Latest / Ridiculous History / Fonts They Love to Hate, Part Two: Papyrus, Times New Roman and Beyond
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, the production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
- 0:27Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
- 0:31Speaker 1: tuning in. This is part two of a special series
- 0:35Speaker 1: on fonts that a lot of people hate. Please listen
- 0:40Speaker 1: to part one where you can hear some vim and vinegar,
- 0:44Speaker 1: not only from our super producer, mister Max Williams, but
- 0:49Speaker 1: from mister Noel Brown and from me as well. They
- 0:53Speaker 1: call me Ben Noel. You remember how in a different
- 0:58Speaker 1: show we talked a bit about out the frequency illusion,
- 1:03Speaker 1: which is when you maybe you hear a word and
- 1:07Speaker 1: all of a sudden you feel like you hear that
- 1:09Speaker 1: word all the time, or you buy a car you
- 1:11Speaker 1: feel like you see that car all the time.
- 1:15Speaker 2: For that phenom it.
- 1:19Speaker 1: Yeah, just so, it's bader Minehoff and sometimes called frequency illusion.
- 1:25Speaker 1: And that happened to me with papyrus uh after part
- 1:29Speaker 1: one of our fonts episode, I remember thinking, wow, papyrus
- 1:34Speaker 1: is everywhere and it really does seem to damage the
- 1:37Speaker 1: credibility of what's being communicated.
- 1:39Speaker 3: Were you compelled to go and watch the uh, the
- 1:42Speaker 3: the avatar films after that? I was not. I was not.
- 1:46Speaker 2: I I was.
- 1:48Speaker 1: It's funny because on our On another show we do
- 1:52Speaker 1: called stuff they Don't Want you to Know. We recently
- 1:55Speaker 1: recorded an episode about a mysterious bridge in Scotland, uh
- 1:59Speaker 1: called the Dog Suicide Bridge. And I didn't mention that
- 2:03Speaker 1: on that show, and I probably won't. But the one
- 2:06Speaker 1: book that is written about it is leans more into
- 2:11Speaker 1: supernatural explanations and folks, the the cover font is in papyrus.
- 2:18Speaker 2: No it's not.
- 2:19Speaker 1: It is published.
- 2:22Speaker 2: Does that not just screen side published though?
- 2:25Speaker 1: But you know, research is important, so I had to
- 2:28Speaker 1: do the due diligence of read it. But but we
- 2:31Speaker 1: in the interim, folks, we found so many other strange
- 2:37Speaker 1: fonts such that we might have to return in another
- 2:41Speaker 1: installment to talk about controversial fonts in non Western languages.
- 2:47Speaker 1: But but for now, with some help from our research
- 2:49Speaker 1: associate Jeff Bartlett, I don't know, man, let's let's dive
- 2:53Speaker 1: into Times New Roman.
- 2:56Speaker 2: Why not Times New Roman?
- 3:00Speaker 3: Indeed, this is a font we kind of talked about
- 3:04Speaker 3: some of the more let's call them credible fonts. You
- 3:08Speaker 3: know how Vetica came up as sort of like end
- 3:11Speaker 3: all be all for designers in terms of just the
- 3:13Speaker 3: right amount of thinning of the of the joints between
- 3:17Speaker 3: the letters and all of that stuff, just the right
- 3:19Speaker 3: amount of Sarah for lack of Sarah and all that,
- 3:22Speaker 3: and Times New Roman sort of has earned, I guess
- 3:27Speaker 3: itsself a place in the history of fonts. It's a
- 3:30Speaker 3: little bit divisive because it's sort of what you would
- 3:32Speaker 3: consider like a templatized sort of standard font, and for
- 3:36Speaker 3: that reason alone, I think it may have also earned
- 3:39Speaker 3: itself a bit of a place on the shit list.
- 3:43Speaker 2: Let's call it, you know, a fonts Yeah.
- 3:45Speaker 1: Oh, and also we talked about curning in part one,
- 3:50Speaker 1: but I don't think we defined it. Curning is the
- 3:52Speaker 1: way spacing between characters works. The Times New Roman dates
- 3:59Speaker 1: back to the original Roman Type in fourteen seventy. This
- 4:04Speaker 1: guy named Nicholas Jensen creates Roman Type, and he is
- 4:08Speaker 1: inspired by the text on ancient Roman buildings, and it
- 4:14Speaker 1: catches on pretty quickly. Chances are if you pull up
- 4:17Speaker 1: a word process or whether that's Microsoft Word or what
- 4:21Speaker 1: have you, you're probably going to look at Times New
- 4:25Speaker 1: Roman rather than Roman Type, which you don't see so
- 4:29Speaker 1: much today.
- 4:30Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's you know, it's a font that does
- 4:32Speaker 3: a really good job of displaying Roman numerals for good reason,
- 4:38Speaker 3: you know, I mean, it really is that kind of traditional,
- 4:41Speaker 3: the kind of font that you might think of as
- 4:43Speaker 3: being etched, you know, the product of some sort of
- 4:47Speaker 3: artisanal stone cutting. And as we said, this font has
- 4:52Speaker 3: historically been kind of the standard, you know, set font
- 4:57Speaker 3: for word processors, you know, like Microsoft Word or note
- 5:00Speaker 3: Pad or whatever. It's the kind of the one that
- 5:02Speaker 3: comes up by default. But it actually started with a
- 5:06Speaker 3: bit of a spirit of competition, sort of similar to similar,
- 5:11Speaker 3: but very different to the story behind comic sans Yeah.
- 5:17Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a real hold my beer moment in the
- 5:20Speaker 1: history of typeface. There's this guy, Stanley Morrison. He's already
- 5:25Speaker 1: got his bona fides. He is an esteemed type designer,
- 5:30Speaker 1: and he starts a beef with the famous London newspaper,
- 5:35Speaker 1: The Times, and he says, look, you all are a
- 5:39Speaker 1: bunch of stuffed shirts. You're elitist. You're out of touch
- 5:42Speaker 1: with the modern typographical trends, which you know, to be fair,
- 5:46Speaker 1: most of the public probably didn't care about. So the
- 5:49Speaker 1: Time says, okay, stan you talk so big, why don't
- 5:54Speaker 1: you make something better? And he says, well I will.
- 5:58Speaker 1: He gets a draft named Victor Lardent to start brainstorming
- 6:03Speaker 1: with him, and they land on two goals. We're going
- 6:08Speaker 1: to be efficient and we're going to be easy on
- 6:10Speaker 1: the eyes. Efficient meaning we're going to maximize the amount
- 6:15Speaker 1: of type, the number of characters you can fit on
- 6:17Speaker 1: a line, and we're also going to make it easier
- 6:23Speaker 1: to read. We're getting a lot of this from a
- 6:26Speaker 1: great article on nypl dot org by Meredith Mann called
- 6:31Speaker 1: where did Times New Roman come from? And it's you know,
- 6:36Speaker 1: London Times New Roman. He was petty enough that he
- 6:40Speaker 1: put the name of the paper in the name of
- 6:42Speaker 1: the font.
