Fonts

[Ian H]

Always worth avoiding Gill Sans because Eric Gill was an utter bastard.

He wasn't completely bad, he merely believed in sexual communion with everyone, including his family, and even the dog.
But his typography is near genius, and his sculpture pretty good.

 

[ColinJ]

My favourite font is Johnston, which was created for the London Underground map.

There was an interesting documentary on the BBC last year - Two Types: The Faces of Britain - about Johnston, and also Gill Sans. It is not currently available on iPlayer but for now there is a copy on YouTube - HERE. Unfortunately, the recording has the wrong aspect ratio and the audio level is too low, but it's well worth putting up with those problems.

PS I have found a way of stretching the video... Use THIS LINK instead!

 

[matticus]

for now there is a copy on YouTube - HERE. Unfortunately, the recording has the wrong aspect ratio

I bet no true font nerd could sit through that. Almost as bad as Comic Sans subtitles.

 

[ColinJ]

I bet no true font nerd could sit through that. Almost as bad as Comic Sans subtitles.

I have updated my post with a video fix! (Still too quiet though...)

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

I'm afraid I just use the font that is default in whatever I'm using. Unless I need a Greek letter in which case it's Symbols IIRC. Anyone know where I can access a French letter?

 

[Rooster1]

I bet no true font nerd could sit through that. Almost as bad as Comic Sans subtitles.

I have already watched it, and I will watch it again, lol

 

[Tribansman]

This thread is overflowing with pun potential. <Must....resist....>

 

[matticus]

[emailing out plain-text passwords]

The old aukweb.net site used to do this.

Yup. And it was readable/usable. Progress eh? At least your calendar is now safe from strangers!

/another-off-topic-whinge

 

[Tribansman]

What's Chicago's favourite song?

I shot the serif

 

[Milkfloat]

I too worked in a company pretentious enough to have their own font. It was expensively produced specifically for our company which was great, except any time you sent emails or documents to people outside the company they could not read it and defaulted to a basic Times New Roman which made everything look terrible. We moved on from that debacle to a standard font, just ne of the lesser known ones, the problem with this font is that an 'i' looks almost exactly the same as a 'l', so I spend my entire time wincing when reading emails and documentation.

 

[figbat]

Anyone know where I can access a French letter?

Something for the weekend, Sir?

Here's a screenshot of a document I put together many years ago - I usually have a printed version somewhere I can see or reach quickly (in a notebook or on a noticeboard). The ones I commonly use like °, ö, ü, ä, é I know from memory now, others I can usually get to with a few guesses. I hate seeing lazy/ignorant use of things like º (superscript 0) instead of ° (degree) and even x (lower case x) instead of × (multiply). The grey-backed characters will work almost universally across different programs but the amber ones I usually have to go to MS Word to type them and then copy/paste to my required location (eg ≈).

For some I have created automatic replace options in Windows - so for example if I type (C) it will auto-replace to © or CO2 will become CO₂.

 

[AuroraSaab]

The whole history of writing and printing is interesting. Cuneiform for example is fascinating - there are online cuneiform translators if you want to know your name in Ancient Babylonian. Illustrated manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels are things of beauty that took years to produce. We kind of take all this access to literacy for granted nowadays, when in fact reading and writing was the preserve of the rich for thousands of years. Big up for William Tyndale and translating the Bible into English and making it (semi) accessible to the masses.

 

[Mr Celine]

For some I have created automatic replace options in Windows - so for example if I type (C) it will auto-replace to ©

AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhh

Every time work gives me a new laptop or there is some other unavoidable corporate upgrade windows reverts to replacing (c).
I have to quote legislation which always has sub-paragraphs numbered (a), (b), et seq and have never in my life had to type a copyright symbol.
[/rant]

 

[KneesUp]

I too worked in a company pretentious enough to have their own font. It was expensively produced specifically for our company which was great, except any time you sent emails or documents to people outside the company they could not read it and defaulted to a basic Times New Roman which made everything look terrible. We moved on from that debacle to a standard font, just ne of the lesser known ones, the problem with this font is that an 'i' looks almost exactly the same as a 'l', so I spend my entire time wincing when reading emails and documentation.

In my first job, way back last century, the company had a font made that mapped their a fifth-slice of their logo to the letters A,B,C,D, and E - which was fine when letters were being printed and posted - it was actually quite a good way then to get a logo that was scaleable, you just changed the font size to get a different sized logo.

However, once they started using email it became a problem that no-one outside the organisation had the font, so customers were confused when all sorts of documents had ABCDE on them.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Always worth avoiding Gill Sans because Eric Gill was an utter bastard.

Opportunity for thread to segue off into cancel culture

Aha! So you care a bit