I’ve been a computer person my entire life. The notion that you could actually make a font, for example, and start using it that afternoon was incredibly seductive. – Jonathan Hoefler
Font Men – SXSW 2014 Official Selection from dress code on Vimeo.
It’s not impossible that typefaces made by living designers today will still be in circulation in decades or centuries to come. I hope we’re that fortunate. – Jonathan Hoefler
Possibility and potential: It’s so exciting to see experts reflect on the future of their work and their field, often because they’ve lost any of that youthful sense that they should apologize for what they love.
Plus, I’ve always had an (observer’s) interest in fonts. I remember when I was a younger, I spent some time building fonts on the computer (or trying to–I’m not sure I finished an alphabet, and if I did, I’m not sure I ever used it). At one point during a summer vacation, I read this article on the beginning of the adoption of Clearview after interim approval to be used in highway signs. And of course, I learned a little bit about institutions’ font preferences over time–that if I wanted to submit a short story to a publication, I would do well to write in Courier, and if I wanted to submit an essay to a professor, I would do well to write in Garamond (still a personal favorite).
(As a side note, this Opinionator article by Errol Morris in the New York Times comes out in favor of Baskerville for academic writing, although you’ll note that Garamond is not available as a comparison typeface in this test.)
Today I see font choice as a representation of a brand, event, or person’s personality. And it’s this exact desire to have depict clear personality with our words that keeps the Font Men busy, creating new ways of being within alphanumeric characters.