“Every time I get an email in 14pt navy blue Comic Sans it puts a smile on my face and lights a fire in my heart!” Head of School Toby Rockwell said. “I assume it’s the same for everyone.”

The move comes as part of a rebranding undertaken by the school as an attempt to attract younger, wealthier students.

“We had that Rotis thing going on for so long.” Rockwell said. “We don’t talk about that anymore.

“We had weeks of meetings, and were getting nowhere. To be honest, I just let my granddaughters choose and told the rest of the faculty my word was final.”

Senior lecturer Georgia Messing was enthusiastic about the change.

“[The staff] love it! We’ve even requested that that typewriter noise thing in Powerpoint becomes default. You know the one? When every letter comes up with that hammering typewriter sound? I just think it’s so charming!” she said. “I think the Tech guys are still working on that.”

“We were worried that not everyone might be for it,” said Messing. “But we solved that problem by removing every other font on the system.”

“I’ve been using Comic Sans for years,” boasted Head of Landscape Architecture Paul Segoe.

“Whenever I wanted to encourage people to come along to my—may I say—notorious office parties,” Segoe smirked, “I dust off Comic Sans. Throw in some drop shadow, add a couple of rainbow gradients and we’re away!

“I always find it goes nicely with that typewriter sound you can get Picturepoint to do, do you know that one?” he said.

A representative of Victoria’s School of Design, which shares the old Air New Zealand building, was reluctant to comment on the change.

“Well, I mean, they have their tastes—it’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? It’s not like that’s all they’re using—that is all they’re using? Well may God help us all.”

The school has reinstated the traditional Friday afternoon sausage sizzle in order to cover the costs of the licence fees.

“Of course, we had to get that new fancy one with the Euro symbol in it,” Messing said. “It is important one maintains an air of professionalism when one deals with an international market.”

Next to that sits a fairly smart, fairly dusty black suit jacket purchased new only this year, and one that cost a good honest week’s wages. Occasionally it’s trotted out for things like job interviews, graduations, or awards ceremonies—and I expect it will be dragged out for any weddings or what not that I’m unfortunate enough to have to attend in the near future.

One of these is my favourite, and one would sit next to “the terrible amateur artwork we inherited from the tenants before us”, and “the toaster” in a list of “Things I’d rather not save, were there a fire”.

No amount of dry-cleaning, carpet-freshening, or beating-with-a-stick-in-a-river-situated-downstream-from-a-site-of-ritual-sacrifice has yet been able to completely remove the smell of that dead old man. Yet my attachment to old, useless things has currently had me accrue two non-functioning sewing machines, two sort-of-functioning typewriters, a half dozen pre-35mm cameras I can’t find film for, and more vinyl than I’ll ever bother actually playing.

I’m not about to defend or attempt to rationalise hoarding (for that is what it is). Inevitably, some of it will go next time I have to move flats. But having things is nice, and aware as we might be of our responsibility to stop getting more stuff, that’s often easier said than done.

Donald A. Norman—legend among psychologically-aware designers and hero among design-inclined psychologists—has a few choice words about things. He happily and helpfully breaks down the way in which we are affected by the stuff around us into three distinct phases.

Mixed metaphors

The first stage, and one that’s so important to any budding relationship, is that of the meeting. The first date, if you will. You arrive to the table just on time, and (discreetly) smell that subtly sweet aroma drift across the table. You (delicately) brush his smooth skin with your fingers as you wait for him to do his thing, and (delightfully) hear that satisfying POP–swish as he ejects your toast, the perfect temperature for your immediate consumption.

So far, it seems, you’re getting off to a great start in your new relationship.

And things go great—for a few months, at least. 

You move in together, and happily wake up to each other’s company every morning. You feed him bread, and he slowly but assuredly feeds you back toast whenever you feel a bit peckish. Sometimes though, he doesn’t want to get up; sometimes it takes a few goes before he’ll stay down without making a big hairy deal out of it. Sometimes he’ll be an absolute twat and burn your toast even though you were sure you set it to low because you’re late to work since your alarm didn’t go off and you only needed it slightly browned so the butter would melt because the fridge keeps getting too cold for no reason whatsoever. Maybe you can do better than him.

