Georgia is Big, Strong and Clean

This is a post set in Georgia.

This is Georgia Bold Italic.

One of the best looking, simple web pages I've

ever seen used nothing but Georgia, set in concise,

short lines of text, with lots of white space all

around it. Can't remember where that page was,

but it made a good impression on me and confirmed

my fondness for the Georgia typeface.

Georgia was designed by Matthew Carter, a smart,

graceful, amicable elder statesman of the font world.

He's just a great guy, completely likeable. The font

was hinted by Tom Rickner, who is nice enough to

have devoted his whole life to hinting typefaces,

a very specialized, complicated skill that not many

other people have taken the time to master.

I like Georgia for its big ol' serifs, which are always

clear, even on low-rez computer screens. Georgia

is also really BIG, like it's cousin Verdana, with a

mighty x-height that also adds to legibility. Right

in between Times and Clarendon, but clearly not

either, Georgia is a distinctly modern serif rooted

in classic traditions that make web page text read

like a book, in a good way. Love it.

Webdings WTF?

hs

(What's not to like about that?)

Courier Looks Like Poetry to Me

this post is set in courier. this is courier bold italic. courier always makes me think of ee cummings.

"to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." e.e. cummings

PROGRAMMERS really like courier because of its monospace nature. sometimes you really need a font that has every character the same width.

mostly I like courier because it makes me think of a typewriter. And writers.

Verdana Steps in with a Smile

This a retweet from Twitter, posted here in Verdana. This is Verdana Bold Italic.

RT @Charpie Verdana is like someone you don't really want to hang out with, but every time they talk to you they're so damn nice.

Personally I like Verdana because of that big, different, cross-barred "I". Technically, cross-bars above and below on a cap I are a typographic no-no. But I like it because it makes the word "I" come across big and strong. Makes you feel stronger when you type with it. Makes me think of a steel i-beam. While I think the cross-barred I looks good as a word, it's often not as nice in an ALL CAPS INSTANCE. Sometimes a single stroke I looks better. All I'm sayin' is that Verdana feels like a big, well-intentioned rule breaker, and I still dig it.

So does IKEA. They just started using Verdana as their main font.

A post set in Arial

This post is set in Arial. This is Arial Bold Italic. Arial is another typeface with a somewhat dubious history. It's a cheap knock-off of the more classic and elegant Helvetica typeface. It was popularized by Windows in the early 90s when Microsoft opted for Arial instead of Helvetica to save on licensing fees. Windows' ubiquity and popularity led to a similar popularity for the Arial font, which Mark Simonson calls "little more than a shameless impostor" of Helvetica. A couple times every year I like to read about the origins of Arial v. Helvetica in articles like Simonson's "Scourge of Arial." Fonts like Helvetica and Arial are so flavorless and overused, they are the main reason I started making fonts, to make creative alternatives to these heartless, drab typefaces.

Here is a post in Times font

This is a post in the Times font. This is Times Bold Italic. Times was created for the newspaper The Times of London in the early 20th century. There is some controversy over the true origins of this font. It is a good font for a high-school newspaper because it looks like a traditional "newspaper" font.

I always try to capture the fleeting splendor of fall foliage, but the camera never catches it quite as lovely as my eyeballs see it.