Re: Typographic Overload; or, “Do we really need more fonts?”

I just read a piece in the current issue of Computer Arts magazine by Jason Arber of pixelsurgeon.com about what he calls “typographic overload”.

He has a theory that “there exists an international cabal of typographers with a secret agenda to stop honest designers like you and me from doing our jobs, by clogging up our already buzzing heads with a myriad of [font] choices”.

According to his theory, the evil font designers of the world are trying to hold him back from his job by forcing him to wade through thousands of font samples for hours and hours. And he wants it to stop: “Let’s draw a line in the sand and send a message to these evil purveyors of type, telling them that we have enough fonts…”

He reassures himself by debunking the necessity for new typefaces: “Surely we have enough fonts by now. Do we really need another version of Garamond, another clean sans serif, another pixel font, or another handwritten font, for crying out loud?”

(Ironically enough, there is an article 8 pages later in the magazine featuring the type designer Gerben Dollen and his new font, RES.)

To answer Mr Arber and the rest of the people who have and will ever ask if we really need more fonts:

Yes yes yes yes yes! In fact, I would say we need more (bring ‘em on)!

As long as there are new design problems, there should always be new design answers. In many cases, the answer includes a new font! Even when there aren’t new problems, there are surely always better ways to approach the old ones.

Compare fonts with cars, for instance (I love comparing fonts with other things). The problems of driving from Point A to Point B have changed very little in the past 50 years, but you don’t see automobile manufacturers ceasing to innovate on existing standards, do you? Classic cars are always cool (I drive one myself), but for those who require such things, modern cars make use of new technologies, are much more efficient, comfortable (though that’s arguable), and relevant to current styles. The same goes with fonts.

But I rest my case. It is clear that Mr Arber’s article was written with a tone of sarcasm and sensationalist humor, and I don’t want anyone to think I took him too seriously. Regardless: stagnation of new font designs is not the solution to regaining the hours lost in your font searches.

MY theory (for what it’s worth) is that we don’t need less fonts; what we need is a better means by which to FIND our fonts. The problem doesn’t lie in the constant innovation of typefaces, but in the lack of innovation in the tools we use to find them.

The next time I see a list of fonts arbitrarily sorted alphabetically, I am going to puke up a huge ball of the dust that’s been forced down my throat ever since I started looking at type specimens! If I don’t know the name of the font that’s sitting there waiting to be the perfect solution to my design problem, how the hell am I going to know that it’s name starts with a T?! By wasting my time with everything from A–S? And even then, how will I know that U–Z doesn’t have a better solution?

When was the last time you chose to read a book because its title began with a C?

Even if fonts are sorted by their concrete formal qualities or historical design information (both of which can be helpful sorting methods), I am limited to what I THINK I want. If there’s a better solution to my problem that exists outside of my pre-conceived set of guesstimated guidelines, then I want to see it!

I think it’s time for us to embrace this amazing thing called “digital technology” and use it to our sorry font-needing advantage. Dynamic sorting systems that utilize qualitative keywords and other detailed tags are much more likely to return relevant results than the antiquated systems our forefathers used to browse their limited physical libraries hundreds of years ago. Those methods worked fine when people had a few dozen fonts at their immediate disposal, but designers nowadays (as Mr Arden points out) have tens—maybe hundreds—of thousands of choices.

I thought hard about this topic for my graphic design senior degree project at MassArt, and continue to do so now in my work at MyFonts. Given that, I’m probably a bit more worked up about this subject than most people. However, that’s still no excuse to make already sleepless designers wade through endless lists to find what they need. People shouldn’t have to find fonts, the fonts should find the people.

TypeCon 2006

TypeCon has come to an end. The week was extremely interesting, especially for a first-timer like myself.

I won’t go on forever detailing every session and social event, but suffice to say that I am very glad to be a part of such a great group of people that make up the type community. To be totally honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when interacting with people from other companies who might be considered “the competition”, but I quickly learned that most everyone on the scene seems to be more of a family than anything. Everyone is related somehow, and the majority of people seem to focus more on a love for typography than anything else (either that or I’m just happily naïve).

I’m sure there were all kinds of business talks going on behind the scenes but, as a designer, I was glad to find most of the events and conversations focusing on the art of type more than anything else (ie, the fun stuff!).

The materials I designed for MyFonts seemed to go over well. For those of you who attended and took some of the buttons, but weren’t sure if you got the full set, I’m including an image of all 13 designs here:

I also set up an album on MyFonts of all the fonts I used for the buttons.

Similarly, I’ll include a photo of our tablecloth. We had a contest going to see if anyone could identify every font in the alphabet, but as of now we have still not met anyone who can ID all 26 (so far, Stephen Coles from FontShop and Typographica has come the closest). Feel free to give it a shot yourself… a helpful hint is that each font name begins with that letter of the alphabet (eg, “C” is for “Clarendon”).

I’ll end by saying that the final event at the Museum of Printing was the perfect way to close the week. Hearing Larry Oppenberg and Mike Parker talk about Chauncey Griffith and his contributions to the Mergenthaler Linotype library, and then flipping through all the actual drawings (some older than 80 years!) in person was quite an experience.

Hearing old anecdotes from Howard Hansen was priceless, and it will certainly be hard to top the reaction from John Collins (my boss) when he unexpectedly ran into an archaic (and bright pink!) “MVP” peripheral that he built decades ago to run the Mergenthaler “VIP” photo-typesetter.

In case you haven’t done so already, I will direct you to become a member of the museum so that more people will be able to experience stuff like this in the future.

Looking forward to next year’s TypeCon in Seattle!

Let them eat Comic Sans: Typographic aristocracy & democratization

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.

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