As I am marrying a media-savvy journalist, this is really something I should have thought of before. The “IMPACT” (this is a pun by the way, and If you are laughing, you are indeed a nerd of high caliber; I applaud you) of font on our culture and even our personal identity is undeniable. I remember being in the 7th grade and agonizing over the font I would use with my instant messenger. After a long struggle I finally settled for Comic Sans as I thought it would show my quirky sense of humor. We’ve all done this. We have all sat down with a grunt and labored over picking a type-face which somehow represents our message, our tone and ultimately ourselves.
Rambling aside, I found this article very interesting. I hope you do as well.
From: The Man in Blue
Cameron Adams
Hit pause for a moment and consider how greatly we – people in the digital age – are indebted to typographers. Almost all of our visual communication is delivered using the products of their craft: newspapers, SMSes, instant messages, emails, web pages, signs, posters, billboards; the list of purposes is endless.
In these days where looping strokes have been replaced by keyboard clickety-clack, typographers define the style and tone of our missives. Would you like to be elegant, modern, childish or … disturbed? Then you can choose between Garamond, Montag, Comic Sans, Zebraflesh, and a thousand more.
There’s great power in a typeface, but what’s always interested me more than the typeface is the designer behind it – why did they create the typeface? Where did their inspiration come from? How did they start?
Lately, I’ve been asking just one question, though. Something which has always intrigued me: these people that help us communicate … how do they themselves communicate?
