An Exploration into Typography

Anthologyof

Type Designersand

DESIGNERSThat Have Made

an

IMPACTon

TYPE

Edited by Jacob Roth

Published by Roski Design Press, 2015

An E

xploration intoTypography

Typographersand

Designers

CHAPTER ONE

House IndustriesWRITTEN BY HANNAH CHI

House Industries is an internationally known prolific type foundry and

design studio based in Yorklyn, Delaware. The company was created

on March 1st, 1993 when Andy Cruz and Rich Boat quit their jobs and

set up Brand Design Co., Inc. in the space rom of Rich’s apartment

in Wilmington, Delaware. Despite its garage startup, the company has

manifested into making a considerable impact on the world of design

as its fonts are widely spread throughout billboards, greeting cards,

consumer product logos, and mainstream media—a few which include

VH1’s Best Week Ever, Mission Impossible, Nickelodeon’s TV Land,

Anne Taylor garment bags, Lucky Charms, and etc.

Behind the apparent success of House Industries is a team of

impassioned House artists who have mastered a large cross-section of

design disciplines that acts as an infrastructure for the mesh of cultural,

musical and graphic elements within in the mastered typography.

From early forays into distressed digital alphabets to sophisticated

type and lettering systems, House Industries’ work transcends graphic

conventions and reaches out to a broad audience.

Within the realm of House Industries’ broad clientele is a wide variety

of an unconscious House aesthetic of the studio’s ‘blue-collared’

designers. As House designers draw from an exposure of areas in the

American sub-cultural phenomena of unsophisticated yet incredibly

formative graphic design, despite the big names of their clients, House

designers ultimately create their own projects of design and illustration.

Each House Industries project attempts to administer a component of

an art history lesson of sorts by using their font collections to provide

an opportunity to draw attention to the impactful and under-appreciated

art genres that were a huge influence to the designer’s during their

impressionable years. The consistent element of art history embedded

into the House aesthetics has inevitably created a style that audiences

identify House Industries with.

In accordance, because of the twentieth century metal type inspiration

and the diverse references to popular cultural imagery, invariably,

“retro” is always brought up when discussing House’s work. Regardless

of the indifferent categorization of House aesthetics being “retro,” as the

term is thoughtlessly used to describe anything that from the past few

decades, House designers focus solely in the craft of everything they

do. House Industries finds creating artwork by traditional means to be

more direct and efficient so ultimately, the hands-on approach preserves

the characteristic production techniques while drawing from personal

interests, which gives a unique flavor of making the House Aesthetic

one of a kind.

Jessica Hische WRITTEN BY WINNIE QUAN

Jessica Hische is a Pennsylvania-born, award-winning letterer,

illustrator, and graphic designer. Known for her ‘Daily Drop Cap’

project, ‘Should I Work for Free’ flowchart, and beautiful type design

and lettering skills, Hische is currently based in San Francisco and

works alongside friend and designer Erik Marinovich. While she’s not

in her studio space creating and working on designs, she can be found

traveling the world attending and speaking at conferences, finding ways

to help others do what they love.

Having worked for wonderful clients such as Wes Anderson, American

Express, and Penguin Books, Hische continues to work independently

from her studio, designing for advertising, books, weddings, branding,

and companies, while still finding time to work on fun side projects for

herself. One of her biggest projects included designing book covers for

a 26-book classics series with Penguin Books; each with an elegantly-

designed letter that pertained to a classic author, and another working

with Wes Anderson to create film titles for Moonrise Kingdom. Hische

is also greatly acclaimed, having been listed in Forbes’ Top 30 Under

30 in art and design twice, nominated as GDUSA’s person to watch in

2011, and featured in many major design and illustration publications.

She is greatly admired and respected by those in her industry and

lettering-aficionados.

Her hand-lettering skills have been carefully practiced and refined

for years, mainly using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator to develop a

general skeleton and adding decorations and ornamentations later on.

While Hische’s work for her clients is incredibly expansive and ample,

her style is a common element in all of her lettering and illustrations;

her work can be described as both whimsical and sophisticated, as she

finds inspiration everywhere she goes and through all the wonderful

people she meets around the world. “Just when you think you figured it

out, you find some better way of doing things. The key is to always keep

trying to be better.”

