Cuckoo Clocks, Neutrality and the World's Most Popular Font

Who knew there could be so much buzz about a typeface?



Helvetica, the typeface used in the corporate logos of Gap, Panasonic and Tupperware, turns 50 this year. Lars Mueller has managed to write an entire book about the Swiss font and a documentary devoted to the typeface was screened back in March at the SXSW Film Festival in Texas.

According to Neville Brody, a graphic designer and typographer interviewed for an article on the BBC website:

"Typefaces control the message. Choice of font dictates what you think about something before you even read the first word. Imagine Shakespeare in large capital drop shadow. Our response would be quite different towards the content."

Perhaps this is why teachers around the world use Comic Sans as the default worksheet font (my English cousin pointed this out, rolling her eyes): it says, “Hey kids! Do this worksheet that I’ve made to look super-fun, but is actually quite boring and serves only to allow me a few minutes of quiet time at my desk.”

There is actually a Ban Comic Sans website where you can buy merchandise, sign a petition and post photos.

So what is YOUR favourite font? Is it the Helvetica rip-off, Arial? Do you like the old school typewriter feel of Courier? Do you like the impact of, um, Impact? Or do you exist in the world of Zapf Dingbats?

Or do you have better things to do than care about types of typeface?

Oh, My Sweet Jesus…

A New York gallery’s inclusion of a sculpture by Canadian-born artist Cosimo Cavallaro has riled a Catholic group in the United States (link to BBC story).

The sculpture, entitled “My Sweet Lord,” is of a naked and crucified Jesus Christ.

But it is not the nudity that has got the Catholic League all worked up (Christ is usually depicted with a loincloth). Nor is it the timing of the piece’s exposition, so close to Easter where Christians around the world mark the death of Jesus and his resurrection. It is the material that Cavallaro chose to use.

The sculpture is made entirely out of chocolate.

I’m never quite sure why religious groups get all worked up over religious subjects being portrayed in non-traditional ways: In 1975, Edwina Sandys created a bronze sculpture entitled “Christa” which portrays Christ on the cross as a woman. Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” which won an award sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, is a photograph of a crucifix under an amalgam of urine and cow’s blood. And there was much controversy over the “Sensation” exhibit back in 1999 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art where the piece “Holy Virgin Mary,” a rendering of Mary as a black woman splattered with real elephant dung, was displayed.














If I was to try my inexperienced hand at deconstructing Cavallaro’s symbolic intentions, I might say that he was making a comment on the commodification of Christian holidays: most of us secularists associate Easter with chocolate eggs and the Easter Bunny, not death and resurrection. Cavallaro portrays the preeminent figure in Christianity with the medium that has supplanted all others as the substance with which Easter symbols are made. And I would venture to make the assertion that many Christian groups would agree with his thesis, if they could actually make sense of my last sentence there.

How do you think the Catholic League would react to a performance art piece where people broke off bits of the chocolate Jesus, thus actually eating the body of Christ in a Alterna-Eucharist?!

My Internet Boyfriend in Michigan

There was a time when if you mentioned you’d met someone on the internet, it was laughable (remember Napoleon Dynamite’s brother meeting his wife online?) and often questionable (it’s easy to have a perfect boyfriend if no one’s actually met him). But these days, almost all forms of internet socializing are acceptable.

I came to this realization when a friend of mine told me that she lived in the same neighbourhood as a guy we used to go to high school with and she saw him quite often. In real life, she had never stopped to say hello, but within the medium of Facebook, she added him as a friend and made contact.

Over the past few weeks that I have been signed up with Facebook, I have “added friends”* who were people I went to grade school with, people I’ve worked with, boys I’ve gone on a few dates with, friends of friends and one guy who I think I’ve said 3 words to in my life. All contact has been over the website, although I’ve had two suggestions of getting the “web communities” together at an event.

Which slightly scares me. And I don’t really know why. Maybe because you hear of all the cyber-stalking that goes on (a benign form of which I myself have indulged in on occasion – my brother likes to refer to looking at people’s Facebook profiles without their knowledge as “passive stalking”) or maybe I still harbour some Napoleon Dynamite bias, if that is the right word.

I have been reading and commenting on the insightful and perspicacious blog That Shakespeherian Rag over the past couple of months, a blog which I found through a series of serendipitous six-degrees-of-separation-esque events (okay, I dated his friend), and recently found myself in the same room with the author. Due to my aversion to meeting blog buddies in real life, I chickened out at the offer to meet face-to-face (see my comment on the Quiz Night post). I felt like my web community should be separate from my real-life community.

Which brings me to internet dating. I haven’t tried it, and I’m still not at a point in my life where I’m willing to try it. But really, being on Lavalife if you’re single is a totally normal thing. Many relationships have started on dating websites and I personally know of two marriages that have happened as a result of hooking up online.

Our lives are lived online more and more. Instead of going to the bank to pay bills, you do it on EasyWeb. Why bother buying an actual newspaper when you can read most of the articles on the online version. Memos have long been a thing of the past because information is now disseminated via e-mail. I don’t even check the weather on TV anymore: the Weather Network is bookmarked as one of my daily sites. And now, instead of wasting time and money at the bar, you can sort through hundreds of potential suitors and not end up kissing the wrong one at 3am just as the ugly lights are coming on.

