![]() ![]() Frutiger has been used so much for signage programs in hospitals and airports that seeing it now makes me feel that I'm about to get diagnosed with a brain tumor or miss the 7:00 to O'Hare. Careful, though: some typefaces work too well. I've specified exotic fonts for identity programs that work beautifully in headlines and even in text, but sooner or later you have to set that really tiny type at the bottom of the business reply card. Some typefaces are just perfect for certain things. Those thousands of typefaces are still out there, but my recovery has required that I become more discriminating and come up with some answers to this seemingly simple question: why choose a particular typeface? Here are thirteen reasons. I have since, I think, learned to modulate my behavior - like any substance abuser, I learned that binges are time-consuming, costly, and ultimately counterproductive - but I've never gone back to five-typeface sobriety. Liberated from monogamy, I became typographically promiscuous. ![]() "You've become a real slut, haven't you?" It was true. "Jesus," she said, looking at one of my multiple font demolition derbies. She remembered classmates who had switched to public school after eight years under the nuns: freed at last from demure plaid uniforms, they wore the shortest skirts they could find. ![]() My wife, who had attended Catholic school herself, found this all too familiar. On one of my first projects, I used 37 different fonts on 16 pages. Suddenly I could use any typeface I wanted, and I went nuts. Then, after a decade, I left my first job. 3 and never think about it again? My Catholic school education must have well prepared me for this kind of moral clarity. 3 every time you needed a Venetian Roman? For most people - my mom, for instance - these were distinctions without differences. Why spend hours choosing between Bembo, Sabon and Garamond No. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest." For me, it became a time-saving device. "In the new computer age," he once wrote, "the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. For Massimo, this was an ideological choice, an ethical imperative. 3, Century Expanded, and, of course, Bodoni. Between 19, most of my projects were set in five fonts: Helvetica ( naturally), Futura, Garamond No. For the first ten years of my career, I worked for Massimo Vignelli, a designer who is legendary for using a very limited number of typefaces. ![]()
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