Michael BierutWRITTEN BY JOHN LUNA

The Ohio-born Michael Bierut is a highly awarded and famous graphic

designer that is attributed with the creation of designs ranging from

the environmental graphics for the New York Times building to the

development of a new brand strategy for the packaging of Saks Fifth

Avenue. However, his work does not only result from his ability to design

but also his identity as a designer. He describes the difference between

those who design and those who are designers. The designer is also a

participant in the design conversation and, as a designer; Bierut is a leader

in creating a design community. He has served as the national president

of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, acted as a senior critic at Yale

School of Art, and is a founding contributor for the Design Observer.

His works and didactic contributions have affected the language of

typography and the field of design overall. With his book, Seventy-Nine

Short Essays on Design, Bierut hopes to create a community for design

conversation, which, he comments, was fairly unavailable to a majority

of designs despite the universality of design in the world. He complains

that, in the 1970s, there was only really one, inaccessible, conference

for designers to attend and that paid subscriptions to publications tended

to be costly – creating a very isolated world of design. He grants insight

to the importance, especially due to the ubiquitous nature of design, of

the graphic and of the associated text. Mentions of his mistakes and

experiences during his design career inform him and allow him to offer

readers advice on spurring conversations about design and challenging

the established design normative. In Bierut’s essay published in the

Design Observer, he mentions that design is about making connections

between objects. Despite appearing to be an aggregation for essays on

design, he also comments on other topics such as politics or business. He

mentions, “Design is not everything. But design is about everything.”

Bierut praises design for always being about “something else.” These

connections allow designs to become a universal entity that has

driven Bierut’s inspirations. As a result of his contemporary advice on

breaking the design standard, Bierut has become a major, and powerful,

contributor to the entire design community.

Herman ZapfWRITTEN BY KEELY VEDANAYAGAM

Herman Zapf is a German type designer who was born in 1918 in

Nuremberg during the German revolution and is still alive today at

age 96! He is married to a fellow typeface designer, Gudrun Zapf von

Hesse. Zapf grew up with an interest in technical subjects; as a kid he

experimented with electricity and even built an alarm set for his house.

At a young age, Zapf was already getting involved with type, inventing

cipher-text alphabets to exchange secret messages with his brother.

He left school in 1933 with the ambition to pursue a career in electrical

engineering. However, Zapf was not able to attend the Ohm Technical

Institute in Nuremberg due to the new political regime in Germany at

the time, so he took up an apprenticeship position in lithography where

he worked for four years. During this time, Zapf attended an exhibition

in Nuremberg in honor of the late typographer Rudolf Koch. This

exhibition gave him his first interest in lettering and he began to teach

himself calligraphy. In 1938, he designed his first printed typeface, a

fraktur type called Gilgengart.

One year later, Zapf was conscripted into World War II and sent to help

reinforce the defensive line against France. Not used to the hard labor,

he developed heart trouble in a few weeks and was given a desk job,

writing camp records and sports certificates. Due to his heart trouble,

Zapf was dismissed early from his unit and shortly thereafter began

training as a cartographer. After his training, he traveled to Bordeaux

and became a staff member in the cartography unit where he drew maps

of Spain. Zapf enjoyed working in the cartography unit. His eyesight

was so excellent that he could write letters 1 millimeter in size without

using a magnifying glass – this skill probably prevented him from being

commissioned back into the army.

After the war had ended, Zapf was held by the French as a prisoner

of war. He was treated with respect because of his artwork and, due

to his poor health, was sent home only four weeks after the end of the

war. Post-war, Zapf taught calligraphy in Nuremberg before taking up a

position as artistic head of a print shop.

Later in his career, he spent time developing two famous typefaces,

Palatino and Optima. He then worked for a while in developing computer

typography programs before taking up professorship at the Rochester

Institute of Technology from 1977 to 1987. Today he is known as the

artist of several famous typefaces such as Palatino, Optima, Aldus,

Venture, and of course, Zapfino – his most recent typeface which was

released in 1998.

The Contemporary Wordsmith

CHAPTER THREE

Donald KnuthWRITTEN BY JACOB ROTH

Often when we think if new technology, we automatically think that

it will make our lives better. Sometimes this is true, but in the world

of typography new technologies actually made print quality worse.

