The lost typeface and love for an invisible art.

Good evening FIMFIction! Earlier tonight a good friend of mine shared a very intriguing article with me. He did so after I mention that I was currently reading Just My Type, a book about typography that is a fun synthesis of entry-level text, historical survey, and guide to what makes for good typography. It's a fairly slim volume, so it isn't exactly comprehensive, but it has some very intriguing tidbits (including the fact that the font Gill Sans was created by an Englishman who was...sexually experimental with his dog. Seriously). Anyway, upon telling my friend about the book, he recommended that I check out this Gizmodo article.

The Gorgeous Typeface That Drove Men Mad and Sparked a 100-Year Mystery

It's a great read. To summarize, almost 100 years ago an English printer tossed an entire typeface that he had created in to the river Thames to prevent it's co-owner from selling it to a mechanized printer. Recently, thanks to the efforts of some divers, the pieces of the typeface have been recovered, and it has been recreated and is available for purchase in digital form.

It's a fascinating story about an industry in flux, and the conflict between handcraft and mechanization.

The typeface itself is quite nice. I don't know if I will be getting it, but it is very cool.

Typography is one of those things that most people might be surprised to learn is a very intricate practice with a long history. Most of the time it isn't noticed, which is arguably what good typography aims for. It shouldn't stand out. It should be subtle. A work of amazing typography should only be apparent to the trained eye and upon somewhat close inspection (though once you get in the habit of looking for good typography, you start noticing it more and more, with less and less effort).

I'm personally inclined towards modernist typography. The Swiss/International style, for instance, which is what inspired my previously posted pony typography posters.

Here is a decent introduction to the Swiss style;

Lessons From Swiss Style Graphic Design

While it's about graphic design in general, you can see how much the Swiss style relies on typography. In almost every case, sans-serif modernist typography. Grids, clean lines, decisive use of color, abstraction, and contrast are all pivotal to this approach.

This specific piece, the cover of Penrose Annual, is what inspired the pony typography posters. So much so that I still think it looks too similar, even if it is an homage of sorts. I may go back and rework those images so that they look less similar.

Also notable in the history of typography is the Bauhaus art movement, which was incredibly important to art and design.

Bauhaus typography is interesting, although not quite as clean, rational, and tranquil as the Swiss style which (more or less) followed it.

Circling back to the book, it details all kinds of cool bits of trivia, some of which I already knew, such as the history of the hated font Comic Sans. A short history of typography in relation to the Gutenberg printing press is also outlined. The importance of Steve Jobs and Apple computers to typography is another subject (and the relation is pretty revolutionary). Chances are I will blog about this some more as I read further.

For a long time I've been in a mindset where I quickly evaluate the typography around me. It's kind of fun picking out familiar fonts, or analyzing whether something works or does not. A good deal of typography is not great, or terrible. It's merely utilitarian. It works perfectly well for its purpose, even if it isn't great.

I like the idea of these layers around us that are concrete, but unnoticed. Things that just blend in to the background, even though they embody a great deal of work and a rich world of their own. Most of our designed and built environment is like this. People rarely think of all the intricate work that goes in to a building, or the graphic arts and typography that do their part to communicate its purpose, or (in the case of a store) the industrial design work that made the products inside possible. On one level we obviously know that all of those things were created by humans, but we don't always appreciate what that means. Every object, every representation, every created thing has its own story, in a sense. It's kind of overwhelming, really, to think about that. At least it is if you're willing to take a moment and consider the breadth of each story.

Perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing, at least to an extent.

Anyway, enough of this meandering, fanciful talk. I'll bring this blog to a close now. But I do expect to be discussing these and related topics in the future.