Monday, May 19, 2014

Font Matters...

More font odd info from an obsessive and curiously engaging book I snagged at the library a while back.  Reading this book makes me wish this blog had more than seven font options!

The Nazis originally legislated that the proper German font was the old Gothic kind, with all the curly cues.  One slogan read: "Feel German, think German, speak German, be German, even in your script."  One type designer, Paul Renner, was arrested, in part for protesting the arrest of a teaching colleague and in part for a lecture he gave on the history of letterforms.  Later, however, the Nazis changed their tune and declared that Gothic script was Jewish because they were unable to get a hold of it in their newly conquered territories and had to use Roman style fonts for their propaganda (pages 190-191).  Paul Renner is still known today for designing the font Futura.  Per Wikipedia, he did survive the war, dying in 1956.


~ From Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield.

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