Typesetting was traditionally performed on printing presses where

metal stamps were meticulously and painstakingly arranged to achieve

the best product. Because the printing press was labor intensive and

required extensive training, publishers were excited about a new

technology, phototypesetting, which drastically reduced the time and

skill required to typeset books.

While the technology was initially limited to low quality publications

like newspapers and magazines, the price eventually forced the new

technology into more premium products like text books. Donald

Knuth, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, in 1978

received a gallery print of his second edition textbook. Compared to

the original version, he lamented, “The quality of typesetting was

abominable. It was a pain to read. You couldn’t look at this because they

had changed printing technology.” In retaliation, Mr. Knuth decided to

create a computer program to typeset his new book instead of using the

phototypesetting method he loathed.

Just like any self-respecting typography student would, Mr. Knuth

began his research by tracing out the letters from existing typefaces

onto paper. After many hours of studying the shapes he came to the

conclusion that the phototypesetting system failed because, whereas

letters were designed by human beings which something in mind for

them, the typesetting process had no way to capture the intelligence

or intentions of the type designer. Mr. Knuth decided that in order for

a computerized system to produce beautiful text, it must preserve the

past traditions of typesetters instead of throwing them out like current

technology had.

The systems Mr. Knuth developed changed typesetting from a problem

with metallurgy to a problem of mathematics. In contrast to previous

methods, his system does not rely on static characters but instead

digitally creates each character based on the parameters given such as

point size and weight. The advantage of using digitally created characters

is that each character is a perfect reproduction of the designer’s

intentions whether printed on paper or displayed on a computer screen.

Additionally, because text was represented in an abstract way inside a

computer, Mr. Knuth applied complex algorithms, such as automatic

river reduction, that where time and labor prohibitive on traditional

presses.

The typesetting systems that Mr. Knuth developed made great progress

towards digital publishing but the systems were not perfect. Specifically,

the system required many different commands to achieve the desired

results. While many academics were able to effectively use the system,

graphic artist publishers found the system difficult because they had

little computer experience. In the end, Mr. Knuth’s digital publish

system never gained much acceptance outside universities. All of his

work in not in vein, however, because many of the algorithms and

principals he pioneered are now integral parts of the most widely used

software packages.

ÉmigréWRITTEN BY JT WANG

Emigre was a magazine about “the global artist who juggles cultures,

travels between them, and who is fluent in the cultural symbols of the

world.” It was founded in 1984 in Berkeley, CA by wife and husband

Zuzanna Licko and Rudy VanderLans, who created the type foundry.

The word émigré, which often refers to a person who has “migrated

out” of of something, perfectly defines the foundry’s take on art and

design. Emigre resisted typical design rules that had existed during its

beginning and used its wild creations to offset long-accepted imbalances

between form and content.

The foundry was the first of its kind to create and distribute fonts made

for and by a computer, and their work was made possible the advent of

the Macintosh computer. Licko and VanderLans used the magazine to

explore and experiment with new and radical pieces that were created

by computers using bitmap design, dot matrix printing and vector-based

design, rather than by hand and letterpress. This wasWr a surprise to

the design community whose convention at the time placed a high

value on calligraphy; the norm was to create typestyles by hand before

manipulating them on the computer. However, for Zuzanna Licko, the

computer’s tools opened a variety of opportunities because she was

left-handed and thus had never been able to do calligraphy.Though

the pair of designers had not intended to break rules, Emigre started a

typographic rebellion as a result of their explorations of the new tools

and capabilities created by the computer.

Emigre’s radical design choices drew a great deal of attention from

designers and critics alike, and in the beginning, they faced severe

opposition. Some critics saw the creations as barbaric and described

Emigre’s postmodern design as “the degradation of culture” and “The

Cult of the Ugly.” However, after awhile, the arguments subsided

and Emigre grew to become an influential record label, merchandise

vendor, and journal for design dialogues, and since then, the foundry

has designed and licensed over 300 different typefaces from a variety

of artists.

Erik SpiekermannWRITTEN BY SARAH ANNE NAKAMURA

Erik Spiekermann is a German typographer and designer who started

his education at Berlin’s Free University studying art history. During

his stay at the university, he funded himself by running a letterpress

printing press in the basement of his house. He later went on to establish

FontShop, in 1988, the first mail-order distributor for digital fonts, with

his wife Joan. This later evolved into many other companies that strived

to publish and distribute fonts to artists and designers all over the world.

