Once upon a time, I found myself gainfully employed at a software company. Said company published a couple of applications – a vector drawing app and a photo editing app – that used type. I was able to convince them that they needed to achieve parity with their competition, and provide a typeface library along with the products, as a value-add proposition. Because I was the guy at the company that actually knew something about type, I was asked to pick which faces would be included with the products.
So I set out to write an interactive guide to using typefaces. It was an interesting task, not the least because I had to use the Windows Help System to deliver the product. (This was back in the early 90’s. Think about something that was even more of a kludge than HTML version 1.0, with no tools like Dreamweaver with which to code it.) The topic was (admittedly) huge. I realized all I could do is to scratch the surface, but I was determined to create a credible, useful guide.
Typefaces are the clothes that words wear.
I love that quote. It says it all. And it’s true. Think about it this way…take two packages – Say, some perfume like L’Air du Temps, and some household cleaner like Janitor in a Drum. Take their logos. Switch the names. Would you buy a perfume that used ITC Machine for it’s logo? Would you buy a cleaner if it used some kind of Spencerian script for it’s logo. I don’t THINK so. Typefaces can tell you how to feel about words before you even read them. That’s powerful.
I could live to be 200, and I wouldn’t know everything there is to know about typography. I’m cool with that. As long as I can keep learning about type, I’ll be one happy designer.