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Gore’s choice
Last summer, I received a phone call from Michael, a designer from mgmtdesign in Brooklyn, New York. After the initial how-do-you-do’s, he explained that they were designing a new book for Al Gore, Our Choice, the sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.
“Great project”, I said.
And it got even better. They had chosen Brioni, one of our typefaces, for the body text.
“And this is why I am calling now”, said Michael, his voice dropping a level. “You see, Al is really involved with the project and we spend a lot of time working together in the publisher’s office. When he was reviewing the proofs, he had a comment about the typeface.”
I took a deep breath and asked what the comment was.
“Basically, he wants you to change the numeral one.”
“Interesting”, I said. “And how did he come to this conclusion?”
“Well, in the book there’re a lot of examples of scientific nomenclature and this particular numeral one is causing confusion when it’s combined with capitals.”
Brioni is a book typeface and comes with old style figures. Because of the fairly low x-height, the numeral one looks like a Roman one, like a shorter version of a capital letter I. It looks very elegant, but when combined into acronyms, it could be confusing.
“OK, we’ll have a look.”
I called Nikola, the author of the font, and informed him of the situation.
“Hi Nikola, Al Gore wants you to change the numeral one in Brioni.”
“Huh?!”
I explained, and Nikola agreed to make some modifications. That same day, we sketched alternatives, printed samples, tweaked it a bit further, made new fonts, sent them to New York, and waited for the reaction.
A short email arrived the next day. Al liked the change.
“There was a great cheer from upstairs when they presented the layouts in question to Al. So I would say that it is good to go”, the email read.
Al was right. The new numeral is a lot less confusing when combined with letters. We already changed it for all other weights of Brioni. We’ll call this ‘Gore’s choice’.
. . .
If you have purchased a licence to Brioni, you can download a free update of the fonts from your online account.
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linked here via http://twitter.com/espiekermann/status/7493033571
That´s a tough one.
Bravo et bien vu! Bonne pub pour Typotheque.
The funny thing is that we do such modifications almost everyday, but they never get as much attention as if a Nobel prize winner asked for it personally. And this was a reasonable request, compared to others that we sometimes receive. Well spotted, and other users can benefit from these change as we offer it as a free update.
@Michael Ummels
Brioni Pro will come out later in 2010. Cyrillic is ready, but we are still working on the Greek. There is over 1000 new glyphs to draw per style, so it takes some time.
That brand, Brioni, too, has a hint of the authentic: http://www.girvin.com/blog/?p=679. Fonts, and the tuning of them. Love that. It's a never-ending saga, http://www.girvin.com/blog/?p=1494. thanks all, good story!
tim g.
No, it wouldn't. So what?
Its a great improvement over the original though.
Well youg Padawan, there was you chance at your 15 minutes but you let Al Gore take it away from you. No surprise, he's a master and you still have much to learn.
http://blog.fawny.org/2010/01/11/goreschoice/
It's also entertaining to see in the comments here that Al Gore still provokes so much conservative dyspepsia.
Gee, Ben, I've read the comments and I don't see a single one that can be attributed to a 'conservative'. A number of comments disagree with Al's positions (primarily AGW) or his past actions, but none are specifically 'conservative', unless by 'conservative' you mean any comment that disagrees in any way with someone who has become a liberal icon/martyr. Way to live up to those 'liberal' tropes of inclusivity, broadmindedness, and openness. You're an example to us all......
In this case, the change should have been a "no brainer".
I had to laugh at the H1N1 example. HINI. Funny!
Al Gore IS a douche... and this is not how this should have been resolved. Anyone familiar with InDesign, would have been able to swap all the 1's with a font that looks like he wanted, and was necessary for this particular application, to avoid ambiguity.
The typeface artist must've been flattered by Mr. Gore's attention, and allowed his personal creativity to be compromised.
Thanks Al!