Font wonks fight. They champion some typefaces and sneer at others. They go ballistic if a system of signage is altered, as when Ikea changed its designated corporate font from Futura to Verdana in 2009. And they show off tribal symbols. A T-shirt that is depicted in Simon Garfield’s “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts” is adorned with nothing but the ornate ampersand of the font Caslon. This graphic, Mr. Garfield remarks, is capable of “occasionally eliciting a nod from another aficionado, like smug fans of a cool pop band before it becomes famous.”
Sometimes (as with Ikea’s typeface treachery) a tipping point will rock the world of fonts. “Just My Type” should be one of them. This is a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things. Your friends’ eyes may glaze over when you begin to regale them with the font-related trivia with which this book is packed. (What is the Woody Allen movie credits font? Windsor.) If that should happen, recommend that they read Mr. Garfield too.
Sometimes (as with Ikea’s typeface treachery) a tipping point will rock the world of fonts. “Just My Type” should be one of them. This is a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things. Your friends’ eyes may glaze over when you begin to regale them with the font-related trivia with which this book is packed. (What is the Woody Allen movie credits font? Windsor.) If that should happen, recommend that they read Mr. Garfield too.
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