Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

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Clothing Ideas

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Software such as Word, Publisher and Pages have essentially put the tools of newsrooms and their compositor desks on our computers.  First published in 2018, this piece remains a favorite because it blends consideration of the visual and the textual. 

Most of us never stop to consider the choices of fonts chosen by a website or publication.  We know that different fonts exist.  But we usually don’t consider how they might enhance or impede our abilities to improve ideas committed in print or pixels.  Though it’s probably unlikely you will run into a font junkie, it’s worth noting that their unusual passion has a point.  Fonts and the impressions they make are important.

Because all of us have become—at least to some extent—“publishers” of materials passed on to others, it makes sense that software such as Word, Page and Publisher have essentially put the tools of newsroom compositor desks on our computers.  My computer is set at a conservative default of Times New Roman, 12 point, originally designed in the 1930s for Britain’s London Times.  It’s the kind of font you might see in a letter from a law office. The point number is indicates the size of the font.  If we bold it, we are adding “weight” to it.  And we can also alter the spaces between letters (called “kerning” in typography).  But add too much, and it looks like you are a M-o-r-s-e  C-o-d-e  o-p-e-r-a-t-o-r.

Graphics experts are quick to note that there are few hard rules on choosing fonts.  Nonetheless, the choices we make can be either badly out of place or situation-appropriate.  For example, content for children or adolescents may feature larger and often rounded font styles, such as Goudy Stout. It suggests an upbeat or playful approach to its subject. But it would be totally inappropriate in most business correspondence.  Similarly, if you are announcing events or designing a poster, you would probably avoid “office” fonts such as New Times Roman, which look old fashioned and formal.  You might consider choices that are more contemporary, like Helvetica, the default choice for a lot of advertising, and similar to the font used in this blog.  Helvetica is a sans font, omitting the serifs, or longer “tails” or “projections” extending out from an individual letter. Freestyle Script is an example of a serif font.  It’s commonly used in invitations and announcements. But written script generally lacks the assertive boldness of a font with more weight, like the terrific and vaguely art-deco Broadway in the “FONTS” graphic at the top right of this post.

We expect similarity and continuity in most print forms. It’s risky to choose anything that requires more work from a reader.

In business correspondence and commercial pitches it’s important to choose a font that scans easily.  The eye should glide easily through lines of copy without running into jarring changes.  Most sans fonts are designed to be easy on the eyes. Not so with varied Gothic fonts that can look like spider webs. It’s also advisable to avoid abrupt changes in font types, colors and point sizes.  We expect similarity and continuity in most print forms. It’s risky to choose anything that requires the eye to work harder.  Achieve variety by using headlines that are larger and often bolded.  It also makes sense to apply fresh eyes to how the text works on the page.  No spacing between lines–a function of “leading” that is too tight–can be daunting. The reverse problem–too much space–requires the eye to do more work as it returns to the next line.

Publishers vary in their sensitivities to how text sits on the page.

All of this applies to online publishing as well.  Individual computer defaults can affect what we see.  Even so, to see fonts well used and laid out, visit the online pages of the Washington Post.  The fonts for headlines and text are consistent, simple, generous in size, and held together in consistent blocks.  For a less successful use of online fonts see The New York Times.  A greater variety of font styles and sizes creates a bit too much ‘visual noise.’

Publishers of books vary in their sensitivities to how text sits on the page.  One of the best studies of communication I have ever read–a classic in the field–was apparently delivered as a longer manuscript than the publisher would have liked.  The result was out of character for a mainstream publisher: a cheesy small font with lines seemingly on top of each other.  The author’s wonderful ideas deserved to be better dressed.

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Another Vaccine Story

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The sense that help is on the way also spread through American households in the mid-1950s.

The current effort to vaccinate citizens against the COVID-19 virus rings bells for people my age, some of whom became the first to receive the Salk polio vaccine in 1954. Recent stories celebrating the apparent success of the new drugs are a reminder of the maelstrom of parental dread about polio that few children probably understood. To be sure, my eight-year-old self was particularly clueless to the risks of being around other kids, or going to parties or swimming pools where the paralyzing disease could attack. Back then, the habit of many parents was to worry alone about the risk of a paralysis that could immobilize their children. Those conversations were mostly saved for other parents. Anyway, kids have a natural habit of living in their own world. Then it was music, radio and bicycles. If we were skating on thin ice as potential victims of a disease, we were only dimly aware of it.

What a contrast with the current pendemic. Our more invasive media mean that there is no such shielding of children from the worries and disruptions of the virus.  COVID-19 is their crisis as well.  As is often true with kids, many are handling it better than the rest of us.

The current sense that help is on the way similarly spread through American households in the 1950s. Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh in the Oakland section of the city led a team that found a workable vaccine. All that was left was to manufacture and distribute it, but in reverse order of today’s vaccine roll out. Kids went first because they were most at risk.

Like many others, my third-grade class at Ashley Elementary School would be among the first “polio pioneers,” having volunteered in true Ashley fashion by doing what we were told. It was not that big a deal to get the shot. And there is no doubt the Salk and later Sabin vaccines saved millions from paralysis, withered limbs and leg braces.

The subject didn’t surface in my still unfocused brain until junior high, when I could no long make my legs flexible enough to run. I was stiff most of the time, choosing activities that did not require speed or agility. I warmed the bench in little league, put on weight from too many visits to the Dairy Queen, and preferred to roam surrounding neighborhoods on my bicycle. Only after a checkup, did our family doctor begin to wonder about my stiffness. The most probable cause: the dose of vaccine given to me may have contained some of the virus that had not been fully neutralized. Some minimal physical therapy took place in Denver’s children’s hospital. But the best recommendation was to have me join the track team at my tiny high school when my family moved to the nearby mountains. I was on the team not to compete, but to get back to level of mobility comparable to my peers. It was a chore, since my speed was only slightly better than an enormous shot putter who joined the group for fun. The two of us inadvertently reenacted “The Little Engine that Could” on every slope.

I would not say I had polio. Even while it may have been the cause of my symptoms, the vaccine surely spared me the full effects of the disease. If anything, over the years the Salk Vaccine made me a stronger believer in the power of childhood vaccination. Watching a recreation of F.D.R.’s struggle with polio was the tipping point for a degree of self-awareness. His legs were so sapped of energy that he was carried like a child when he had to be moved to places that were beyond the reach of his wheelchair. Viewing the film as a high school senior, I began to realize that I had perhaps skated closer to the edge than I knew.

                                           UPMC Oakland

Sixteen years later I began a graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh, trekking daily from my apartment on Craft Avenue up to the University about five blocks north. In my daily walks to the center of campus, I never failed to be in awe of the sprawling medical and public health campuses of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, their massive structures made even taller as they marched up the steep hillside above Fifth Avenue. UMPC is how God would want a vast medical complex to look like. It was enough to always remember that this is the spot where my childhood was given both a medical challenge and reprieve. To this day the geography of Pittsburgh is still my reference point for thinking about how dedicated researchers can suddenly tame a terrible disease.