particletree offers a useful set of links that's a crash course in typography for all of you who keep saying you've really been meaning to get around to learning more about type. Includes links to resources in history of type, web type, fonts, typographic punctuation, great free fonts, and more. My favorite is the link to "I Hate ITC Garamond," (which particletree labels "How to Hate a Font"). Note: This is an advanced topic. Don't attempt this sort of maneuver if you don't know what a "serif" is. (And I haven't verified this, but I think according to Jan Tschichold "dog poop" is a typographic technical term.)
The most distinctive element of the typeface is its enormous lower-case x-height. In theory this improves its legibilty, but only in the same way that dog poop's creamy consistency in theory should make it more edible. Some people dislike ITC Garamond because it's a desecration of the sacred memory of Claude Garamond. That part doesn't bother me. For one thing, despite its name, Garamond as we know it appears to be based on typefaces developed by Jean Jannon, who lived about a century after Garamond, and Garamond based his designs on those of Aldus Manutius: it's hard to say where you'd locate authenticity in this complicated history. And I've been stimulated by Emigre's revivals like Mrs. Eaves and Filosofia, which take inspiration from --and bigger liberties with -- the work of, respectively, John Baskerville and Giambattista Bodoni with great success. But there are good revivals and bad revivals, and ITC Garamond is one of the latter.
[via Lifehacker]
Posted by johndanseven at November 4, 2005 01:24 AM