You know you’re a typoholic when...
you’re so busy concentrating on the typeface painted on the truck beside you that you miss your highway exit and have to drive 10 kms to the next exit and turn around.
(Did that yesterday and did not laugh at myself).
...when you go to the pub at lunchtime to watch the Mexico v Angola match and spend most of the game discussing the Puma Pace font’s diacritics with your Angolan co-worker.
... when you completely forget to slow down at the sight of a new speed limit because in your head you’re comparing the two different versions of DIN printed onto the two traffic signs you’ve seen ...
ok, slightly embarrassing, but I almost did not go on the first date with my boyfriend because the first courting email he sent came to my mailbox in....COMIC SANS. only after my best friend told me to stop being such a “font tool” did I decide to accept his wooing. lucky i listend to my best friend and not my typophilic tendencies. he, BTW, finds this little story completely hilarious.
I once had a girl who sent me an e-mail set on Monotype Corsiva and Impact, in Bright pink background and ecletic variation of font size (a la MySpace design aesthetics).
My reply said “Tschichold would be proud.” Set in Outlook’s default font stripped of all its formatting.
...when your partner points out poorly set type for your appreciation.
having said that I don’t really conside rmyself a typoholic ... yes still in the denial stage ... nor do i consider myself GREAT at typography, that’ll change. :)
Yes, Chris, I do have them listed in my iCal. I *am* a typoholic.
... when you are reading “The Education of a Typographer” by Steven Heller before you go to bed and you turn to your husband and ask him if you can read him a really interesting excerpt and when you turn back again, he’s asleep.
Your teenage son cracks up when you extol the virtues of PMN Caecilia on the Panera Bread in-store signage. He asks “Are you a type nerd?”. No, I say, a typophile. Which he says sounds like pedophile - all downhill from there.
Chris, that’s a good question isn’t it? One of my favourite quotes, by Beatrice Warde, is “People who love ideas must have a love of words. They will take a vivid interest in the clothes that words wear.” That’s how I see it: We do see the words, but we see what they’re wearing, too.
When my husband woke up the next morning and I told him that he had fallen asleep in the middle of my *extremely* interesting story, he replied with, “Honey, it’s like you’re reading from the Sears catalogue”. I was completely shocked.
My Dad is a retired commercial airline pilot, and flying is his reason for being. I told him this weekend that when I was a kid I remember him and other pilots standing around at an outdoor party talking about the pros and cons of different types of propellers. I had always wondered why they cared so much. One day I realized I was just as excited about different types of serifs as they were about props. And my wife is the one who rolls her eyes now.
You’re lying on a table in the Surgical Center awaiting your Doctor’s arrival for a colonoscopy, and on the ceiling above you is sign telling of the dangers of COLONORECTAL CANCER, and the message of the sign doesn’t seem as important as the fact didn’t kern the TA, leaving the AL hanging almost as another word.
And you actually start wondering if you should tell someone so they can fix it...
Andi - I can’t tell you how many close calls i’ve had on the 401 because i was obsessing over some aspect of the typography or logo on the truck beside me. I wonder if this is some sort of typographic natural selection at play..
That’s an interesting concept, Ben. Mind you, I don’t know how you drive on that 401 with all those lanes and collector lanes and big signage shouting at you from all sides - it’s really too much distraction for me. I don’t think I’d make it in the big city!
Brad, there’s two nice threads on that subject. Go over there.
You know you’re a typoholic when you’ve been away from your computer for a while and upon returning, you check the typophile.com site before you check your email.
We had one of these threads not long ago. It’s mildly embarrassing. But I know participation is optional. It would be great if there were no more “colonrectal” allusions.
Hey, I always check typophile.com before my e-mail.
But that’s probably because the new Hotmail (Windows Live Mail) logo is now set in Segoe UI (a.k.a. Frutiger lookalike), and is kerned too closely. Actually it really does open slowly.
Edit: I was referring to the e-mail page loading time when I typed “open slowly”, it was not an allusion to the tightly kerned logotype seemingly moving apart.
> ... a former prepress manager who said that if you can’t design with Helvetica and Times, then you can’t design.
Then I guess blokes like Bruce Rogers and Lucian Bernhard were just design hacks! (I know it doesn’t purely follow the logic of the argument... but hey!)
