Typography is art. The proof is simple: try to design a font. No matter what you do, you’ll always end up with something that looks ugly. Unless you spend lots of time making in perfect.
Now, I’m no artist in the visual sense. But over a year ago, I discovered typography. Rather, I started looking at fonts differently.
Note: a font is a member of a typeface, much like Times New Roman Italic is a font whereas Times New Roman is a typeface.
You have plenty on your computer, including the most widely used typefaces in the world: Helvetica and Times New Roman. Some of those you have look old and refined (Baskerville), while others look modern and even futuristic (Eurostile).
Yet have you ever felt tired of them? Times New Roman is everywhere. Every student has to use it for his/her papers (or be punished for not conforming), and most people who think their computer only has Word and Internet (i.e. Internet Explorer, plague of the web) have never tried discovering the other typefaces.
I’ve felt tired of Times New Roman. Many, many times. So I decided to take a look at other typefaces I could use.
One upon which I stumbled was Avenir. Well, I bought Avenir. And I now use it in my C.V., on the buttons at the top of this website, in my lecture notes for main titles, in my list of films we own, …
To me, it’s simply become irreplaceable. It’s simple, clean, readable from afar, and holds my number one spot among the “sans serif” fonts (the second being Gill Sans).
The second for which I discovered a special inkling was Bembo. It’s become my favourite “serif” font, ahead of Baskerville, and I use it in my lecture notes, my law & case-law compilations, my C.V., and so on.
In truth, typography, in your daily life, reflects part of who you are. Most people don’t know a thing about typography because they haven’t ever questioned the computer on which they work. But if you have ever ventured into the world of typography, you start to look for something that corresponds to what you like.
I like things that are elegant, different, clean. Maybe these two typefaces do correspond, in a way…
To illustrate the opposite, I hate Comic Sans MS. Truly. I think it’s the most horrible of the widely used typefaces, because it tries to be “fun” but is more “childish” than anything else. I wouldn’t mind it if it were rarely used or used only by kids and young teenagers. But after the age of 14, I think it’s immature to use such an unrefined typeface. I guess that means I’m serious…
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