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Contributed by Stephen Coles Source: www.flickr.com Kit Karzen/Harris for President. License: All Rights Reserved. The Kamala Harris 2024 campaign identity, designed by Wide Eye Creative, is built around Sans Plomb, a condensed gothic not unlike the Bureau Grot used by Wide Eye for Harris’s 2020 primary bid – in turn inspired by Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 campaign. This time, though, the typeface is from a French foundry, rather than from Anglo-American origins (Stephenson Blake via Font Bureau). Source: fontsinuse.com License: All Rights Reserved. The logo for Kamala Harris’ 2020 campaign used Bureau Grot and an atypical asymmetrical layout. It’s not clear to me why they made the switch. From a design point of view, the caps aren’t significantly different from Bureau Grot. Perhaps they liked the more constructed, “modern” feel? Personally, I would have gone back to Chisholm’s pick, the all-American Franklin Gothic, which has no shortage of contemporary versions for any use case. (At the risk of friendship bias, I recommend the interpretation from Fonts In Use cofounder Nick Sherman.) The symmetrical layout for “Harris/Walz” is a much more conventional approach compared to Harris’s 2020 logo, which took a different road than most US presidential campaigns. The new look reflects her move to the center (no pun intended) for a broader audience. Source: www.flickr.com Eric Elofson/Harris for President. License: All Rights Reserved. Not the best kerning on this rally sign (AY). The font, Sans Plomb Super, doesn’t deliver that big of a gap out of the box, so something went awry in the typesetting. Source: kamalaharris.com License: All Rights Reserved. Source: kamalaharris.com License: All Rights Reserved. Source: store.kamalaharris.com License: All Rights Reserved. The supporting face for “WALZ”, running text, and other small bits like “YES SHE CAN” merch is Balto, Tal Leming’s contemporary take on the American gothic genre, such as Franklin Gothic and News Gothic. The Harris web store adds Sara Solskone and Jonathan Hoefler’s Decimal, a continuation of the Biden/Harris 2020 campaign. Seeing Solskone’s name makes me wonder if maybe there was a missed opportunity to also choose a typeface by an American woman for the main mark. For example, Program by Zuzana Licko, or Utile Narrow by Sibylle Hagmann. Source: store.kamalaharris.com License: All Rights Reserved. Source: kamalaharris.com License: All Rights Reserved. The logo used in this web pop-up is the early version before it was redrawn (see below). Source: www.instagram.com Jonathan Hoefler. License: All Rights Reserved. A refined version of the Harris/Walz logo (white outline) launched around August 11. The biggest changes were relieving the pinched curve at the top of the S and enlarging “WALZ” just slightly to the left for optical centering. Hoefler, whose typefaces (or those of Hoefler & Co.) have been part of the logo for “every Democratic president in the twenty-first century”, recently revealed that the mark was refined on August 10–11, a few weeks after its initial launch. The work – which involved some redrawing and better “WALZ” centering – was done by Leming and Scott Dadich under the direction of Wide Eye’s Alayna Citrin. Hoefler also commented that, “Trump has used Gotham for years, and NEVER bought a license. Color me surprised! We talked to a white shoe lawfirm in NYC about taking action, and was told, with a laugh, ‘take a number.’” Ironically, it was Barack Obama’s 2008 run that made Gotham (and its lookalikes) a default for US political campaigns, regardless of party. At least Harris is diverting a bit from that same old choice. This post was originally published at Fonts In Use
Contributed by Florian Hardwig Source: www.abebooks.com Between the Covers (edited). License: All Rights Reserved. One advantage that lettering has over typeset text is that the artist can always alter letterforms ad hoc, depending on the context. This allows her to make the most of the available space, to dissolve awkward pairs into pleasing combinations, or simply to enliven a design by means of variegation. Ursula Suess was a graphic artist who designed numerous book jackets in her career. For the majority of them, she’d come up with her own letterforms. I’ll later add a selection of designs that hints at her stylistic range in the comments to this article. Source: www.abebooks.com Between the Covers. License: All Rights Reserved. An early jacket with italic lettering, designed by Suess for Sean O’Casey’s Sunset and Evening Star, Macmillan, 1955 Source: www.abebooks.com Between the Covers. License: All Rights Reserved. Suess designed the jacket for The Confrontation by Lenore Marshall (W.W. Norton) in 1972, the year her Book Jacket was released. The