The "My Favorite Font" Story

It was an ordinary day. Typing away on my computer at about 40 words per minute. How do I know that? When I took typing in high school in 1961 with Miss Morse, I was able to type 43 wpm without any mistakes, and I assume with age that I have slowed down a bit. As a senior in her course, I was allowed to use an IBM Selectric typewriter, while underclassmen in the class had to use a manual typewriter. Boy, my fingers just flew over those keys. Weren't supposed to look at the keyboard, but did manage a few quick peeks as I typed. Still do that today. Back then there were two font "balls" that you had to choose from in class. One was "Times Roman" and the other "Helvetica." When I started teaching Graphic Arts in the same high school, we set type by hand in a composing stick. By then we had a few more fonts to choose from, but they were all pieces of type housed in a California Job Case or drawer. I look back on those days and wonder how people ever survived with the technology we had at the time. Now when I open my word processing program, InDesign 5, I can choose from 178, yes 178, fonts available for use. Some are even in different languages. And, you don't even have to load a ball into the computer to be able to choose which one you want. Unbelievable! I also can still remember back to the late 80s and my first Macintosh computer. Choose the word processing program on the Mac and the default font was Geneva. Can still remember that. Typographers, or those who design typefaces, are having a field day. I think it all started with the calligraphy classes that were offered in colleges when the Macintosh first came out. It was just a mind-blowing revolution to be able to design your own font. And the Mac has been the reason for the revolution. Right now there's an avalanche of incredibly beautiful typefaces from all over the world that could only be designed on a Mac. Do you ever wonder what font I have chosen for my blog stories? Called Trebuchet! Choose it because it sounds French to me (trey•boo•shay) and reminds me of when I took French with Miss Nolan in high school. We all called her Shenna, Queen of the jungle. Tall, blonde and good looking. My name in class was Raoul. I often thought how neat it would be to create my own font and have it appear on everyone's computer when they decide to scroll down the list of choices they have when typing something. Maybe call it Raoul Pro or Raoul Classic orRaoul Std or Raoul Cursive or just plain Raoul. Would have to feature lots of flairs and curved serifs. Definitely would have to have lots of comma choices! And then again, I might just call it LDub Classic. Hey, got to go and design a few more letters for my new font. Hope to show it to you soon. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.