What does your font say about you?

In the same way that hand writing has been analyzed to reveal personality traits, the same theory is now being applied to a person's choice of font. I think this could be true. As someone who knows a little bit about typography, I would say that generally:

People who use serif are traditional, organized, smart, and professional.

    ...BUT they might be using Times New Roman simply because they didn't bother to change the font at all

People who use script fonts are stuffy. 

People who use sans serif are modern, trendy and youthful.

    ...BUT people who use Helvetica are probably just lazy, followers, inexperienced in typography, or trying to fake the youth that sans serif usually implies. 

People who use decorative fonts for more than one or two words are trying way too hard and are far more likely to be experiencing a mid life crisis than users of other fonts.

Now that I'm done with my slightly offensive and definitely biased generalizations, as I am personally a fan of serifed types and very open about my disdain for Hellvetica, here's some more.

I found this hilarious chart in an equally hilarious article linked below:

Fonts by Cracked.com

Danger of Digital

     While studying for my finals I was reminded again just how much of a difference hand writing makes for memorization. It's so much easier to memorize things when I write them out by hand. I tried creating study sheets on my laptop but they were completely unhelpful. I ended up copying my digital study sheet by hand to learn the material. With the world becoming so heavily digital I wonder what the effect will be on learning. Digital fonts are convenient but might also be harmful to our ability to learn.

Annotated Bibliography

This is a bibliography of the sources I used during this course. I have also made some comments about each source.

Annotated Bibliography

Typography Class

Fall 2010

1.  Barker, Nicolas. Stanley Morison. London: Macmillan London, LTD., 1972. Print.

This book was pretty dry, it was far too long and factual. Morison was an interesting guy, but not interesting enough to justify a book that’s over 500 pages long! I found this book in the rare book room and I have to say I’m not surprised that it stopped being printed and is now a rare book… Once sifted through, it was useful for factual information.

2.  Brewer, Roy. Eric Gill: The Man Who Loved Letters. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, 1973. Print.

This book provided useful and extensive information about Eric Gill’s life and work. It’s another book that I found in the rare book room. It was written before Gill’s diaries were published and therefore, the dark part of his life – the fact that he was a pedophile, a rapist, etc. etc. – was not discussed. Knowing what we know about Gill now, this book is horrifically out of date.

3.  Frampton, Kenneth. Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century. New York: Abrams, 2002. Print.

This is a beautiful book that celebrates the work of Le Corbusier. It shows his works from sketch to completion in full page, full color photos. It also gives interesting analysis and information about who Le Corbusier was and why he is such an important figure. I found Le Corbusier fascinating, and this book was by far the most enjoyable source I used in this project.

4.  Identifont.com

This isn’t the most traditional “academic source” but it has been extremely useful as a database for information about typefaces. You can search it’s database by designer, font name, font appearance, and font similarity. It has information about each font’s designer, creation, date, what fonts it was influenced by, what fonts it is similar to, what fonts it’s an influence on, where you can buy it and more. It has been extraordinarily useful.

5.  Lupton, Ellen. Thinking With Type. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. Pgs 34-43.

Lupton’s break down of the parts of type is helpful to a limited extent. Her chart is helpful in identifying and naming the parts of type but because Lupton neglects to define the parts of type, her illustration isn’t helpful in understanding the parts of type. The lack of definition also leaves some grey areas when one starts to learn more about the anatomy of type and starts trying to distinguish between similar pieces; for example it’s hard to distinguish between a bowl and a loop but because there are no definitions, it’s even harder. Lupton’s break down of type anatomy is very “bare bones” and doesn’t name very many pieces of type. Perhaps it’s to avoid the confusions that would require her to define the names.

6.  Moran, James. Stanley Morison: His Typographic Achievement. London: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited, 1971. Print.

This was a much better book about Stanley Morison than Barker’s book. It is under 200 pages and focuses on what Morison did in the world of Typography. The information about his professional accomplishments was a nice compliment to the biographical information I already had about Morison.

7.  Morison, Stanley. Type Designs of the Past and Present. London: The Fleuron, LTD., 1926. Print.

This was useful because it’s a first hand source. The book shows how passionate and educated Morison was about typography, especially historical type faces.

8.  “Morris, William / Artist Index / Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History / The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Metmuseum.org. Web. 1 October 2010. <www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/hi_morriswilliam.htm>.

