Hi, this is Frank Romano from WhatTheyThink.com.  All that typographic things came up this week and I thought, there’s no place for all of us to talk about the things that involve typography.  So I am creating Typefacebook.  Not Facebook, Typefacebook.  You can friend a font, you can write on the wall in any font you want. 

Fonts are people too…

Because here are several things that happen involving type. For instance, New York City just spent $27.5 million to change all the street signs.  Yes, yes, yes.  Every street sign is going to change from one Sans Serif font to an other Sans Serif font from all capital letters to upper and lower case letters.  The Department of Transportation says that this font, called Clear View, is much easier to read, it will avoid accidents, and will be more efficient.  Of course, James Sullivan, a 34-year-old bike messenger who lives in Queens said, “That’s ridiculous, they might as well as just burned the money.”  Well, he said, “Burn the damned money.”  So that’s even worse, I guess. 

Cities and states have until 2018 to comply in changing all of their old font street signs to new font street signs.  I’m not so sure they’re easier to read, but that’s what the Federal government says, and you know that they know everything. 

The Gap… you all heard of the controversy over the Gap, the Gap logo, one of the great iconic logos; a beautiful condensed typeface over a blue background.  So they hired a designer, what did they use?  Helvetica with a little blue box! 

Now, criticizing design is easy because we’re all experts on it and I understand the work that goes into the creative process to create logos, but I’m telling you that that’s not a lot of work right there.  That’s, you’re eating a sandwich at lunch and you say, “I’ll use Helvetica upper and lower case in a blue box, thank you very much.” 

Pastrami on rye gives true font inspiration…

The thing about it that annoys me is, I’m getting tired of Helvetica, and by the way, Arial as well.  Come on guys, there are other Sans Serif typefaces out there, you don’t have to use Helvetica just because it come with the system.  Use something more, Futura is a beautiful San Serif, Anzeigen Grotesk is a beautiful Sans Serif.  Univere is a wonderful family of San Serif typefaces.  Just because they made of movie of Helvetica, doesn’t make it good or better. 

I watch it every night before bed…

And it’s overused now.  It’s so overused to the point where if you do anything else, you’ll stand out.  So, stand out. 

Also involving Facebook, not Typefacebook, but Facebook, you can have every picture that’s on your – of all your friends that’s on your Facebook account printed out as a poster and as large as 20 inches by 40 inches.  It says, “It’s an awesome gift.”  Not just a gift, it’s an “awesome” gift.  So if you want a poster of every friend you have – now by the way, the bigger the poster, the more friends you have. 

My friend poster has my mom and that bike messenger from Queens…

You could run for elected office of some… So you know, maybe this is not a bad idea.  Anybody want to create this website?  They can’t get made if the Typeface is a – it’s a normal word.  Typefacebook, we’ve always had typeface book, specimen books, etc.  Where do we go to comment on typography?  There is no place.  So let’s create it.  So somebody out there, I give you the rights to Typefacebook.  And let us now have a place where we can all talk about typography and rip all those designers to pieces. 

And that’s my opinion.  Take care. 

Next time…

Just under half of the group here, there has been a decline in printing…