Things aren’t perfect—they never are—but, over time, you become accustomed to his quirks. In return, he stays quiet when you feed him bread straight from the freezer, as long as you hold the button down for a couple of seconds when you first press it. Sadly though, no relationship is forever, and all people must at some point say goodbye to their things.

It is a sad day indeed when you put him out on the footpath with the recycling, peeking through the curtains to make sure the rubbish men are careful with him—that he goes out with at least a little dignity. It takes you a week or so to really grieve: frozen bread is hardly an option, and there exists no shower short enough to stop a grill committing arson upon a couple of innocent slices of bread. Eventually you’re going to have to see new people.

Lust, mollification, and nostalgia

These stages three, Norman more sensibly tags the Visceral, Behavioural, and the Reflective. The initial is one of lust: the stage in which those smooth curves, that hard body, or the ability to broadcast Freeview and Teletext initially win you over. The behavioural is when you really get to know each other, whether for better or for worse. You find out living together isn’t nearly as hard as your mothers were worried it might be, and a bit of compromise never hurt anyone. Maybe you can’t push all his buttons—some of them you’re not ever sure what they do, and you’ve never been one for remotes anyway—but the basis of a solid relationship is formed. The reflective is where it all gets a bit more complicated.

Absurd metaphors aside, things that work well tend to stick around. The memories attached to an object that just does what it’s s’posed to tend to be good ones, and help that object earn a long-term position in a company of possessions. A well-trained vacuum cleaner can be disturbingly satisfying to use, and is unlikely to be left to think about what it’s done when you next move house.

Some things get something of a free ride when it comes to being associated with good times. A watch bought on holiday is unlikely to be binned long after its foreign, pentagonal batteries expire. A watch received from a long-lost Swiss summer sweetheart will be forever endowed with a level of saccharine reminiscence able to intimidate the suavest of suitors. Photos fit into an awkward category, being of the ultimate worth to those involved in the participation of their creation, whilst containing an innate ability to bore—harrowing to anyone unfortunate enough to have to sit through them explained and described.

Often, a thing might be kept due to its ability to impart a modicum of self-reflection upon its beholder.

A new diamond ring contains almost precisely nil sentimentality, and yet exerts from its wearer an aura of unbridled wealth, conscienceless greed, financial naïveté, and—to a few—attractiveness and envy.

If something is still yet to be binned a generation after it was originally conceived, it’s probably doing something right. Whether through its ability to generate or store positive memories, to display or represent some deliciously enviable quality, or to be in the right place at the right time, some objects have that certain je ne sais quois that keeps them out of the bin, and in our possession.

A certain word

There is a certain word, one I daren’t even type, that has about it an absolute air of abhorrence within design circles. That’s not to say it’s an unimportant word—only that every designer on this planet is sick to the teeth with it. This is unfortunately really, because it really was a very useful word. It had several synonyms, most of which started with ‘e’, though sometimes with ‘s’, and was very often associated with a hue commonly found loitering between what the Italians describe as blu and giallo.

What you should know is this: keeping things in your possession and making full use of their ability to perform their designated job is advantageous to not only yours and the thing’s life, but to those directly and indirectly associated with you and your being. This is important.

It is also very convenient, as nice things are a pleasure to hold on to. Make full use of this fact by only bringing into your possession things which you imagine yourself continuing to possess. It can be hard to guess which way a relationship is going to go—especially at its beginning—but for every toaster, teddy, or touch-screen telephone you ditch out of dissatisfaction, detachment, or dispensability, the tears of a designer drip disappointedly into his morning porridge.

I like your old stuff better than your new stuff

Liking old stuff is one thing, but what about ‘new’ old stuff? Objects with strong sentimental significance enjoy a free ride down family lines, and apart from the occasional guilt-ridden trip to pawn shops, carry with them memories of those long since passed—even if they weren’t someone we ever even met. There are, however, objects about us which display anything but any kind of historical lineage. 

Ross Stevens, senior lecturer at Victoria University’s School of Design, devoted an entire thesis to the subject, in which he discusses the wear of modern items, and the creation of a ‘contemporary history’ that we partake in forming in our use of everyday items. Common electronic appliances—cell phones, MP3 players, and the like—that wear in graceful ways (or at least should). 