But ay, here’s the rub: my real-life friends have become my online friends. So why can’t my online friends become my real-life friends?

Ignoring the choplogic, I think the answer lies in our innate sociability as humans. Sure, the internet acts as a conduit for social introductions, but it doesn’t replace the day-to-day interactions with people you know. And just as you may smile and wave at your letter carrier and leave it at that, you may poke or write a wall message to one of your Facebook friends and never really go beyond that.

And although using Lavalife as a forum to meet your partner is completely reasonable nowadays, conducting an entire courtship over the internet, without ever meeting, is still considered just plain weird.

Now I wonder if my friend will stop next time she runs into her Facebook friend in her neighbourhood and make their virtual socialization into a tangible interaction…


* For those of you not on Facebook, a) what’s the delay? and b) adding a friend is when you find someone, or someone finds you, and you add them to your visual list of friends on your profile page, for everyone to see how popular you are.

The Sony Reader

This is interesting: Sony has come out with kind of an iBook (wait a minute, where have I heard that before?) where you store digital files of books and then read them off a small computer screen (“smaller than many paperbacks”!). It even comes with an iTunes-esque managing system you load onto your computer.

This could just be one of those new-fangled things that scholarly types decry at first (“But I need to feel the well-worn pages in my hands!” "How can I make notes in the margins?”), but then eventually get used to. We store our music on devices the size of a package of gum, so why not books?

Well, I must agree with those elbow-patched intellectuals – it IS nice to feel the pages beneath your calloused hands (don’t you love the mismatched widths of the pages of some hardcovers, jutting out from between the smooth book jacket?). Folding over the top of a page to mark a particularly good piece of prose is an archaic practice, yes; but has not met with any innovations in the last 600 years, save for the hallowed bookmark, which would be rendered obsolete by the Sony Reader. And though I have browsed extensive CD collections in people’s homes, it is not the same as browsing the shelves of tightly packed books, head cocked to the side, scanning spines.

And, somewhat tellingly, the sample text displayed on the Sony Reader is from The Da Vinci Code. This is a device for the masses. And though I have read (and enjoyed) The Da Vinci Code, I do understand Stephen W. Beattie when he says “if my girlfriend ever chose The Da Vinci Code over me, it would be her way of telling me that we were done.”

Who I Love and Must Attend To

I wrote a previous post about Who I Hate But Must Attend To. Upon reflection, I feel that I need to balance my disapproval and criticism with some glowing praise and support of some people in the radio and print industries who I love:

Doug Saunders

I don’t know how this man keeps all his knowledge of current world politics and the histories of what seems like three-quarters of the countries in the world in his head and available for easy retrieval. His weekly column “Reckoning” in the Focus section of Saturday’s Globe and Mail dissects the current political climate of various countries, his writing infused or contrasted with the histories of various nations. Saunders takes current events from around the world and analyses them with a critical, and often Canadian, eye (despite the fact he has been transplanted in London, England). His writing often makes me think and always causes me to learn. Saunders’s column this week asks the question if the well-intentioned architecture and design of the suburbs of cities such as Paris contributed in some way to the unrest among its young, foreign-born inhabitants.

Barry Taylor

My favourite thing to do on the weekend (after sleeping in, of course) is to have a coffee, read the paper, and listen to Barry Taylor on 102.1 from noon onwards. Taylor has a relaxed attitude and a keen understanding of the brevity of wit. His show entails a series of spots, including the Barry Funny Joke and the 4:20 Thought, along with the music that the Edge is known for. He also has all sorts of random sound bites that follow the spots, which fans come to anticipate. On the Edge website, Taylor lists his hobbies as video games, drinking and making out.

Webquest

Find this magazine. Turn to page 178.

Match the photo on the page to a photo on this blog.

Find the secret code word in the comment window of the matching blog photo.

First person to post the code word in the comment window of this post wins.

Googlicious

I love this about Google: they change their logo to reflect whatever celebration is happening. They had a whole series of logos during the Olympics, they commemorated Groundhog Day with little rodents climbing over the letters, and St. Patrick's Day saw Google's logo in green with decorative shamrocks. Today the logo is in the style of the art of Miro, the Spanish painter who was born on April 20th. Usually I pick up on the celebration immediately, but today I had to google "miro april 20" to figure out the connection.

What happens when two events are celebrated on the same day? And what will be the logo on Sunday, Shakespeare's birthday?

Leah, Me and the Banal Blogosphere

A week into this blog business and I’m beginning to learn many things about the virtual “blogosphere”. Anyone can start up a blog on any subject they choose. I’ve seen blogs focusing on celebrity news, one that keeps track of sports scores and several that publish photographs.

There is; however, a large number of people who use their webspace to create a diurnal register of personal minutiae (“Rob told me he didn’t like my haircut. He said that heavyset women should wear their hair long. I told him that we weren’t dating anymore, so he had no say in the matter”).* And there is an inordinate amount of photographs of people’s pets.

