We font fans go window shopping in an entirely different
way, stumbling into street furniture as we go. Like maps,
fonts do not always tell the truth; they may make us feel
warmer towards a product by association, quickening
our desires by stirring our memories. At 225 Smith Street
we encounter Smith + Butler, a swinging tavern sign in
a curious blend of German blackletter and Wild West
wanted poster. The sign has all sorts of weirdness going on,
including a crescent shape over the i, where normally a dot
would go. The letters look as if they have been carved by
an apprentice stonemason on his first (and probably last)
day. The sign wants us to believe that the store - which
sells home furnishings and classic utility clothing leaning
towards biker chic - has been in this neighborhood for a
while. Its owners speak of how the shop's mood 'reflects
the early 1900s corner carriage house, the 1940s butcher
shop and the 1960s local pharmacy'. But shopfitters
are really setbuilders, and the type on the signs is not
actually fifteenth-century Gutenburg or nineteenth-century
Wyoming, but something stenciled in 2008, when the
place opened.
In Manhattan, we can stroll into the reassuring chaos
of the Strand Bookstore on Twelfth Street and Broadway,
and find that their popular T-shirts and mugs ('18 Miles
of Books') are in Helvetica. But you will find no better
example of the diversity of type than by touring the
tables and stacks. The text choices favour the digitized
traditionals, the Bembos and Baskervilles and Times New
Romans, but the jackets display the full roster, the fluid
scripts for those intimate heartrending memoirs, the
all-lower-case for the comic novels, the no-nonsense bold
capitals for the business books, the wimpy scrawls for the
children's stuff. Of course you can judge a book by its
cover; moreover, we are obliged to.
A walk a couple of miles north to the Museum of
Modern Art will be rewarded with a small exhibition
devoted to posters and type on the London Underground,
a design from the beginning of the twentieth century that
was influential in setting a modernist tone throughout
Europe. Edward Johnston's
font, with its
exceptional clarity and magical diamond dot on the i,
has helped millions of travelers find their way around
the capital. But trying to get close to it during its run at
MoMA was a task, such was the interest and so eager
were the crowds.
So I think we live in healthy typographical times. Steve
Jobs and his digital rivals have brought about a world in
which we are all masters of our type, and one in which we
are more aware of fonts - their names, their design, their
pedigrees - than ever before.
The modest purpose of this book, beyond entertainment
and elucidation, is to extend this awareness and to celebrate
our relationship with letters. Things we take for granted
may disappear without our knowing; things we treasure
should not pass without commemoration.
Excerpted from Just My Type by Simon Garfield. Copyright (c) 2011 by Simon Garfield. Reprinted by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
Full Story