The story an object may tell through a certain pattern of wear is written simply by its use. An object can mature and contain real physical evidence of its history by the way it rubs everyday in a pocket, is fingered in frustration whilst trying to phone a friend, or is accidentally polished smooth by habitual use. The patina formed is one tied to ownership and interdependence, and one pertinent to the contemporary design of everyday things. Cell phones might tell a shorter tale than the rotary variety, but it is an important tale no less.

The chase

Maxe Fisher, programme director of Culture+Context at Victoria’s School of Design, attempts to explain her love of things. It’s a love not without its downsides.

“Once a year, I go back to Canada, and look through these boxes and boxes of objects I’ve found in abandoned factories, but I just can’t throw anything out.

“There’s the history of our own thinking in those objects, it’s something about the hunting and the finding and the discovery of these objects—it’s something unique, and it’s mine, and no one would have it otherwise. New products don’t have that; you can’t find that in a store.”

The aging items that litter our lives enrich and surprise us in ways current stuff can’t, and won’t. Whether through revealing past naïveties and the forgotten ideals of times past, or the kind of craft and materiality we can only hope to witness in a contemporary context, old stuff has stories to tell.

Maybe I have gone and defended and attempted to rationalise hoarding (for that is what it is). Old things make archaeologists of the best of us, and I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. Some things really are worth lugging around in unopened boxes between flats, and some coats are worth smelling like a dead old man for.

Amongst your peers, however, there’s no secret to your failure. Your type choices are, quite frankly, embarrassing. Your cramped, centred text is unsightly, and you seem to want to get far closer to the edge of your paper than your printer is entirely comfortable with.

It is a strange and wonderful thing, that despite the vast number of ways in which something may be said, the overwhelming majority of those ways are at best flawed, and at worst objectively and assuredly wrong. These ways are likely to cause tears of disappointment in all who care about such things, and so too it is with typography and its typographers. Despite having at your disposal a plethora of tools with which to impart your world-changing, environment-cleansing, kitten-cuddling messages, almost all of these should be inextricably banished from your “C:\Windows\Fonts” folder. The rest should be used with the utmost of respect, adoration, or at least a waning interest, for they shall forever contain the ability to transform your well‑crafted prose into a humorous office memo. One that can only hope to alleviate some of its attributable damage by being, at least, recycled.

Some History

Since Johannes Gutenberg first put bits of inky metal to paper in the mid-1400s, typographers have required typefaces after which to name their otherwise quickly floundering profession. Gutenberg’s earliest faces were calligraphic Blackletters—including Textura, and the slightly more modest but certainly no easier to read Fraktur. These proudly live on today on the covers of albums going for that ‘Gothy Metal’ look, a kind of ‘Scary Hip‑Hop’ look, or spelling out someone’s name at the top of the windscreen of that car that’s still doing laps at 1am on a Tuesday. As your mouse hovers threateningly over OldeEnglish.ttf , remember that they have no place on your hard drive.

Encouraged by Gutenberg’s new invention that the Chinese had already invented, new typefaces began to spring up all over Europe—predominantly in the ‘Roman’ style. Italian calligraphers, in their determination to create new faces in the supposedly superior style of the Romans, had mistaken Carolingian minuscules for the One True Script of the Ancients. They hurriedly combined it with some capital letters they’d found on an old pole belonging to some guy called Trajan, only to be horribly embarrassed when they realised what they’d done.

Nonetheless, these formed the basis for all later ‘Roman’ typefaces, and after making all the letters look a bit more like each other, and borrowing some italics from somewhere else so it didn’t read like they were shouting every time they tried to emphasise a word, the typographers of the day had set in stone, so to speak, the various forms of all western lettering to come for the next few hundred or so years.

These new faces were highly legible, and shied away from recreating what could otherwise be done by hand. Blackletters, unreadable to all but Germans and vampiric ducks, were replaced by Roman faces such as Jenson’s Jenson, Garamound’s Garamound, Caslon’s Caslon, Basker­ville’s Baskerville, as well as faces by less conceited typographers such as Griffo’s Bembo, and Voskens’ Fell types—imported to Britain during some unfortunate bureaucracy that halted the production of any British type for a bit.

