Fonts and Fonts— May 6th, 2007

February 9, 2021

For certain people, possessing a collection of fonts is a real kick. I am not embarrassed to admit that I fall into that category. I realized this when, after getting my first Macintosh computer, along with a LaserWriter NT and the accompanying resident typefaces—Avant Garde, Times, New Century Schoolbook, and all the rest—I made my first font purchases. In fairly short order, I bought a Futura collection, Adobe Garamond, and Bodoni. The anticipation with which I awaited the arrival of each of those fonts reminded me of a child waiting up late for Christmas Eve to turn into Christmas Day. There was no way to download fonts, or anything else back then.

It was easy for me to use the same fonts repeatedly in those days. I simply had so few; and I was not yet doing real production or design work on a regular basis. Palatino became my first favorite serif font. It looked strong yet graceful to my eye. And not too tight on a line, the way Times seemed to be. I still use it as a text face in all my print—as opposed to email—correspondence. Avant Garde was my early favorite sans serif typeface. Even then, Helvetica struck me as overused. (After seventeen years of experience, my respect for Helvetica is at a much higher, and more appropriate, level.)

I used those fonts relentlessly. And then, not long after, I turned on a dime one day and—still in the infant stage of my design and production work—replaced Palatino and Avant Garde in my pantheon of favorites with adobe Garamond and Futura.

Sometime after that, something unexpected occurred: thanks to the largesse of Adobe, I suddenly possessed many fonts—enough to speak of them as my very own “font library.” What happened was that I purchased software—a version of Adobe Illustrator, perhaps—and one of the “Extras” on the CD was a chunk of Adobe’s Typeface Collection. Choices, choices! That’s when I instituted a rule: Just because you have a lot of fonts does not mean you are obligated to use them all in one document.

By this time I was beginning to get some steady, and paying, book layout work. Mostly, clients provided templates with the font choices already made. New Baskerville was a popular choice. So, too, was Times. The first time I designed a book’s interior and was able to choose all the fonts, I selected Sabon for main body text. I felt like quite the big deal.

Recently I finished page design and layout of an illustrated children’s storybook. I consciously tried to consider all the typefaces I own but had never used for a project. I used something called Usherwood. More clean lines and a good x-height, both especially important if there are to be young readers of the book.

That’s how I want to proceed from here on, giving thought to unused of little-used fonts I own. And I always wonder what leads other book designers to choose the fonts they do for their work.

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