During this time, he worked at MetaDesign, a global design consultancy.

He currently holds an honorary professorship at the Academy of Arts in

Bremen as a board member of German Design Council.

As an established designer, he has written many books such as Stop

Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works and redesigned the

magazine The Economist, a publication based in London. Through out

his career, he has created many commercial typefaces such as Berliner

Grotest, Lo-Type, ITC Officina Sans, FF Govan, and FF Meta Serif.

Spiekermann had achieved many milestones in his career, one of them

being a Honorary Doctorship for his contribution to design in April of

2006 from Art Center College of Design. He later collaborated with

designer Christian Schwartz where they successfully designed the

Deutsche Bahn family typeface. This won them the Gold Medal at

the German Federal Design Prize in 2006. The following year, he was

elected into the European Design Awards Hall of Fame.

Erik Spiekermann has the opportunity to participate in First Things

First 2000 Manifesto, a collaboration of a group of international

graphic designers in 1999 that followed the publication of First

Things First Manifesto in 1964. The goal was to generate discussion

about the education and press exposure in the design profession. Erik

Spiekermann was one of the thirty-three designers to sign the manifesto

with the concerns of “free design” and the right to take a stand on who

and what they are designing for.

Modern Masters

CHAPTER FOUR

Herb Lubalin: Meaning MattersWRITTEN BY DAWN LEE

Recognized for his unique contributions to the world of design, Herb

Lubalin is one of the most successful and foremost American graphic

designers and typographers of the twentieth century. Although he is

colorblind and started working back in the day when designers utilized

drawing boards and workstations, Lubalin’s design is still perceived

as futuristic and innovative. As the creative mind behind the culture-

shocking magazines of the 20th century, including Eros, Fact, Avant

Garde, and U&IC, the designer introduced a fresh and groundbreaking

style to his audience. In fact, his logotype for Avant Garde magazine

was so high in demand that he later released the complete set of the font

called, “ITC Avant Garde.”

The expressive typography of “ITC Avant Garde” is reflective of Herb

Lubalin’s vision in his design. The form of the tight, all-majuscule, and

sans-serif typography is slanted to the right, as if headed towards the

future and embracing the futuristic context of its existence. By giving

the letterforms the shape and voice of the meaning of the word “Avant

Garde” itself, Lubalin manipulated the form into an inseparable part of

the word’s meaning.

Herb Lubalin was a designer who constantly sought for ways to create

typographic innovations. His wildly illustrative typography is a result

of his imagination and insight, combined with his talent. His inventive

typographic designs go beyond the twenty-six alphabet characters; by

bringing a new aesthetic that emphasizes the shock of meaning to the

world of design, publishing and advertisement, Lubalin has changed the

course and constraints of design for those who were to follow. Lubalin’s

typography is significant because it is a representation of how an idea

is conveyed from one to another—how meaning is communicated

through its form. The designer’s ability to incorporate sensitivity and

meaning into his typography has profoundly influenced young designers

and continues to inspire those who desire to push the boundaries of

contemporary design.

Ed BenguiatWRITTEN BY ALBERT MONTGOMERY

Ed Benguiat is a scrapper - Ex-military, musician, Illustrator, typography.

Supposedly,after walking into the musician’s union one day saw other

older musicians, who played wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs.

He was like “screw this I want tobe an Illustrator!” Fortunately for

Benguiat, his father was a lead illustrator for a New York department

store so he was around those type of tools, influence, and opportunity,

since the age of nine.

