Joe's Reviews > Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield peeks behind a number of fonts on our PC or Mac dropdown menus to explore what they're been used and misused for, with some terrific history about the art of typesetting as well as controversies that have arisen--as they often do--between geeks who are hyperfocused on a subject a lot of us take for granted. I learned things I never knew I wanted to about type. Typeface is a particular alphabet and its accessories, while a font is a particular set of glyphs within that typeface. Helvetica is a typeface, while 12 point Helvetica or 10 point Helvetica are fonts. Don't you feel hipper already? I can feel a goatee growing while I type this.

-- In an office, somewhere in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Steve Carell is chairing a meeting, Rainn Wilson is shredding paper, John Krasinski is on the phone and Jenna Fischer is looking resentful. We are, of course, at Dunder Mifflin, the paper-supply company at the heart of The Office. The credits roll, the music plays, and when the title of the show comes up in white text on a black background, there is only one typeface that will do the trick: Helvetica. It's clear, it's bold, it sits there like every other sign you barely glance at. For this is a place you've been to before, a place you'll fit right in. It's probably an office you've worked in yourself, a place of awful recognition.



-- As Obama's presidential bid gained momentum, Frere-Jones received nice emails from friends wondering whether he had seen his work employed in this important way. Gary Hustwit, the director of the Helvetica movie, sent him a picture of Obama, microphone in hand, standing in front of a banner that read, all in capitals, "CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN." In the next year, all the dynamic Obama watchwords--CHANGE, HOPE, YES WE CAN--would appear in these simple sans serif letters, notable for their solidity and durability. They also had a unremarkability and inoffensability--a type consciously chosen to suggest forward thinking without frightening the horses. Gotham replaced the Obama team's original choice Gill Sans, which was discarded as too staid and inflexible (Gotham was available in more than forty varities, Gill Sans in fifteen).

"Great choice," observed Alice Rawsthorn in the New York TImes. "No typeface could seem better suited to a dynamic, yet conscientious, American public servant." Rawsthorn also detected "a potent, if unspoken, combination of contemporary sophistication (a nod to his suits) with nostalgia for America's past and a sense of duty."



-- Mention your admiration of Univers--or even Helvetica--to a font enthusiast and he or she is quite likely to respond by talking about Frutiger. Frutiger is the typeface that many typographers believe is the finest ever made for signs and directions. And the reason Frutiger is better than Adrian Frutiger's previous exceptional sans serif, Univers? Because Univers, although a milestone in font design, can be a little rigid and strict; a Univers lower-case e is almost a circle with a cut in it, both precise and scary. Whereas Frutiger is perfect.



-- Still, after all these years, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is a pangram, a phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, and it endues, like the Alphabet Song in Sesame Street, for the simple reason that the phrase is rare, and no one has yet been able to think of a better one. As such, it is instantly familiar to anyone in the type world--a "display phrase" that will allow you to put a font through its paces, check there's nothing untoward.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is not a perfect pangram, because it repeats letters. The truly perfect pangram would contain all the letters of the alphabet in the right order, but the only thing that achieves that is the alphabet. There are phrases that use fewer characters, but they are not as catchy. Here are two of the shortest:

Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim.

Sphinx of black quartz juge my vow.

And here a couple that make a kind of sense:

Zany eskimo craves fixed job with quilting party.

Playing jazz vibe chords quickly excites my wife.

-- The most enduring modern American font--and the most likely to appear on our computer drop-down menus--is Franklin Gothic, a typeface named after Benjamin Franklin and first published in 1905. This was a sans serif face before the style became the rage in England through Johnston and Gill. The American definition of gothic is not the same as the European one: it may be a heavy type, but it has no connection with scribes or the German blackletter. Nor with heavy metal bands.

It was made by Morris Fuller Benton, a young star at ATF who created a family of fonts that remain ever present in newspapers and magazines. His Franklin Gothic font had its roots in the German Akzidenz Grotesk, and has survived all manner of fashionable and faddish political pressures. It is not geometric or mathematical or futuristic; it is wide and squat and sure of itself, a slightly less refined form of Univers. It was the closest American type would get to Swiss type, and it was the type that finally threw off the straightjacket of Englishness. Things "All-American" have a habit of using Franklin Gothic to press their case, be it the title on the Rocky films or the block capitals on Lady Gaga's album THE FAME MONSTER.



-- Often it's just better to be apart and extreme. Amy Winehouse's debut album Frank featured her name in a sharp angular sans serif that overlapped the title. But her diva image was far better suited to the glamour of the 1930s deco lettering on her follow-up Back To Black. This custom-made type has fine Gill Sans-style capitals at its root, fattened up by a barcode of vertical stripes and bookended by another thicker line. The letters are loaded with historical significance, but the precise pedigree is hazy: an Atlantic ocean liner perhaps, or a poster announcing a new Gershwin show.

The Back To Black font has notable antecedents: the Atlas face designed by KH Schaefer and issued by Francaise type foundry in 1933 (also known as Fatima), and Ondina, designed by K Kranke for the Schriftguss foundry in 1935. It works for Winehouse not just because it reflects her voice, which is something from a former and smokier age, but because it's a shortcut to brand recognition. You need just see the A to recognize the product, the way you just need the long T to recognize the Beatles.





-- The best font for a love letter? Ideally something affectionate with big round Os, but you might also consider an italicized font such as Humana Serif Light which alludes to old-fashioned scribes and may possess "a softening emotional quality, as if the writer is leaning over to talk personally to the reader." But beware: "Implementing such fonts may also serve as an aid to romantic deception."

And what, should one use to end a relationship? "For clarity without harshness," the doctor prescribes plain old Times Roman. "To let them down softly, italicized fonts can be employed. However, the user may unwittingly give the reader false hope. Verdana or Hoefler Text may have a lighter, optimistic yet respectful feel to it. For those who won't take no for an answer, Courier or the more rigid technical fonts indicate there's no room for interpretation, no going back."

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts is snappy and highly readable. Garfield doesn't declare what a "good" or "bad" font is, taking a journalistic approach of letting others plead their case for why Comic Sans is so hated or Helvetica has endured. Type designers are compared to dressmakers, type as couture, with some fonts no more practical than certain runway fashions. As with fashion, there is a place for type that is expressive or pretty to glance at, if nothing more. It really comes down to what the user wants to communicate.