Random Notes from a Crank

I found a typeface I will now be using more of: Charter. It's easier on my eyes when I look at documents on a screen. 

For this blog I've been using Trebuchet for years. It's a sans serif font that has some serif-like style with its pointedness. 

And this all reminds me of the character Brick from The Middle who is also fascinated with typefaces. 

I started watching that show a few months ago. It's hilarious. Of course, with my timing, I didn't actually watch the sit-com when it was off the air. 

HBO has a new series I'm interested in: Watchmen. I enjoyed the graphic novel and its adaptation to the big screen. On the latter opus, I guess I"m a minority if one goes by all the vitriol on the InterWebs. I don't know what the series will be like, but I was surprised by Don Johnson being in the show. I haven't seen him in years. 

His Dark Materials looks very interesting too. I'm intrigued. I'm considering reading the novel trilogy that is the series' basis. 

Who are the morons who started the idiotic trend of wearing socks with Birkenstocks?

Random Notes from a Crank

A couple of summers ago, the Nasty family took a trip to Des Moines to play at Adventureland. A good portion of our time was spent at the water park. My memory got jogged about that experience because I just saw this article on the world's tallest waterslide under construction in Kansas City. It's call Verruckt, German for "insane." 

As I've written about before on this forum, or maybe I haven't, I'm a geek about typefaces. Recently, I decided to use Avenir Heavy typeface for headings in a document, and my mind started wandering. Who invented Avenir, and why call one version "Heavy"? I imagined a bunch of stoned graphic designers playing with the typeface one night, and then one of them adjusts the typeface so it's so thick and bold that boldface is not needed. Then one of his pot-smoking designers says, "Wow, that's heavy, man." And there you go: Avenir Heavy was born. Unfortunately, that narrative is improbable since Avenir was created in 1988 when the word "heavy" was not in mass use for that kind of meaning like in previous decades. 

And if you care about typefaces, here's "Best Practices of Combining Typefaces", "Typographical Twins: 20 Perfect Font Pairings,"  and "19 Top Fonts in 19 Top Combinations."  

A comic of note:

I started reading Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware the other day. It's one of those adult comic books, one in which the main character deals with finally meeting his father he never knew. It's semi-autobiographical, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think Ware wrote the tale for cathartic reasons, but it seems a bit too confessional for my blood. I'm usually not a fan of confessional stuff, and I guess I'm used to comic books graphic novels that have more action to them, such as the outstanding series Mind MGMT by Matt Kindt. Do yourself a favor and read that series, people. It's worth your time, money, and mental energy.