This is the one about fonts.

Posted May 27th, 2010 by Mike Lawson

You know how songs can totally bring you back?  Would it be strange to say that when I use particular fonts, or just scroll past them when putting together a flyer, I kind of get transported back in the same way?
I’m serious.

Some fonts, pardon the nerdy pun, carry more weight than others.  But just like particular perfume, sometimes just seeing a font means more to me than anyone could ever guess.  Here are a few examples:

In the early 2000s (damn that makes me feel old), I was working for a newspaper covering city politics.  And said newspaper was struggling to put content on the web – instead of having searchable, dynamic content they were just uploading a .pdf of their paper to the web.

So I was contracted to create a simple site that used a CMS – and my design used Bell Gothic.

This was also the font that I started creatively adjusting the tracking in.  Back in the day.

Over a year ago I loved this font.  I used it everywhere but the two places that stick out are here on this site (notice it’s gone, btw) and I also created a Power Point and manual for a training we did at work on Effective Guidance and Discipline.

To be honest, the font and design were the only things that were enjoyable in that entire thing.  But it was one of the few times since being in Arizona that I’ve been able to get super creative and put on my novice graphic designer hat.

I hate this font.  I really hope my old boss isn’t reading this.

In California when I was a literacy coordinator for a Club, my boss was a girl named Kristen that used this font like crazy.  I guess if I had a font named “Mike Lawson” I’d use it a lot too…oh wait, look at the header of this blog and all the headers on the right.

I get it.  She liked it.  She thought it was cute.  But entire meeting agendas in the Kristen font were just too much.

Hate.

This is another stupid font, but it totally brings me back.  Back in the early 2000s (again?!) I created a website to host my resumé and my first official blog (even though I’d been doing Internet Journals since high school…the title of “blog” was new).  I used the font Grinched in the design.  If you click here you can kind of see the design on the Internet Way Back Machine even though the website is gone now.

P.S. Unless you want people to think you know nothing about design, don’t use this font.

This is my absolute favorite free font.

The love affair started back in my Princeton Review Days.  Julie used to always call this font the “Mike Lawson Font” and she knew if I made flyers because I would ALWAYS use the font.

It’s a wonderful headline font.  It looks good spaced out or scrunched together.  It’s just beautiful.  Additionally, The Boys & Girls Club’s current “Be Great” campaign uses the font:

It’s so versatile.  It’s simple.  It’s sexy.  I love it.

Another font that I don’t LOVE, but have used.  Again, when I was a literacy coordinator one of my duties was to create and run activities that disguised the learning components to engage non-traditional readers in literacy-related activities.

I did a lot of random things…”Don’t you like Family Guy and The Simpsons?” I’d say.  “Then come to my fun club where we’re going to watch TV.”  And then I’d make them read scripts and act out scenes before we could watch them.

And then one Halloween season I created a book of scary stories using the Chiller font.  “I’ve got some really creepy stories…but you can only come if you don’t get scared,” I told them.  And we’d turn the lights off and read with a flashlight.

What about you, what font brings you to a place?