Joe Mackiewicz article What
Technical Writing Students Should Know About Typeface Personality describes
the importance of typeface in a document as a form of visual rhetoric. Typeface choices such as broadway, garamond, verdana, or calibri can affect the tone and an
artefacts ability to persuade its audience.
Mackiewicz comments that students need more guidance when it comes to
typeface choices, as it is rarely taught and highly accessible with the use of
computers, but only offers that technical writing should occur in fonts that
are neutral and professional. While this
is appropriate ideal for technical writing, I can think of many typefaces that
would fit into that catergory (calibri, cambria,
times new roman,
etc.) and Mackiewicz does little to guide a student into which of these
typefaces may be more appropriate than the next.
Mackiwicz also mentions that certain fonts hold historical
meanings that a writer should consider when choosing an appropriate typeface. He mentions that the typeface helvetica
"dredge[s] up the emotions and memories connected to the Helvetican
IRS" as it is used on many government documents (9). Many conventions of font exist from times
before access to typeface was easy, which makes choosing fonts difficult when
thinking historically. Many fonts, as
depicted below, are associated with certain brands. One can easily distinguish the letter "G" representing Google and the "P" associated with the Playstation brand.
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There are conventions dictated by the past that we still cling to in the age of computers. Newspaper headlines are still created in an ornate manner, as was the convention of newspapers dating back to 1906 (depicted below on the left). The New York Times still uses the same typeface for its headline, even though the paper now is able to integrate more use of visual rhetoric, with graphic and multiple typeface choices. While it is not necessary for the New York Times to "cling" to its typeface, I think it lends to its ethos and the convention allows the reader to see the document as a newspaper without having to actually read any of the present text.
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