Being a relatively new member of the MyFonts team, I’ve given a lot of thinking lately to the topic of typography as it relates to the “uneducated” designer and popular public taste.
Many, many years ago, when I learned that there was a difference between the “dumb” (ambidextrous) quotes, left behind from the era of the typewriter, and “smart” quotes, I reveled in the position I had acquired amongst those in the know. I could scoff at poor typesetting at the local convenience store or feel smart, passing the new-found knowledge on to my fellow high school classmates. I had climbed up one rung on the social ladder of typography.
Years later, in college, I was sitting in a dark room watching a presentation by one of my professors for a typography class. I was excited to learn some new techniques or be presented a different take on an existing typographic rule. Instead, I found myself somewhat discouraged to find that the majority of the presentation wasn’t much more than a slideshow of the same incorrect use of quotation marks over and over. It was a humorous and entertaining presentation, but when I reviewed my notes afterwards all I found was doodles.
Skip ahead again, this time to the 2005 AIGA National Design Conference. Again I was sitting in a dark room, excited for a stimulating presentation from design guru Ellen Lupton. Ellen had been a teacher of mine in the past, and was phenomenal, plus I enjoy her writing, so naturally I was excited. Again, however, I was somewhat disappointed when a large part of the presentation consisted of every designer in attendance chuckling at examples of naïve typography (the presentation is available for download here).
That’s when it hit me. I looked around the room at all the giggling designers and pondered the fact that, since I was at the conference as a student, I had to watch the presentation remotely on a projection screen in a different room. I was looking up the social design ladder to see an image of the people at the top rung looking down and laughing at the ignorant amateurs who were all the way at the bottom.
Having said all that, I must confess that I am guilty of scoffing. Not so much at naïvety, but more often at things which were considered, but in bad taste (in my opinion). To my dread it always seems to be the things of bad taste which become popular: reality TV, pop music, Thomas Kinkade… the list goes on.
In fact, while in a teleconference the other day, I found a statement my co-worker pointed out to be so true that I wrote it down in my notebook:
The public has appalling taste.
I could not agree more.
The typographic world is not immune to this either. Typefaces pour out endlessly from the desktops of amateur designers who were able to get a pirated copy of FontLab or Fontographer. A majority of them are bound to be horrid and garish to the eyes of a seasoned typophile. Even professional typeface designers often have to look on in horror as the least favorite of their own designs are repeatedly chosen over their most prided work.
But who’s to say what should or shouldn’t be used? What makes the effort to Ban Comic Sans all that different from the Nazi condemnation and banning of certain lettering styles?
Ok, maybe that’s pushing it. But it is worth the thought of whether or not you would support an outright ban of a typeface if it ever was a possibility. (By the way, I do hate Comic Sans. I’m not just defending it because it’s used above the search bar on MyFonts.)
Several days after writing down my co-worker’s statement about the public’s taste (or lack thereof), I came across a quote attributed to Pablo Picasso:
Good taste kills creativity.
I wrote that one down too.
There are several things about MyFonts that offset the horror of seeing Comic Sans on every single page. One of them is the fact that, even if scoffing goes on behind closed doors, every font has an equal chance at success. This fact encourages experimentation (I think), which in turn produces a lot of unpleasant typography. BUT (and that’s a big but), the pot is constantly being stirred. Stagnation subsides and more interesting things happen at a higher frequency.
I’m not quite willing to go as far as signing my name in blood on the post typographic manifesto, but I don’t think non-traditional or even ugly typography should be discouraged.
It is my opinion that no creative endeavor is entirely worthless. Even with the distasteful or “incorrect,” we learn. With so many of these horrors of creation we are presented with questions—intentional or not—that may lead the way to improvements in existing traditions. Indeed, Victor Frankenstein’s Monster taught him more about life than any of his aristocratic friends could have. Let’s not kill ourselves as he did, trying to stamp out our unpleasant creations.
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Related links:
- On the Democratization of Type by Gunnar Swanson
- The Antiqua-Fraktur Dispute on Wikipedia
- Typography of the Nineties by Peter Bilak
- The “New” New Typography by Joseph DiGioia
- Post Typographic Manifesto
- The Curse of Comic Sans by Jessica Helfand
July 25, 2006 at 1:06 pm |
We all have our typographic predjudices. The problem comes when we remember the goal of typography — clear communication (knowing that the double-dash will offend many).
One of the ways we demonstrate our professionalism is our ability to design and set type that is so easily read that no one ever notices the type.
Dumb quotes, double hyphens, proportionally reduced small caps, and many other things are rarely noticed by uneducated readers — but I am convinced they have an unsettling feeling that they are reading a non-professional piece of work.
The bad type just makes mine look better. But sometimes it is a good thing. Like poorly done, hand-scrawled garage sale signs: sometimes the poor type makes the reader feel that they have gotten in on something cheap. That can be a good thing, clearly communicating one of the benefits of the client’s offerings.
my 2cents — David
July 25, 2006 at 2:10 pm |
I have read plenty of similar ponderings about the democracy of computer-produced type and graphic design, and I have discussed it with many people over the years. Some people approach the issue with a lot of passion, which can be a bit much. I don’t think it’s strange that a designer, whether a beginner or an expert, scoffs at the way lay people approach the field. It happens in other fields too. It is like the experienced real estate agent scoffing at the person who wants to sell her house on her own, or like the car mechanic who scoffs at the way I change my own car’s oil. I do, however, think scoffing at the lay people is born of misunderstanding and maybe impatience. While we as designers have earned our knowledge and aesthetic senses through the years, most people haven’t reached that far. I scoff too sometimes, but I try to keep it to myself, for fear of sounding off as someone who thinks she is better than others just because I happen to be ahead in the design field race at this point in time. I try to remind myself that I’m quite outnumbered computer user-wise, and it’s not likely things will change in the future. I’ve spoken to people who used to make film type, and typeset using same. The majority of them harbored then the same laments we have today. I would guess that typographers during the less-populated and less-”overmessaged” metal type days had similar misgivings about the occasional work of “outsiders” as well.