Ed Benguiat became a prolific lettering artist and became the typographic

design director at a company called Photo-Lettering, which failed by the

way. But Benguiat’s impact on the type community involves more than

just design. He played a critical role in establishing the International

Typeface Corporation, the first independent licensing company for

type designers. Ed jump-started the type industry in the late ‘60s and

early ‘70s.Eventually he became known for logo designs for Esquire,

The New York Times, Coke, McCall’s, Ford, Reader’s Digest, Sports

Illustrated, and Estee Lauder. He created new ITC typefaces such as

Bauhaus, Tiffany, Korinna, Panache, Modern No, 216, Bookman,

Caslon No. 225, Barcelona, and Avant Garde Condensed to name some

of them. At some point, “The Ed Benguiat Font Collection” came into

being, which is listed as a casual font family, named after the designer,

which includes not only five typefaces but a series of dingbats, or what

House Industries staff dubbed, during an interview, “bengbats.” This was

a collection of glyphs bases on his jazz percussion background. Benjuiat

laments that student designers now show more interest in learning the

computer rather than mastering the art of designing letterforms. “Too

many new designers substitute technology for talent, thinking they’ve

got a Mac and now they can draw a logo or a typeface. You have to learn

to draw first. The computer won’t do it for you.” He’s convinced that

showing a font in an A-B-C format is not the best way to sell it. You’ve

got to SEE IT in action, typographically arranged exactly the way the

designer had in mind. Each piece of designed typography should be, so

to speak, a beautiful work of art within itself. That’s what typographic

communication is all about, “Liberating the Letter!”

Ed FellaWRITTEN BY VICTORIA HORNG

Ed Fella was born in 1938. He grew up in Detroit Michigan and

studied at Cass Technical High School where he studied hand lettering,

illustration, and commercial art. After that he went into the graphic

design industry where he did a lot of work for automobiles. He then

went back to school and studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art where he

was able to experiment and explore art and design together.

Today, he is an extremely well recognized graphic designer, artist,

illustrator and educator. His work is very different from what we

usually expect from graphic design in our time, which is expected to

be clean and structural. His work breaks the rules. He deconstructs and

distorts letterforms, using various different shapes, forms, spaces, and

thicknesses. His hand lettering is an outburst of fun movement and

combinations of aspects belonging to different categories. Although at

first glance his work may look disorganized or too free, each part of it is

done extremely skillfully.

He combines serifs with san serifs, dingbats, scripts and much more.

Since he pushes so many boundaries of people’s common perceptions

of design, he is known as a controversial designer. Nevertheless, his

design has a great influence in the industry, is extremely well received,

and is followed by many people.

His way of mixing and matching, creating work that looks perhaps

crazy, very quirky, and extremely eccentric really changed how the

current generation of designers think and work today. In a world where

the definition, methods, and role of design are continuously changing

with the transformation of society and culture; his work helps us to

once again question what exactly defines good design by pushing the

boundaries of innovation and creativity, yet still creating work which

communicates and gives purpose.

Neville Brody WRITTEN BY KATHERINE VUONG

Neville Brody is perhaps one of the most popular graphic designers of his

generation. He studied graphic design at the London College of Printing

and first worked on record cover and magazine designs, establishing his

reputation as one of the world’s leading graphic designers. In particular,

his innovative artistic contribution to The Face brought his artistry to

another level. Brody also won much public acclaim through his ideas

on incorporating and combining typefaces into design. Later on he took

this a step further and began designing his own typefaces, thus opening

the way for the advent of digital type design.

He was one of the founding members of FontShop in London and

over time has designed 24 font families. A distinctly notable font is the

updated font Times Modern for the Times newspaper. In addition to

pouring himself into design, he was also partly responsible for starting

the FUSE project, holding conferences to bring together speakers from

design, architecture, sound, film and interactive design, and web.

What resonated with me more than his multiple decades of provoking

design and typographic work are his views on creativity and the future

of innovation. Brody believes that designers should take more risks

and help draw attention to social issues. He advises that with regards to

politics, young designers have to find their own platform. The point he

makes is that it’s more about being a conscious designer than anything

else. Some designers don’t think about the consequence of their work,

they are just motivated by money and making things look ‘nice’. Then

there’re others who are only interested in designing for other designers.

He hopes to teach by giving context and getting students to engage with

the idea that everything they do will somehow affect the society that

they live in.

He admits that for a time graphic design had lost its relevance with many

designers halting experimentation and simply conforming. Their work

became a case of style over substance. Brody that the main medium

holding designers back is the digital screen. Digital is becoming a utility.

A few decades ago when people first started thinking about the potential

of the internet, he expected much more innovation and experimentation

by now, and so he tries to push out from being boxed in in order to be

great and hopes the same from other designers.

