handwriting in and creating fonts, something that this program lets you do. I scrapped the idea, because as soon as I saw how easy it was, I realized that anyone, anywhere might be doing it. Looks like I was right. If you’re gonna take advantage of new technologies, it has to be reasonable. Don’t just do it because you can. It’s like the old ESPN the Magazine commercials from back in the day–”All nude…but tastefully done.” And I’m glad that Wayner gets a little sarcastic on our asses with the quip about the “broadside fired at a monarchy.” Ha.
And finally, the stunning observation, that I agree with, casually empirically, of course–
While he acknowledges that his study was very unscientific, he wanted to remind all high school graduates heading for college that an element of surprise is important. “You don’t want to fall into the same pattern that the professor sees on every new paper,” he said.
I have to agree, one hundred percent. Check out the first three pages of my honor’s thesis that earned an “A”, and the first three pages of my Senior Seminar paper which earned an A+++, and my handout for the senior seminar presentation. And my Resume (I got it all here today, folks, all *.pdf). It seems clear that you get better grades when you spend time with fonts and layout. Don’t get too tacky, though, or you’ll end up like the loser who still animates his powerpoint presentations (”That’s cool, if it’s 1995).
I’m outty.
–Keepin’ It Real Since ‘86
