 I fancy myself to be a man of letters. Or, more precisely, to be a guy obsessed by type families and their letterforms. Oh, such lovely faces...and capable of such expression. A few favorites...Garamond Condensed Light...Franklin Gothic... Potpourri, designed with the beveled end of a drinking straw...The "Y" of Requiem...Caslon's ampersand...Ampersands in general. Lots of fonts; lots of stories.
There are messages that can only be articulated with elegant, serif characters featuring large bowls and strong stems. Other messages demand a no-nonsense, industrial sans serif--though not, heaven forbid, symmetrical. A well-designed type family has a unique personality, a distinct voice, that can either hinder or enhance the power of the message itself. Check out the first billboard you see today. Did they choose wisely? And a type family, like our own families, can be moody. Type faces--whether serif or sans serif--have ample opportunity to express their moods: to be bold, to be italic, or--when they really want to assert themselves--to be bold and italic. Maybe even underlined. Well, frankly, underlining is never appropriate. Underlining suggests the author's admission, "I don't know how to say this any better, so allow me to simply call it to your attention." What font or type style do you feel like today? Are you feeling bold? Italicky? Kind of scripty? A little Grotesque? There's a font for that. Typefaces can even push our buttons and provoke a visceral reaction. Depress the "Caps Lock" button, for example--arguably a vestigial remnant from the typewriter--and the tension becomes palpable: "WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?" It doesn't matter what you say in all caps, you're still shouting: "I HAVE AN EXPENSIVE NEW CAR "I WANT TO GIVE YOU FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY!" "FINE, BUT WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?" Alright, let's everyone just back away from the "Caps Lock" and calm down. Which recalls a curiosity I have around Closed Captioning on television. When Closed Captioning is on, and you use the remote control to increase the volume, wouldn't you expect the letters on the television screen to grow larger? Of course, the real source of fascination around a typeface is what we can do with endless combinations of twenty-six simple letterforms. Or twenty-two, if you still harbor the notion from your youth that "elemenopee" is one letterform. It's quite heady if you think about it. From those twenty-six letterforms, we gather and convey thoughts both simple and complex, mundane and profound, common and holy. Twenty-six letterforms combine to form the canon of Shakespeare; rearrange them and you get Harry Potter; rearrange them yet again and you get directions to the Men's Room at Grand Central Station. Dashiell Hammett, John Lennon, and God have all used the same twenty-six letterforms to communicate in their unique voices. Of course, it may not be fair to compare another author or composer with God... After all, God managed to say everything there is to say with just one Word (John 1:1-14). In the font of Blessing. | 
