A friend send me a link to the Design Police, where you can download cut-out labels that can be stuck onto offending examples of bad typography and design. The very first of the stickers, all of which are stark white on red, says, “Kern this!” with a pointing arrow. Among the noteworthy stickers are: “Hierarchy required”; “Track this!”; “Display font unreadable as body copy”; “Please reduce line length immediately”; “Do not use faux italic”; and the ever-popular “Comic Sans is illegal.” (Sorry, Vinnie.) I particularly like “Caution: rivers,” which really does sound like a warning sign.
A couple of them have more to do with content than with graphic design, though they’re good advice: “Get your tone of voice right” and “Hire a copywriter.” And the huge, stark “WIDOW” could easily be applied too freely; there are worse things than widows on a page. My personal favorite, though, must be: “Microsoft Word™ is not a design tool.”
Well, all right, anything can be a design tool, in the right hands. But still.
“Scare quotes”? I haven’t run across that phrase. Do you mean like folk emphasis: “‘24-hour’ service” or “100% ‘pure’”?
[yearn] Have you seen anything like this for scare quotes, false decimals, or apostrophe abuse?
And the kern ‘hoodie’ has no hood! It’s a zip-up. John what are your readers drinking? ;-)
It’s 2008.
I love it! I also love my “now slower and with more bugs” stickers to put on things like, uh, Vista packages. Your post also brought to mind this fabulous Kern Hoodie I’ve had my eye on. http://tinyurl.com/3ykxrw
Great stuff, and I’ve passed it along to our Creative Services group. I should send them out on to the streets of Portland fully equipped.
Good to know someone is still paying attention to type, John, even in 2007.