Designer Mayhem

CHAPTER FIVE

David Carson: Type Fanatic or Genius?WRITTEN BY TREVOR THORPE

Despite his indisputable influence in graphic design, David Carson

manages to be a controversial designer to this day. Compared to many

influential typographers, Carson does not come from any ordinary

formal art school background. Rather, into his mid-twenties, Carson

was a professional surfer in California. It was not until he was twenty-

six and enrolled in a short design course that exposed him to the

wonders of typography. This unorthodox entry into the field is quite

likely responsible for his unique impact. He experimented with type

in ways that other artists with more formal typography education did

not, manipulating text and throwing letters around that often rendered

them illegible. Hence, Carson’s most distinguished work was the source

of debate seeing that it destroyed much of the communicative value

of typography that many hold to be its primary purpose. However, at

this expense he enhances the expressionistic qualities of type before a

viewer even reads the text.

Carson has worked on a variety of publications over the course

of his career, and his first role as an art director was for Transworld

SKATEboarding in the 1980s. Over the course of his time there, he refined

and began to gain notoriety for his distinct style of design. The covers

he designed demonstrate early decisions to manipulate and combine

different typefaces, type sizes, and colors into individual headlines.

In doing so he successfully captures the youthful and countercultural

idealizations of skater culture. Similarly, his other work facilitates its

own messages through the messy layouts of text. He became the first

art director of Ray Gun, a surf and music magazine in 1992. Seeing that

the beginnings of this publication were rooted in Carson’s vision, it very

much had a distinct style, adding to the cutting-edge aesthetic that the

magazine embodied. His work in particular building elaborately chaotic

typographical designs for Ray Gun garnered him enough fame to be

featured in publications such as the New York Times.

After Ray Gun Carson went on to found his own design agency, David

Carson Design, which still operates today. As the head of the agency,

Carson revisited his passion for publications and created his own travel

magazine, Blue which circulated for three years. David Carson Design

has done work for companies with as high of profiles as NBC, American

Airlines, Pepsi Cola, and Toyota amongst many more. His agency has

maintained his unique aesthetic, with text all over the place and designs

with aesthetics reminiscent of collage. Carson relays the significance

of his upbringing and unique background to be a driving force in his

typographic work. Today, he largely lectures including appearing on a

TED Talk, and he emphasizes the importance of the individual voice,

and that each person’s own unique experiences should shape what he

or she produces. Ultimately, Carson’s work is admirable not only in

its own inventiveness, but also that it encourages peers and other type

designers to think about communication in new ways.

Vincent ConnareWRITTEN BY BRANDON SINGH

Comic Sans MS is one of the most polarizing typefaces in the design

community. Even people who aren’t designers have learned to dislike

the typeface. It’s almost a force of habit for most to despise Comic Sans.

While the typeface itself is relatively known by many, neither the man

behind the it nor the story of Comic Sans have been brought to light.

The history behind Comic Sans and its designer provides interesting

insight about the typeface and can perhaps enlighten many on a typeface

that they have grown to dislike.

Vincent Connare designed Comic Sans when he was working for

Microsoft in 1995. Connare is also the designer behind Trebuchet MS

as well as one of the designers behind Webdings. He began working

on Comic Sans in 1994 after seeing a beta version of Microsoft Bob, a

personal assistant software being developed by Microsoft in the ‘90s to

appeal to younger users. The software featured cartoon characters with

word balloons and messages set in Times New Roman. Connare found

the typeface to be inappropriate for the given context of the software, so

he started to design Comic Sans. As implied in the name, the typeface

was based on the lettering style in comic books that Connare had in his

office, namely The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. He was careful

not to copy the lettering used, but instead pay close attention to the

shapes the letters made considering that comic letterforms were usually

manually written at the time.

Comic Sans wasn’t actually completed in time for the launch of Microsoft

Bob. A rough copy was made when Microsoft Bob was finished, but the

typeface was larger than Times New Roman, so it interfered with the

metrics of the program. While it was too late for Microsoft Bob, the

programmers of Microsoft 3D Movie Maker--which also used cartoon

characters and speech bubbles--began to use the font in their software.

Comic Sans was later included in the Windows 95 Plus! Pack and

then became a standard font for Windows 95. The typeface eventually

became one of the default fonts for Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft

Internet Explorer.

