Font Flava Flave!!

It's 1:53 a.m. and I can't sleep. . . because I'm thinking about fonts.

Okay, I also have a bit of a migraine, but the part of my brain that isn't throbbing is focused on fonts.

My name's Jane and I'm a typoholic.

It all started in 1986 when I took Typography from George Tuck. A required class, it also was a bit of a bear. Who'da thunk that anyone could spend 15 weeks talking about type? And yet, there we were, sweating over serifs, kicking ourselves about kerning, loathing leading.

We had to keep a typography journal over the span of the semester, ultimately collecting samples of about a hundred fonts. By May, that little booklet became both my bane and my pawed-over pal. It also did a funny number on my brain.

Mark, who also took Typography, ended his semester equally infected.

Twenty six years later, we still can't attend a movie without breaking into font wars, both of us hungry to be the first to identify the type used in the opening credits.

"That's Garamond, for sure."

"Uh uh. Look at the way the 'p' can't quite close itself. You're looking at Palatino, mister!"

Tomorrow morning--well, actually this morning--I'm teaching layout and design to a group of Introductory Journalism students. Assuming I'm awake. And the really dweeby part of me feels like each of those kids is about to win the friggin' lottery and they don't even know it.

Hey, I've seen the same thing happen to my Newspaper and Yearbook students. Usually, by December each year, I'll notice a student or two break out in a tiny little lip sweat as their inner typoholics begin to emerge. Staring at their computer screens, fiddling with a layout, they'll look nervously from side to side, sure that they're about to get caught doing something bad.

Yeah, I recognize that bug. And, if I'm feeling just a bit bad myself, I might pull up a chair and really taunt them by showing them the utter awesomeness of extra leading between those luscious lines of type.

That's pretty much when their teenaged minds explode.

I feel bad for the rest of you, who are probably sleeping right now, having your Times New Roman, cookie-cutter dreams, maybe kicking it up a notch or two with the occasional New Century Schoolbook sideshow. You're like a human nose among dogs, missing out on about 98 percent of things because you just don't know any better.

I pity you font fools in your monochromatic worlds. Kind of like the way I pity the sick student who will miss tomorrow's lesson.

Yeah, it's going to be that good.