- 6:43Speaker 3: So in nineteen twenty six the British Medical Research Council
- 6:49Speaker 3: published a report diving into the legibility of print and
- 6:57Speaker 3: you know how this affects readers, and they issued some
- 7:02Speaker 3: guidelines or some recommendations right for what would achieve maximum legibility,
- 7:08Speaker 3: and Times New Roman attempted to really, you know, adhere
- 7:12Speaker 3: to these guidelines. There were some test pages that were
- 7:16Speaker 3: submitted to what is referred to in the article that
- 7:19Speaker 3: you cite had been as a distinguished ophthalmolic authority, right,
- 7:24Speaker 3: And so then it became, you know, once they kind
- 7:26Speaker 3: of got the thumbs up from said distinguished ophthalmolic authority.
- 7:30Speaker 3: They were able to kind of issue almost like a
- 7:33Speaker 3: three out of four doctors agree. You know, Times New
- 7:36Speaker 3: Roman is easy on the eyes.
- 7:39Speaker 1: Yeah, it's for your health. And they said, okay, we've
- 7:44Speaker 1: got some credibility, we've got scientific analysis that's pretty good,
- 7:48Speaker 1: but we need to see we need to drive this
- 7:51Speaker 1: around the block. Essentially, we need to see how it
- 7:54Speaker 1: works when you actually read it. So members for this team,
- 7:57Speaker 1: the Report on the Legibility of Print team spent a
- 8:01Speaker 1: long time reading this and they case tested it. They
- 8:06Speaker 1: read it out during nice afternoons in the sunlight, they
- 8:09Speaker 1: read it under artificial light. They tested and tested and
- 8:13Speaker 1: tested again, and they finally approved it. They called it
- 8:16Speaker 1: The Times New Broman, and on October third, nineteen thirty two,
- 8:22Speaker 1: The Times had their big reveal. They debuted it, and
- 8:27Speaker 1: all of the readers of the paper, The Times were
- 8:31Speaker 1: reminded daily of the importance of type and printing, at
- 8:35Speaker 1: least that's according to the monotype Recorder, which, as you
- 8:39Speaker 1: can tell, might be a bit of a bias source.
- 8:42Speaker 3: Oh.
- 8:42Speaker 1: This was also the first time ever that a newspaper
- 8:45Speaker 1: designed its own typeface.
- 8:47Speaker 3: Rightan, and that's a big deal, because as we know,
- 8:49Speaker 3: you know, the history of typography is one that kind
- 8:53Speaker 3: of begins with actual type setting and you know, creating
- 8:58Speaker 3: these sets of letters and characters that were designed by
- 9:02Speaker 3: you know, specific individuals that worked at printing presses. So
- 9:05Speaker 3: typically the printing press was sort of separate from the
- 9:09Speaker 3: publishing or the content creation right of the news. So
- 9:13Speaker 3: this really was kind of a big deal. This means though,
- 9:17Speaker 3: that the Times actually owned this font and they had
- 9:22Speaker 3: exclusive rights to it, but only for a year, which
- 9:25Speaker 3: is interesting. How does that work?
- 9:27Speaker 2: Ben?
- 9:28Speaker 3: Is this like why was there such a clock put
- 9:30Speaker 3: on it as opposed to what would normally be a
- 9:33Speaker 3: longer period for copywriting or a trademarking of something.
- 9:37Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I'm guessing it's someone with pen laws.
- 9:39Speaker 4: But it's like, you know, how quickly does it becomes
- 9:42Speaker 4: kind of universal like thing? That's kind of a lot
- 9:44Speaker 4: of times how that stuff goes, like i know, with
- 9:46Speaker 4: trademarks or stuff like that, especially like brand names. Once
- 9:49Speaker 4: it becomes universal, like calling something a search engine googling
- 9:54Speaker 4: it is like an example of.
- 9:55Speaker 1: Sure proprietary, right, Yeah, Yeah, It's it's tough to know
- 10:02Speaker 1: for sure. We we can speculate on a couple of things. One,
- 10:07Speaker 1: it may have been part of the agreement the Times pitched.
- 10:11Speaker 1: Two it may have been part of the negotiations between
- 10:15Speaker 1: Stanley and the Times because he might have known he
- 10:19Speaker 1: had lightning in a bottle, and the price that they
- 10:23Speaker 1: would have to pay for exclusivity may have been pretty prohibitive.
- 10:27Speaker 1: But also to your point, Max, it would be difficult
- 10:30Speaker 1: to enforce rights after a certain amount of time. But
- 10:34Speaker 1: they it turned out they didn't really have a lot
- 10:37Speaker 1: to worry about in terms of exclusivity for the immediate
- 10:42Speaker 1: future because after those rights laps, publishers over in the
- 10:47Speaker 1: United States, especially newspaper publishers, aren't champion at the bit,
- 10:54Speaker 1: and it is champion at the bit, not chomping. They're
- 10:56Speaker 1: not champing at the bit to a adopt this new
- 11:00Speaker 1: font because they're being cheapskates. It needs more ink and
- 11:07Speaker 1: it needs a better quality of paper. And so essentially
- 11:10Speaker 1: the William Randolph Hearsts of the world across the pond
- 11:14Speaker 1: are saying no, we're not nah pass. So we see
- 11:21Speaker 1: Times New Roaming come out, not first in newspapers in
- 11:24Speaker 1: the US, but in books and magazines, notably Woman's Home
- 11:29Speaker 1: Companion in December nineteen forty one precisely.
- 11:34Speaker 3: So you're starting to see this wide adoption of this font,
- 11:38Speaker 3: which is a big deal, and a lot of the
- 11:40Speaker 3: stems from the fact that it really was incredibly legible,
- 11:44Speaker 3: you know, and in small print. As we know, newspapers
- 11:47Speaker 3: and magazines are trying their best to shove as much
- 11:50Speaker 3: content into as small a space as possible to maximize
- 11:54Speaker 3: what they can put in their publications, the amount of
- 11:57Speaker 3: stuff that they can cover.
- 11:58Speaker 2: So this was a big deal.
- 11:59Speaker 3: This is still a time where this is not a
- 12:03Speaker 3: computerized process at all. You know, this is in the
- 12:06Speaker 3: nineteen forties and fifties where these you know, type sets
- 12:09Speaker 3: were still part of the process of printing, you know,
- 12:13Speaker 3: physical metal letters and characters, and these were There was
- 12:18Speaker 3: something called punches that actually helped create the molds for
- 12:23Speaker 3: casting these types. And they were created by a company
- 12:26Speaker 3: called the Monotype Corporation, and they collaborated with the Linotype Company,
- 12:32Speaker 3: and I believe Monotype and Linotype are still you know,
- 12:37Speaker 3: names that resonate within the typography community to this day.
