By Stephen Banham Posted Mon 16 Jun 2014
Photo: You don't need to know the history of a font to appreciate it because it will invariably convey its provenance to you on the page as you will read it, hear it and feel it. (Eloise Fuss)
A few months ago a rare thing happened: typography hit the headlines. It shouldn't be so surprising, because the power of fonts to convey clarity and "voice" to words is enormous, writes Stephen Banham.
A few months ago a rare thing happened: typography hit the headlines.
Suvir Mirchandani, a 14-year-old schoolboy from Pittsburgh calculated that the US state and federal governments could save nearly $US400 million a year (24 per cent of its printing costs) by changing their current typeface, Times New Roman, to Garamond.
Although this news story could be read as a tale of mini-economising and the inability of a monolithic institution to embrace it, it is even more compelling because it brings into focus the details of the typeset page and more specifically, the typed font.
Seeing the potential print savings from using one font over another brings into question the structure of fonts - their weight, structure, clarity and above all, their voice.
I say voice because that is the most appropriate and descriptive parallel when trying to understand typography. It's a well-used metaphor in typography textbooks simply because it works.
Each font is said to have its own tone, volume and pitch. Typographic hierarchies can steadily build to a crescendo or dance across the page in a syncopated rhythm.
The repetition of certain letters or words within a paragraph can set up a playful rhythm while the bold weights of the font can bring in the percussive bass, and so on.
This, of course, was explored most interestingly in the concrete poetry movements of the mid 20th century.
In more recent years the appeal of typography has gone "mainstream" - many internationally bestselling books have been based on topics once considered the exclusive territory of the nerd, namely the finer points of typography and punctuation.
Simon Garfield's Just My Type and Lyn Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation are perhaps the best known of these respective fields. Visit any home wares store and everything from tea towels to bedding is festooned with alphabets of all descriptions.
Type is hip and everybody has an opinion. I know this because fewer people greet me with a blank look in casual social situations when I state my profession as "typographer" - and no, it's not somebody who makes maps from an aerial perspective (that's topography). Rather than being considered "invisible" as many claim it to be, it is perhaps better described as "ever-present".
You don't need to know about the history of a font to appreciate it because it will invariably convey its provenance to you on the page as you read it, hear it and feel it. Even when you read a font as ubiquitous as Times, it will carry over its sense of formal structure and considered legibility.
It will carry a voice of authority and perhaps even display its Englishness (designed as it was for The Times newspaper). Built for the unforgiving newsprint presses of the 1930s, its digital translation carries over these pragmatic, no-nonsense qualities to the very font you use today on your laptop every day.*
But it's not just the "black stuff" (the appearing type) that can reflect something of our lives. Even the space between the letters can change depending on the fashion of the times.
The exploratory optimism of the 1970s science-fiction era led to typography that was wide and expansive (think of Eurostile or the broad proportions of titling for films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars etc.) whilst the turbulent 1960s sexual revolution with all its progressive forms of intimacy saw fonts (such as Avant Garde) set so tight they were likewise perpetually touching each other.
Like all cultural forms, typography can express who we are and what we think as well as just what we read.
That internal "little voice" one hears when reading really does affect our interpretation of the content - if it didn't I wouldn't have a job and I certainly wouldn't be writing this article right now.
Because you're reading this on a web page and not a printed, proofed page I have no control whatsoever over the kind of voice you're hearing me in. So I encourage you to copy and paste this text into another file and set it in the different fonts.
Depending on your font you choose, you'll be able to hear my voice go loud, bombastic, shy, bloated, formal or just plain silly. So please be kind.
* This is a slight simplification as there are more than a dozen digital interpretations of Times currently available.
Stephen Banham is a Melbourne-based typographer, writer and educator. View his full profile here.
A love letter: the enormous power of fonts - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
