Monday, May 22, 2017

New front in the culture war: fonts.

This is the mentality of the Left: fonts are racist.

Typography is much bigger than a "gotcha" moment for the visually challenged. Typography can silently influence: It can signify dangerous ideas, normalize dictatorships, and sever broken nations. In some cases it may be a matter of life and death. And it can do this as powerfully as the words it depicts.

Really? Tell me more.

I'm not interested in whether Clinton or Trump had good logos. I'm interested in the different values they reveal. Clinton's typography embodies the spirit of modernism and enlightenment values. It was designed to appeal to smart, progressive people who like visual puns. They appreciate the serendipity of an arrow that completes a lettermark while also symbolizing progress. In other words, coastal elites who like "design."

Trump's typography speaks with a more primal, and seemingly earnest voice. "Make America Great Again" symbolizes "Make America Great Again." It tells everyone what team you're on, and what you believe in. Period. It speaks to a distrust of "clean" corporate aesthetics and snobs who think they're better than Times New Roman on a baseball cap. Its mere existence is a political statement.

The two typographies are mutually intelligible at first glance, but a lot gets lost in translation. We live in a divided country, split on typographic lines as cleanly as the Serbs and the Croats.

You got all that from a font? M'kay. What else?

The stakes are higher than you think. The next generation of fascists will not love geometric sans serifs as much as Mussolini did. They won't be threatening journalists in blackletter.

No, they'll be using Helvetica, just like they've been doing since the 1960's. Hillary and you, buddy, are the new fascists. The rest of us are tired of your shit, and we served you notice.

The Phantom

1 comment:

Sam L. said...

Quick! Get James Lileks, STAT. He KNOWS fonts.