type3kcad

This blog was established for the Typography 3 students of Kendall College of Art + Design.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Do we all have to be font dorks?

I found this article on The Onion website, depending on how nerdy you are, you might find it funny. Here's part of it...

Now, on to our next letter: Dear Font Dork,
How many of the letters you print do you actually write yourself? And if it is actually less than 100 percent, then what kind of loser needs advice on fonts?
Not Falling For It In Falls Church

Well, Falls Church, those are some pretty big accusations. But first, let me say that the tracking and leading of your letter were off by a country mile. I'll also point out that the Bodoni you used, with a cap height of a mere 11 points, is probably the most inexpressive font around. And if that weren't enough, demi weight moderns have been out of style since the early '80s! Maybe if you spent less time mocking what you obviously don't understand, and a little more time trying to comprehend the subtle science of font usage, your letter wouldn't look like it had been typed by a chimpanzee!
The rest is here -http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33780

This article made me laugh a little bit, but it also made me cry a little bit when I realized that the writer of this fictional comedy newspaper article knows more about type than I do, and I'm supposed to be a graphic designer. As a student of design, I feel most self-concious about the typefaces that I choose because most of the time I don't have an explanation for why a chose a particular typeface. Anyway, I'm just curious about how much consideration you put in to your type choices.
Are you aware of any connotations your choices might have to a more educated viewer?
How much time do you spend choosing a typeface?
Why Caslon instead of Garamond?
Are you like me and rotate between Helvetica, Futura, and Garamond on every project no mater what it is?

1 Comments:

At 9:19 PM, Blogger jalger said...

Uh oh. Sounds like a hole in the typographic education. Either that or someone hasn't been paying attention!

"Learning" typography is much harder now than it was not more than a decade ago. Thanks to font "designing" software and the Internet making an endless array of fonts available (see our recent discussion on downloading free fonts), we lose much of the focus on the science and art of typography. Instead we choose to spend more time "expressing" ourselves with the most recently posted gritty or script fonts. This is not typography.
Certainly, knowing which font to use in any given situation is a part of the process, but it's more about knowing how to use the type chosen.

If we believe the words of Massimo Vignelli, then "A designer should use only these five typefaces: Bodoni, Helvetica, Times Roman, Century, and Futura." Perhaps this is a bit extreme, but it demonstrates the point that even with a little, one can do a lot.

 

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