Using Fonts for Website Design
Posted by: Octavio Marquez on 7/7/2008 1:37:25 PM
Textual content is everywhere around us. We constantly have to read whether we want to or not. We read printed material - books, newspapers, pamphlets, bills, posters and billboards, as well as TV, computer or theatre screens. We read wine and t-shirt labels too. wherever we look there are different letters. Our world is made out of fonts.
In order to do it properly I would have to start with the invention of papyrus, but than, who would be patient enough to read all that jazz (see the article about how Google makes us stupid) so, I think I’ll skip a few thousand years and go with the more recent past instead, concentrating on two specific moments. First one would be in 1455 when Johannes Gutenberg printed first the Bible using mechanical means, and the second one is something that we have all witnessed – computer assisted desktop publishing that started in the late eighties.
All through history, before Guttenberg, books were copied manually – which, fonts wise, must have been the most creative process ever – one man – at least a dozen different styles. After Guttenberg, for more than five centuries western civilization relied on a handful of really useful types. I read somewhere that by the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century seventy five percent of published books were printed in Helvetica. And Helvetica still reigns.
There have been countless type mutinies for a long time now but no other font has came close enough to Helvetica. Which is good and bad at the same time, of course. We have become so used to that crisp and clean sans serif type that many times we don’t even consider anything else in order to give our ideas a graphic form. And, there is nothing wrong with Verdana, Rotis, Barmeno or Myriad. Not at all. The fact is that Helvetica is a brand as Volkswagen, Perrier, or Kleenex are. It is a safe bet. But being a safe bet it is also conservative. Nevertheless, it still processes elegance and enviable readability. It is really difficult to get rid of it. Personally, I love it but at the same time I challenge using it on a daily basis.
When the computer revolution started, graphic programs came stuffed with hundreds of True Type fonts. We were all amazed by mere possibility of using all of them. It looked like a designer heaven had suddenly opened up on our computer screens. But it soon became obvious that there was a huge problem related to abundance of choice. All sorts of aesthetic and usability crimes had been committed in the name of artistic freedom. Everything was easy and everything was permitted. Fortunately, there are fast learners around, and design anarchy faded out. Some tried to make the best out of it by introducing fonts that have little to do with reading and packaged it as a attractive, modern design as David Carson did. Great stuff, no doubt about. It was the second best contribution to history of type next to Russian Constructivism (Lissitzky, Malevitch, Rodschenko and Co). Others carefully kept on going with their academic research providing us on a steady basis with countless examples of good fonts. Thank you Agfa, and thank you ITC. Thank you Adobe.
