I've been in love with type for as long as I can remember. Of course at that time, I didn't call it type, I called it the alphabet. I would draw hundreds of Ds on the sides of my notebooks during class, each one with its own unique characteristics. Typography, lettering, calligraphy-- these are truly some of my favourite words in the design world that we live in! Yes, my main focus is in Interactive Design, but pull me aside, talk to me about type, and we will be drinking our cups of coffees until the end of time. The book I'm about to talk about was my companion throughout my 4 day trip in Virginia!

Over the past week, I've been poring over the book Just My Type by Simon Garfield, a book I chanced upon at the local bookstore. I'll be the first to admit that this book was not what I was expecting at all. Its insightfulness and humour pleasantly surprised me. Not only were there gossip about famous type designers, we as readers are brought back to different, yet relevant eras of type from Swiss domination (Helvetica and Univers) to road signs and iconography to readability vs. legibility.

Lessons I learned from this book:

1. Eric Gill, the famous type designer who's behind Gill Sans,  is one crazy man! I don't want to spoil it for you, but let me tell you, it was juicy gossip!
2. " The only intractable, invincible basic rules of good type? Make it interesting, make it beautiful, and bring out both its humanity and its soul. Make it tasteful and witty and apt. And readable." -- throughout the book, it's apparent that a type's readability is seen by most, if not all (designers or nondesigners), to be the most important.
3. The symbol ^ that's found on top of the number 6 on your keyboard is called an "asciicircum" or "caret." Who knew?
4. The interrobang, a symbol that's a combination of a question mark (?) and an exclamation mark (!) was something I've always found interesting. It was introduced in the 1960s by an ad executive named Martin Spekter who was looking for a new way to express himself in an excited manner. Before choosing the term interrobang, "exclamaquest" and "quizding" were being considered!
5. There's a lot of not-so-positive buzz about the typeface, Arial, for looking too similar to Helvetica. Yes, there are some differences but apparently (and I've checked for myself), the width and grid that it uses is exactly identical to the grid used by Helvetica. Coincidence?
6. Most type designers would first draw the h, o, p, and d of a new typeface as these letters set the tone for the letters to follow. This I found extremely interesting.
7. If you have letters that have curves or points such as the capital letter A or the capital letter C, the curves and the points should exceed your height's grid by a tad, otherwise it'll look weird.
8. The most used font is Frutiger, Helvetica/Helvetica Neue, and Futura (in that order). Most visible fonts are Helvetica/Helvetica Neue, Meta, and Gill Sans (in that order). And the least favourite fonts in the world are Times New Roman, Helvetica/Helvetica Neue, and Brush Script (in that order; although I'm quite shocked to know that people dislike Helvetica. I assume it's because it's used too often).
9. There's an app that lets you type in a phrase and using those letters, you can draw whatever you want. The finish pieces look like a designer carefully set each letter in place of the drawing. Pretty cool, huh?
10.I want to pay my respects to Max Kerning, who--you guessed it!-- introduced the "eradication of sloppy text by the correct proportional spacing." He's actually quite an interesting, eccentric man. Something he said really hit home for me: "Clean type is godly type. I care about text. Some people say that I care too much. They say to me, 'Max, you are too strict!' That is what sloppy people say. When text is clean, well-spaced and organized, it is then, and only then that I find perfection."
11. I must write about Rodrigo Xavier Cavazos (or RXC) who said that "Type is a powerful behaviour modification tool. Transparent to the consumer; transcendent to the designer who knows how to use it." If you don't know who he is, he's responsible for a lot of EA's sports games typefaces. What I like about him is when he was asked what he does when he's not working on a typeface, he says he is working on another typeface, which is something  truly admire and I find in a lot of the designers I admire--passion.
12. Lucas de Groot is responsible for Microsoft's default font when you open Microsoft Office applications: Calibri. Thanks to this wonderful designer, we are graced with a rounded, well-designed type.

The list can go on and on. It doesn't come close to the amount I've learned from reading this book. I am definitely going to be reading Garfield's other books: On the Map and To the Letter as well as Shoot, Eats and Leaves by Lynne Truss, a book about punctuation (yes!).