>Then I guess blokes like Bruce Rogers and Lucian Bernhard were just design hacks! (I know it doesn’t purely follow the logic of the argument… but hey!)
You are right. I feel bad now. I should have said a world of Times New Roman and Arial.
The odd thing about the o’s is that the diagonal stress was pretty light so I couldn’t figure out why it was bugging me so much at first & then... boom. Recognition.
It was a Land’s End store in the Minneapolis airport. After seeing that I looked around critically it also started to dawn on me that Land’s end seems like a serial type abuser. So much squishing & bending of type! It was like it was 1985 in there & they had gotten Broderbunds’s Typestyler and they were gonna use it!
Unfortunately (for him) the clerk wanted to know why I was laughing to myself. Naturally I explained about the ’o’s.
BTW - I think a backwards R can be okay it is kerned correctly.
No, I’m still on the Viking ship crossing the Atlantic. Oh geez, I forgot—I’m supposed to be pre-letterform, so as a Typophile, I must be really crazy.
Take some advice from me—NEVER do this if you get checked into a hospital. I did this so I would be left alone by various clergy and generally a wiseass, but no, EVERYONE had to come meet the Druid.
According to the Wikipedia, the main source of information about the Druids is Julius Caesar, in his Gaulic Wars:
“Caesar also notes that the Druids did engage in human sacrifice. This is supported by the fact that bogs in the United Kingdom have revealed people that have been ritually strangled. Because of the lack of trauma to the remains of these bodies, it has been suggested that the person sacrificed participated willingly, presumably believing that his sacrifice was for the good of the tribe.”
You hesitate to buy an otherwise beautiful and intelligent book — in this case, Christopher de Hamel’s wonderful “La Bible, histoire du Livre”, the French edition by Phaidon — because it is set using Monotype Bell WITHOUT the “fi” ligatures.
...a friend shows you their pictures of a recent trip to Greece and what you’re really interested in is the monumetal inscriptions in the background (which they hadn’t even noticed).
My father’s a geologist and as a child I heard my share of geological explanations when travelling on holiday with him. No mountain was just a mountain, no valley just a valley: there was always a very interesting fold in the rock, or evidence of an ancient glacier.
I guess it’s payback time — except my wife’s the one who has to put up with my “typocentric” travelling habits.
>”Edel, I saw “Dumb and Dumber” two nights in a row. Same theater, same time.”
I’ve said it before, we have much more in common than we think! You telling me not to quote from Hollywood movies. Come on, throw a quote from D & D in here! I dare you!
... you go to a car show and your friends say “Ooo, look at this cool old car, what kind of engine does it have?” and you say “Ooo, look at this cool old car, look at the art deco lettering!” (Happened today.)
>>When you have kids, you will instead start seeing salvation in it… ;-)
You know, Hrant, there is nothing more precious than seeing your children make their first letters and expressing themselves. You’re right. I have two girls (one 11teen and one 9) and even though the youngest still writes most of her letters backwards, these scribblings are wonderful and I love seeing them (on most every blank surface in our house).
However, seeing Toys R Us (R backwards) and WRAPS (R backwards) on the front of buildings makes me cringe. This is next to seeing stacked type on a banner, of course. OY!
You get tired of bookmarking and looking at all the different threads, look around, and like an idiot, realize theres’s a freakin’ “track” button that just tells you when there’s a new post. You start using the “track” button, because you figure, “hey, they’re not so bad here”, and decide to stick around because you can’t fathom the “Most Prolific Poster” title being handed over to your bitter rival, Hrant!
16.Jun.2006 5.09pm
You must have been pretty flushed to get that ragged. Right? :-)
ChrisL
16.Jun.2006 6.54pm
Nice one Paul.
You know you’re a typoholic when...
you’re so busy concentrating on the typeface painted on the truck beside you that you miss your highway exit and have to drive 10 kms to the next exit and turn around.
(Did that yesterday and did not laugh at myself).
16.Jun.2006 7.08pm
Your boss threatens to fire you for even kerning a half assed headline, but you continue any way, increasing said boss’s anger. You just do it!
The Truth shall set you free
16.Jun.2006 8.25pm
When you have yelling matches with the proofreader about use of en spaces versus thin spaces.
