What the font . . . ?

 I have always had a fascination with fonts even before I knew what the word “font” meant.  I liked seeing my mom and my grandmother’s handwriting and how they wrote the letter “R” exactly the same.  I now write my capital “R” the same way as well.  I liked how different pens made my handwriting slightly different, still uniquely me, just different. I was intrigued by the way that every individual person interprets the shapes of 26 alphabets.  My first introduction to different type fonts was in grammar school when our school secretary would make some of the letters to our parents in cursive which interested me to no end because I knew she did it with a typewriter.

I received my first computer in August of 1991 - an Apple Mac Classic II.  I began my love of computer fonts then.  I like how different fonts make words feel different. A font can convey an emotion to the written language; it helps to communicate.  The word love written in Times New Roman seems declarative and matter of fact. The same word, love, written in Beautiful feels romantic and lovely.

Recently, I decided to make a catalog of all of my fonts in order to make designing easier.  I have so many; it’s difficult to find the perfect letter “K” when I need it quickly.  I thought this little project would take about an hour or two.  Now, I’m a week in, at 400 pages, and am not finished.  Fonts are fantastic but my little project has started to grate on my nerves a bit.  I will finish because I’m no quitter and if I were going to quit, it would have been long before page 400!  This project has taught me to chill on my font love a bit.  No more new fonts for a long time.  There is such a thing as having too much.  But for now, I have spent a week getting organized and falling in love with many of my fonts all over again and being inspired to leave my comfort zone with others.  I’ll let you know what the final page count is . . . .