- 12:41Speaker 3: These were manufacturers of machines that would do type setting,
- 12:47Speaker 3: so they really were very very important organizations, you know,
- 12:52Speaker 3: for creating mass produced media. Both companies made sets of
- 12:58Speaker 3: these letters that were available for purchase. The monotype version
- 13:03Speaker 3: was known as Times New Roman. The linotype version was
- 13:06Speaker 3: just Times Roman. So if we move forward a little bit,
- 13:12Speaker 3: quite a bit actually into the I guess more like
- 13:15Speaker 3: the eighties, into the computer era, where we start to
- 13:17Speaker 3: see selectable fonts being used in word processing programs, like
- 13:23Speaker 3: you know, those created by Apple computers. Because remember, early on,
- 13:28Speaker 3: before computers could do all of the crazy things that
- 13:30Speaker 3: we know and love today, they were essentially bespoke typewriters,
- 13:35Speaker 3: you know. So Apple licensed the linotype version and Microsoft
- 13:40Speaker 3: licensed the monotype version. That is why the way the
- 13:44Speaker 3: appearance of these fonts to this day between Apple and
- 13:48Speaker 3: Windows machines look a little bit different.
- 13:51Speaker 1: Thanks, Can I get the more? You know, close enough
- 13:56Speaker 1: to not get a suit? That's a true story. It's
- 14:05Speaker 1: a weird historical footnote. We should also footnote that the
- 14:10Speaker 1: Times was not was not super on board with people
- 14:17Speaker 1: using their font in books in any long form writing.
- 14:23Speaker 1: They said, quote, it is a newspaper type and hardly
- 14:27Speaker 1: a book type, for it is strictly appointed for use
- 14:30Speaker 1: in short lines, i e. In columns. And they went
- 14:34Speaker 1: back and later developed a wider version of times New
- 14:39Speaker 1: Roman to fit the longer lines of text in a book,
- 14:43Speaker 1: and the idea that the use of a typeface affects
- 14:47Speaker 1: its form struck our writer man that we mentioned earlier
- 14:52Speaker 1: as incredibly relevant still in the modern day. You know,
- 14:55Speaker 1: a lot of books are entirely published electronically. A lot
- 15:00Speaker 1: of the stuff that the average person reads is not
- 15:03Speaker 1: a book. It's an article on the on the phone,
- 15:07Speaker 1: it's an article on a web page somewhere. And that's
- 15:11Speaker 1: why the ideas that Stanley had originally efficiency and ease
- 15:18Speaker 1: of reading, right, these are still incredibly crucial today. That's
- 15:23Speaker 1: why you see the newer kids on the printing block. No,
- 15:29Speaker 1: keep it up. It's folks like folks like Ariel and Calibri.
- 15:37Speaker 1: How do you guys pronounce it?
- 15:39Speaker 3: I guess maybe Calibri. Calibri sounds good. I think it's
- 15:43Speaker 3: potato potato.
- 15:44Speaker 4: Your pronunciation sounded better than how I've ever said it.
- 15:46Speaker 2: How do you say it? I don't know. Calibri.
- 15:51Speaker 1: You say Calibri with like four eyes at the end.
- 15:53Speaker 4: I see it selected and immediately change it.
- 15:56Speaker 2: There you go, okay, all right?
- 15:58Speaker 1: So, uh, the these typefaces are quite competitive nowadays because
- 16:03Speaker 1: if you're reading on a screen, the lack of seahs.
- 16:07Speaker 1: Remember our technical definition from part one. Seraffs are those
- 16:11Speaker 1: little dally bops at the end at the industry, the
- 16:15Speaker 1: little dongles, you know, the little hangars. Yeah, the little
- 16:19Speaker 1: weness bumps there. If you don't have seraphs, then for
- 16:23Speaker 1: most people it's easier to read a word on a screen.
- 16:28Speaker 1: But Times New Roman is almost a century old, and
- 16:33Speaker 1: it made the jump from print to digital. I think
- 16:38Speaker 1: maybe maybe nol we talk about the idea that fonts
- 16:43Speaker 1: without seraphs are easier to read. Why is that or
- 16:47Speaker 1: do we have any specifics on that?
- 16:49Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I mean the idea being that, I
- 16:53Speaker 3: think it's just a little bit less distracting. It is
- 16:56Speaker 3: a little faster to process. Sands Sarah of fonts, you know,
- 17:01Speaker 3: like you mentioned stuff like Tahoma ver Donna Ariel and
- 17:05Speaker 3: Paula Peters on Medium points out that, you know, these
- 17:09Speaker 3: days we're kind of blasting through text. You know, the
- 17:13Speaker 3: average viewer or the average reader only spends about eleven
- 17:18Speaker 3: seconds reading an email and around sixty seconds reading a
- 17:22Speaker 3: twenty page proposal of some sort. She cites sales proposals
- 17:27Speaker 3: so you know, since we're kind of living in a
- 17:29Speaker 3: culture of scanning, the more legible the better. But as
- 17:33Speaker 3: we mentioned at the top of the show, I think
- 17:35Speaker 3: Times New Roman, while very effective at communicating because of
- 17:39Speaker 3: its wide adoption in books, you know, magazines, newspapers, publications
- 17:45Speaker 3: of all kinds, because of this study that we talked
- 17:48Speaker 3: about that cited its incredible legibility, I think people just
- 17:51Speaker 3: got bored with it, you know, like like anything that
- 17:54Speaker 3: you kind of get inundated with. So while it was
- 17:57Speaker 3: an effective tool, you know, and accomplished exactly what it
- 18:01Speaker 3: was set out to do, when you start getting into
- 18:03Speaker 3: like design communities and folks that are maybe looking to
- 18:06Speaker 3: have things, you know, have a little bit more of
- 18:08Speaker 3: an aesthetic flare, it starts to become so overly recognizable
- 18:13Speaker 3: to the point of being cliche.
- 18:15Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you know.
- 18:16Speaker 1: Another comparison would be the fashion of business suits, right,
- 18:22Speaker 1: like double breasted suits. When you see them, you know
- 18:25Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, they scream seventies, eighties. There's still
- 18:30Speaker 1: a suit, there's still the reason that person is not
- 18:33Speaker 1: naked in front of you. They get the job done,
- 18:36Speaker 1: but you know, there's something aesthetic about it, and this
- 18:40Speaker 1: leads Paula Peters to say that modern audiences love a
- 18:45Speaker 1: font without a seraph. If you pay attention, you'll start
- 18:50Speaker 1: seeing this everywhere. We don't want to get in your
- 18:56Speaker 1: head too far, folks, but look around. Odds are you
- 18:59Speaker 1: will I'll not be far away from something written right.
- 19:03Speaker 1: And if you are reading Latin based language, then you
- 19:09Speaker 1: are probably going to notice there's a lack of saraph
- 19:12Speaker 1: in most of the things you're seeing now, Sarah. Fonts
- 19:17Speaker 1: are easy to read if you have a really big monitor,
- 19:20Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like if you play World
- 19:22Speaker 1: of Warcraft and you're reading something on that same monitor,
- 19:26Speaker 1: times New Roman Chef Kiss beautiful. But if you're reading
- 19:31Speaker 1: on a mobile phone, like so many people these days,
- 19:35Speaker 1: then you're gonna see that it's a little bit more difficult.