The Bit Before Now

This was all very well, until the mid-1800s birthed a group of scalpel-wielding pre-Modernists, who took great joy in lopping off the lovely serifs that had been gradually refined over the previous four hundred years. Having thrown off the shackles of their oppressors, these new sans-serif typefaces recruited an appropriate lowercase shortly thereafter, and now make up the other half of the majority of contemporary typefaces.

In a move that isn’t representative at all of general technological and creative advancements in the 20th century, the last hundred years have shown more subtle advances in the way we understand type. We’ve long since given up looking for any absolute answers, and have instead embraced all variants upon a theme in that post‑ironic way we do so well. Soft, bouncy humanist sans‑serifs now live happily alongside more seriously international neo‑grotesques; contemporary serifs remain very nearly structurally identical to their 15th century great‑great‑grandparents; geometric type comes and goes depending on how cool computers are at the time; and some people still aren’t bored with Helvetica.

It’s hard to say who’s the most naïve—the hip café‑dwelling Italian masters of the 1400s who thought that old retro‑chic 1st‑century AD look was back for good, or those annoying graphic‑designer friends you have who still think that Helvetica is God’s (read: Max Miedinger’s) gift to the world, and have the Swiss flag tattooed on their egos. Typography, like anything, is liable to show its age. Contemporary typographers are often happy to explore anything resembling type—from the minimalism of pure geometry to the maximalism of arranging your name in hair.

The Bit Where Things Are Bridged Together

As you write, you are partaking in an exercise oft referred to as ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’. It should, therefore, come as no great surprise, that it is very much in your best interest to borrow said giants’ typewriters, keyboards, type sets, printers, and any other possessions they happen to have collected on their way. If possible, sit yourself comfortably around their eye level, so they might notice and chastise you as you attempt to set your latest prose in Verdana.

There is a reason you have so many delightfully banal fonts on your computer. Most early designers were too preoccupied with witch-burning to have the forethought to think about how their delicate strokes were going to look when converted to vectors, then pixels, and finally displayed on that old CRT you’ve still got.

It is only fairly recently that computers have found these new jobs for typefaces, or fonts, to do. Whereas previously typefaces were designed with ink‑traps, so words didn’t get too smudgy when over‑inked, fonts are now hinted, so words don’t get too smudgy when they’re converted to pixels. Default fonts supplied with operating systems are loaded with nice big character sets, and as sick as we are of seeing them, they really do do a commendable job of rendering pretty much anything that gets thrown at them.

As the internet matures, blossoming from a 20-something alt.binaries.warez.linux Usenet moderator, to your 40-something mum who has all the time in the world to blog about her cats’ favourite recipes, so too does its typographic component. There are currently a great many very long and very touchy conversations about how to display type nicely on the net without letting people pilfer them too easily. Add to this the challenge of getting Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and the rest to play to the same rules, and you end up with some fairly primitive typographical technology.

The interim solution to all this is a collection of fonts designated ‘web-safe’. This means everyone has them, and you can slather your band’s MySpace page with them without any unsightly rectangles or question marks popping up. They do, however, tend to have the unfortunate side-effect of looking incredibly bland on paper.

Safety First

There may have been a point in time, so very long ago, an appropriate and almost-but-not-quite-charming context in which to use Comic Sans. That time is not now. Nor shall it ever be any future now, then, or any time at all. It might hurt a little to say so, but if you are considering using The-Font-That‑Must-Not-Be-Named, you’re probably better off sticking to Times New Roman. TNR itself was once a proud bastion of contemporary British typography. That time was 1931, when it was commissioned for The Times newspaper, and it is now best used for filling that brief interval between opening up Word and changing the font to something that is not Times New Roman.

Once upon a time, Times New Roman was a high‑contrast serif typeface with a large x‑height that made it perfect for squashing onto the tight, poorly‑printed pages of a newspaper. Now, it screams apathy and indifference. It might not get noticed, but in most cases, getting noticed is fairly conducive to your writing being read.

