FRIDAY SURPRISE: It's the little things that make life pleasant

Friday, January 25, 2008 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Completely irrelevant, Personal opinions
One of the reasons I hate the very concept of reading books online is because of the typefaces involved. (In fact, that's one of the saddest parts of the entire online experience.) There are only a handful that will reproduce distinctively on a website, and if you're using a Windows PC (as opposed to a Mac) that number is cut in half (due to the way Microsoft renders type.) Even such niceties as italics and boldface are substandard - or non-existent - when getting words through the 'net.

(A typeface, BTW, is a family of type; a "font" is a specific style within that typeface. For instance, Arial is a typeface consisting of the fonts Arial Regular, Arial Bold, Arial Italic, etc.)

Typestyles are tremendously important in their ability to bring emotion to print. One gets a profoundly different feeling reading a paragraph in, say, Caslon versus that same text in Optima. Subtle variances in typefaces can bring huge changes to how the words are perceived by the reader, and the skilled designer recognizes and exploits that.

The beauty of one specific typeface is the subject of a neat feature-length independent film called, simply, "Helvetica." Filmmaker Gary Hustwit looks at this ubiquitous type, where it came from and why it's important in the wider world of graphic design. I know, it sounds dry - but I found it to be engaging as it persuaded me to take a closer look at something that is, quite literally, everywhere. If you're a fan of good design, you should check it out.

It's currently available for online viewing at Google video.

-=[ Grant ]=-

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