A font of knowledge

Garfield, Simon. Just My Type: A Book About Fonts. New York: Gotham Books, 2011.

Blogger offers seven fonts:

• Arial, for a blog post that should remind you of work
• Courier, in case you are a typewriter person at heart
• Times (the default), for that traditional serif feel
• Georgia, designed "as a modern take on ... Times New Roman"
• Helvetica, one of the most popular fonts in the world (e.g., New York subway signs) and the title of a movie about fonts (oh, no, there isn't just a book)
• Trebuchet, created by the person who gave us the much-maligned Comic Sans--and is apparently a choice font for helping dyslexic children to read
• Verdana, the font that caused a stir when IKEA changed all of its signs in their SMOLSVIK-y glory to it from Futura

I was, of course, spurred to tell you that after finishing Just My Type, probably the most interesting boring book I've read in a while. It was fun to see and learn about the fonts we find in daily life, like American Typewriter on DVDs of The Office and Cooper Black on the side of an easyJet. I liked learning that there's another thing movie (and font) purists can complain about: fonts that hadn't been invented yet at the time the movie is set. And who knew that there were real font-designing people behind names like Caslon and Zapf?

Luckily, I can comfortably forget most of this stuff after having been amused once, since a key point in the book is that the best fonts are those that just work and don't make you pay attention. NO NEED TO SHOUT!

Rating: **