One the advantages of being
comfortable with my nerdom is that I freely pick up books like Just My Type:
A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield.
It is a strange book that
combines opinionated musing on the effects of particular fonts, bits of
history, some outrageous puns, and odd stories. There's lots of stuff on cities picking different fonts for
street signs and labeling public transportation. I have to say, it has made me notice once far more than I
otherwise would have.
There is actually a
tongue-in-cheek movement to ban Comic Sans (pages 17-18).
In 2007 a woman named Vicki
Walker from New Zealand was fired for sending e-mail in ALL CAPS. She later won her lawsuit, claiming that had
been unfair, and was awarded $17,000 (22-24).
Even though fonts can
be time-consuming and therefore expensive to design, it has proven difficult to
establish intellectual property rights over them (225). If lettering is your passion, you might not
want to make it a career….
"It is believed Gutenberg cast almost 300
different letterforms for his two-volume 1,282-page Bible of 1454-55."
Only 48 copies of Gutenberg Bibles to survive, and very few of them are
complete (28-31).
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