times is the new courier
byNow, moving from a sans-serif font to serif is kind of a step backwards since Courier seems so primitive and bland. To quote the geeks in JPod by Douglas Coupland: “Documents are thirty four percent more boring when presented in the courier font.” [jPod] [Coupland]
I decided to Google around and see if I could come up with some interesting Courier arguments. I came across this article from 2004: “As of February 1, 2004, the standard typeface for all official State Department correspondence is to be set in New Times Roman 14, reported the Associated Press.” [AIGA] I was immediately sucked into this analytical and completely geeky discussion/debate and it made me laugh. This is exactly what I was looking for.
I continued the font-discussion-search and came across another article/post about the influence of fonts: “…be mindful of your target audience when you’re marking up a document, whether it’s a university essay or a commercial website. You never know just how loudly a font speaks.” [secret lives of fonts]
On that note, I’m thinking of changing my blog’s font. John suggested I do it a while back when I originally re-did my theme. Thoughts?
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For more font geekiness, I heard that Verdana for presentations is most aesthetic. As for myself, I’m totally partial towards Trebuchet!
I went to one of these fancy shmancy high schools, where our entire curriculum was based on IBT – international business and technology, and we were taught a couple things about visual elements in word processing and what not.
Now, times new roman is quite old school for the internet, but it’s also very traditional and professional for the business world. While fonts such as tahoma, verdana and arial are more contemporary and appropriate for the net – everything in our lives was dictated by this school.
One thing which you should take as constructive criticism, miss 604, is the use of “justified” alignment. It spreads words too far apart and it becomes a bit hard to read at times, that’s why most business documents shouldn’t be justified, because they might take away from the sensitivity of the content.
If everything sounds like a bunch of rambling, you’re right. I’ve just been talking out of my butt for the longest time, but I am serious about the justified alignment though, hehe 🙂
Thanks for the constructive criticism :p I normally wouldn’t justify any ‘serious’ documents, I mean this is just a blog eh? hehe
Only thing is, I often post pics in my blog posts. When you have a pic up with text I find it looks smoother when it all lines up – a nice line of sight.
But that’s just me talking outta my butt now – I swear I learned these habits in Graphics 9 when Michelle and I were the yearbook editors (oh gosh, I shouldn’t have just admitted to that)
Georgia! Georgia or Trebuchet MS, I find.
Unless it’s essays. Then, Georgia, always.
But, you already knew that 😀
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RE: Now, moving from a sans-serif font to serif is kind of a step backwards since Courier seems so primitive and bland. To quote the geeks in JPod by Douglas Coupland: “Documents are thirty four percent more boring when presented in the courier font.â€
I laughed out loud when I read this paragraph, to the point that the people from the company in the office next door poked their head in to see what was going on.
Thank you!