When you’ve been doing this for over 30 years and you realize you’ve never used Helvetica (or plan to).
16.Jun.2006 8.27pm
...when you go to the pub at lunchtime to watch the Mexico v Angola match and spend most of the game discussing the Puma Pace font’s diacritics with your Angolan co-worker.
17.Jun.2006 6.59am
...threads such as this one make you smile and you get all warm and fuzzy from being able to relate.
19.Jun.2006 3.03am
... when you completely forget to slow down at the sight of a new speed limit because in your head you’re comparing the two different versions of DIN printed onto the two traffic signs you’ve seen ...
19.Jun.2006 5.41am
Geez, driving and typography don’t mix!
19.Jun.2006 8.15am
You know you are a Typoholic when someone is talking about Type A and Type B personalities, you think about which font to use for the A and B :-)
ChrisL
19.Jun.2006 9.41am
Or when somebody asks you what’s your blood type, you reply “yes”.
hhp
19.Jun.2006 9.46am
And when they want you to immediately sign off on that
blood transfusion, you start going on about how amazing
Linotype Sangue is.
hhp
19.Jun.2006 12.57pm
...when you make note of every type designers’ birthdate. : )
19.Jun.2006 5.52pm
Andi—Do you have them listed in your iCal?
ChrisL
19.Jun.2006 6.16pm
ok, slightly embarrassing, but I almost did not go on the first date with my boyfriend because the first courting email he sent came to my mailbox in....COMIC SANS. only after my best friend told me to stop being such a “font tool” did I decide to accept his wooing. lucky i listend to my best friend and not my typophilic tendencies. he, BTW, finds this little story completely hilarious.
19.Jun.2006 6.30pm
amyp,
I once had a girl who sent me an e-mail set on Monotype Corsiva and Impact, in Bright pink background and ecletic variation of font size (a la MySpace design aesthetics).
My reply said “Tschichold would be proud.” Set in Outlook’s default font stripped of all its formatting.
And she was not a designer.
That’s when you know that you’re a typoholic.
19.Jun.2006 9.31pm
Font selection says a lot about a person, Amy. I’m glad you date him, but your friends really shouldn’t have called you a tool. ;^)
19.Jun.2006 10.24pm
Man, I really, really, don’t belong here.
ER
20.Jun.2006 12.44am
...when your partner points out poorly set type for your appreciation.
having said that I don’t really conside rmyself a typoholic ... yes still in the denial stage ... nor do i consider myself GREAT at typography, that’ll change. :)
—————
Paul Ducco
Solid Creative
Communication Design, Melbourne
20.Jun.2006 3.54am
Yes, Chris, I do have them listed in my iCal. I *am* a typoholic.
... when you are reading “The Education of a Typographer” by Steven Heller before you go to bed and you turn to your husband and ask him if you can read him a really interesting excerpt and when you turn back again, he’s asleep.
20.Jun.2006 6.06am
Your teenage son cracks up when you extol the virtues of PMN Caecilia on the Panera Bread in-store signage. He asks “Are you a type nerd?”. No, I say, a typophile. Which he says sounds like pedophile - all downhill from there.
20.Jun.2006 6.27am
When you refuse to work with a clients logo because of the horrible typography, so you change it for comps and switch it later.
20.Jun.2006 6.31am
…when you argue with the editor that the AP Manual’s style for something is typographically incorrect, and have the research to prove it.
…when you know it’s a sickness, and don’t want a cure!
20.Jun.2006 6.47am
Andi,
My wife’s comment to me is, “Don’t you ever just read the words?”
ChrisL
20.Jun.2006 6.50am
My wife is much the same way, I think she is embarrassed when we go out at times.
20.Jun.2006 7.45am
Chris, that’s a good question isn’t it? One of my favourite quotes, by Beatrice Warde, is “People who love ideas must have a love of words. They will take a vivid interest in the clothes that words wear.” That’s how I see it: We do see the words, but we see what they’re wearing, too.
When my husband woke up the next morning and I told him that he had fallen asleep in the middle of my *extremely* interesting story, he replied with, “Honey, it’s like you’re reading from the Sears catalogue”. I was completely shocked.