What Your Font Says About You

In 2004, and in a rare blogospherical win, documents purported to be conclusive evidence of George W. Bush’s non-patriotism during his military service in the 1970s were found to have been typed circa 2004 in Microsoft Word using every default setting in the book. Due to a lack of evidence—forged or otherwise—of any time-travelling paperclips, Dan Rather was made to retract his assurances that the documents had been authenticated by CBS experts. What he had meant, it seems, was that the documents had been photocopied enough to look kind of old, and they didn’t think anyone would notice anyway.

Jack Yan, founder of Lucire magazine, Vic alumnus, and general typographical wizard, goes even further. “The Killian memoranda were so obvious—there were ‘experts’ arguing it was done in Times New Roman. Dumbasses. It was set in Linotype Times, on an Apple Laserwriter or an equivalent. ‘But,’ argued Dan Rather on CBS, ‘Times New Roman was designed in 1932.’ Yes, but they didn’t have laser printers in the 1970s. I think he got in some typewriter repairman to attest to this. That would be like getting a mechanic to identify the paint colour on a car.”

Unfortunately for 60 Minutes, people did notice, and people do; what your font says about you turns out to be rather a lot. Looking bad is often synonymous with looking just plain boring, and your 1.25 inch default margins tend to be a dead giveaway that you’re not very good at paying attention to details.

If you say a word often enough, it loses any semblance of meaning. If you use a font often enough, much the same happens. When you switch from Times New Roman to Arial, you’re making a conscious decision to change from an overused serif that has long since lost any punch it once had, to a young Helvetica clone, bought on the cheap by Microsoft, who didn’t want to spring for any royalties. “Arial is for losers,” Yan says. “You can’t expect a typeface based around a British design stretched to Swiss widths to work. It would be like putting spotted dick into a kilo of cheese.”

That Verdana you’re using converts nicely to on-screen pixels, but looks primitive and unrefined when put to paper—just ask the brains behind IKEA’s latest typographic fumble. Your Courier New might make a more convincing 1970s typewriter than Dan Rather’s copy of Office 97, but even the US Government has recently upgraded—though exasperatingly only to TNR. You might think that 18pts is a great way to come off as if you’ve more to say than you really do, but unless you’re looking for flatmates you might want to try a touch of subtlety. And this is before you discover the novelty fonts.

Hinting

Of course, it would be rude to criticise without offering advice. The average person shouldn’t be expected to spring for font families worth the average GDP of medium-sized countries. Keep away from Lorenzo Uomo when the Salvation Army is almost giving away suits. If you’re on a PC, have a play with Eric Gill’s Perpetua, a delicate wee thing that was good enough for Barack Obama’s unexpectedly good typographic campaign. Georgia, commissioned for Microsoft, sits well on-screen, and will feel far stronger than Times New Roman and its unfortunate familiarity.

If you’re on a Mac, you’re lucky enough to possess Hoefler Text, a contemporary classical serif with all sorts of lovely features you’ll probably never need or discover. With Adobe Reader (which you almost certainly have) you’ll have received Minion, another recent serif perfectly adept at freshening up your writing.

A pleasant side-effect of Google’s recent Android venture is the Droid family of typefaces that came out of it. A charming family of serifs and sans-serifs alike, they’re easily Google-able. If you really can’t handle serifs (those little flicky things on the end of letters) have a quick browse for Myriad or Calibri, depending on the colour of the warm, humming box you’re typing into. Spice things up with some 11pt instead of Word’s suggested 12, bring in those margins so I’ve somewhere to put my thumbs as I chastise you, and please, please stop using WordArt.

Amateurism at its Finest

You might even have an advantage over those who’ve studied this stuff their entire lives. David Buck, a local designer with international credentials, says some of his favourite typography often comes from people who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. “I like seeing something like a ‘Garage Sale’ sign, and thinking: ‘How’d they come up with that?’, or ‘How did they think that letter was supposed to look like that?’ My favourite type is always going to be interesting work done by amateurs.”

Don’t always assume the computer knows what it’s doing. Don’t give that insidious paper clip the satisfaction of its Machiavellian exploits. Get off the computer every now and then and write something by hand. Remember that? That’s cramp and it’s probably about time you had some. Realise that 12pt isn’t the only way and that letters can be as expressive as the words they describe. You might even enjoy it.

