Month: October 2012

Awful Futura, fabulous Futura. I will use almost any other typeface before I will resort to Futura! It is over-used, ill-used, thoughtlessly used. And yet its alphabet contains some perfect letter forms and when used appropriately and wisely it is stylish beyond measure. It elicits such a reaction from me because I have had to use it too often, particularly in school textbooks where the ‘a’ most closely matches the ‘a’ of the Foundation Style method that’s used to teach kids to write. Upper case Futura looks great and lower case works well for headings, but to me it reads badly as body text, and therein lies the rub.

I love Clarendon Bold. According to Jaspert’s Dictionary of Typefaces it was originally put out in 1845 by Robert Besley & Co (formerly the Fann Street Foundry) as a heavy face to accompany an ordinary roman in dictionaries and the like. I like slab serifs generally, but I like Clarendon particularly well, especially the upper case R, which exudes boldness and solidity and gutsiness while simultaneously showing off a touch of quirkiness. Clarendon shouts look at me, I am not ordinary, which I guess is why it was perfect for those American Wild West Wanted posters. Clarendon is not a typeface I use very often, but it is striking and worthy and I am pleased to have made its acquaintance.