Just My Type

A book for the general reader about fonts.  Who’da thunk it?

‘Just My Type’ by Simon Garfield opened my eyes and mind to font design and use.  Yes, it’s more than I ever wanted to know about typeface.  You might find yourself skimming through some of the more detailed history, but for the most part the writing is hip and the subject matter interesting.  Here are some of my own conclusions.  Anyone who’s worked even casually in the world of graphic design will probably react with a resounding ‘Duhhhhhh!’.  Nonetheless:

-          Font choice is yet another resource available to us for expression.  Fonts do influence the way we read and the way we interpret what we read.

-          It’s fascinating to look at our modern world through the prism of fonts.  Look around you and notice the fonts that are used in print material, online, on public signage.  Some choices are perfect; others downright offensive.  It’s fun to notice.

-          To some extent fonts reflect historical and artistic trends.

-          Readability is partly objective, but not entirely.  We learn to read what’s put in front of us.  We grow accustomed to the fonts we see most often, and they can become optimally readable, no matter what the objective criteria might indicate.

-          Font choice changes over time, and not just because the times change.  Also because we just plain get bored.  Even if a font is perfect for its time, sooner or later it will fall out of favor simply because we’re bored with it and we fail to notice it.

Maybe the book could have been a third shorter, but I don’t regret the time spent reading it.  As you would expect, the fonts being discussed are actually used in the book, so as a reader you get to experience the font in context.  Not sure how the E-book version works.  E-readers generally present text in a uniform font chosen by the device.  Some offer a limited choice of fonts.  But in this book the variation of fonts is crucial.  Maybe the E-book is presented as a series of images?  If not, this is one case where hard-copy is essential.

What’s next?  A book about the history of book binding?  It probably already exists.  For now, I’ll happily return to reading fiction, but maybe I’ll bring to it a new awareness of the influence that the shape of the letters on the page is having on my reading experience.