In her column** this week, Leah McLaren decides to log out of the blogosphere due to the fact that it is “spectacularly boring.” Couldn’t agree with her more for a large part of the blogs out there. However, I do disagree with her contention that bloggers blog because what they have to say is unfit for publication. I don’t think a lot of bloggers have any intention of attempting to publish what they’ve written on their blog in print media. The sole purpose of many blogs is to document and thus validate the lives of the bloggers. They probably don’t have anyone else listening to what they have to say and the internet provides a vast and incalculable audience.

If you read my previous post about Ms. McLaren, you might be starting to wonder if I have asked myself the question, do I blog because I can’t get published? (Do I teach because I can’t do?)

My intention from the start was to get myself writing more frequently and to hone my skills. I maintain a blog for much of the same reasons as David Eddie, a writer mentioned in the column: blogging is “a good way to limber up.” Just as athletes stretch and jog to warm up, writers practise their craft through a less regulated and stylized medium.

So am I a spiteful blogger? Am I one of those “bitter unpublished writers venomously slagging published ones”?

No. I simply document the daily trivialities that occur in my life which include, but are not limited to, reading and responding to other pieces of writing.

----------------------------

*paraphrased from an actual blog author navigated quickly away from; name has been changed due to author’s faulty memory

**Leah's Feb. 25th column available here:

Leah McLaren



PS. Here’s a picture of my friend’s dog – isn’t she so cute?!?!

Who I Hate, But Must Attend To

We all have those moments - like driving by a road accident - when our rational side says, nothing to see here, move along, but our hedonistic side forces our senses to the scene. We know that indulging in an activity is bad for us, but we do it anyway out of a secret desire to see how bad it can actually be.

There are two such activities that I indulge in on a regular basis, my brain both hating and secretly enjoying each. I always complain about them afterwards, but still I come back to them. These activities are: reading Leah McLaren's column in the Style section of the Globe and Mail on Saturday and listening to the Dean Blundell Show on 102.1 The Edge on weekday mornings.

Leah McLaren



I will fully admit that the green-eyed monster doth mock when it comes to Leah. She has the job I want: she writes a column in a national newspaper AND she found a publisher for her book. Some have argued that nepotism got her the column and the column got her the book deal. They must be bitter...

But come on - that column about jeans and sitting in the bathtub (Feb. 11) was just so...inconsequential. One would like to think that anyone writing for a major newspaper would have some serious education and experience behind them, but these qualities rarely shine through in her column. Granted, she's writing in the Style section, but I put more stock in what Jeanne Beker writes about bikinis than what Leah writes about Botox because Jeanne can back up anything she writes with a wealth of experience.

Yet every week I read the girl and every week I roll my eyes and think, "I could be doing this! Why can't the Globe hire me?" I am not interested in the goings-on at her farm. I don't care what she thinks of silent dating. I think her move to London was a safe and structured way for her to become "well-travelled" and "cosmopolitan". And my god, did you really write a novel about a 35-year-old woman whose eggs are on the outs?

I gave her credit for her column on the smugs (Jan. 21). Leah describes a list of the different types of smug people (giving credit a bit too late, in my opinion, to Helen Fielding who created the term "Smug Marrieds" for her series of novels about Bridget Jones). There were smug singles, smug healthys, smug parents; all with a mini-description. She ended her column with a description of smug columnists: "the kind who criticize the social crimes of others while implying that they are somehow above the fray, this high-handed breed would never own up to feelings of smugness. Except as a clever way to end a column." It was a clever way to end the column. But it was the one bit of cleverness I've seen out of a profusion of ephemera.

And perhaps this is why I still read Leah: somewhere in the bastion of banality (now there's a phrase she'd use!), I am hoping for some little clever connection, some little clue as to why it's her, and not me writing that column.

Dean Blundell et al



The great cougar hunt? The ugly contest? And now the best ass contest? Exactly how juvenile are Torontonians able to go at 8 o'clock in the morning?

Apparently, quite so. I thought we'd worked this out of our system with Howard Stern on Q107. These guys are like the table of jocks in the high school cafeteria that eyeball and chuckle when lesser mortals pass by. They find humour in waving in the background of Breakfast Television's weather report, discussions of J.D. Fortune's (new lead singer of INXS) genitalia with his ex-girlfriend and making fun of poor Eduardo, a frequent caller.

Dean, Todd and…that other guy…seem to have trouble treating women as equals. They once did a segment called “Cheerleader Math” where Todd attended a cheerleading audition and asked math questions, airing only the incorrect answers from the women.

Yet every morning, my radio is tuned to this crew of obnoxious arseholes. And every morning I laugh out loud at their conversations. I enjoy their off-colour humour – up until a point, but they always seem to take it just one step too far. Like the hammered guy at a party who thinks it’s totally okay to pee in the plant in the corner, these boys cross the line of social niceties way too early in the morning.

And when they do cross the line, my rational side says, "Change the dial! Go back to Humble Howard!" However, my hedonistic side keeps attending, listening for more coarse and twisted bits of the Dean Blundell morning show, seeing just how bad it can be.