One of the things which word processing and computers has brought to many of us is the number of different fonts there are in the world; when we just had type-writers, the self-printed word was pretty uniform, but now a whole world of fonts of all styles, shapes and forms is available. There are many books which discuss this, a recently published book which was read as book of the week on the BBC Radio 4 was ‘Just My Type’ by Simon Garfield, which is fascinating, and quite fun too.
http://www.simongarfield.com/pages/books/just_my_type.htm
I’ve been wrestling over the cover of my next book, the published-any-day-now, Flipside. I knew what I wanted in terms of font, something which looked as if it had been scrawled in felt tip, or spray-can, a sort of graffiti, sort of black-board notice. I had it exactly in my mind but I just couldn’t find what I wanted – nice shape but too thin, big and bold but too precise, great letters but all squished too close together or too fuzzy or too fussy or too scruffy…
And what curious names some of them have, Feast of Flesh, Knives and Pens, My Chemical Romance… and many even more strange.
Lois Elsden 