Choosing a typeface
Ninja May 13th, 2007
A while ago, I was driving back home from work at midnite when an orange Ford Mustang cut me off. Instead of being angry, I sort of chuckled once I saw his bumper. He has some incredibly stupid saying in large, white vinyl lettering across the back of his car set in Eurostile Extended Bold. I’ve always associated the Eurostile family with various fashion brands/houses that use the typeface as part of their identity. Now, I can’t stop thinking of this guy’s car.
For the longest time, I wouldn’t use Gill Sans (the Helvetica of England) because of a weird mental association. In college, I had trouble sleeping (and I hate being idle) so I’d go online and read. I found this article (I think it was written by Barry Deck) which spoke of freaky sexual acts that Eric Gill participated in. I later got confirmation from my teacher that this was indeed true. So in college, whenever I’d consider setting something in Gills Sans, I would stop, blink, and choose another typeface. Besides, the Gill Sans’ letters always needed to be kerned (which you should do anyways) because the spacing was so tight. Someone once jokingly said to me, “Gill was so horny that Gill Sans’ letters are practically humping each other.” Now, I’m a little more mature. I’ve accepted that Gill was an unusual character, and I’m over his experimental activities. I used Gill Sans for the first time in a logo that I created a few months ago. The client loved it, but ironically their legal department vetoed it because they claimed it gave off a “touchy-feely” vibe, haha.
I always find it interesting to go back to previous projects and see what typefaces I choose. Back then, I was pretty loyal to my small set of fonts (also as a poor college student, I couldn’t afford to have a large collection). In college, Univers was king. It was clean and incredibly legible, even at smaller sizes. We didn’t have it in the computer lab, but I wanted Meta because of it’s old style figure numerals (kind of rare to see that in a sans serif face). During my second internship, I worked at a publishing house (their claim to fame was putting out Madonna’s infamous sex book and later her children’s books). Oh my gosh, SO MANY fonts!!! Talk about fontage overload. There, I even got to work with Emigre fonts, which was like forbidden fruit compared to my Swiss Modernist upbringing. As an added bonus, my supervisor gave me my first type specimen book for HTF’s Didot.
How do I choose a typeface now? It really depends on the project. Yes, I have faces I like (and will probably work), but I have to pick one that fits the needs for that particular job. If I had a ridiculously large budget, I’d indulge and get a custom face made. =)
Have a good laugh: read Michael Bierut’s 13 Ways of Looking at a Typeface.
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