Wednesday, November 12, 2008

In search of the font of knowledge.

Type is as essential to brand as a score is to music. It’s the voice you hire to pronounce your name in print, to convey the mood, personality, and approachability of the brand.

For centuries custom fonts had to be painstakingly created letter by letter. Then came Adobe’s PostScript. For the first time, everyone with a computer and access to the Internet has a world of font choices from thousands of sources.

Now anyone can create a totally new letterform as formal as the most prestitious law firm or as free form as a surfer. Turn an ordinary old font into a proprietary logotype. Condense that type, expand it, kern it, shadow it, make it multi-color or gloriously multi-dimensional for print, the web or TV.

And wouldn’t you know it, with countless new font choices, there’s a new found appreciation for readability and for the classic fonts re-interpreted for specific clients, projects and media.

The trick is to find the visual poet who can choose the right font for the brand.

“The difference between regulated architects and unregulated designers is, unlike buildings, letters don’t fall down and kill people.”

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