- 19:39Speaker 1: And as Peters points out, nowadays, almost sixty two percent
- 19:45Speaker 1: of all emails are opened on a smartphone. And if
- 19:51Speaker 1: you look at the millennial generation in particular, which we
- 19:55Speaker 1: are apart, then you'll see that number goes up to
- 19:58Speaker 1: eighty eight percent. No one tell our bosses, but a
- 20:02Speaker 1: lot of times, a lot of times we're like in
- 20:06Speaker 1: bed or we're walking somewhere.
- 20:08Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, multitasking, yeah, listening to other stuff, perhaps watch
- 20:14Speaker 3: researching on a computer, while looking at emails on the phone,
- 20:18Speaker 3: you know, all of that stuff. It's definitely part of
- 20:23Speaker 3: the equation for sure. I think one of the biggest
- 20:26Speaker 3: issues though, is just the kind of dated vibe of
- 20:30Speaker 3: Times New Roman and what it communicates about your brand
- 20:34Speaker 3: or your company, you know, as like philosophically speaking, you know,
- 20:38Speaker 3: everyone kind of does.
- 20:39Speaker 4: No.
- 20:39Speaker 3: One wants to be considered old fashion nowadays, like everyone
- 20:42Speaker 3: wants to feel like they're in some way on the
- 20:44Speaker 3: cutting edge, and design is a big part of that,
- 20:47Speaker 3: you know.
- 20:47Speaker 2: Like you said, the medium is the message.
- 20:49Speaker 3: So what you put out there, whether it be your
- 20:52Speaker 3: style guide for communications within a company, you know, your
- 20:55Speaker 3: signature file, for example, companies even like ours, have a
- 20:59Speaker 3: very lized and uniform way of formatting those signature files,
- 21:05Speaker 3: including the fought choice mm hmmm.
- 21:07Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 21:07Speaker 1: If you, for instance, think about it this way. If
- 21:10Speaker 1: you are considering putting money into a new or bleeding
- 21:16Speaker 1: edge industry and you go to their website and it's
- 21:20Speaker 1: in Times New Roman, then you're going to think they
- 21:24Speaker 1: don't get it. I don't know if these are the
- 21:26Speaker 1: people I trust for this investment, So we have to
- 21:30Speaker 1: be conscious of this. You know, it's often said by
- 21:33Speaker 1: great communicators that how you say something matters as much
- 21:37Speaker 1: as what you are saying.
- 21:39Speaker 2: Right.
- 21:40Speaker 1: A great deal of information in in person conversations is
- 21:44Speaker 1: conveyed via intonation and body language, which is why it's
- 21:48Speaker 1: easy to misread a text.
- 21:50Speaker 2: Right.
- 21:51Speaker 1: The same holds true with fonts. To some degree. The
- 21:54Speaker 1: thought you choose will influence the way your message is
- 22:00Speaker 1: interpreted by the readers, and that's why you see things
- 22:04Speaker 1: like multiple graphic designers have written their own diatribes. Dare
- 22:09Speaker 1: I say manifestos about Times New Roman. They say things
- 22:13Speaker 1: like it's corny and boring. Avoid it when you can.
- 22:16Speaker 1: It's bad, it's ugly. One person said. It makes me
- 22:19Speaker 1: nervous when I see it.
- 22:21Speaker 3: Yeah, we are here, we are with the poster out,
- 22:24Speaker 3: you know, the the reviews are in for Times New Romans,
- 22:28Speaker 3: like we did with with Comic Sands. Again, Yeah, I mean,
- 22:32Speaker 3: especially when you're looking at things through the lens of
- 22:35Speaker 3: a designer, this is something that's absolutely going to make
- 22:39Speaker 3: them cringe for all the reasons. The outline, it's dated,
- 22:42Speaker 3: it's not maybe as easy to read as some kind
- 22:46Speaker 3: of updated versions of the quote unquote more legible fonts,
- 22:49Speaker 3: and it really does say a lot about kind of
- 22:52Speaker 3: your attitude towards aesthetics and towards kind of being seen
- 22:55Speaker 3: as a little bit more on the cutting edge.
- 22:58Speaker 1: Which led some people to say, I want a font
- 23:01Speaker 1: that makes an impact. Hey, Impact, Impact, Impact Sunday, Sunday Sunday.
- 23:10Speaker 3: Exactly, Impact being like one of the more aggressive thoughts.
- 23:17Speaker 3: It's a fund that you want a font that smacks
- 23:19Speaker 3: you in the head like a stack of bricks.
- 23:21Speaker 2: Impact is for you.
- 23:22Speaker 1: Impact invented in nineteen sixty five by Jeffrey Lee. It
- 23:27Speaker 1: is easy to read. It is sansera. It does grab
- 23:31Speaker 1: your attention, but it is in the world of zime
- 23:37Speaker 1: people think it's often a little too thin in the strokes.
- 23:41Speaker 1: It's amateurish. It's most commonly used on documents that have
- 23:46Speaker 1: been quote designed by people who don't know what they're
- 23:49Speaker 1: doing when it comes to typefaces, and as such it
- 23:53Speaker 1: should be avoided. That is coming to us from vandalaiddesign
- 23:57Speaker 1: dot com in an article by Steven Snell.
- 24:01Speaker 3: Exactly, it's the kind of font that you might see
- 24:06Speaker 3: if you highlight something in a like let's say you're
- 24:09Speaker 3: using notes like on an iPhone, and then you highlight
- 24:11Speaker 3: it and just select heading. That's what it's going to
- 24:14Speaker 3: present you with, something with kind of a large amount
- 24:17Speaker 3: of space in between the letters, which arguably does make
- 24:21Speaker 3: it a little easier to read, and a kind of
- 24:23Speaker 3: inherent boldness to it. But again it's just a little
- 24:27Speaker 3: bit cliche, you know. It's like sort of almost mimicking
- 24:31Speaker 3: the headlines of yesteryear, in the same way that comic
- 24:35Speaker 3: Sands was trying to mimic the way text was designed
- 24:38Speaker 3: for speech bubbles and cartoons.
- 24:40Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And imagine reading an official like an official
- 24:45Speaker 1: government document or a paper of note in impact thought,
- 24:52Speaker 1: after the headline, you make a great point about the headline.
- 24:54Speaker 1: After the headline, it would start to feel off somehow.
