Oh, To Be 15 Again...
There is a great exhibit in town right now (San Francisco, that is) that will appeal to the font nerd in all of us. FontShop has brought it's visual feast, Fifteen: 15 Years of Type for Independent Minds, to the gallery in the AIGA SF office.
As part of Design Makes a Difference Week in San Francisco, this exhibit will run for practically the entire month, June 11-27, and is a must-see for everyone who has ever dabbled in typography. According to the description of the exhibit from the site, Curated by Erik Spiekermann and Jan Middendorp, FiFFteen is an exhibit celebrating the 15th anniversary of the FontFont [FF] type library. The exhibition reveals the far-reaching influence of FontFont's library of over 3,000 fonts. From legible sans serifs to handwriting fonts and mega type families with matching sans and serif variants, FontFont pioneered areas of type design that are now taken for granted. The exhibition will also feature FUSE, a seminal publication on experimental typography published by FontShop between 1991 and 2000.
The exhibit features floor-to-ceiling banners and panels of some of the 3,000 plus FontFont, well, fonts, in use, from descriptions of the fonts themselves to randomly-selected portions of email messages rendered in the chosen font samples. There are also kiosks of various FF fonts used in packaging, books, and condoms (yes, you read that right) and information on the artists and designers that did the jobs.
In the FUSE section, there are more than 15 huge posters on display that show the results of experimental design and typography, of course, using FontShop fonts. They are quite astounding.
If you're in the Bay Area in the month of June (you're coming to town for Gay Pride, right?), then you must stop by the AIGA gallery and check out this FREE exhibit. It has traveled around the world and we are extremely lucky to have this on the West Coast for awhile.
Font-on!
Too bad this isn't a touring exhibition. Showing everyone stuff about fonts would be a great idea. It certainly opens people's eyes to fonts around them. I certainly didn't notice much before I studied typography, then all of a sudden all the typefaces in the world just lit up!
Oh and it might make people think there's more to this typography thing than picking a pretty one from that long pull down menu !