Type

My cousin, Joel, is talking about fonts again. He wrote an exposé on Times New Roman a while back, and I guess he's probably going to be looking at fonts for the rest of his life.

We all look at fonts (or type face) everyday, but very few of us actually look at them. They're part of the landscape, you could say. We ignore them like we ignore the chairs in the room. Yet both chairs and fonts are designed by someone. An actual human being deliberately created the appearance of most of the things we "see" around us.

I'd always half-looked at fonts. When creating handouts and things like that, the choice of fonts can make all the difference, but they were always just things you select on a computer - not really something you look at that closely. Then I worked for a sign writer for a few months (the poor man was probably grateful I was only on a short "contract", as I wasn't the best assistant in the world), and found myself literally surrounded by letters all day. Quite often, after stripping the old letters off a sign we were recycling/updating, I would find all sorts of errant letters stuck to my clothes. It was like being in one of those children's books that are designed to look like the letters have come loose and are tumbling all over the page...

The office walls were covered with posters illustrating different type faces. I would often find myself staring at them for a few minutes, looking at the difference in the swoop of the serifs between two fonts that were otherwise quite similar, or admiring the way a different font could create a completely different "feel" - especially once you coloured it.

My boss warned me that I'd be looking at signs for the rest of my life, and he was right. Even now, years later, I find myself looking at the signs themselves as much as I look at the information they convey.

Once you've really made that connection - once you've appreciated that this thing you're looking at doesn't just exist, it was deliberately designed by someone who intended it to look that way - well, you can't stop noticing it. You will always "see" it a little more clearly than you did before. Signs, fonts, chairs... Whether it's the pencil in your hand or the tin of asparagus sitting on your desk, it's all by design.

Look around,you may see something.