Fonts and Circumstance

This weekend's "Slow Lane" Financial Times column by Harry Eyres struck a resonant chord.

His piece was about how the font we type in affects the style and content of what we type.

I couldn't agree more.

I'd extend his observations, though, to the subject of keystroke accuracy.

I have noticed, over the past few months, that simply by hitting the "larger" button in Safari my accuracy thereafter increases.

But not just my accuracy: the feel of my fingers on the keys seems different, somehow plusher, more pleasant.

It's as if the increased size of the letters on the screen somehow cushions the keys for each fingerstrike.

The word that keeps recurring is "plummy": the keys feel almost as if they have a softer, gel–like surface when the font size is larger.

Feedback is more powerful than we realize, perhaps.

Here's the FT piece.

Subtle Fonts of Inspiration

Typographically, I seem to be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.

When it comes to the choice of fonts on the computer, I seldom stray from Times New Roman, set as my default typeface, though not even by me.

All the Slow Lanes, bar one, which have appeared in this newspaper have been composed using this font.

It is of course a version of a classic typeface, designed for the Times newspaper in London in the 1930s, but based on the designs of the great Renaissance typographer Nicholas Jenson, and thus a reminder of the key turning point in the history of western typography, when the Gothic Black Letter styles favoured by Gutenberg and Caxton gave way to the clarity of Roman designs.

Times New Roman is certainly clear and elegant, but it is also rather sober and old-fashioned.

I'm beginning to wonder if it may be affecting my style.

The only other fonts I use with any regularity are Arial, set as the default for my Outlook Express e-mail, and Courier.

Arial is as clear as Times New Roman and less old-fashioned, but for me it lacks character and beauty.

It has a sort of disembodied blandness that maybe suits the medium of e-mail - but I can't imagine composing a poem in Arial.

Courier is rather different: it has a distinctively rough, but attractive typerwriter-ish feel, and I use it for pieces of writing where urgency takes precedence over polish.

When you think about the very different histories of these fonts, which you might use somewhat unconsciously, it becomes less surprising that they might have a subtle effect on the way you write, or the way you feel as you write.

Times New Roman comes with quite a lot of history: in the background is Roman history, or rather those great confident inscriptions in stone that once linked most of Europe, the Middle East, north Africa in a great system of empire and administration.

Closer at hand is the Times newspaper, sometime organ of the English establishment and newspaper of record.

Common to both is the idea of setting something, either literally or metaphorically, in stone.

When you compose in Times New Roman, you are simultaneously, as it were, putting what you write into print.

That might feel good in an official kind of way, but it might be a step too far, too fast.

You might find yourself framing your first thoughts in official-ese.

Courier's history and connotations are entirely different.

It was designed by Howard Kettler for IBM in the 1950s and quickly became the most popular font for typewriters, before it was reconfigured for computers.

If Times New Roman makes me feel on the established side, Courier takes me back to my first days as a writer, hammering out unsolicited pieces and drafts of poems from an attic full of animal sculptures in Notting Hill or under the giant pineapple finials of Gaudí's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

It's all an illusion you could say, a trick of the pixels.

There's no substantial difference between these fonts; it's not as if I'm actually pounding the keys of my old Adler when I compose in Courier or becoming the voice of the establishment when I use Times New Roman.

But I can assure you I feel looser in Courier and more formal in Times.

One of these days, I may see what happens if I switch to Helvetica or Garamond.

The subtle but quite important implications of a change of font, which is a change of style but also, perhaps, a change of perspective, apply in other areas.

Working from home, from my second-floor room with its tree-rich view and clear north light, I sometimes feel becalmed or stuck, in a sort of mental doldrums.

There's one very quick and easy solution to this; I either walk down to the piano room and play a Scarlatti sonata or step out of the house to find a café.

It's amazing how different the outlook on the world, that is, can seem just a few hundred metres away.

I'm lucky, though maybe it's part of the luck of London or any big city, that there's such a choice of cafés and ambiances.

Ten minutes walk one way is St. John's Wood High Street, with its ambience of... well I'm not sure I would call it an ambience, but there are good patisseries.

Ten minutes' walk in the other direction is Kilburn High Road, full of bustle and traffic but also great humanity and even beauty in the smiles and kindnesses of strangers.

The world looks different from each of these perspectives.

And there are not just these extremes, but halfway-houses in between.

There's an almost infinite variety of perspectives on the world, as there are of cafés.

So when one style or perspective seems to be leading to tunnel vision, why not experiment with the small adjustment that makes all the difference?

The typefaces mentioned in Eyre's column are illustrated below:

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Times New Roman:

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Arial:

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Courier:

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Helvetica:

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Garamond:

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