Just My Type

When I was a teenager, my family spent a year and half living in Berkeley while my dad was on sabbatical.  California was such a strange and interesting place for me, having spent my early years in the midwest.  I wanted to make a scrapbook of my time in the Bay Area, so I collected photos, ticket stubs, programs, etc. of the things we did and pasted them on the pages.

Here is the geeky part - I had a catalog of fonts (I'm not sure how one bought fonts back in the 1970s, but maybe it was for rubbing them off of a page?).  I scoured the catalog and found what I felt were the right fonts for each caption and title in the scrapbook.

I went looking for this scrapbook yesterday, so I could scan a page or two to post, but I couldn't find it.  Maybe I got rid of it, or it is in a super good hiding place.

All this is just to say, that I finished reading a book about fonts and typeface called Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield.  When I tell friends what I've been reading I get two responses.  One is a blank stare and perhaps the comment, "Are you hard up for reading material?"  The other is, "Oh! That sounds interesting!"  Well, if you fall into the second group, you may like this book as well as the movie Helvetica.