Perhaps I am oversimplifying the issue in order to avoid delving too deep into it. Graphic design is after all one of those most subjective fields, lodged between art and practicality, with theories about simplicity versus complexity that can easily overwhelm. It’s a long and confusing maze between Rand and Carson. Design is not like straight forward practical professions, where a particular prescription can take care of a certain condition, or where replacing a defective chip can get the television set working again.
While I agree to a large extent with what seems to be a designer concensus today — that fonts shipping with operating systems are made distasteful by overuse, that most computer users can bear reading a book or two about information design or typography, I honestly haven’t seen any proposed viable solutions to what we perceive as an “ignorant masses” or “craft being ravaged by technology” problem. I have read many designer and experienced software user essays and manifestos, and to my mind they all amounted to little more than internal field quarrels about how we work, who our clients are, and the varying levels of aesthetic or compensation standards we have. One train of thought I haven’t seen is one reaching the conclusion that in this day and age of computers in every school and home, it seems elementary that basic design should be standard education issue. Perhaps this is a worthy lobby — at least one I would support with all my heart.
We can also start with our own children and their schools. My ten year old son is already quite aware of design as an important means of expression, and sometimes he surprises me with the things he notices while we conduct our daily routine.
July 26, 2006 at 9:15 am |
Great discussion!
A story: In the late 1980’s I desired to be a developer for Steve Job’s NeXT Computer company. The application was tediously long, but the last page had a 3.5 x 2 inch rectangle labeled “Staple business card here.” Knowing of Mr. Job’s reputed design sense, I flashed that the previous pages meant little and the design and typography of the business card meant much. Confident in the design “chops” of my card, I was not surprised to be admitted into the core fraternity of NeXT developers.
Fast forward to the design ambiance of today’s Apple stores, the various incarnations of the Apple iPod, and the elegant new MacBook. The good news: there are beacons in the design world; the bad news: every new generation of designers still must “apprentice.” To that end, I heartily recommend this revised version of a decades-old classic book entitled Editing by Design by Jan V. Wright.
Enjoy!
July 28, 2006 at 11:18 am |
From Rebecca above:
“I honestly haven’t seen any proposed viable solutions to what we perceive as an “ignorant masses” or “craft being ravaged by technology” problem.”
A possible answer:
In the continual online battle between form and function I see a small glimer of hope in sIFR..
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2004/08/sifr
My hope is based on the ability of the search engines to read this type as “type” rather than “artwork.”
“The knee-jerk reaction of some people whenever they see Flash is that it must be inaccessible because it’s Flash. What we’ve done with sIFR, however, is turn that model completely on its head. Your (X)HTML document is still the exact same document it was before sIFR kicked in. Your code is untouched and sIFR is completely abstracted to the javascript layer; therefore, your accessibility, your search engine friendliness, and your semantics are the same as they were before the day you decided you like nice fonts.”
It’s my guess that this is perhaps one of the more compelling reasons Adobe purchased Macromedia (Flash software).
November 2, 2006 at 3:05 pm |
Nick, you are right that I get a lot of chuckles from poking fun at bad typography. I am also a huge fan, as you know, of the democratization of design and the dissemination of typographic tools and knowledge. In launching my crusade to make the world safe for typography, I have tried to convey a bit of self-irony concerning dumb quotes as a global threat. The real goal, in my view, is to encourage everyone at every level to enage in better-quality typography. Yes, this means avoiding dumb quotes and Comic Sans. We can help people avoid these temptations by demonstrating through our actions that there are better alternatives.
To make typography more democratic does not mean to dumb it down. The best service we can provide to “the masses” and to the ongoing typographic culture is to expand access to typographic thinking without diminishing quality. Impossible? Perhaps. Yet this is the standard towards which we must strive.
June 22, 2007 at 12:32 pm |
I am NOT a professional designer. I’ve always wondered why I detested Comic Sans. I just thought it was an odd eccentricity on my part. I know a lot of people who use it, probably because it’s a mini-rebellion against corporate America (and Times New Roman).
I’ve loved Georgia from the moment I first saw it, and wish people would use it more. But so few people can tell the difference between one font and the next. I explain endlessly to my employees the difference between serif and sans-serif, and why you should use one for blocks of text and the other for titles. They look at me like I’m insane.
I also hate text that has been both right and left justified — like this blog. What gives? Isn’t this ne kulturny for professional designers?
January 24, 2008 at 12:04 am |
You just demonstrated how even when attempting a vague, apologetic populism, type designers come off like elitist anal-retentives.
Taste is a consensus judgment and completely culturally relative. Good taste and bad taste are only useful in as much as they’re class signifiers; beyond that, judgments seem pretty much arbitrary.
Oh, designers love to appeal to utility and function, but trust me, those appeals are largely bogus.
You designers need to start fucking the rules. It’s like fucking with language. Think about what you’re saying with design.
January 7, 2009 at 2:42 am |
By “dumb quotes” you probably refer to ASCII 34. Well, when I’m doing web stuff, I’ll always stick to a single principle: use ASCII, except for national characters; only then use some extended charset. “Smart” quotes are not national chars, and any use of extended chars limits accessibility and generally makes stuff more complicated. Not to mention experience in game dev.
This reasoning of mine made me grow annoyed at ANY use of smart quotes.