Colophon [colophon.info] have just produced a publication on the life and times of unstoppable New Zealand based typographer Joseph Churchward. Not only does it include many lush examples of Churchward’s typographic work, both published and unpublished. But you also get a discussion on the ‘unsolicited’ work Churchward used to produce that he affectionately referred to as ’suggestions’. You can get hold of a copy via Clouds [clouds.co.nz/joseph-churchward] or by emailing Colophon direct.

Used to be that Designers set typographic trends. A spanky new typeface would be released by some hot shot type foundry and, with enough universal appeal, and despite the cost, that typeface would spread like wildfire, pricking the public consciousness and giving a new language to entities the world over. It happened with Meta, Insterstate, Akkurat and, back through the mists of time, with Helvetica, Futura, Gill Sans, Garamond etc.
 
Now, with ‘personal computing’ and the online environment making the creative world more democratic, we’re staring to see loads of design decisions made by ‘non-designers’. It’s all part and parcel of the rise of the amateur, something Boicozine doesn’t think of as necessarily a bad thing (boicozine is the product of both amateur journalism and amateur web design). Having said that this ‘rise of the amateur’ bodes ill for typography. Type is often the most expressive aspect of a graphic design. The appropriate choice of typeface will set the tone for your communication straight away.
 
If design is decision making then deciding on the most appropriate typeface for a project is the most vital skill a graphic designer can master. Still, it’s a skill that the amateur often overlooks for reasons of accessibility. Think about it… you’ve never designed anything before and you’re setting a page of text. You have a choice to use what’s preloaded on your computer or to go dive head-first into the vast cacophony of typefaces that are available, on a scale from free to the most expensive you can find (House Industries attempted to create the most expensive typeface family in the world with their ‘Luxury’ family [houseind.com] although the debate rages on [typophile.com]).
 
So it was that Arial came to prominence. The poor bastard child of Helvetica, it was produced to get around having to pay to license the real thing. It’s Helvetica with crappy bits thrown in to avoid any law suits. Of course, it been with us long enough now for a certain mystique to have developed around it, helped by the rise of Ascender Corp [ascendercorp.com], who were born out of the ashes of Microsoft’s typography division [microsoft.com/typography] clutching a swag of valuable font licenses and continue to hold sway over of computer operating systems the world over. Which brings me neatly round to Century Gothic.
 
Century Gothic is freakin’ everywhere at the moment from M&S ‘Connoisseur’ packaging, to the Casino Royale to PC World’s recent rebrand to the City of London’s collateral and so on. It is essentially Futura or Avant Garde with crappy bits thrown in to avoid licensing costs… again. Only this time around Ascender have learnt from criticism levelled at Arial (which they continue to naively contest) and imbued it with an historical context, basing the design, very loosely, on a typeface developed around the 1940s by little known typographer, Sol Hess [linotype.com]. Their choice to ‘work-up’ a Monotype typeface is ripe too. Monotype have reproduced and renamed a number of replicant typefaces throughout their often dubious history.
 
So fellow amateur enthusiasts (in whatever field you may frequent) next time you’re scrolling through your typeface menu and are about to reach for the Century Gothic (cause everyone’s doing Arial) just remember this… there are gabillions of typefaces in the world, far too many to count and, although it may seem easier to work with what you’ve got, it was Ascender who also thrust upon the world the most reviled font in existence, Comic Sans [bancomicsans.com], and they’re still flogging it today (for $30 a pop) [ascenderfonts.com].

The French edition of Elle magazine has taken the bold step of employing Non-Format [non-format.com] to add a new dimension to the Elle magazine format with their bi-annual, Very Elle [veryelle.elle.fr]. They’ve designed a typeface called Heroine for it that plays on Elle’s Futura international obsession. The previews look fab. I’m going to have to try and get a hold of this one.

Ludovic Balland’s foliosite [ludovic-balland.ch] is almost, completely monochrome which highlights how bold his studio’s typographic vision is. To achieve this they’re not only manipulating existing typefaces in new and exciting ways but also creating new typefaces from old (or from scratch). If you are looking for a sample of his studio’s more exciting work, seek out the compendium they produced for the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art [bb5.berlinbiennial.de] entitled ‘When Things Cast No Shadow’ [jrp-ringier.com], where a crazy cast of typefaces that should be jostling for attention are roped into order with surprising results.

As a sidenote jrp | ringer are also the publishing house behind Ezra Petronio and Suzanne Koller’s forthcoming (and rather expensive) monograph [jrp-ringier.com]. You may know them better as Work In Progress [petronioassociatesblog.com].

Fanette Mellier [fanettemellier.com] has just completed her residency in Chaumont as part of the annual Festival International de l’Affiche et du Graphisme de Chaumont 2008 (they could think of a snappier title huh). She has also been putting the finishing touches on an ace new identity for the Parc Saint Leger Contemporary Art Centre [parcsaintleger.fr]. It’s modular and multi-faceted, comes in a variety of colours or in basic black and has a rather nifty set of punctuation that ties in with the geometric shapes that make up the custom display typeface which you can see above. Further proof that France is kicking serious graphic butt with this latest generation of creative types.