lettering could pass as an extrabold variation. Source: www.klingspor-museum.de Photographer unknown. License: All Rights Reserved. An undated portrait of Ursula Suess In the early 1970s, Suess set about designing a typeface. According to a 2014 article by Ellen Sussman, she was in part motivated by the fact that “most type styles at the time were too wide and didn’t fit on a jacket.” Her typeface indeed is compact, both horizontally and vertically, with condensed, tight-setting letterforms and a large x-height with short extenders. Suess didn’t want to forgo all the flexibility she was familiar with from lettering, so she drew a large set of alternates. A TGC specimen sums it up: “She used lettering similar to this in her book cover designs, where space limitations called for lettering with many swash characters that was strong and condensed, yet rich and sensuous.” The calligraphic design was released by VGC as a stand-alone italic in 1972, named Book Jacket. Whether you find the name boring or brilliant, it did clarify the intended application area. And Book Jacket indeed was used for designing book jackets. One example by Suess herself is shown here. (See Robert Halsband’s biography of Lord Hervey for a second one.) As We Are Now is a novel by Belgian-American writer May Sarton (1912–1995), published by W.W. Norton & Company in 1973. Suess used her typeface in two sizes, with the alternate swash caps for the big initials, a wider terminal form in “We”, and hardly any space between the last two words of the title. For the subline, she opted for more restrained forms overall, but inserted a descending h, a sweeping f that embraces the preceding o, and a single swash cap L in “LOVE”. The a in “author” is the double-story alternate. May Sarton’s name is set in Richard Isbell’s wide Americana. Source: canadatype.com Canada Type. License: All Rights Reserved. Partial glyph set of Book Jacket Pro, the digitization drawn by Patrick Griffin and released by Canada Type in 2010 Ursula Suess was born August 13, 1924 – which means it’s her 100th birthday today. Canada Type, who released a digital version of Book Jacket in 2010, provided a biographical outline: Ursula Suess was born in 1924 to German parents in Camden, NJ, and grew up in Munich, Germany, where she attended two semesters of design school at the Academy of Fine Art before it burned down during the war [in July 1944]. She then studied calligraphy with Anna Simons for two years. She returned to America in 1946 and established herself as a graphic designer working for Oxford University Press, Macmillan Co., Harper, and other publishers. She also taught calligraphy for 20 years at the Westchester Art Workshop, and at the Cooper Union in New York City. In her 50s she learned to cut gems and eventually became an accomplished gem carver. She moved to Green Valley, AZ, in 1998, and has been applying her artistic versatility with clay, water-color and acrylics. In Arizona, Suess became a long-time supporter of the Tubac Center of the Arts. Ellen Sussman additionally mentions paper sculpture, pottery, and collage as techniques she engaged in. Apart from Book Jacket, she is credited with at least one more typeface: Rotalic is a low-contrast italic sans featuring swash caps with ball terminals. It was also released with VGC. One of its four styles recently was digitized as BN Rascal. Suess passed away in 2020. She left us a large number of beautiful works, including many pieces of lettering and two unique typefaces that have stood the test of time. Source: tubacarts.org DeDe Isaacson, Tubac Center of the Arts. License: All Rights Reserved. Ursula Suess at the Tubac Center of the Arts Source: www.abebooks.com Rare Book Cellar. License: All Rights Reserved. This post was originally published at Fonts In Use
Contributed by Stephen Coles Source: lithub.com License: All Rights Reserved. Martyr! is a novel by Iranian-American writer Kaveh Akbar that combines modern situations with traditional imagery. For the jacket, prolific cover designer Linda Huang did what she does so well: pick a striking and relevant typeface and let it do a lot of the work. License: All Rights Reserved. Left: Salem, as advertised in the Inland Printer, Vol. 28, No. 2 (November, 1901). Right: Daria Cohen’s reinterpretation, Zangezi (2018), with additional weights, italics, and condensed (2021). Her choice was Zangezi Condensed, a fresh, fashion-forward take on Salem, in which Daria Cohen took a turn-of-the-century dazzler, narrowed it, and increased its stroke contrast, giving it even more spike and sparkle than it already had. The idiosyncratic type is the perfect companion to the contemporary use of antique illustration. Huang also deftly delivers the commercial necessities – a blurb and “a novel” – in an inconspicuous way. Huang on the design: Despite its heavy