Friday, May 09, 2008
True to Type
Probably like you, our family talks a lot about books. We talk about what we are reading, what we have read, what we’ve read about reading (God bless the Sunday New York Times Book Review section!) and what we are planning to read next. Standing in front of the bookcase, my daughter-in-law, Nancy, and I were having one of those discussions. I think that she was holding Bobbie Ann Mason’s Clear Springs; she flipped to the back and saw the page that tells which font was used in printing the book and a bit of history about that font.
Nancy said, “I can’t believe that they waste a page putting that in there. Nobody cares about that!”
Danger! A big, evil-mother-in-law-trap just waiting to ensnare me there! Recognizing it in time, I pulled the shreds of my seldom-worn garment of tact around myself and did not blurt out, “Are you nuts! That’s a great thing! I love it when they put that in! It’s like frosting on a cookie; it makes it ever so much better!”
I didn’t say it then, but it does matter, it matters to anyone who ever has had trouble reading a sign because of difficult lettering, and it matters to me. I’m hard-wired to think about fonts. I have no clue why, but my father, a pretty constant reader himself, had some books on lettering and typography, and I used to lie on my stomach in front of the fire and thumb through them when I was a child. In the Southern way of keeping things in the family by passing them on, I now own those books. One of them has an introduction by Frederic Goudy (All of you who have ever scrolled through the font list on your computer will recognize that name.) and my father’s name and the date of purchase written near the front in his neat, round, fountain-pen-produced script.
That early interest in lettering led me to absolutely love classes in layout and design (The discussions of serif versus sans serif were endlessly fascinating: leads-the-eye, as opposed to clean and no-frills. You can have knock-down, drag-out fights over that one!), purchase lots of additional fonts for my computer (Merchandisers see me coming!), fantasize about working for a printer, and save every font-related cartoon that I came across: admittedly a small collection. (Did you see the “Fox Trot” where the kid’s computer queries him about performing spell-checking, grammar-checking and style-checking, then it declares that Helvetica is “so ugly” that it will not permit the kid to print his book report?)
So, when Larry, in the mode of a good research assistant, announced to me a couple of years ago that “Helvetica” the movie, was coming to a theatre near me, I was ready to go. Wow! A whole film about a font! How cool was that! Time had flown and Helvetica was 50 already. Time to celebrate! We arrived at the screening and the auditorium was full. Imagine! That many people not only were willing, but had paid money, to watch a full-length film about a font. And, no kidding, after the film, they gave us snacks: frosted cookies decorated with letters spelling out, in the aggregate, “Helvetica:” in the appropriate font, naturally.
Font, along with stock, and hardbound versus paperbound all are things that can make reading just that much more pleasurable. Knowledgeable and true book-lovers, Phillip and William at Erasmus Books, will take the time to discuss not only the content, but also the physical characteristics of books with you. For some of us, it’s close to dying and eating frosted cookies forever.
Think of it like dinner. A few years ago, there was an airline advertisement that featured a flight attendant coming along the aisle – this was back when there was food service on flights – saying, “Slap some cuisine onto your plate?” Consider that “cuisine slapped onto your plate,” versus a dinnertime presentation where there is arrangement and garnish on a lovely piece of china that just invites you into the experience; you look at the plate and think, “Oooohh.” Works the same way with a book. Though it was over 40 years ago, my first receipt of a leather-bound book in a slipcase remains a clear memory that awakens my senses: the feel, the smell, the visual beauty of the gold stamping on the leather binding, the sound as I turned the thin-but-opaque, gilt-edged leaves, the elegant, clear print, those all made the getting of a gift just that much better!
In times when we do not have to live like barbarians, but have the opportunity to experience the luxury of the frosted cookie, why not have it! It makes it ever so much better.