Anyone who has followed Boicozine since way back when will know I’m a massive fan of Tom Adams’s [tomadamsuncovered.co.uk] work on Agatha Christie books around the middle of last century. As far as this author’s concerned, they have never been bettered. The Agatha Christie series has been redressed innumerable times since the books were originally conceived. The latest batch of cover designs by David Wardle [designedbydavid.co.uk] are still not a patch on ‘the Adams’ but do add an interesting twist to the cannon. The big change is that they are primarily typographic covers, with individually rendered type styles created to suit each book. Although many seem to be a little too ‘jolly’ for my liking, they are a vast improvement on the blurry photographic style covers they are replacing and should be of interest to type freaks the world over.

Photoshop is easy. That’s why people love it. It can do some crazy stuff for you but if are designing most of your work in Photoshop then you shouldn’t really be designing at all. Does that sound harsh? Have a look around at the visual noise you see everyday. Have a look at any effects laden website disaster [smashingmagazine.com]. Have a look at any recent Movie Poster [impawards.com]. Many of these Photoshop Monkeys will lazily pick through their existing font menu and use whatever is pre-installed on their computer rather than seeking out the most appropriate or well drawn typeface for the job. Either that or lazy marketing hacks (who love manipulating Photoshop Monkeys cause they can’t argue their case as well as fully fledged Graphoes) will specify a typeface simply because they have it on their PC and, therefore know what it’s called and what it looks like. In this case familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, just laziness.

The website you are looking at has the ability to display any typeface you’d like to specify. In fact, any website that employs Cascading Style Sheets [wikipedia] has been able to do this for ages now. Problem is your Browser can’t (well, IE4 could but this doesn’t really help much — Note: it’s back in Safari 3.1, see link above) [msdn.microsoft.com]. Could be developers just decided embedding fonts was unnecessary when you had a least five typefaces to choose from already. For the developer that finds typefaces a frivolous waste of resources you can already specify them as simply ’serif’, ’sans-serif’, ‘monospace’, ‘cursive’ and, ‘fantasy’ (!?). The other possible reason leads us to our third set of culprits in our ‘death of typography’ scenario…

Typefaces are expensive. Well, most good ones are. They can take a long, long, time to put together or require the sort of slight of hand only a handful of type experts can deliver. Typefaces need to be less expensive. Compare them to your average consumer product. Pretend you are shopping on your local high street or shopping mall or whatever and Woolworths now have a typeface aisle. Should I get Children of Men on DVD for £15 pounds or buy Berthold’s new OpenType version of Akzidenz Grotesk for £230 [bertholdtypes.com]? Sure, it’s a loose analogy but none of these type foundries seem to want to admit that many of the decisions regarding typefaces are being taken out of the hands of your traditional design professionals. People being free to create their own types of media (be it a blog, or a blurb book [blurb.com], or a myspace profile etc) means decisions on what typefaces to use are being made by more and more people. Typefaces are mass media. So why do they continue to be marketed to a select few. Surely, there’s some educating to be done on both sides of the fence here.

There are real solutions to this dilemma. Possibly, the best way to solve it is to separate typefaces into two distinct areas. The ‘bite-size’ chunkette [wired.com/snack_attack] and the Deluxe (or Professional) edition. For a typeface to be popular, all it really only needs is four fonts (this is what you should be calling a singular version of a typeface [typophile.com/wiki]), the Regular, the Italic, the Bold and the Bold Italic. That’s your basic package right there. Now all you have to do is market it like the delicious collectable eye-candy that it is and you’re away. The way the web is, this should get people chopping and changing fonts like crazy. The thing to remember is, that like candy, this is only the cheap substitute to the real meal (and you and I know that it’s okay to snack between meals but never substitute your dinner for candy). That’s where the Pro version comes in and the big cash money comes out. Whaddya think? It’s time to stop edging around the consumer and dive straight in. Now which foundry is going to be first to test the water?

Update: And so it begins: [fonts.info]

Further Reading on the Trouble with Typography:
The unfortunate death of Helvetica
[designbyfire.com/31]
Web Design is 95% Typography (Part 1)
[informationarchitects.jp/the-web-is-all-about-typography-period]
Web Design is 95% Typography (Part 2)
[informationarchitects.jp/webdesign-is-95-typography-partii]

Around 1969, British Harper’s Bazaar [paperpursuits.com] had a bit of an identity crisis. It only lasted for a year and a bit, the outcome of which saw it merge with it’s main competitor, Queen magazine [wikipedia], to become Harper’s & Queen [vinmag.com]. But before this weird hybrid mag was born, they did some really interesting ‘messing about’ with the Bazaar identity. Looking very Biba [bibaexperience.com], even the masthead was dramatically redrawn in a sort of 60s/20s homage to Art Deco. Sans serifs were employed throughout in the magazine, which was rare for a fashion magazine at the time, namely Gill Sans.

A few years ago, I worked on the ‘Girl’ issue of a London-based music and lifestyle, and was so inspired by this 1969 edition of British Bazaar that I had a crack at building the typeface myself. It was only ever used for this special edition of the magazine and has been languishing on my hard drive ever since… until now. It’s not for sale because it’s unfinished but here’s a beta version of the ExtraLight weight available for free download for you to muck about with. Let me know what you think.

[ Download Bazaar ExtraLight Beta ]