- 24:59Speaker 1: Jeffery Lee designed this font because he was in the
- 25:04Speaker 1: midst of the nineteen sixties, and the mid nineteen sixties,
- 25:08Speaker 1: as we know, experienced a renaissance for bold condensed type
- 25:14Speaker 1: faces that, according to designers, probably came about through other
- 25:19Speaker 1: cut up prints and art of the day, specifically something
- 25:23Speaker 1: called the Schmalfett grotesque font, which had been drawn by
- 25:29Speaker 1: Volter Hottenschweiler Hottenschweiler, and because Impact was less condensed than
- 25:34Speaker 1: this other font. To your point about Kerning, designers often
- 25:38Speaker 1: use these two fonts together, and you could use Impact
- 25:44Speaker 1: for you know, Impact man maximum.
- 25:49Speaker 3: I love the idea of a font being grotesque, though
- 25:52Speaker 3: I think some designers might consider all of these fonts
- 25:55Speaker 3: that we're talking about, you know, in these episodes, to
- 25:57Speaker 3: be grotesque.
- 25:59Speaker 2: Shout out to small fet.
- 26:01Speaker 1: Yes, shout out this small efet And developers. Oh, here's
- 26:06Speaker 1: where you see Impact the most nowadays, fellow ridiculous historians.
- 26:10Speaker 1: You see it in memes. It's the default font for
- 26:13Speaker 1: things like caption meme. It's the default font for a
- 26:16Speaker 1: lot of those macros you can make your own. And
- 26:20Speaker 1: developers use Impact because it's super readable, it's ubiquitous, it's
- 26:26Speaker 1: available at every computer. You don't have to download a
- 26:29Speaker 1: new font pack, and you don't have to read a
- 26:33Speaker 1: lot for a meme usually, right, a meme is hopefully
- 26:39Speaker 1: I don't want to sound pretentious. You can hate or
- 26:42Speaker 1: love memes or as they're called sometimes shit posts, but
- 26:46Speaker 1: you have to admit there's an art and beauty to
- 26:51Speaker 1: the economy of language, no question.
- 26:53Speaker 3: And you know, as is the case for a lot
- 26:55Speaker 3: of Internet culture, you know, and kind of like stuff
- 26:59Speaker 3: that might have found its origins on forums, you know,
- 27:02Speaker 3: like something Awful or Penny Arcade or some of these
- 27:06Speaker 3: you know forums that sort of kind of got condensed
- 27:09Speaker 3: since now what we know has read it. I guess,
- 27:11Speaker 3: I mean all these other There are, of course forums
- 27:13Speaker 3: that still exist that are more under the radar, but
- 27:15Speaker 3: now Reddit has kind of become the more like mainstream
- 27:17Speaker 3: version of a lot of this type of Internet communication.
- 27:20Speaker 3: Dated fonts and kind of you know, Internet relics are
- 27:24Speaker 3: like a big part of the presentation for these kinds
- 27:26Speaker 3: of things.
- 27:28Speaker 1: And our pal, Jeff Bartlett, not Jeffrey Lee, Jeff Bartlett
- 27:32Speaker 1: research associate, wants everyone to know that he has only
- 27:36Speaker 1: one tattoo and it is sapere aude Latin for dare
- 27:42Speaker 1: to know, and an old school like motto of the
- 27:45Speaker 1: Age of Enlightenment. Says it's on his forearm, it is
- 27:49Speaker 1: in impact fonts, and he has no regrets.
- 27:54Speaker 3: All right, you heard it here first. Oh man, I'm
- 27:58Speaker 3: so excited. I'm so excs for this next one. We've
- 28:01Speaker 3: been teasing it from the start, good old Papyrus, you know,
- 28:12Speaker 3: if we're talking about fonts that are trying to invoke
- 28:15Speaker 3: a certain feeling, you know, a certain like you know,
- 28:18Speaker 3: we said comic Sands was trying to evoke whimsy or
- 28:21Speaker 3: sort of creativity or you know, like a lightness to
- 28:25Speaker 3: their communications. I'm not quite sure what Papyrus is supposed
- 28:29Speaker 3: to communicate in that respect.
- 28:30Speaker 2: Is it mysticism? Is it the age, the wisdom of
- 28:34Speaker 2: the ancient?
- 28:35Speaker 1: Like you're reading a scroll, you know, Max, give us
- 28:38Speaker 1: some like D and D Renaissance festival music, you know,
- 28:44Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons. Sw I mean by D and.
- 28:46Speaker 2: D not do not disturb.
- 28:48Speaker 1: So here here's our certa intrue, maybe a fife, the flute,
- 28:52Speaker 1: a bit of elup. There's an American. His name is
- 28:54Speaker 1: Chris Costello. He creates Papyrus in nineteen eighty three. This
- 29:00Speaker 1: is also Yeah, this reminds me. I associate Papyrus with
- 29:04Speaker 1: the early oh, the early computer games. I used to
- 29:08Speaker 1: play by Sierra Entertainment. So shout out to anyone who
- 29:12Speaker 1: remembers King's Quest. But he Chris says, this is one
- 29:16Speaker 1: of my proudest accomplishments. He's also Chris has his stripes.
- 29:20Speaker 1: He's a graphic designer, illustrator, web designer, and he says
- 29:26Speaker 1: similar to the creation of comic sands. He says that
- 29:29Speaker 1: Papyrus was made with certain intent and it was never
- 29:34Speaker 1: meant to be used on the logos of big businesses,
- 29:37Speaker 1: on mortgage companies, construction logos, just like our Times New
- 29:41Speaker 1: Roman example. You wouldn't trust, say, a cryptocurrency outfit that
- 29:47Speaker 1: had their website in Times New Roman. You would you
- 29:50Speaker 1: trust a mortgage company in papyrus like their font ism Papyrus.
- 29:56Speaker 3: I wouldn't trust a mortgage company general funds, but no,
- 30:00Speaker 3: definitely not. Or perhaps a realtor you know who's who's
- 30:04Speaker 3: whose yard signs have their name emblazoned in papyrus. Yeah,
- 30:10Speaker 3: it has kind of taken on the reputation of being
- 30:12Speaker 3: the most maligned font on the planet.
- 30:16Speaker 1: Yeah, the Pepsi to the Coca Cola of comic sans.
- 30:20Speaker 1: Papyrus is famous for being misused. You see it in
- 30:25Speaker 1: business cards, letterheads, signs, et cetera. There are a lot
- 30:29Speaker 1: of websites that exist just to make fun of Papyrus.
- 30:33Speaker 1: It gets featured ironically and all kinds of things in
- 30:37Speaker 1: television shows, in sketch comedy. If you want to sort
- 30:43Speaker 1: of undercut the character who is being cartoonish in the sketch.
- 30:48Speaker 1: Then you have them without explanation, use Papyrus and shout
- 30:52Speaker 1: out to Snell's sketch. We mentioned shout out to the
- 30:56Speaker 1: McSweeney's article, which I'd love to read in full, the
- 30:59Speaker 1: Comics's articles just oh, it's so good.
- 31:02Speaker 2: Anyway.