themes, I found Akbar’s novel to be insanely funny,” Huang told Literary Hub. “I cackled many times while reading the manuscript. More than anything, I wanted to evoke this unique tragi-comedic tone on the cover. One of the central, recurring images is this Iranian ‘Angel of Death’ warrior. I experimented with scale and ultimately found the warrior in miniature to be most striking, with ‘a novel’ set in a deadpan speech bubble. I was also lucky to stumble upon the perfect decorative typeface to activate all that negative space. To me, humor is one of the most alluring qualities in a book (and really, in life) so it was an absolute treat to work on Akbar’s novel. Source: www.penguinrandomhouse.com License: All Rights Reserved. The version of the cover seen in bookstores today. Martyr! quickly became a New York Times best seller – soon enough for the cover to get an extra speech balloon celebrating that fact. You can also see an improvement on the letterspacing in “Akbar”. A Digression and Suggestion Photo: Stephen Coles. License: All Rights Reserved. Once you get to the end of a book, “a note on the type” is a great way to learn about the creation of the letterforms you’ve been staring at for hours. Photo: Stephen Coles. License: All Rights Reserved. Back jacket flaps usually include an author bio and designer credit. This is good. Could they include a bit more? The interior of this book, designed by Betty Lew, includes “A Note on the Type”, a lovely hundred-year-old publishing tradition which not only credits the text face (in this case, Dante), but tells a bit of its story. Why not have a typeface credit on the jacket flap, too? Sure, you’re reading a lot more Dante than Zangezi when you read this book, but it’s the cover that often sells the book. Also, the type used on book covers is more likely to be something newer that the interior text, and thus more likely to be made by living designers. Isn’t it time we give them a nod? This post was originally published at Fonts In Use
Contributed by Stephen Coles Source: lithub.com License: All Rights Reserved. Martyr! is a novel by Iranian-American writer Kaveh Akbar that combines modern situations with traditional imagery. For the jacket, prolific cover designer Linda Huang did what she does so well: pick a striking and relevant typeface and let it do a lot of the work. License: All Rights Reserved. Left: Salem, as advertised in the Inland Printer, Vol. 28, No. 2 (November, 1901). Right: Daria Cohen’s reinterpretation, Zangezi (2018), with additional weights, italics, and condensed (2021). Her choice was Zangezi Condensed, a fresh, fashion-forward take on Salem, in which Daria Cohen took a turn-of-the-century dazzler, narrowed it, and increased its stroke contrast, giving it even more spike and sparkle than it already had. The idiosyncratic type is the perfect companion to the contemporary use of antique illustration. Huang also deftly delivers the commercial necessities – a blurb and “a novel” – in an inconspicuous way. Huang on the design: Despite its heavy themes, I found Akbar’s novel to be insanely funny,” Huang told Literary Hub. “I cackled many times while reading the manuscript. More than anything, I wanted to evoke this unique tragi-comedic tone on the cover. One of the central, recurring images is this Iranian ‘Angel of Death’ warrior. I experimented with scale and ultimately found the warrior in miniature to be most striking, with ‘a novel’ set in a deadpan speech bubble. I was also lucky to stumble upon the perfect decorative typeface to activate all that negative space. To me, humor is one of the most alluring qualities in a book (and really, in life) so it was an absolute treat to work on Akbar’s novel. Source: www.penguinrandomhouse.com License: All Rights Reserved. The version of the cover seen in bookstores today. Martyr! quickly became a New York Times best seller – soon enough for the cover to get an extra speech balloon celebrating that fact. You can also see an improvement on the letterspacing in “Akbar”. A Digression and Suggestion Photo: Stephen Coles. License: All Rights Reserved. Once you get to the end of a book, “a note on the type” is a great way to learn about the creation of the letterforms you’ve been staring at for hours. Photo: Stephen Coles. License: All Rights Reserved. Back jacket flaps usually include an author bio and designer credit. This is good. Could they include a bit more? The interior of this book, designed by Betty Lew, includes “A Note on the Type”, a lovely hundred-year-old publishing tradition which not only credits the text face (in this case, Dante), but tells a bit of its story. Why not have a typeface credit on the jacket flap, too? Sure, you’re reading a lot more Dante than Zangezi when you read this book, but it’s the cover that often sells the book. Also, the type used on book covers is more likely to be something newer that the interior text, and thus more likely to be made by living designers. Isn’t it time we give them a nod? This post was originally published at Fonts In Use