Interestingly enough, such inclusion of the typeface in other programs

was not what Connare had intended. Connare designed Comic Sans for

applications that were primarily targeted toward children, which was

what Microsoft Bob was at the time. It was the widespread inclusion

of the typeface in so many programs that allowed it to gain popularity

among people of all ages. Connare believes that people liked the font

because it was fun and simple. Apple even used Comic Sans as the

default font for Apple iCards when they were first released. Ironically,

this lead to wider use of the typeface, perhaps overuse of it in appropriate

situations, similar to the situation that lead to Comic Sans being created.

According to Connare, the main designer of Twitter said that the most

server space is used by complaints about airlines, Comic Sans, and

Justin Bieber--in that order.

Lawrence WeinerWRITTEN BY ANDREW HURLBUT

Lawrence Weiner was a leader of the Conceptual Art movement

of the 60s. Thus, in order to understand Weiner as an artist and

typographer one must understand the Conceptual Art movement as a

whole. Conceptualism, like its counterpart Minimalism, is more easily

described as a philosophy than as purely an artistic movement. As a

reaction of the Contemporary and High Modern art scene during its

time, Conceptualism was arguably born through Marcel Duchamp’s

works known as readymades. These readymades have made it possible

for the art world to expand its mind into accepting more conceptual

works such as the works of Lawrence Weiner.

Weiner is most well known for his typographic pieces. One of the initial

pieces that he made based in typography was his book “Statements”

which contained exactly that, statements, throughout the entire book.

Weiner’s work despite being made primarily in text has been described

as embodying every aspect and dimension of physical art. Weiner’s

most famous workers use a phrase or statement and typographically lay

them out onto a wall or site. Through his typography he was able to

transcend his art from a conceptual realm into a metaphysical one. One

other approach that Weiner uses is site-specificity to encapsulate the site

as a whole and adding his statement into the site thus creating a new

meaning for the site as a while.

Lawrence Weiner’s “Bits and Pieces” piece spells the line “bits and

pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole” on the side of

a building with a crevice going through the middle of the text. Weiner

uses crevice as a guide for his work by aligning some words to it and

more cleverly kerning evenly but also words are not obstructed by the

crevice. Other pieces he has made use this same method of combining

site and type to create a piece that is greater than each individually.

Comic Sans and HelveticaWRITTEN BY IVY LI

Comic Sans has been the most hated font of this era by designers, and

Helvetica, too, is receiving a rising controversial reaction from the

design community, and there are historical, technical, and subjective

reasons to account for the phenomenon.

First of all it is the exposure. Comic Sans is a casual, non-connecting

script font that was made by Vincent Connare for a very specific

situation—a friendly speech bubble for Windows 95. And it was then

carried out by Microsoft as one of the default fonts in its operating

system, and very soon it was largely celebrated by the public, and

reached its high time of misuse. It quickly appeared everywhere and on

any publications, as it seemed to draw more attention from the general

public in the pool of traditional fonts. The exposure resulted in backlash,

especially when they are used in inappropriate situations like formal

emails, legal documents and serious notifications. Helvetica, at the same

time, is used massively around the world as a professional Swiss font

since 1957, when first developed by Max Miedinger. It was so loved and

there is even a film for it. Its wide popularity makes it one of the most

used fonts in the entire planet, and several large companies have used it

for their brand identities.

These two fonts also have technical reasons for the controversial

reactions they are getting. Comic Sans has very poor kerning when

used as the body copy. And in terms of font design, it is constituted of

inconsistent edges and weird angles. Besides, it may not even be a good

comic font due to its awkward and unnatural strokes. However, it is often

praised for its legibility. Helvetica, despite that it is a professionally

designed sans serif typeface that follows design principles, has strokes

that are too ubiquitous that barely communicate to the contemporary

audience at all.

And sometimes we designers just hate popular things, especially

design related stuff that are mindlessly used by “the average people”.

When some fonts are used too much, they are perceived emotionally

different in the social context. Comic Sans would imply “bad taste” and

everyone knows immediately that you are not are well-trained designer.

Helvetica, on the other hand, means “tasteless” ‘’boring” and “playing

safe”. Partially due to these implications, Comic Sans and Helvetica are

generally not favored as much by contemporary designers.

Interestly, there is a revival of Comic Sans going on right now. The

Comic Sans Project includes some very impressive examples to use

Comic Sans the “right” way, which really emphasize its playfulness and

try to avoid some technical issues it may have. Overall, the conversation

around type showcases the awareness not only from within the design

community but also the general public, which is an achievement by

itself.