Attention font fan(atic)s: Many thanks to Larry Adylette of Welcome to L.A. for passing along this video, Font Conference. I guess Helvetica is not represented because Ariel was created in order to avoid paying royalties for Helvetica. Microsoft Windows started using it in 1992, and Apple adopted it for Mac OS X in 2001. (Microsoft commissioned Verdana in 1996.)
Arial Narrow is a redneck bastard
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"One can summarize a plot in one sentence, whereas it’s fairly difficult to summarize one frame." -- Raymond Durgnat
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“An idea does not exist apart from the words that express it. Style is not an envelope enclosing a message; the envelope is the message.” -- Dwight Macdonald
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3 Comments
I'm with Courier New on this one.
And I'm a little glad to not see Helvetica in there. Since Helvetica was designed way before the days of Windows and Mac OS X and LCD screens, it's not really a font made for computer screens, particularly at small sizes. Yet people's obsession with it ends up littering applications with it. I like the font at bigger sizes, especially in print ads, but there are much better alternatives when it comes to smaller sizes.
But as the documentary points out, Helvetica is still amazingly popular 50 years later. When asked why, Erik Spiekermann says, "I don't know. Why is bad taste ubiquitous?"
So I'm with Erik, too.
Ok, this is the first thing that's made me laugh out loud in quite some time. But did this whole post get lost or something? Today is the first day I noticed it. Glad I went back to check. Thanks for posting this, Jim!
I LOL at most everything College Humor puts out, but as a graphic designer, I would have taken a different direction making this video.
The problem was that most (thought not all) of the human characterizations of fonts were based off the font names and not the actual characteristics of the font.
For example, "futura" in the video was a being from the future. Duh. That's boring. Futura at the time it was created 50 or so years ago was indeed a futuristic sort of font, but these days, it's really just an elegant font used a lot in fashion, makeup etc.
Baskerville and Bookman were fairly appropriate but not because they have "old" in the name, but because they're fairly traditional serif fonts.
French Script is, uh, French? Rage Italic is angry?
Old English really should have been a German and not English.
Century Gothic a goth? No. I don't think Goths would use that font.
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