- 31:03Speaker 1: Chris Costello sold the rights to his font, and he
- 31:08Speaker 1: regrets it a little bit. He says, there have definitely
- 31:10Speaker 1: been days I wish I'd never sold the rights, and
- 31:14Speaker 1: I get that there are a lot of critics, but
- 31:17Speaker 1: hate if you must. Papyrus is on over a billion
- 31:20Speaker 1: computers around the world. It's a font you can choose
- 31:23Speaker 1: right now.
- 31:24Speaker 3: You can definitely choose it, as we saw a designer
- 31:29Speaker 3: choosing it from the list of drop Town available fonts
- 31:32Speaker 3: in that amazing SNL short about you know, Papyrus being
- 31:36Speaker 3: the logo for Avatar, a multi billion dollar grossing you know,
- 31:43Speaker 3: fantasy science fiction franchise. Watch that if you get a
- 31:47Speaker 3: chance with Ryan Gosley. It puts a lot of context
- 31:50Speaker 3: around this, but you know, with you if you look
- 31:51Speaker 3: at the font though on its own, and you saw
- 31:54Speaker 3: it like as a singular work, maybe before the ubiquity
- 31:58Speaker 3: of it, like on the cover of a comic book
- 31:59Speaker 3: or something. It does evoke kind of like a biblical,
- 32:03Speaker 3: kind of Middle Eastern mystical kind of vibe, you know,
- 32:07Speaker 3: And that's exactly what Costello was trying to do when
- 32:10Speaker 3: he was messing around with a calligraphy pen on a
- 32:13Speaker 3: literal piece of parchment paper, and he, you know, was
- 32:17Speaker 3: kind of fooling around and created these sort of ornate
- 32:21Speaker 3: sort of capital letters that had these brushstrokes or kind
- 32:25Speaker 3: of pen strokes, you know, on the edges. And he
- 32:28Speaker 3: also claims that he got to this place because he
- 32:32Speaker 3: was on a bit of a biblical journey himself.
- 32:36Speaker 1: Reading a lot of history, spiritual and geographical about the
- 32:41Speaker 1: Middle East. And then he also said he dove into
- 32:44Speaker 1: the Biblical times. That's a quote from him, and he
- 32:47Speaker 1: was drawing a lot of ligatures and letters with these
- 32:51Speaker 1: hairlined arrangements, and this struck a chord internally for Chris Costello,
- 32:57Speaker 1: and over the course of just a few days, worked
- 33:00Speaker 1: on these letters until he had generated an entire Roman
- 33:05Speaker 1: alphabet in all caps, and he was pretty happy with it.
- 33:10Speaker 1: He said, you know what, I'm gonna call this papyrus.
- 33:12Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if I can turn it into a
- 33:14Speaker 1: font and get this ridiculous historians. This was the very
- 33:18Speaker 1: first typeface he ever worked on. This is a lot
- 33:22Speaker 1: like going into a studio and saying, I play a
- 33:25Speaker 1: little guitar, I've never recorded anything, and then boom, you've
- 33:29Speaker 1: created you know, what's a what's a hated pop song? Macharena?
- 33:34Speaker 1: You know?
- 33:35Speaker 3: Oh absolutely maybe you know, let's say the instrument was
- 33:38Speaker 3: maybe more of like a cowbell or something. Right, you
- 33:41Speaker 3: make the most cow the most.
- 33:43Speaker 2: Noted cow bell song of all time. Right, that then
- 33:47Speaker 2: becomes something of a trope.
- 33:49Speaker 1: And the thing is he sent this out. I wanted
- 33:53Speaker 1: to sell it, and he said, everybody rejected me. The
- 33:58Speaker 1: big names, the small names and type distribution, which is
- 34:01Speaker 1: an industry, honestly, folks, I had never thought about until
- 34:05Speaker 1: he talks to one company, a small outfit called Letra
- 34:09Speaker 1: Set British company, and he believes they may have been
- 34:13Speaker 1: the creators of louram ipsum. And you guys know everybody
- 34:17Speaker 1: knows lauram ipsum, right, it's the famous placeholder text.
- 34:21Speaker 3: Well that yeah, or like the the whatever what like
- 34:25Speaker 3: a font is missing?
- 34:27Speaker 2: Right?
- 34:27Speaker 3: Or that isn't that what comes up by default the content. Yeah,
- 34:30Speaker 3: it's it's like a mock. Oh no, it's to demonstrates. Yeah,
- 34:34Speaker 3: it's to demonstrate a font because I think it has
- 34:37Speaker 3: or it's sort of like the quick brown fox jumps over.
- 34:40Speaker 2: The lazy dog.
- 34:41Speaker 3: I think it demonstrates a good number of characters in
- 34:45Speaker 3: a font set. So it's used to kind of showcase,
- 34:49Speaker 3: like you know, the letters, the style of the letters
- 34:52Speaker 3: in a particular font.
- 34:53Speaker 1: The I feel, Yeah, that makes sense, right, How do
- 34:56Speaker 1: my eyes feel looking at this in this font? Yeah,
- 35:00Speaker 1: that's smart too. So like Comic Sands, if there's a
- 35:05Speaker 1: villain in the story for people who hate Comic Sands
- 35:08Speaker 1: and Papyrus, then it's Microsoft, right, because those those fonts
- 35:15Speaker 1: may not have caught on if they weren't pre installed
- 35:18Speaker 1: on Microsoft Office starting with Office ninety seven. Actually, behind
- 35:23Speaker 1: the scenes, I don't know if we want to keep
- 35:25Speaker 1: this in, but I was looking through the fonts on
- 35:28Speaker 1: the shared docs we use that I was gonna see
- 35:31Speaker 1: if I could put it in put virus, but I
- 35:33Speaker 1: decided not.
- 35:34Speaker 2: We've got a show to do.
- 35:36Speaker 3: Well. That's the thing though, right, Like it's no longer
- 35:39Speaker 3: that you know, ubiquitously pre installed font that it used
- 35:43Speaker 3: to be. And a lot of the history that we're
- 35:44Speaker 3: talking about has exactly to do with what you're saying.
- 35:47Speaker 3: You know, you have like a sort of taste maker
- 35:49Speaker 3: or like a company like Microsoft that determines what goes
- 35:53Speaker 3: on these machines that are widely adopted, and then it's
- 35:57Speaker 3: ultimately up to creators to kind of proliferate which fonts
- 36:01Speaker 3: become the thing, you know, but then they sort of
- 36:04Speaker 3: create the palletts at the tones that were available to
- 36:06Speaker 3: designers and obviously non designers alike. Not to mention, you
- 36:10Speaker 3: remember back in the day when like web pages would
- 36:13Speaker 3: be in weird fonts, you know, but you were limited
- 36:16Speaker 3: to what fonts were installed, whether you were a Mac
- 36:19Speaker 3: user or a PC user. And now web pages and
- 36:22Speaker 3: various designs don't necessarily depend on you having that font
- 36:26Speaker 3: installed unless you want to actually create something. You know,
- 36:29Speaker 3: things are generated into like vector images or whatever, you know,
- 36:33Speaker 3: like high quality JPEGs. You don't have to have that
- 36:36Speaker 3: thuon installed, so you can get all kinds of design
- 36:39Speaker 3: elements that don't rely on the user having that. But
- 36:42Speaker 3: back in the day, it was literally sourcing what fonts
- 36:45Speaker 3: you had on your computer. And then recreating that with
- 36:48Speaker 3: those characters that were actually installed on your physical machines.
