How you say?

The font you use has an import­ant impact on how people read your copy.

This site is a com­bin­a­tion of blogs, and a home for a com­munity. Its aim is to bring together people who work with type in dif­fer­ent media for a cross pol­lin­a­tion of ideas and to learn from each other’s exper­i­ences. A bunch of people who’ve an interest in fonts have got together and we see this as some­where to exchange views. Quite a bit of what we do will be suck it and see but our ini­tial thoughts are to look at the way people use type in tra­di­tional media, on the web and on mobile.

The under­stand­ing of the effect of fonts is very dif­fer­ent in all three. The world of print­ing has under­stood the value of “it’s not just what you say but how you say it” for over 400 years. The web world has some well under­stood uses of fonts and these are expand­ing. This site uses Embed­ded Open­Type so if you have Inter­net Explorer you’ll be able to view it with the fonts we choose not just those that hap­pen to be in your browser. The mobile world is in the dark ages, with a mind­set of 16th Cen­tury monks, you get the font you are given, and all they care about is memory foot­print and legibility.

With this site we hope to mash up the three worlds with a com­mon interest in type. We hope to learn what we didn’t know that we didn’t know. To teach the print and mar­ket­ing world about the lim­it­a­tions of tech­no­logy, screen sizes and ali­asing, and the mobile and web worlds about the joy of get­ting just the right font, the import­ance it has in con­vey­ing brand,

A quick thought to take away. The job a body font does is like the score in a film. It sets the scene and lives in the back­ground doing its job. If it is wrong it starts to jar with the main mes­sage, if it pops into the fore­ground it has ideas above its sta­tion. If it is too ordin­ary it fails to sup­port the story. Choos­ing a font matters.