The Bit at the End

Every discipline likes to imagine itself as far beyond the understanding of the proletariat, and in most cases there might be at least a glimmer of truth to that. However, with current tools, acceptable or even admirable typography shouldn’t be beyond the means of anyone. When an entire creative discipline suddenly finds itself in the hands of the common people, some emergency education must be done—but it also offers up the chance for a whole new world of intrigue and means of expression.

Your marks will improve, Real Groovy will call back, and people other than your flatmates will finally be able to taste that cheese ball recipe you’ve been refining. Just don’t use walnuts—no one likes those.

Things typographers will make fun of you for doing
Using Trajan. You’re not a movie, and if you are, you should probably know better than to use Trajan.

Anyone’s ‘Hand’. You’re not fooling anyone, you didn’t write this by hand. Why would you? Blow out those candles and remove the corset—your accidental American spelling is a dead giveaway.

Novelty fonts. The classier ones call themselves ‘display’ fonts. Great in small doses for main titles, daunting for walls of text.
When your work looks like a ransom note. Not just because it’s horrific, but because the collection of fonts you’ve downloaded from Dafont.com is unique to you and might get you pinned in court.

Grunge, or ‘distressed’ fonts. As great as your writing is, you’re not Banksy, and there’s no need to make it look like it’s written on the side of a building.

Something must have gone horribly wrong with the marketing for this film. As a testosterone‑burdened, socially conscious twenty‑something with a near‑permanent connection to all obligatory forms of media, it came as a mild offence to find that Sony had managed to miss me in their highly‑targeted and pervasive marketing campaign.

Nonetheless, it is always a treat to walk into a good film you know very little about, particularly if you aren’t yet aware it’s good. I had heard various mutterings—including the promising tidbit that District 9 was, in fact, an interesting take on xenophobia posing misleadingly as a Summer Blockbuster.

The opening snatches of documentary‑style interview, for which director Neill Blomkamp is renowned, offer a delightfully uncomfortable view into the racism with which we all eye‑rollingly know still exists. And then proceeds to push it that little bit more—just enough for everybody watching to feel like a big dirty racist. Self‑important smirks slip slowly from faces as mock interviews hit a little close to home. Sharlto Copley does a spot‑on South African Rhys Darby, which only stings that little bit more when his Wikus van der Merwe ramps up the racism.

Despite the initial success of this clever technique, it doesn’t quite work as it might. Perhaps in an effort to stave off cries of ‘jamming it down our throats’, Blomkamp stops short of presenting us with a species we can quite empathise with. The aliens for which we are to feel guilty about having unfounded prejudices against are presented as an aggressive, unreasonable bunch, who want little more than to dine on raw flesh and tyres. Even up until the end of the film, the aliens struggle to display quite enough heart to keep that middle‑class, white guilt flowing—to say nothing of the Nigerians: those notoriously Evil Baddies with no redeeming qualities whatsoever—but I guess someone’s got to be cannon fodder. Thankfully, act three was all tear‑jerkingly satisfying action, and all the better for it.

District 9 is hardly shy about showing off its aliens, and deservedly so. For a film Jackson introduced prior to the screening as a “low‑budget alternative to making Halo”, the effects are as convincing as any of Weta’s previous. Alien characters are imbued with the natural motion‑capture–fuelled movement that Weta perfected with Gollum; explosions are effective without being over the top; and the amount of fake blood wiped from camera lenses between shots is of Jackson’s own special blend.

After Fox’s scrapping of the proposed Red vs. Blue Halo movie three months in, the short‑lived relationship between Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp seemed to have trickled to nothing. Fortunately, we’ll never have to wonder what we might have missed. Dealing with the same themes explored in Blomkamp’s short film Alive in Joburg, District 9 is everything the hype promised it would be—and a fair bit more. While at times losing its point in a haze of dust, shells and splatter, District 9 is a fantastic collaboration. Blomkamp’s direction is perfectly suited to his story, and makes it all the more real to watch. Blockbuster or not, District 9 is the truly provocative “South African movie” Jackson describes it as, and has all the racism, blood and B‑Movie brilliance you could hope for.

Thank Fox they didn’t make Halo.

District 9
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Produced by Peter Jackson
With Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope and Robert Hobbs