on the misidentification of typefaces and the embarrassment, shame,
and chagrin associated therewith: a case study in brief
Oh, Trade Gothic, where have you been all my... I-I mean News Gothic...
Wait, who are you again?
I hate to lose face, but I dislike not knowing the truth even more, so
when Eric Olson was kind enough to email recently and inform me, in the gentlest
of ways, that what I thought was Trade Gothic on the pages of the
DWR catalog was actually Bitstream’s cut of News Gothic, I smiled and
quietly spouted, “Oh. (Sigh, pause). Shit.” A necessary lesson in humility and type ID all in one.
At least it wasn’t nearly as bad as the time, awhile back, I confused (in correspondence with Eric, no less)
Process Grotesque with Bureau Grotesque. Oh crikey, God-what-have-I-done,
triple-shit-on-a-stick (it’s a Minnesota thing),
that was. Thankfully, he bore no grudge and hasn’t even mentioned it since!
Eric is right, of course, about DWR’s main text face, and for the purpose of verification,
check the scan here against
Trade Gothic
and Bitstream News Gothic.
I may have been close, but alas, I smoke no cigar.
25-February 2003
kindly delay a month, will you...?
Quousque tandem abutere, Mr Allen, patientia nostra? Pulchrae
Minneapolis vivendum est!
At least until the end of March, for the annual Insights lecture series at the
Walker Art Center
is not to be missed. According to the mailer, “This year’s theme –
Double Vision – examines the creative partnerships of design practitioners, whether
spouses, business partners, or both.”
The schedule:
Tuesday, March 4
Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel
Winterhouse, Falls Village, Connecticut
Tuesday, March 11
Rick Valicenti and chester
Thirst and Thirstype, Chicago
Tuesday, March 18
Nikki Gonnissen and Thomas Widdershoven
Thonik, Amsterdam
Tuesday, March 25
Charles S. Anderson and Laurie DeMartino
CSA and Studio d, Minneapolis
I shall take copious notes.
24-February 2003
exceptions: from the naïve to the bellicose
The canonical responses aren’t all-inclusive, of course. There are
those to whom you’ll mention your interest in type, and upon hearing
this, will exclaim, “Oh, me too! I just love, um – what’s it called –
oh yes, Financial. I use it for everything!”
Loathe though you may be to admit it, these persons constitute a
collection of remote yet kindred spirits; not nearly ready for the
big leagues, they nonetheless pique your interest and bring a
sparkle to your eyes. This is because, at the very least, they
seem to be paying attention; they transcend basic awareness of a
font menu and know just what they like.
The sparkle is duly doused when you realize, as you have so many
times before, that they’re not wannabes and have no interest in
the big leagues, for to their way of thinking, they’ve already arrived.
So sure are they in their expertise, they’ll publish funeral announcements
for the former VP of Human Resources in Tekton because “it’s friendly and
comforting;” so determined are they to “do something different,” they’ll
distribute last week’s meeting minutes in Garamond italic, and next week’s
in Baskerville bold; and so impactful do they wish to be that they will
compose the cafeteria menu in, well, Impact.
In their own minds, they know as much as you do, you realize; and to
the few who willingly admit that you know more, you are a fool for
accumulating such a store of useless knowledge. Don’t tell these
people that you purchase fonts; an even greater fool will you instantly become.
But the sad truth is – and you well know it – most of them actually
do know more than you! Their grasp of fonts comprises only a small
subset of their design-related knowledge base. They have mastered all
mundacities (should be a word) and intricacies of PowerPoint, including
but not limited to fancy transitions that employ the insertion of sound
clips from old Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals; they can use more
colors in their Excel spreadsheets than they can actually perceive
with their standard-issue video cards; and they are so proficient in
WordArt that, to the delight of the division president, they’ve
successfully redesigned the division logo using it.
Try to tell these people rule 3.5.1: “Change one parameter at a time.”
Go ahead – I dare you. You’ll receive a swift kick in the ass in the
form of a smile and a brief expulsion of air through the nostrils that
says, in effect, you’re a fuckin’ loony. Push them on 1.1 – you know,
that balderdash about typography existing to honor content – and you
might get that kick for real.
In a blind attempt at retribution, I attempted a solo coup at my last job.
