Font Let’s Start: Slate on typography
The online magazine Slate recently had an article in which they “revealed” the favorite font of a number of writers. This was tied into a Slate article about a new documentary about Helvetica (which I think I’ll skip, waiting for the epic mini-series about Times New Roman). To kick off their survey, Slate “asked a number of prominent writers to tell us what font they compose in and why.” Well, I have to say that, after reading the article, learning about writers and their favorite fonts is probably just about as interesting as hearing film directors on their favorite kind of film stock (Kodak or Fuji? Tell me more!). It makes me think of the Joseph Heller quote, “Never mind the trick, what the hell’s the point?” Because a font is just a vehicle for the transmission of ideas, the same way a printed book is only a vessel to carry words. Of course, whatever it takes to get a writer going is fine by me, but I couldn’t really care less that Richard Posner “composes” in Century Schoolbook.
This reminds me of Raygun magazine, a painfully hip music magazine from the ‘90s. Raygun had some amazing design and layout, mashing up fonts and typography into a stew of print that was a visual feast for the eyes. The only problem was, you could barely read the damn thing. More than once I’d bought it, looking forward to an article on a band I liked, only to not be able to make out half the words because the designer had done some weird thing in the design (like using backwards R’s or substituting 3’s for E’s). At a certain point, if the aim is to clearly transmit ideas, the look of something has to take the backseat to its content. After all, isn’t the old saying, “You can’t judge a book by its cover”? So I don’t really think you can judge a sentence by its font.
Now, I realize that these writers aren’t insisting that their books be published in these fonts, but the fetishism they show for them I find disturbing; I would hope they cared more about the words they were typing, rather than the font those words appeared in.
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Design is not the opposite of content; design is content - therefore it cannot take a “backseat to content.” You cannot divorce form from function, or the body from the soul. Written letters are pictures, and writers deal with making pictures using words. It’s perfectly valid to confront and acknowledge the disparities of language and the methods of communication.
I don’t think form and function should be divorced, but I only want them to be good friends. I feel that, like in a dance, someone has to lead. You’re either driven by design or by content. You look at a Rothko, but you read a menu. And if your menu becomes so stylized that people can’t read it, then it has failed (as least as a menu; then it goes on the wall next to, perhaps, a Rothko).
A few summers ago I was visiting friends at the Bonnier Group Agency in Stockholm when their Art Department delivered the placards that label all of the clocks in the agency, which reflect various time zones around the world(”New York,” “London,” “Tokyo” e.g.) The placards had been run in a modern-looking font that was originally designed to grace all of the signs in the stations of the Stockholm subway. Upon reading the Slate article and your blog today, I suddenly remembered how delighted we all were to unveil those placards, and what a thrill it was to learn about the font’s history. I would never read the biography of a particular font, but surely someone needs to keep track of all the best arcana? Especially in publishing? Just a thought.
Nice blog, btw.
Totally true, but we can’t mix up the New York Times and Times New Roman; one is, I really think, more important than the other. Because a sentence says something, and a font’s just waiting for something to say.