I’m not going to TypeCon 2005. (It sometimes helps to be invited.) However, they keep claiming that Mayor Bloomberg declared July 18–24 Type Week in New York, yet I haven’t seen any documentation.

So, being an actual journalist, I called the mayor’s office and got it. [continue with: Type Week, allegedly →]

A complex and outstanding example of three-dimensional type and natural building materials that is difficult to photograph.

Who knew there was so much of interest in the topography of the ancient Lande Rovère?

Yes, that was a giant bronze statue of an owl found in a BACK OF TRUCK.

Then of course they had to install it.

And now they’ll have to shut the branch down for a full day to pour additional reinforcing concrete.

I joshed with the grizzled, chain-smoking sculptor that we needed a matching statue of the owl’s prey. A couple of rats, he said. No, I countered, a bunny.

Actually, it was a 928.

The lay-back (“slantnose”) headlamps were the dead giveaway – though I did photograph them ambiguously and Porsche had annoyingly diluted the design trope through reuse in 968s and a few other models I can’t track down.

Richard Barrios, Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall, p. 327:

Redford may be shortchanging his own performance [in Inside Daisy Clover]. However the character’s sexuality plays out, Wade still comes across as the essence of showbiz egotism: An embodiment of physical beauty so self-contained that sex in any form is just a type of homage, like a good review or a seven-figure contract. With an effortless charm that can come only from deep and conflicted self-adoration, Wade needs to attract everyone. That’s why he lives, and why men like Wade and Cary Grant and Tyrone Power and [Insert name of your favourite star of ambiguous sexuality here] need to become famous. It was true in 1965, it’s true today, and at neither time would it be the kind of role that many up-and-coming proto-stars would be willing to accept.

E. John

“Just a simple word. It’s two hearts living in two separate worlds. But it’s no sac·er·i·fi·hice. No sac·er·i·fi·hice”

Bad Religion

“If there’s a purpose for us all, it remains a sec·uh·ret to me. Don’t ask me to justify my life”

Go-Go’s, The

“Pay no mind to what they say. It doesn’t matter anyway-hé-é-é. Our lips are sealed. There’s a weapon we must use in our defense: Si·uh·lence”

Dandy Warhols, The

“I always knew that you were insane with your pain. But I never thought you’d be a junkie – because heroin is so passé-hé. Heroin is so passé-hé. Heroin is so passé-hé-hé”

Juice Newton

“The joker ain’t the only foo-hoo-oo-ool who’ll do anything for you. Layin’ out another lie-hie, thinkin’ ’bout a life of kurrime, if that’s what I’ll have to do-hoo-oo to keep me away from you”

Siouxie and the Banshees

“Ohh-ooh-oh, oh, your see·uh·tee lies in du-u-st, my friend”

Ahem.

Two hours ago, I wrote:

Microsoft’s £7 million ad campaign for Office shows generic wage slaves, situated in generic internationalized office environments (or in unplaceable limbo), wearing baggy, ill-fitting clothing. (Except for the only identifiable woman. But what she’s wearing is similar to the guys’ clothes in another way: Long sleeves.)

More noticeably, they’ve got triceratops, stegosaurus, and T. Rex prostheses on their heads. They are wearing actual… dinosaur… heads. The campaign is justly reviled for calling its own customers dinosaurs. (Pot calling the kettle beige? Anyway, it looks better in Italian.)

Now: Here is my question. Is it a plus or a minus that they’re using a Microsoft Longhorn ClearType screenfont, Corbel by Jeremy Tank·árd, in the ads? It looks overbold and overregularized in print at those sizes. (Dead giveaways that the font is a late-20th/early-21st-century engineered typeface include uniform stroke widths and confusion-avoiding letter shapes, especially g and 1.)

Now my esteemed colleague Simon Daniels writes in and tells me it’s Segoe. Funny about that italic f.

I also wrote –

Did you know I still cannot tell apart the Longhorn fonts – all of which carry dyslexia-inducing names beginning with C – without checking my playbook? And now there’s a seventh, a pi font with the dumbest and least wholistic name since Frontiera: Cariadings. (Mariah Carey? Coriolanus? Hermione?)

– and that all hasn’t changed.