There, the use of Times New Roman in all reports was mandated. I snuck
Minion in through the back door; trouble is, no one ever noticed. Some
coup. Some revenge!
The moral of the story is – at least for those of you with one of
those “day jobs” – don’t try to win; you can't! Just stay low. Besides,
we like our type community small and smart, don’t we?
22-February 2003
questions about requiem for jonathan hoefler
I think in Courier, but I dream in Requiem.
I so clearly remember my first glimpse of it.
Never before had boilerplate Latin appeared so glorious to me. I studied the hell out of those four
HTF catalog pages –
or at the very least, I sure stared at them. The poise and sensuality of the lower case, roman a;
the capriciousness of the little p, whose bowl nudges nonconformingly past the stem;
the dazzling array of letter combinations in the italic, comprehensive enough to pacify the
most demanding polyglot. Not only is sauerstoffflaschen a word, apparently,
but it can be set precisely as it deserves.
Designer/author/teacher Jessica Helfand revealed her passion for Jonathan Hoefler’s Requiem in
an email exchange: “Requiem...is nothing short of perfection. I would be perfectly
happy to use it for everything I ever design the rest of my life. Period.” I suspect that
more than a few other designers and users feel the same way.
Perhaps I am more of an ascetic than most. I approach Requiem like I do fettucine alfredo: they’re both
so delicious that I feel I must save them for only the best of occasions.
In treating myself so infrequently, however, I’ve not come to know Requiem like I should,
so I decided to ask Jonathan a few questions. And he was kind enough to answer.
JC: For me, Requiem closed a gap that I perceived among types in this genre.
For my work, I needed something like a Centaur, but a superior cut, and I
needed a better, more optically correct Bembo; Requiem fit the bill
perfectly. Did you see a void as well, and was Requiem your attempt to fill
it?
JH: I wish I could say that Requiem had such lofty beginnings, but alas it
didn’t: like most of my studio’s work, it began with a practical request
from a client.
In 1990, Fred Woodward at Rolling Stone faxed me a page of initials that
he liked, and wanted to see developed as a typeface – these were the
Arrighi capitals from Il Modo, which have been variously reproduced. By
the time I’d finished some other obligations and got around to developing
a prototype, the folks at Rolling Stone had discovered Adobe’s new
“Trajan” typeface, and thought it suitable enough for their purposes. But
a few years later, the project was revived when Giovanni Russo at Travel
& Leisure inquired about having a custom typeface developed. It was then
that the font gained a lowercase, and ultimately an italic. The
ornaments, italic ligatures, and “optical size” masters for small sizes
(Text) and very large sizes (Fine) were done as a labor of love, in
preparation for bringing the fonts to market in 1999.
JC: The type is, as you state, “derived from a set of
inscriptional capitals in Il Modo de Temperare le Penne.” Furthermore,
Arrighi’s chancery italic is revived in that of Requiem. But what was your
precedent for the roman? How much of it was derived from historical
interpolation vs. your own preferences for a compatible roman?
JH: The roman lowercase is basically caprice, as I really couldn’t find a
suitable historical model. Arrighi did draw the occasional bit of roman
lowercase, in both Il Modo and La Operina, but I find them to be
overly calligraphic and generally contrived. [I’ve included some scans,
which are very old and therefore pitiful by today’s standards, but
they’re hopefully better than nothing. Here, see
Arrighi.]
In the beginning of the project, I spent some time experimenting with
Cresci’s lowercases [Cresci],
but found them a little too bitter to
go with Arrighi’s saucy caps – there’s a staid, “constructed” quality to
Cresci’s lettering that seems at odds with Arrighi’s esprit.
I did see a model that I liked at the British Museum, which has a
marvelous collection of sixteenth century manuscripts. One of them,
Marcantonio Flaminio’s La Paraphrasi
[Ruano]*, is especially
sparkling. It seems to bridge the gap between the typographic and the
calligraphic very smartly, and in a useful and unexpected turn, it
demonstrates capitals, upper- and lowercase roman, and italics all on the
same page – a rare example of a modern typographic family, rendered in
pure calligraphy.
