does it swim in the water or live on the land? A simple way to think about type.

I think no other aspect of a designer’s work is more telling than their use of type.   It shows their understanding of culture,  the subject matter, and the audience in very subtle but important ways.

For the rest of us, type doesn’t have to be complicated.  A few simple “common sense” rules can help you create more attractive, easy to read documents. Here is one such rule.

Years ago, the Apple II had a very simple game in which you thought of an animal, and it tried to guess what it was. The opening question was always “does it swim in the water or live in the land.” The corresponding rule with type is simply: “was it created by a human hand or by a machine?”

“Made by hand” means part of a typographic tradition closely aligned with handwriting. In most cases, this means type with serifs and with a stress. Take an “O” and make it huge. Does it look like a circle made by a machine or does it lean slightly to the left? Does it  have a stroke that gets thinner or thicker as if it  was written by a right handed person? This one observation can tell you a lot about a font, and how to use it.

According to this approach, Times New Roman is by hand; Arial is made by machine.

time and arial - machine vs. person

If it was created by hand, then simply treat it as  handwriting… meaning: used mixed  caps, be very sparing with bold and underline, and colors, and don’t reverse it (meaning white text on a black background), and don’t justify or letterspace it.  Basically,  just keep it simple and use default settings.

If  the type was created by a machine, then it will be much more accommodating of the permutations listed above. The type is designed for flexibility. Think of it as putty that can be stretched and molded.

Of course, there are many exceptions to this rule but this provides a very helpful guideline for creating documents that are attractive and easy to read.