- 36:51Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean Microsoft Office starting in ninety seven,
- 36:55Speaker 3: like you said, is really to blame for, at the
- 36:58Speaker 3: very least, giving folks the options that, some of which
- 37:03Speaker 3: became these hated fonts.
- 37:05Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 37:06Speaker 1: Yeah, he nailed it, man. And it's strange because none
- 37:10Speaker 1: of these font creators, these designers, they're not bad guys.
- 37:14Speaker 1: They're not Bond level villains. They made something really cool
- 37:19Speaker 1: and it's just in the way people used it.
- 37:23Speaker 2: Now.
- 37:23Speaker 1: Of course, when you're learning about the creator of Papyrus,
- 37:26Speaker 1: if you hate Papyrus, you may be tempted to think
- 37:29Speaker 1: of this guy as some kind of Bond level graphic
- 37:33Speaker 1: design supervillain. But believe it or not, folks, he only
- 37:39Speaker 1: got the equivalent of about two five hundred dollars for
- 37:42Speaker 1: selling the rights, so he probably lost out on millions
- 37:47Speaker 1: of dollars, given that one in seven people on the
- 37:50Speaker 1: planet has access to Papyrus on their computer.
- 37:53Speaker 3: But that's the thing too, You know, a font that
- 37:56Speaker 3: comes pre installed like that is sort of like having
- 37:59Speaker 3: back to our discussion on sampling, you know, not the
- 38:03Speaker 3: cheese cubes, but like sampling of music. You know, if
- 38:06Speaker 3: you buy a keyboard like a synthesizer or a you know,
- 38:09Speaker 3: a sampler or whatever, and it has presets on it,
- 38:13Speaker 3: those are available to be used without concern over copyright clearance. Point.
- 38:19Speaker 3: So the you know, the idea of who's making money
- 38:22Speaker 3: off of Papyrus, the answer is probably no one really,
- 38:26Speaker 3: you know, after that initial deal, you know, selling the
- 38:29Speaker 3: rights to it, and then it sort of gets lumped
- 38:31Speaker 3: in with this list of presets. As we know, fancy
- 38:35Speaker 3: er font sets are quite expensive because you are paying
- 38:39Speaker 3: for the rights to be able to use that font
- 38:42Speaker 3: in whatever commercial designs you might you know, want to.
- 38:45Speaker 2: Use it in.
- 38:46Speaker 3: But since Papyra has already pre installed on your system
- 38:49Speaker 3: and it comes with quote unquote you know, your software
- 38:52Speaker 3: that you already have, you can use it however you want.
- 38:55Speaker 3: So it's not like every time someone, you know, I
- 38:57Speaker 3: don't think that anyone got paid for Papyro is being
- 39:00Speaker 3: used in the Avatar logo. I would also argue that
- 39:03Speaker 3: it's possible, I don't know specifically, but that the version
- 39:07Speaker 3: of Papyrus on the Avatar logo was adjusted or tweaked
- 39:11Speaker 3: in some way. You can you can you can make
- 39:13Speaker 3: tweaks to like font sets and stuff and then kind
- 39:15Speaker 3: of make it your own. But I don't know, Max,
- 39:17Speaker 3: what do you think, like, do you think if someone
- 39:19Speaker 3: is using one of these fonts, is there anyone getting
- 39:22Speaker 3: a check? Are there like font residuals? I'd like to
- 39:26Speaker 3: answer as well, after you mix, Yeah.
- 39:28Speaker 4: Probably maybe, But to the thing, it's like, do you
- 39:31Speaker 4: if you make it just slightly different? So side note,
- 39:34Speaker 4: I watched the Papiates sketch right before we came on,
- 39:37Speaker 4: and it Chris Read is playing I guess Ryan Goslin's friend,
- 39:42Speaker 4: and he's like, hey man, it might have started with Papyrus,
- 39:44Speaker 4: but it's like slightly different. So I mean, I'm guessing
- 39:48Speaker 4: that's probably a tricky thing where if you make it
- 39:50Speaker 4: just different enough and it's probably it's probably just very
- 39:53Speaker 4: much soaked in minutia.
- 39:56Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah.
- 39:58Speaker 1: I also like to think that maybe their budget was
- 40:01Speaker 1: just so close that they said we have to use
- 40:04Speaker 1: one of the pre installed thoughts. It's down between Papyrus
- 40:08Speaker 1: and comic Sands. But you know, shout out to Costello.
- 40:12Speaker 1: It sounds like a really cool guy. He says, I'm
- 40:14Speaker 1: not embarrassed about this. You know the fact that it's
- 40:18Speaker 1: one of the world's most widely recognizable fonts. Even if
- 40:22Speaker 1: that means it's overused, it means there's just as many
- 40:25Speaker 1: people out there who love it as who hate it.
- 40:29Speaker 1: And he also says stay humble. I mean, Chris feels
- 40:33Speaker 1: like a good guy to hang out with, you guys.
- 40:35Speaker 1: He also says telling people I created Papyrus is always
- 40:39Speaker 1: a good topic for humorous conversation. It always gets a laugh.
- 40:44Speaker 1: How can you put a price on that? That's nice, man,
- 40:47Speaker 1: that's very well adjusted.
- 40:48Speaker 2: I think excellent conversation starter for sure.
- 40:54Speaker 3: You know what an interesting thing to Hey, I mean,
- 40:56Speaker 3: did this guy go on to design any other fonts?
- 40:58Speaker 2: Is his first one out of the gate? Right?
- 41:00Speaker 3: Did he try to you know, like, I guess repair
- 41:04Speaker 3: his repute? I mean, I thought he feels like it's
- 41:06Speaker 3: a bad reputation. But you know, it seemed like he
- 41:08Speaker 3: was just sort of a dabbler in font design. I
- 41:11Speaker 3: gotta wonder, like, is this guy what's he up to now?
- 41:14Speaker 1: He's got a website Chriscostello dot design, and you can
- 41:18Speaker 1: see his collection of fonts, which include Blackstone. He also
- 41:25Speaker 1: has Mirage, letter Press text and Papyrus, and then he
- 41:30Speaker 1: has one called virus. This is this is a rabbit
- 41:34Speaker 1: hole to link into, and I think we've we've hit
- 41:37Speaker 1: some of the big one. Snow will doubtlessly hear from
- 41:40Speaker 1: our fellow ridiculous historians who have pet peeve fonts of
- 41:44Speaker 1: their own. But I believe we have to mention, just
- 41:48Speaker 1: just at least the once, we have to mention how
- 41:51Speaker 1: wing Dings came about. As as we're wrapping.