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A screen isn’t a technological distraction to overcome but a powerful cognitive prosthetic for external memory. Screens get a lot of blame these days. They’re accused of destroying attention spans, ruining sleep, enabling addiction, isolating us from one another, and eroding our capacity for deep thought. “Screen time” has become shorthand for everything wrong with modern technology and its grip on our lives. And as a result, those of us in more design and technology-focused spheres now face a persistent propaganda that screens are an outmoded interaction device, holding us back from some sort of immersive techno-utopia. They are not, and that utopia is a fantasy. The screen itself is obviously not to blame — what’s on the screen is. When we use “screen” as a catch-all for our digital dissatisfaction, we’re conflating the surface with what it displays. It’s like blaming paper for misleading news. We might dismiss this simply as a matter of semantics, but language creates understanding and behavior. The more we sum up the culture of what screens display with the word “screens,” the more we push ourselves toward the wrong solution. The most recent version of this is the idea of the “screenless interface” and the recurring nonsense of clickbait platitudes like “The best interface is no interface.” What we mean when we talk about the “screen” matters. And so it’s worth asking, what is a screen, really? And why can’t we seem to get “past” screens when it comes to human-computer interaction? For all our talk of ambient computing, voice interfaces, and immersive realities, screens remain central to our digital lives. Even as companies like Apple and Meta pour billions into developing headsets meant to replace screens, what do they actually deliver? Heavy headgear that just places smaller screens closer to our eyes. Sure, they can provide a persistent immersive experience that a stationary panel cannot. But a headset’s persistent immersion doesn’t make a panel’s stationary nature a bug. What makes a screen especially useful is not what it projects at you, but what happens when you look away from it. It is then that a screen serves a fundamental cognitive purpose that dates back to the earliest human experiences and tools. A screen is a memory surrogate. It’s a surface that holds information so we don’t have to keep it all in our heads. In this way, it’s the direct descendant of some of humanity’s most transformative devices: the dirt patch where our ancestors scratched out the first symbols, the cave wall that preserved their visions, the clay tablet that tracked their trades, the papyrus that extended their memories, the parchment that connected them across distances, the chalkboard that multiplied their teaching. Think of Einstein’s office at Princeton, with its blackboards covered in equations. Those boards weren’t distractions from his thought — they were extensions of it. They allowed him to externalize complex ideas, manipulate them visually, and free his mind from the burden — the impossibility — of holding every variable simultaneously. Our digital screens serve the same purpose, albeit with far greater complexity and interactivity. They hold vast amounts of information that would overwhelm our working memory. They visualize data in ways our minds can grasp. They show us possibilities we couldn’t otherwise envision. They hold them all in place for us, so that we can look away and then easily find them again when we return our gaze. Comparing screens to Einstein’s chalkboards, of course, is a limited metaphor. Screens also display endless streams of addictive content designed to capture and hold our attention. But that’s not an inherent property of screens themselves — it’s a consequence of the business models driving what appears on them. The screen isn’t the attention thief; it’s merely the scene of the crime. (And yes, I do think that future generations will think of today’s attention economy in the same way that we think of other past norms as injustices.) The connection between screens and attention matters, of course, because our brains have evolved to emphasize and prioritize visual processing. We can absorb and interpret visual information with remarkable efficiency; simply scanning a screen can convey more, faster, than listening to the same content read aloud. Visual processing also operates somewhat independently from our verbal reasoning, allowing us to think about what we’re seeing rather than using that cognitive capacity to process incoming language. We can scan at the speed of thought, but we