Re: Font Selection Methodology

[Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- jci -dot- com]

>>Is it more important to find the right words to
>>accurately describe the process, or to present the words in the perfect
>>font?
>
>It's not an either-or question.

Bruce, I asked that question as a priority-setting question, not to imply
one should spend 100% of one's time in one arena or the other. All project
work involves trade-offs; the main thing is to keep the main thing the main
thing, if you catch my meaning. Do as much of everything else as time
permits, but keep the focus on the words and illustrations that you're
using. The most important facet is where the biggest "bang for the buck"
lies. The purpose of asking the question is to get the most important facet
clear. If it's more important to get the style right than provide accurate
factual content, then (when the time crunch inevitably appears) we skimp on
the facts in favor of the style. OTOH, if the facts are more important,
then we shouldn't spend time on style at the expense of facts. It's about
primacy, not about exclusion.

If you work in an environment which allows you all the time in the world
for all your projects, then you never need to answer this question. Spend
as much time as you feel like researching the history of every font and all
of their nuances. I don't, so I have to decide which facets of the project
will get loving attention to detail, and which get the "Speedy Delivery"
treatment. In those cases, I maximize the time spent on facts and
procedures, because they're more important than the font choices. (If I've
set up my document correctly, I can always revisit these choices later, if
I find I have extra time near the end of the process.)

I can pick a font in 10 seconds and produce serviceable, usable, and clear,
though perhaps not elegant, documents. Or I can spend days agonizing over
getting the font choice absolutely perfect, and end up not having time to
make a last editing pass or two at troublesome, complicated passages,
resulting in an unhelpful document with beautiful production values. When
the project's clock is ticking, it's too late to start researching the
wonderful world of typography. You make your style choices as best you can,
according to the knowledge you have (including the captured knowledge in
the site style manual) and get on with the job. You don't like the choices
you made? Read "A Manual of Typographical Style" over the weekend, so
perhaps your next set of choices will improve.

(We could always sidetrack this discussion into how difficult it is to
produce typographically correct documents with a computer, as the 256
character limit imposed by ASCII is far too small to do justice even to
english-language documents -- resulting in missing ligatures and incomplete
upper- and lower-case number sets, and the like -- but that's probably too
esoteric. Still, now that Unicode is becoming more common, I'm looking
forward to being able to use some complete fonts, providing anyone still
knows how to design them -- most Unicode sets are still woefully
incomplete, though.)

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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In God we trust; all others must provide data.
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Opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
If JCI had an opinion on this, they'd hire someone else to deliver it.



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