- 41:54Speaker 2: Up this series.
- 41:56Speaker 1: Wing Dings is the thing that looks like a bunch
- 42:00Speaker 1: of strange nonsense. You know, it looks like the computer
- 42:04Speaker 1: is taken over and it doesn't speak your language. But
- 42:07Speaker 1: according to a great article by Phil Edwards over in Vox,
- 42:11Speaker 1: why the wing Dings font exists, there are multiple versions
- 42:15Speaker 1: of wing dings. It's one of the early days of emoji.
- 42:20Speaker 1: It could give you an image and scale it.
- 42:23Speaker 3: Yeah, at the very least like clip art, right like
- 42:26Speaker 3: it was a way. We talked about this a little
- 42:28Speaker 3: bit in the last episode that it was. Yeah, to
- 42:30Speaker 3: your point, fonts are also scalable. That's that's a very
- 42:34Speaker 3: important distinction that you made there, Bend, Because you can
- 42:37Speaker 3: blow up a font to a massive size and it's
- 42:40Speaker 3: not going to have any pixelation, right, I mean depending
- 42:45Speaker 3: on how you are outputting it, like in whatever you know,
- 42:48Speaker 3: design software you're using. But a font is essentially like
- 42:52Speaker 3: information telling a computer how to recreate something that is scalable,
- 42:57Speaker 3: whether it's tiny or whether it's massive. It's not the
- 42:59Speaker 3: same as like blowing up a low resolution JPEG, which
- 43:03Speaker 3: of course is going to cause all kinds of you know,
- 43:05Speaker 3: horrible blurring and pixelation and all that. This is neat
- 43:09Speaker 3: because these are little individual images. Some of the ones
- 43:12Speaker 3: that they pull on the vox article or like a
- 43:16Speaker 3: little hand or a little disc drive, you know, or
- 43:19Speaker 3: like a floppy disc. Some of them are just little
- 43:22Speaker 3: symbols like like an X, you know in a circle,
- 43:26Speaker 3: or you know, certain kind of characters that might be
- 43:28Speaker 3: look look like runs or something like that. Right, There
- 43:32Speaker 3: were multiple iterations of wing dings as well. We had
- 43:36Speaker 3: the og wing dings.
- 43:37Speaker 2: Which would have like, you know, there's like a OM
- 43:40Speaker 2: symbol in there.
- 43:41Speaker 3: There's you know, like a little redical or whatever you
- 43:43Speaker 3: call it, sort of like the way the Zodiac Killer
- 43:46Speaker 3: signed you know, his missives to the press. Then you
- 43:49Speaker 3: had wing dings, two, wingedings three. Then of course, who
- 43:54Speaker 3: could forget web dings, and then something called zapp ding bats,
- 44:00Speaker 3: which I'm not familiar with, but that's where you start.
- 44:02Speaker 3: They do start to resemble like the emojis that we
- 44:05Speaker 3: know today, like a peace sign, explosions like a little
- 44:10Speaker 3: you know, kind of a firecracker pop, or things like snowflakes.
- 44:15Speaker 1: And of course flowers. Charles Bigelow, who's one of the
- 44:19Speaker 1: co creators of wing dings in its various forms, says
- 44:23Speaker 1: that his personal favorite will be the floral designs. And
- 44:29Speaker 1: we want to to squeeze in just a little explanation
- 44:33Speaker 1: about wing dings.
- 44:35Speaker 2: What a ride this has been.
- 44:36Speaker 1: We may have to return to fonts in the future
- 44:39Speaker 1: because this addresses so many things that we find ridiculous
- 44:43Speaker 1: about history, right, social dynamics, human psychology, How small things
- 44:49Speaker 1: can have such an outsized influence. A great time with
- 44:53Speaker 1: this one, and thanks to super producer mister Max Williams,
- 44:56Speaker 1: thanks to research associate Jeff I didn't know about the
- 45:00Speaker 1: impact tattoo.
- 45:01Speaker 2: Oh I did neither.
- 45:02Speaker 3: And I just have to add one last little thing
- 45:04Speaker 3: because I questioned what the deal was with wing ding dingbats.
- 45:09Speaker 3: Apparently dingbats are actually refer to a particular.
- 45:14Speaker 2: Type of tool that was used in printing.
- 45:19Speaker 3: They were small pieces of reusable shapes that could be
- 45:24Speaker 3: slotted into texts and used like to kind of add
- 45:27Speaker 3: a little bit of flair to a book printing, think
- 45:30Speaker 3: about maybe something that might be used in chapter headings,
- 45:34Speaker 3: or even like page numbers or little kind of bespoke
- 45:39Speaker 3: like frames on the edge of pages.
- 45:41Speaker 2: Things like that. They were called dingbats.
- 45:43Speaker 3: So, you know, the more you know, I love how
- 45:45Speaker 3: a lot of this stuff, or most of this stuff
- 45:47Speaker 3: does have references to you know, antiquity into like the
- 45:51Speaker 3: age that's even pre printing press. And then obviously the
- 45:54Speaker 3: printing press becomes the earliest form of type setting, and
- 45:59Speaker 3: then it you know, trans decisions into the computer aid.
- 46:02Speaker 3: So yeah, now I'm with you, man. This is a
- 46:03Speaker 3: really really fun topic. And I don't know some of
- 46:07Speaker 3: these fonts. I think maybe you're a little unfairly maligned.
- 46:11Speaker 3: I don't hate comic sands. Maybe as much as the
- 46:14Speaker 3: design community might, none of these really inspire that much
- 46:17Speaker 3: like ire from me personally. I'm more interested in the
- 46:20Speaker 3: history and the question of like why certain people hate these,
- 46:23Speaker 3: So I hope we did a decent job in answering those.
- 46:27Speaker 4: I don't know if y'all have noticed this, but I
- 46:29Speaker 4: have been returning emails and comic fans.
- 46:31Speaker 2: Since I see you.
- 46:33Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw it.
- 46:33Speaker 2: I saw it.
- 46:34Speaker 1: And also thanks to you guys for let me include
- 46:37Speaker 1: what was going to be a wing Ding's Dia tribe.
- 46:40Speaker 1: But after I had found and read that box article,
- 46:43Speaker 1: I just really enjoyed the history of it like you
- 46:45Speaker 1: guys are saying. And thanks of course to Jonathan Strickly
- 46:49Speaker 1: and aka the Quister Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Eve's
- 46:53Speaker 1: Jeff Coat, Gabe Luzier who is killing it over on
- 46:57Speaker 1: this day in history.
- 46:58Speaker 3: Class, and of course research Associate extraordinary Jeff Bartlett. Thank
- 47:03Speaker 3: you for being our sharpa on this font journey. Uh
- 47:07Speaker 3: and you Ben It's it's been a it's been a
- 47:09Speaker 3: wild ride.
- 47:10Speaker 2: Mm hmm. San Seraph all the way. We'll see you
- 47:13Speaker 2: next time, folks.
- 47:21Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
- 47:25Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.