In the end, there wasn’t much in Flaminio’s lettering that made it into
the Requiem lowercase, though studying it did help me diagnose one of my
font’s early problems. Most printing types designed in upper- and
lowercase presume that the primary function of capital letters is to
serve as initials, and that the bulk of what is read will be printed in
lowercase. The widths of these lowercase letters differ greatly, so that
their composition produces a sort of modulated effect. Aside from obvious
outliers like I and M which are bound by their basic design, most of the
capitals hew to a narrow range of widths.
But in alphabets which have no lowercase, this modulation must be
effected through the capitals themselves. Inscriptional letters such as
those found on the Trajan column exhibit wildly different character
widths: Es and Ss are nearly half the width of Ns and Rs, so that capital
inscriptions (“SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVM”) can achieve the varying
rhythm which is apparently most comfortable for reading.
The difficulty in outfitting a font of capitals with a lowercase is that
caps of dramatically different widths aren’t particularly comfortable
with the same lowercase. A lowercase ‘n’ designed to accomodate a narrow
cap S will be dwarfed by a wide cap H, or vice versa. (Most of the
various Trajan-with-a-lowercase fonts suffer this problem as a
fundamental design defect.) The problem is exacerbated by a small
x-height, which is a characteristic of renaissance letters such as
Arrighi’s.
Flaminio cleverly sidestepped the problem by combining his capitals with
a lowercase of unusually large x-height: a sufficiently large lowercase
‘n’ is at home with both a narrow ‘S’ and a wide ‘H’. I borrowed this
strategy for Requiem, additionally lengthening the font’s ascenders and
descenders to help camouflage the large x-height, and give the font the
grace that Arrighi’s caps deserve. Of course, a large body is exactly
what you don’t want in a chancery italic, and it wasn’t long after
Requiem’s roman was completed that the order came in for an italic.
Reconciling Requiem’s roman and italic required a bit of chicanery, as
close admirers of the font might have discovered.
JC: A requiem is most commonly known as a musical composition or chant in
honor of the dead. Is the face meant to be a typographic requiem of sorts?
JH: I suppose it’s as elegiac as any other historical revival. Something
about the name Requiem seemed in keeping with the spirit of the typeface,
and I’m especially fond of musical names for typefaces: somewhere on the
drawing board are Oratorio, Novena and Plainsong, as well as a medieval
thing I’ve been calling Burana. Incidentally, quite a few type designers
are also musicians, most locally my partner Tobias Frere-Jones, who
manages to move between Bezier curves and waveforms with annoying
effortlessness.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll also admit to having settled on
“Requiem” because it contains a few of the font’s signature letters, R, E
and Q among them. If at all possible I’d have snuck a Y in there as well.
JC: A few years have elapsed, now, since Requiem was released. No doubt,
you’ve had an opportunity to see it used in a variety of settings, from
signage to book covers, to extended text. Are there some
applications of it that have especially pleased you, and conversely, are
there some that you have found to be simply egregious?
JH: Maybe it’s because I’m especially pleased with the font itself, but I
tend to be especially happy seeing Requiem in use. I’m surprised that I haven’t
seen the ornaments and cartouches used much: designers who visit our web
site seem to single these out for praise, though I think I’ve only seen
them in print once. But I regularly see the font being used with great
aplomb: lots of carefully spaced capitals, thoughtfully leaded text
settings, and judicious use of the decorative end of the family.
Somehow Requiem seems to have escaped the sorts of violations I’ve
witnessed of the other fonts, though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time
before I see fake caps-and-small-caps, scaled 60%, and slanted. But rest
assured that the designers in my office are awaiting this offense, with
ticket books in hand.
*N.B. After I posted, John Downer kindly wrote to Jonathan and to me and informed us that
Marcantonio Flaminio was the author of the text only, and
did not produce the lettering shown in the sample.
He added, “Ferdinando Ruano was the scribe most experts think
deserves credit for the lettering. He was amazingly
adept at producing a ‘typographic-looking’ bookhand
by employing quills of two sizes – the larger to form
the stems and bowls; the smaller to add serifs. (It’s
very laborious to execute lettering this way, but the
results can be magnificent, as seen in Ruano’s work.)” The link has
therefore been changed from Flaminio to Ruano.
07-February 2003
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