20.Jun.2006 8.21am
My Dad is a retired commercial airline pilot, and flying is his reason for being. I told him this weekend that when I was a kid I remember him and other pilots standing around at an outdoor party talking about the pros and cons of different types of propellers. I had always wondered why they cared so much. One day I realized I was just as excited about different types of serifs as they were about props. And my wife is the one who rolls her eyes now.
20.Jun.2006 12.09pm
You’re lying on a table in the Surgical Center awaiting your Doctor’s arrival for a colonoscopy, and on the ceiling above you is sign telling of the dangers of COLONORECTAL CANCER, and the message of the sign doesn’t seem as important as the fact didn’t kern the TA, leaving the AL hanging almost as another word.
And you actually start wondering if you should tell someone so they can fix it...
20.Jun.2006 12.27pm
Andi - I can’t tell you how many close calls i’ve had on the 401 because i was obsessing over some aspect of the typography or logo on the truck beside me. I wonder if this is some sort of typographic natural selection at play..
20.Jun.2006 12.30pm
That’s an interesting concept, Ben. Mind you, I don’t know how you drive on that 401 with all those lanes and collector lanes and big signage shouting at you from all sides - it’s really too much distraction for me. I don’t think I’d make it in the big city!
20.Jun.2006 12.30pm
We really should stop. Let’s talk about Che Guevara or something.
20.Jun.2006 12.32pm
Brad, there’s two nice threads on that subject. Go over there.
You know you’re a typoholic when you’ve been away from your computer for a while and upon returning, you check the typophile.com site before you check your email.
20.Jun.2006 12.35pm
We had one of these threads not long ago. It’s mildly embarrassing. But I know participation is optional. It would be great if there were no more “colonrectal” allusions.
20.Jun.2006 12.48pm
No need to pick on me. I’ve been traumatized enough for one day.
: )
20.Jun.2006 12.58pm
When your younger son sends you a birthday present, and it’s an antique brass plate of Newport uppercase letters he found in a junk shop!
20.Jun.2006 12.59pm
That’s a good son!
Read about mine - http://typophile.com/node/19321
20.Jun.2006 1.15pm
I remember the thread, Brad (you must be a proud papa).
This all adds another level of font dysfunction to family photo albums.
Now this is a photo of junior, standing next to a poorly kerned commemorative plaque for the Battle of Gettysburg during our PA trip.
20.Jun.2006 1.43pm
Hey, I always check typophile.com before my e-mail.
But that’s probably because the new Hotmail (Windows Live Mail) logo is now set in Segoe UI (a.k.a. Frutiger lookalike), and is kerned too closely. Actually it really does open slowly.
Edit: I was referring to the e-mail page loading time when I typed “open slowly”, it was not an allusion to the tightly kerned logotype seemingly moving apart.
20.Jun.2006 2.08pm
Alright, I’m back in the spirit. You go see a movie because of a font.
20.Jun.2006 2.31pm
That’s the [type] spirit Brad!
20.Jun.2006 2.35pm
You know you are a Typoholic when you deny that you are one.
My name is Magnus. I am not a Typoholic.
20.Jun.2006 5.15pm
Of course not! Me neither by the way, I’m here because I have this huge crush on hrant.
20.Jun.2006 6.00pm
I love you too, Demi.
hhp
20.Jun.2006 10.24pm
Londontype, that’s exactly what i always do! I’m like the only one who will always stay for the movie credits.
21.Jun.2006 9.38am
A world without typoholics is a world of Helvetica and Times.
Although I had a former prepress manager who said that if you can’t design with Helvetica and Times, then you can’t design.
Tim
21.Jun.2006 10.32am
Lore, now I’m heartbroken :-)
ChrisL
21.Jun.2006 10.35am
> ... a former prepress manager who said that if you can’t design with Helvetica and Times, then you can’t design.
Then I guess blokes like Bruce Rogers and Lucian Bernhard were just design hacks! (I know it doesn’t purely follow the logic of the argument... but hey!)
21.Jun.2006 10.37am
Ah, but to rephrase Shaw:
Is it a sin to love more than one man?
hhp
22.Jun.2006 8.19am
>Then I guess blokes like Bruce Rogers and Lucian Bernhard were just design hacks! (I know it doesn’t purely follow the logic of the argument… but hey!)
You are right. I feel bad now. I should have said a world of Times New Roman and Arial.
