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How Fonts Are Fueling the Culture Wars (backchannel.com)
Reader mirandakatz writes: Typography is having a bit of a moment: Suddenly, tons of people who don't work in design have all sorts of opinions about it, and are taking every opportunity to point out poor font choices and smaller design elements. But they're missing the bigger picture. As Medium designer Ben Hersh writes at Backchannel, typography isn't just catchy visuals: It can also be dangerous. As Hersh writes, 'Typography can silently influence: It can signify dangerous ideas, normalize dictatorships, and sever broken nations. In some cases it may be a matter of life and death. And it can do this as powerfully as the words it depicts.' Don't believe him? He's got ample visual examples to prove it.
I thought the article was going to be about how a capital "I" and a lowercase "L" look the same in some fonts and really messes up your code. I've had it happen before... Il
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
It was supposed to represent "moving forward". The irony of it pointing to the right wasn't lost on Bernie supporters. It also looked like a house that fell over between the Twin Towers.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's not funny, just pretentious.
Comic Sans has an actual use in the classroom for young readers and writers. It is the only font that has all of the following features at the same time:
a. It's widely available, installed on pretty much any computer some random Word or PowerPoint file might find itself.
b. The lower case "a" has a single loop and a small tail, the way it's usually taught for handwriting.
c. The lower case "g" has a single loop and a hook, the way it's usually taught for handwriting.
d. The "I" and "l" characters are easily distinguished (see what I did there?).
e. The "U" and "u" characters are easily distinguished.
I don't know what to say about Trump's "logo" other than it was just a generic slogan, but maybe that said "genuine" to some people.
I liked Trump's slogan because it actually told you to do something. It immediately involves the listener in the process. You can respond by agreeing ("I would like to help Make America Great Again"), or by disagreeing ("I don't want to make America great again") or by rejecting the premise ("America already is/never was great"). But it contained a call to action that forces one to engage. Compare this to other slogans:
Clinton: "I'm With Her." There's no direct call to action there. There's no goal. There's no evaluation of the current situation or a possible future. It's empty.
Jill Stein: "It's in our hands." No shit. There's nothing to really disagree with there, but also nothing for you to do. There is no engagement.
Marco Rubio: "A New American Century." What the fuck does that mean, Marco? What am I supposed to do with the new American century?
Ted Cruz: "Reigniting the Promise of America." Well that sounds nice, but there's nothing to engage me or call me to action. Also it's passive. The "promise of America" sounds like asking what my country can do for me, not what I can do for my country.
Carly Fiorina: "New Possibilities. Real Leadership." Now that's generic and meaningless.
Jeb Bush: "Jeb!" Man, fuck you Jeb. Low energy.
So, I'd say Trump's slogan was far less generic than anybody else's, and at least it said something, and required the listener to evaluate the call to action and accept or reject it.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
That's what the early Arabic fonts did, but those who know Arabic well (I don't) tell me it didn't look good. And that's the Naskh style, which Arabic and many other languages that use Perso-Arabic script use. There's also the Nasta'liq style, which is still more calligraphic, and much harder to encode as a font. Urdu and Punjabi use Nasta'liq, and maybe others as well. (Persian used to.) Indeed, it wasn't long ago (a decade?) that some Urdu newspapers were written out by calligraphers before being printed by photo-offset. (I hope I have my terms right...)