Just My Type

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.

Here are some random bits of information that I am pulling out, mostly so that I have them someplace I can get back to them.

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).