Tim
22.Jun.2006 11.35pm
Or you notice that the two o’s in sign that says ’room’ over the changing room were put on backwards...
23.Jun.2006 5.53am
You come up with typographic names for hip-hop acts like “Spurius G and the Small Caps”.
23.Jun.2006 7.00am
You keep old phototype books in plastic bags in the back of the toilet just in case your family plans an intervention.
23.Jun.2006 7.08am
YES!
23.Jun.2006 10.00am
Building on what Eben wrote, an upside down letter S drives me nuts but a backwards R makes me completely crazy.
23.Jun.2006 10.02am
> a backwards R makes me completely crazy.
When you have kids, you will instead start seeing salvation in it... ;-)
hhp
23.Jun.2006 2.32pm
The odd thing about the o’s is that the diagonal stress was pretty light so I couldn’t figure out why it was bugging me so much at first & then... boom. Recognition.
It was a Land’s End store in the Minneapolis airport. After seeing that I looked around critically it also started to dawn on me that Land’s end seems like a serial type abuser. So much squishing & bending of type! It was like it was 1985 in there & they had gotten Broderbunds’s Typestyler and they were gonna use it!
Unfortunately (for him) the clerk wanted to know why I was laughing to myself. Naturally I explained about the ’o’s.
BTW - I think a backwards R can be okay it is kerned correctly.
24.Jun.2006 9.16am
When you refuse to eat at a restaurant because its entire menu is set in Zapf Chancery.
24.Jun.2006 9.55am
Or if you freak out at your own mother’s eagerly-awaited Bat Mitzvah because the entire program is set in Balfour AND Comic Sans.
And I wonder why I have an ulcer.
24.Jun.2006 9.59am
Your mother had a Bat Mitzvah? At what age? Mazel tov.
24.Jun.2006 10.06am
Thanks, she’s 70. There were fourteen women B’not Mitzvahed at the same time, all between 40 and 85. Pretty cool.
Personally, I’m a Druid.
24.Jun.2006 10.14am
Plus, she’s a Mac user!
24.Jun.2006 10.23am
Rock on mom!
Did you go to Stonehenge for the solstice?
24.Jun.2006 12.27pm
No, I’m still on the Viking ship crossing the Atlantic. Oh geez, I forgot—I’m supposed to be pre-letterform, so as a Typophile, I must be really crazy.
24.Jun.2006 5.03pm
Now you stole my favorite line when people ask me my religion (usually in a form). I always fill in Druid. :-)
ChrisL
24.Jun.2006 5.11pm
Take some advice from me—NEVER do this if you get checked into a hospital. I did this so I would be left alone by various clergy and generally a wiseass, but no, EVERYONE had to come meet the Druid.
24.Jun.2006 5.14pm
>I always fill in Druid. :-)
According to the Wikipedia, the main source of information about the Druids is Julius Caesar, in his Gaulic Wars:
“Caesar also notes that the Druids did engage in human sacrifice. This is supported by the fact that bogs in the United Kingdom have revealed people that have been ritually strangled. Because of the lack of trauma to the remains of these bodies, it has been suggested that the person sacrificed participated willingly, presumably believing that his sacrifice was for the good of the tribe.”
Sounds like the Bar Mitzvah is a lot easier :)
24.Jun.2006 5.26pm
I personally prefer the christening technique in “Nacho Libre”.
hhp
25.Jun.2006 1.35pm
You watch Hollywood movies?
ER
25.Jun.2006 2.57pm
You hesitate to buy an otherwise beautiful and intelligent book — in this case, Christopher de Hamel’s wonderful “La Bible, histoire du Livre”, the French edition by Phaidon — because it is set using Monotype Bell WITHOUT the “fi” ligatures.
25.Jun.2006 4.54pm
“Sounds like the Bar Mitzvah is a lot easier :)”
Hoy Vey, and your Druid relatives don’t even give you money for learning their version of the Torah:-)
ChrisL
25.Jun.2006 6.46pm
...a friend shows you their pictures of a recent trip to Greece and what you’re really interested in is the monumetal inscriptions in the background (which they hadn’t even noticed).
My father’s a geologist and as a child I heard my share of geological explanations when travelling on holiday with him. No mountain was just a mountain, no valley just a valley: there was always a very interesting fold in the rock, or evidence of an ancient glacier.
