#7: Find Some Fonts
Instructions
Notice the design of the letters and words around you.
See the shapes and forms instead of the content.
Notice your reactions.
Combine what you’ve culled.
What the Huh?
Right now, your brain is taking in the light pulsing from your device, collecting the shape of the ascenders, spacing, and other font choices to make sense of these pixels. Now, I do t h i s, or this, OR THIS, and you have a reaction (love it! HATE IT! Meh?), simply because I changed the shapes and spacing used to make words.
Welcome to the fantastic world of fonts.
Image: machine-made and hand-made signs in the neighborhood
All around us are design choices in font and lettering, subtly (or LOUDLY) implying culture or quality. And based on who we are, our politics, and our preferences, we react to these choices.
Famously, design nerds love Helvetica, hate Comics San (potty-mouthed comic response here), and then people fight about accessibility.
One day, you’ll notice a font and suddenly can’t stop seeing it. SNL had a funny video piece about Papyrus, and my pal Stephanie even started an IG account called Papyrus Spotting to deal with the visual overwhelm.
Who the Buh?
Artists have manipulated and even created fonts, especially in the age of reproduction.
Image: crops from artwork by Lawrence Weiner, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, and Christopher Wool
Artists with fonts attached to their work include Lawrence Weiner, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, and Christopher Wool. And people have played with those! A developer created an open-source software project that mimics Christopher Wool’s style and generates new combinations of words (sometimes NSFW).
Designers play with our expectations and visual branding in corporate font swaps. Back in the 90s and early 2000s activists got in the mix and started doing “culture jamming” (great idea, terrible name).
And way back in the 50s and 60s, artists including Corita loved to play with letter shapes and sourcing from the visual environment around them.
So look around and play around with the shape of words! Sure, I’d love to live in an environment that banned outdoor advertisement like São Paolo did, and many other places do—but learn to love what’s around you right now, even if you strive to improve it.
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