today’s special: typography
September 8th, 2008i am kind of a type geek. since working with a creative director and typography nut two years ago, i have been on a slow and steady mission to learn more about font types and proper uses of punctuation and special characters. i examine billboards and brochures, i assess their subjects and goals, i try to identify fonts and formatting techniques, i ask questions. and then i reason out answers based on patterns i have previously observed and file them away in my brain for later use.
this neurotic tendency remained private until one fateful day in july. my boyfriend and i were walking into a restaurant in rockridge when, upon observing a special promotional sign, i blurted out, “zapfino linotype one!” he looked very concerned. the jig was up.
fortunately, as a fellow web designer, he understood. unfortunately, i have now also turned him into a type nut. several restaurants have since fallen prey to our typographic (and also general design) criticism. so far, we have observed the following:
- i will not eat crème brûlée unless the restaurant menu, at the very least, has the accent over the é.
- fresh + organic = papyrus. it’s becoming kind of a cliché…
- courier new should never be used to list items on a menu. ever.
- sans-serif fonts = quicker meal decisions!
- any inconsistencies in font or font size should have a purpose (i.e. to highlight a special or popular dish. we once saw a breakfast menu in san diego where, in the middle of an otherwise well-designed menu, we saw the word “waffles” screaming at us in caps. “I AM WAFFLES,” it seemed to say. “I AM NOT THE SPECIALTY HERE BUT I AM IN LARGE CAPS TO FILL UP WHITE SPACE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MENU. HELLO!” we did not order waffles.)
- proper indentation and line spacing is a plus.
- clever copy will have us coming back for more. unless your food sucked.
oh, and for the politically inclined, i found an article in the LA Times on typography in the presidential elections. i had recently been talking with people about how this year’s campaign logos and designs were garnering more interest than in previous elections, and ran into the article after googling mccain’s campaign font.
(it’s optima, by the way, which appears to be the same font used in the print citizen cake menus. hey, we’ve come full circle!)
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