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Said elsewhere:
By month:
October 9, 2007
Fonts. We love ‘em. We want more of ‘em, drill sergeant. Currently, I have roughly over 6,000 different fonts (taking into account bolds, italics, etc.) in my collection. How many have I used? Roughly, about fifty. And I’m rounding up.
I’ve heard the argument made both ways. There are either never enough fonts to choose from, or way too many in front of our eyes.
Some designers collect them, like stamps. They might not ever use half of their collection, but they can’t help themselves. Any type of font, no matter the silliness, must belong in their collection. It’s overkill.
Other designers stick to less than a dozen core fonts that do the job just fine. (Gotta love European design) Personally, I usually end up using my core favorites for different projects. A group of serifs and sans never disappoint me, and I never find the need to venture away from them.
My process for choosing fonts never changes, though. I always go through my collection folders (sorted by serifs, sans, etc.), which might run a couple hundred. Inevitably I always come back to the same list. Maybe it’s my own tastes, I don’t know. However, I came to this conclusion about my process a year ago. I just don’t stray. And if I don’t have a need to stray, what’s the purpose to collect so many fonts? I don’t need them, do I? If I don’t use them, seems like a no-brainer.
This was my thinking until I attended an AIGA speaking event: a typography workshop with Allan Haley. It was a great presentation regarding non-font typography. Utilizing fonts created outside a computer. Very inspiring stuff.
What really caught my ear during the presentation was his answer to the question: “How do you feel about people spending their every-waking-moment collecting fonts?” His answer, “I’m all for it. Fonts are like music, why only stick to a select few? How could growing your collection be a bad thing?”
This comes from a typography master.
That really shifted my thinking on the matter. I might only stick to a select few fonts, but there isn’t any real reason to abandon the rest. More fonts can only open the mind to more possibilities. While some fonts are universally liked and used for various purposes, the thousands of other fonts out there aren’t just a waste of time. Well maybe a few are…
The more exposure designers have when it comes to typography, the better?
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