I have recently finished reading Just my Type, a book about typefaces by Simon Garfield. Its striking cover uses no less than 10 typefaces in the title alone, one for each letter. There are 200 more inside, taking the reader from antiquity to the digital age.
A typeface has to walk a tightrope. It has to be clear enough to be easily understood, while also being so ‘invisible’ that the reader doesn’t really notice it at all. Indeed, they are most easily noticed when they are ‘bad.’ Thankfully, there are now at least 550,000 to choose from. Many will be familiar with the difference between serif fonts (those that have small lines and ticks at the top and bottom of the main strokes) and sans-serif fonts (those that don’t). Minion Pro, which you are reading now, is a serif font from Adobe. It is recommended for body text and extended reading. Hopefully you’ve never really noticed it until now. The other typeface in Global Cement is the sans-serif Myriad Pro, also from Adobe. Its variety of widths make it adaptable for graphical text like globalcement and the news.
Beyond serif and sans-serif, typefaces can vary enormously. How far does the lower loop of the g descend below the rest of the letter? How tall are the shoulders of the letters h and n? How far does the extender of a lower-case f reach above those shoulders? Letters that have similar elements may not be the same. The thickness of the vertical parts, for example of an r and p, might differ. The width of a b and d could be subtly different. Look at the l and t of Minion Pro. Without inspecting them, you’d probably say they are the same height, but even at 9pt there is a big difference.
Typeface designers’ decisions are often subjective. They carefully sculpt each letter individually and check how they look together on the page. When they are finally happy, they release their new alphabet to the world, hoping that it is simultaneously familiar enough and different enough to grab attention and gain widespread use.
Of course, Global Cement could use other typefaces. Arial is a Microsoft stalwart dating from 1982. It would be totally readable, but is beginning to look dated, which is why Calibri, quietly replaced it as the MS Word default in 2007.
Verdana (Arial for screens) is different again, while Garamond (France, 1530s), Gill Sans (UK, 1928) and Futura (Germany, 1927) are some perennial favourites with staying power.
By far the most popular typefaces, however, are Helvetica (Switzerland, 1957) and Helvetica Neue (1983). Garfield says that these have taken over our lives. They are on food packaging, clothes’ labels, credit cards, bank-notes, airport signage and transport networks like the New York Subway. They are the ‘face’ of the internet too, rendering them almost unavoidable in the modern age. It is not surprising to see them as the main body text on the HeidelbergCement, Cemex, Ultratech and Votorantim websites. CNBM’s English site and Global Cement both plump for Arial. LafargeHolcim uses a tailored version of Noto Sans.
While any of these typefaces would work for Global Cement, others could look jarring, be illegible or bring unwanted associations. You can’t read about kilns in School House or Mesquite because you eyes will hurt.
Cooper Black is best when big, bold and far away, like on the side of an EasyJet. OPTIMA screams ‘luxury lifestyle products.’ Zapfino is great for an Italian restaurant but not for reading the latest cement news. Of course, no typeface discussion can be complete without Comic Sans, the only font that gets hate mail. Don’t worry, we are not going to use it.
Just my Type points out that, while typefaces are critical to companies, they can also be key to national identities and political ideologies. Even a pleasant Guten Morgen written in a gothic type-face (Barloesius Schrift) comes loaded with overtones of Teutonic heft. The use of such typefaces was considered an essential part of German culture, but, like the Nazis, gothic text was defeated in Europe in 1945. The writing was actually already on the wall before then, as gothic presses couldn’t keep up with demand for printed materials. Occupied Europeans couldn’t read it anyway. KREMLIN BOLSHEVIK is also tricky, but takes the reader to a different time and place. Underground, as fresh today as in 1916, is an integral part of London and is instantly recognisable. Surprisingly, it was not until 2008 that a US Presidential Candidate, Barack Obama, used a consistent campaign typeface. His team chose GOTHAM, a solid sans-serif typeface that sought to convey Obama’s clarity and authority, right from the primaries to his Presidential acceptance speech.
For 2020, Joe Biden commissioned Hoefler&Co to produce Decimal and Mercury Text. I cannot use them here, but you are very likely to have seen them in recent months. More angular than Obama’s choice, they nonetheless develop the bold and clear theme. The President-elect has over 75 million US citizens to thank for victory... and maybe some well-designed
typefaces too.