Obsessions of my youth
May. 16th, 2007 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat_sochoTypefaces. No, really.
I might have to go out and see Helvetica, if it ever comes to someplace around here. (Postrel, via Ed Driscoll)
Bierut's point is well taken, and just thirty years ago it was no small thing to choose a typeface, even if you weren't using a typesetter's services. I spent a hectic weekend sometime in my high school cadet days going through Civil Air Patrol Information Officer School along with a dozen or so other cadets and about as many senior members, and for a year after that I was the squadron IO, responsible for helping put out the unit's newsletter. Back then there were no desktop publishing programs, and anything not done on a typewriter required the careful use of Prestype lettering and similar dry-transfer magicks. Photographs had to be expensively half-toned, and so were rarely used. It's hard to explain how much work it was to people who have grown up with Word and similar programs that make newsletter generation the work of a few minutes rather than a weekend-long headache. If you were lucky.
I might have to go out and see Helvetica, if it ever comes to someplace around here. (Postrel, via Ed Driscoll)
Bierut's point is well taken, and just thirty years ago it was no small thing to choose a typeface, even if you weren't using a typesetter's services. I spent a hectic weekend sometime in my high school cadet days going through Civil Air Patrol Information Officer School along with a dozen or so other cadets and about as many senior members, and for a year after that I was the squadron IO, responsible for helping put out the unit's newsletter. Back then there were no desktop publishing programs, and anything not done on a typewriter required the careful use of Prestype lettering and similar dry-transfer magicks. Photographs had to be expensively half-toned, and so were rarely used. It's hard to explain how much work it was to people who have grown up with Word and similar programs that make newsletter generation the work of a few minutes rather than a weekend-long headache. If you were lucky.
