For the Love of Type: A Non-Designer’s Perspective
I’m Mike. (Hi, Mike!) I’m a project manager who loves typography.
The only tattoo I’ve ever seriously considered was an ampersand.
I was moved to tears by the movie Helvetica.
How did this happen?
When I was a kid, before I even knew what typography was, I’d hang out at my dad’s store, Roberts Bros., and play with a small letterpress signmaking machine. I loved it. And I’d make signs that said the sorts of things that you’d imagine from a kid old enough to be left on his own, but still young enough to want to hang out in the back room of clothing store.
I didn’t really think much about type again until my first year of college. I’d hang out and study with my girlfriend while she worked in the Mizzou Journalism graphics computer lab. In the lab, my eyes were opened to typography once again. I got to know a lot of wannabe designers and was intrigued by their work enough to change majors.
Designer friends and I would analyze type on bar table tents, credits and titles in movies and pretty much any type that was in front of us. We were the Mean Girls of type.
So what’s the deal? Why am I so into typography? In a previous post about Frank Lloyd Wright, I talked about how I really appreciate functional design. Not that I can’t appreciate design or art for beauty alone, but design that does something really moves me.
Type, at its core, does something. It does just about everything actually. It conveys a mood, a feeling, a concept without the viewer even knowing.
My (incredibly smart) Atomicdust coworker, Jazzy Loyal, once told me that type is kind of like air. It’s all around us, it’s vital, but it’s doing its job when we don’t notice it. It’s a seamless part of our lives. And that sums it up for me.
Type is sneaky like that. And while I don’t advocate being sneaky, I do appreciate it.