I guess it’s payback time — except my wife’s the one who has to put up with my “typocentric” travelling habits.
25.Jun.2006 7.06pm
Edel, I saw “Dumb and Dumber” two nights in a row. Same theater, same time.
—
Erik, case in point:
hhp
25.Jun.2006 7.27pm
>”Edel, I saw “Dumb and Dumber” two nights in a row. Same theater, same time.”
I’ve said it before, we have much more in common than we think! You telling me not to quote from Hollywood movies. Come on, throw a quote from D & D in here! I dare you!
ER
25.Jun.2006 7.30pm
“Hey, would you kids happen to have a cup of warm water?”
Said unintelligibly due to tongue being stuck frozen to a ski lift chair.
hhp
25.Jun.2006 7.32pm
Wow...
quite a handsome dude!
(The beardless one, of course!)
25.Jun.2006 7.48pm
Hrant, these are gems!:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109686/quotes
ER
25.Jun.2006 8.06pm
I LOVE that movie.
25.Jun.2006 10.22pm
o.k., so another thread has evolved, or devolved, into Cat Fancy. Someone there has a cat named “Comma”.
Does anybody else here have a pet, or dare I ask, a CHILD, named after a type element!?
ER
25.Jun.2006 10.49pm
... you go to a car show and your friends say “Ooo, look at this cool old car, what kind of engine does it have?” and you say “Ooo, look at this cool old car, look at the art deco lettering!” (Happened today.)
s’marks
26.Jun.2006 5.12am
as for letters the wrong way around, here is how my youngest daughter Ebba wrote her name a few years ago.
26.Jun.2006 7.04am
UNDER THE BALLS as written by my boyfriend’s 5-year-old. Pretty da da.
26.Jun.2006 11.21am
>>When you have kids, you will instead start seeing salvation in it… ;-)
You know, Hrant, there is nothing more precious than seeing your children make their first letters and expressing themselves. You’re right. I have two girls (one 11teen and one 9) and even though the youngest still writes most of her letters backwards, these scribblings are wonderful and I love seeing them (on most every blank surface in our house).
However, seeing Toys R Us (R backwards) and WRAPS (R backwards) on the front of buildings makes me cringe. This is next to seeing stacked type on a banner, of course. OY!
26.Jun.2006 11.23am
Magnus, I think that’s great how your daughter had translated the double letter b in her name into two distinct letterforms.
26.Jun.2006 12.09pm
ER, no, but I had seriously considered “Geraldine” lately.
Okay, it’s not that strange of a name, but when you’re a typoholic you’ll know that it’s a tasty Italian-French old style mix from the 15th century.
“Aldine” is not a bad choice either.
But I could always justify naming my future pet Sir Maximilien Vox.
26.Jun.2006 12.17pm
You start a thread on typoholics hoping to get clues on if you are or not.
Héctor
26.Jun.2006 12.40pm
You get tired of bookmarking and looking at all the different threads, look around, and like an idiot, realize theres’s a freakin’ “track” button that just tells you when there’s a new post. You start using the “track” button, because you figure, “hey, they’re not so bad here”, and decide to stick around because you can’t fathom the “Most Prolific Poster” title being handed over to your bitter rival, Hrant!
ER
26.Jun.2006 1.41pm
Edel R,
You don’t realize that Hrant was the “Most Prolific Poster” every day for FIVE YEARS in a row!
See this old thread:
http://typophile.com/node/15582
ChrisL
26.Jun.2006 1.56pm
>“Most Prolific Poster” every day for FIVE YEARS in a row!
Yeah, I had a feeling....
ER
26.Jun.2006 2.05pm
Since Patty and Magnus opened the door for written notes from their children, I have to post this one from my son Michael:
ChrisL
26.Jun.2006 2.17pm
Does anybody else here have a pet, or dare I ask, a CHILD, named after a type element!?
My sister had a dog we named “Pregunta” because she looked like a question mark when she ran.
You start a thread on typoholics hoping to get clues on if you are or not.
Oh, i had no doubt that i was one. Did I tell you i’m a self-diagnosed hypochondriac as well?
26.Jun.2006 2.24pm
“Did I tell you i’m a self-diagnosed hypochondriac”
No Paul, but I knew you were a sick puppy :-)
ChrisL