Just My Type

by Simon Garfield

As soon as I heard about this book on NPR I knew I had to read it. As if I didn't have enough nerdy interests, I've become interested in fonts and typefaces over the last few years. Fonts first caught my attention when I found some great open-source font projects, and from there I began to notice and appreciate how well-crafted letters helped communicate ideas and promoted clarity. Simon Garfield's book Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, would probably be best enjoyed by a font nerd like me, but it has an interesting combination of history, art, and cultural movements that would appeal to more people than you might initially think. From Gutenberg to the iPad, the book looks at how fonts have evolved and how artistic and cultural trends affected (and were affected by) fonts. For example, I had never thought about any certain font being a "Nazi" font, for example, but the Third Reich had some very distinct (and sometimes conflicting) opinions about the typefaces its citizens used. And if you are familiar with the font Helvetica, its place in the Bauhaus movement seems obvious.  There are amusing anecdotes about the "fontroversy" when Swedish furniture maker Ikea switch to the Verdana font, and a review of why Comic Sans is just so terrible. (Or is it?) I really wouldn't call this a well-written book. It relies on strange authorities to support its positions at times, including random tweets and YouTube comments. But it's almost always interesting, and it helped cement in my mind the rock-star status of certain famous typographers such as Matthew Carter (Verdana, Georgia), Claude Garamond (Garamond), Adrian Frutiger (Univers), John Baskerville (Baskerville), and Eric Gill (Gill Sans, and quite a few controversies). If you even bothered to read this whole book review, you'd probably like this book.

Post Script: If you were wondering, this blog currently is displayed in Neuton, a Roman-style open-source font  by Brian Zick that is available to use on any website through Google Web Fonts.