September 25th, 2008
Why Typography Matters
Noone ever wants to be the one that makes this mistake.
My non-graphic designer friends laugh at me when I mention typography – the study of type. They think it’s ridiculous. I thought it was ridiculous as well, when I was in college and saw that there were two required typography courses that I had to take. However, I quickly learned not only how important good use of typography is, but also how much fun it can be and how powerful a tool it is. I came across this horrible typographical mistake today, which might cause you to have a little laugh and maybe have a bit more appreciation for us geeks who study typography and actually know how to use it.
If you haven’t caught it yet, I’ll point out the blunder – look at the ‘REGISTRATION’ line. It’s intended to say ‘FINAL REGISTRATION’, and either a ligature (which is a special character within a font set where two letters are sort of merged) was used for the FI, or, it was just kerned too closely (kerning is the space between the letters) causing it to look like an ‘A’, resulting in a very embarrassing, but funny, mistake. But what fun would the world be without mistakes like these?
Failblog.org is hilarious, by the way.
September 26th, 2008
amazing.
also, i used to think type is kinda nerdy but after totally stressing out when we built our site and seeing helvetica i had some respect beat into me.
September 30th, 2008
Actually, as a former Spruce City Minor Boys Softball League Member, I can assure you there is no typo in that flier.
*Shudder*
October 3rd, 2008
That’s awesome. Thanks for the link too – I love it.
October 17th, 2008
Hahaha, thanks for this post. Too funny.
January 7th, 2009
Alan, we haven’t talked in a while…but I stumbled upon your website, scrolled down and had a nice laugh on this one. It’s good to be a nerd.