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.
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Posted by Nick Sherman
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