Font Geekery

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I’ve been spending the better part of the last two weeks revising Erekos for its print release in September, and dealing with the vagaries of what font, leading, and kerning to use for a trade paperback edition. It’s fun, but also frustrating.

So in the midst of all my font work there, it was a delight to spend an hour on the phone with the artist who’s doing the cover for Natania Barron’s Pilgrim of the Sky (coming December 2011!), geeking out about fonts, font families, and decrying James Cameron’s use of Papyrus.

You know you’ve found your font soulmate when you go “Okay, so go on DaFont and look up this one font, it’s called Butterbrotpapier, and…” and your artist goes “OhmiGOD, I have that one, I love it, I use it all the time!” and you both sigh happily at the thought of semi-distressed old-fashioned typewriter faces.

Book design is fun.

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Mike Timonin

     OOOO, I have downloaded that font now! Now, where can I use it?

  2. Candlemark & Gleam

    HAH, I find there is rarely a bad place to use butterbrotpapier!

  3. Mike Timonin

    I doubt my dissertation committee would be impressed if I turned my work in typed in butterbrotpapier. Alas. 

  4. Jason

    I will second having always liked Butterbrotpapier. It’s got just enough character, without having too much, if you know what I mean.

  5. Candlemark & Gleam

    That’s precisely why I like it. It has character, but it’s not over the
    top, and it’s delightfully legible.

  6. Mike Timonin

    It would lend a certain cachet, I suppose – I could pretend that I had typed the work on a WWII typewriter… 

  7. Jason

    This is a complement I will have to turn into an insult at some point in the future, you know. “How was the book?” “It was… erm… delightfully legible.”

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