Category: Typography

Typography

Fontgate: Foiled by a Font

By Delphine Hirasuna |


Pakistan’s ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif thought he had “dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s” when he presented Pakistan’s Supreme Court with supposed exculpatory documents that disproved corruption charges against him. The seemingly ironclad evidence was signed and dated February 2, 2006. The fake document would have been credible, except for a subtle oversight that forensic experts quickly spotted. The text was printed in Calibri, a font that was not widely available until 2007 –a full year later.

Created by Lucas de Groot, a Dutch type designer based in Berlin, Calibri had been around for a number of years, but was little known until Microsoft adopted a modified version of it to be the default font for its MS Office suite. After that, Calibri had become so ubiquitous that it probably didn’t even occur to the forgers to change the font. That likely was the case in Turkey too when the government accused about 300 people of plotting a coup, based on documents printed in Calibri and back dated to 2003.
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Typography

The Story Behind Comic Sans

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Designers love to say that they hate Comic Sans. It makes them feel sophisticated and discerning. To admit any fondness for Comic Sans is the equivalent of saying you like to eat canned string beans and fried Spam sandwiches. You might, but you don’t tell anyone. So, it is refreshing to learn that designer Vincent Connare drew Comic Sans while he was Microsoft in 1995 and is proud that it has become an iconic symbol familiar to designers everywhere. Indeed, there are thousands of unknown type designers around who produce respectable fonts that no one uses, can recognize on sight, or can name. Comic Sans will live on, just like Helvetica and Bodoni.

Humor

Would You Vote for This Typeface?

By Delphine Hirasuna |

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A few days ago Meta Design/Font Shop founder Erik Spiekermann expressed his displeasure in a tweet: “Cannot stand that Trump uses my #FFMeta @ FontShop: (only in the background, but still) he only deserves Arial.”
That led Roger Black to tweet: “Trump does not deserve Arial.” Others chimed in that wingdings and dingbats were more appropriate for The Donald. From the incensed outcry of type lovers, one would think that Spiekermann had been violated or defamed by Trump. Type-loving tweeters had very specific views on what kind of personality deserved to use a humanistic sans-serif font that conveyed a calm, reasonable presence, and it wasn’t the bombastic candidate. For the sake of truth-in-typography, we suggest a more suitable option for Trump – Comic Sans.
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Books We Like

Louise Fili’s Typographic Love Letter to Paris

By Delphine Hirasuna |

GraphiqueDeLaRue_1
Over the past four decades, New York-based designer Louise Fili has returned often to Paris, camera in hand, to document the signage of the Parisian streetscape. Graphique de La Rue is what Fili calls her “typographic love letter to Paris.” From the classic neon that illuminates bistros and cafes to the dramatic facades of the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergere to Hector Guimard’s legendary art nouveau metro entrances, Fili shows us the sensuous elegance and dazzling beauty of Paris street signs. This book is a sequel to her Graficadella Strada: The Signs of Italy, which is equally sumptuous.
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Quiz

Typophiliac Issues New 2016 Calendar

By Delphine Hirasuna |

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For the 14th consecutive year, typophiliac Kit Hinrichs has indulged his fascination and love of beautifully designed type by creating a typography calendar, featuring fonts that have caught his fancy. As before, he has overlaid all the faces featured in the year’s calendar to create the “365” name. Kit is convinced that other typophiliacs are so keenly aware of typefaces that they can spot the fonts in the 2016 “365” name on sight.

For better or worse, here’s the quiz. Match the typefaces called out in the circles with the names above. To find out if you are right or if you just want to skip this exercise, see the answers after the jump. If you want to learn more about each typeface, buy the 2016 calendar and read the descriptive blurbs about each face.
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