can only listen at the speed of speech. This is why efforts to create “screenless” interfaces often end up feeling limiting rather than liberating. Voice assistants work beautifully for discrete, simple tasks but become frustrating when dealing with complex information or multiple options. Information conveyed in sound has no place to be held; it can only be repeated. The screen persists because it matches fundamental aspects of human cognition by being a tool that, among other things, offers us persistence: a place to hold information. None of this is to dismiss legitimate concerns about how we currently use screens. The content displayed, the contexts of use, the business models driving development — all deserve critical examination. But blaming the screen itself misses the point, misdirects our efforts to build healthier relationships with technology, and wastes our time on ridiculous technological fetch-quests for the next big device. Perhaps instead of dreaming about moving “beyond screens,” we should focus on creating better screens and better screen experiences. “Better screens” is a problem of materials, longevity, energy consumption, light, and heat. There’s so many things we could improve! “Better screen experiences” is a matter of cultural evolution, a generational project we can undertake together right now by thinking about what kind of information is worth being held for us by screens, as opposed to what kind of information is capable of holding our gaze captive. The screen isn’t the problem. It’s one of our most powerful cognitive prosthetics, a brain buffer. Our screens are, together, a platform for cultural creation, the latest in a long line of surfaces that have enriched human existence. De-screening is not just a bad idea that misunderstands how brains work, and not just an insincere sales pitch for a new gadget. It’s an entirely wrong turn toward a worse future with more of the same, only noisier.
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In his book “The Order of Time” Carlo Rovelli notes how we often asks ourselves questions about the fundamental nature of reality such as “What is real?” and “What exists?” But those are bad questions he says. Why? the adjective “real” is ambiguous; it has a thousand meanings. The verb “to exist” has even more. To the question “Does a puppet whose nose grows when he lies exist?” it is possible to reply: “Of course he exists! It’s Pinocchio!”; or: “No, it doesn’t, he’s only part of a fantasy dreamed up by Collodi.” Both answers are correct, because they are using different meanings of the verb “to exist.” He notes how Pinocchio “exists” and is “real” in terms of a literary character, but not so far as any official Italian registry office is concerned. To ask oneself in general “what exists” or “what is real” means only to ask how you would like to use a verb and an adjective. It’s a grammatical question, not a question about nature. The point he goes on to make is that our language has to evolve and adapt with our knowledge. Our grammar developed from our limited experience, before we know what we know now and before we became aware of how imprecise it was in describing the richness of the natural world. Rovelli gives an example of this from a text of antiquity which uses confusing grammar to get at the idea of the Earth having a spherical shape: For those standing below, things above are below, while things below are above, and this is the case around the entire earth. On its face, that is a very confusing sentence full of contradictions. But the idea in there is profound: the Earth is round and direction is relative to the observer. Here’s Rovelli: How is it possible that “things above are below, while things below are above"? It makes no sense…But if we reread it bearing in mind the shape and the physics of the Earth, the phrase becomes clear: its author is saying that for those who live at the Antipodes (in Australia), the direction “upward” is the same as “downward” for those who are in Europe. He is saying, that is, that the direction “above” changes from one place to another on the Earth. He means that what is above with respect to Sydney is below with respect to us. The author of this text, written two thousand years ago, is struggling to adapt his language and his intuition to a new discovery: the fact that the Earth is a sphere, and that “up” and “down” have a meaning that changes between here and there. The terms do not have, as previously thought, a single and universal meaning. So language needs innovation as much as any technological or scientific achievement. Otherwise we find ourselves arguing over questions of deep import in a way that ultimately amounts to merely a question of grammar. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
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