I used this for pictures of William Morris’s works. I grew up three blocks from the Met Museum in New York City so I’ve also been many times. When I went back to New York, I went specifically to see the Morris works that I saw on the website in person. They were even more impressive in person than they are online. The detail is incredible.

9.  Toxel.com

This website has been a long time favorite of mine. It has the coolest new things on it that inspire me and spark my creativity. I first saw the typography maps that I wrote about on my blog on this website. I also chose this website to place my Meta web banner on.

10.  Withrington, Delve. “Review: An Essay On Typography.” Type Books: For the Well Read Typographer. 2002. Web. 1 October 2010. <www.typebooks.org/r-essay.htm>.

This review of Eric Gill’s book An Essay on Typography helped me to appreciate Eric Gill more. Before reading this, all I could see was Gill the pedophile; after reading this review, I was able to appreciate that he was talented and intelligent on an artistic level. The article his posted on a website that has many articles and reviews on typography books.

HELLvetica

Helvetica is a neutral type. Many would say that modern society is fairly neutral and compliant and so therefore, it would make sense that Helvetica has become so ubiquitous. When researching Meta I was relieved to realize that there are designers out there who craft new type faces with the express purpose of creating the anti-Helvetica. Helvetica needs to be put in its place, I'm sick of it! It's like a song that's amazing when you first hear it but gets played so many times on the radio that you swear your ears are going to bleed every time you hear it. Pop type faces - like pop songs - need to have heights of popularity and then gradually fade out to make room for a new type of the day. Helvetica is far past its prime, it's dead and rotting our copy! Time to bury it and move on to something new. Hallelujah!

Meta Font Research Project

For this project I researched the Meta font family. I then created a poster to exemplify the feeling and purpose of the font. Meta was created in the 90's as the antithesis to Helvetica. I say, thank goodness! I'm SO SO SO sick of Helvetica so I decided to celebrate the extinguishment of Helvetica in my poster by using letters in Meta font to create a man putting out a cigarette that says "helvetica" on it.

The poster shows the wide range within Meta's font family and details the history of its creation. I think this poster does Meta's creator, Erik Spiekermann, proud.  

Typography Maps by Dirk Schächter

(Below: Actual Map, For Comparison)

    These typography maps were designed by German designer, Dirk Schächter, and are available for sale on typomaps.net .
    They are very visually appealing and interesting. I like the different use of colors and appreciate the amount of time it must have taken to hand set the type. That's right - he set all this type by hand not on a computer. He's also done a fairly good job of representing the countries realistically, although he left some out to make it happen. How very German of him to decide which countries deserve to exist on the map and which ones don't... that was a low blow! Just a little dark WW2 humor. 
    What really disappoints me is that for such a cool and different idea, he chose to use Helvetica Neue Black Condensed? SERIOUSLY? It's just such an obvious font choice and is so ordinary and boring for such an inventive and cool piece of art and cartography. 
    It would have been fun to see a range of fonts used that reflected the cultures of the countries or regions. The map shows new ways to use typography and showing that different fonts could reflect the variations of cultures would add another layer of discovery. And even if Shachter wanted to keep with one font for the whole map, I would have liked to see a more unique choice. It would have put this work over the top and made it something really special. 
    As it is, set in Helvetica Neue font, I'm not planning to spend 49 euros aka $66.50 on it. But if you're a fan of Helvetica, then you probably think this is pretty dern nifty. Again the link is:
typomaps.net .

Where Are the Serifs?

Serifs are really simple but the choice to use them or not use them makes a big difference. I think serifs have fallen out of fashion because people think that the message is clearer and stronger when set in sans serif type. I just think that the message looks cheaper. Everything is set in sans serif these days so the message just blends in with everything else instead of being louder and more clear. I'm so sick of sans serif! Why is everything so dressed down these days? Can we get some class back in this world? In general, society needs to put more effort into presentation and thoughtfulness and unless there's a real reason to use sans serif, ads and logos need to dress up their message and get some serifs back!

(Collage from: blog.thomasjquinn.com )


Serifs look more formal, more established and more credible. I feel like the ubiquity of sans serif type is simple laziness. Don't just choose sans serif. If sans serif is right for the message then fine but THINK FIRST! I'm so tired of the jeans and sneakers helvetica type. Please BRING BACK THE SERIFS!

See? Doesn't that just feel better?