Why Blog about Type?

Type is everywhere. This subway sign was designed using Helvetica.

Why blog about something as inane (i.e., boring) as typography? Fonts, really? Really??

Those are fair questions to ask; although, I don’t necessarily like your tone. You might think that a well developed typographic acumen should be reserved for hard-core graphic designers and über-geeks, but type is all around us. From books to magazines, from television ads to billboards, from email to web pages, from letters to invoices, type is, for all intents and purposes, unavoidable. Despite the ubiquity of type, it goes relatively unnoticed by the general public.

I’m blogging about type here to promote an awareness and appreciation of typography and page design.

When it comes to typography, what you don’t know can hurt you.Considering all of the outlets for typography that I mentioned earlier, anything you write is competing for your readers attention against a plethora of other media.

For example, when I was hiring manager, I noticed that I subconsciously spent a lot less time looking at résumés with poor typography and page design than I did résumés that were easy on the eyes, and I noticed I was doing this before I ever studied typography. I wasn’t being a type snob, I was just busy, and the thought of working harder to plough through ugly type and bad page design was not appealing to me. I have a feeling that I was not the only hiring manager who was busy, nor the only one who passed over ugly résumés.

I don’t want your résumé to get passed over, your report to be sent straight to the shredder, or your presentation to bomb due to some unintentional typographic faux pas or another.

This blog is intended for anyone who writes for a living, writes as part of their job, or just has an idle curiosity for type and a lot of spare time to read blogs. This blog may interest professional graphic designers and typographers for its pithy observations, its quirky anecdotes, and my unwitting mistakes.

Happy reading!
—Michael