If there's a car and a dog and an ideal online mate for every personality, then why not a typeface? By answering four simple questions posed in a playful video by the English design firm Pentagram, you can finally hook up with the style of print for which you were destined.
Thousands of enthusiasts have taken Pentagram's What Type Are You? test, searching for the elusive connection between human character and stylized alphabetical shapes.
Scott Richardson, the creative director for Random House Canada and the kind of font fancier who might normally avoid the computer-quiz path to typographical bliss, couldn't resist this deft approach to psychological probing, stylized as more Viennese School than Facebook.
His match? ”It's unnervingly close,” he says. ”Baskerville Italic, a typeface I absolutely love.”
It shouldn't be that surprising that even a self-described ”type geek” can be hooked up so easily. Typefaces, after all, are often categorized in the kind of basic psychological language used to sort out humans in online quizzes: rational or emotional, understated or assertive, traditional or progressive, disciplined or relaxed.
By describing himself as “traditional,” Mr. Richardson automatically typecast himself as a Baskerville kind of guy: “These are loaded questions.”
Too loaded for some. Pentagram is in the branding business, selling clients on its ability to find connections between design and demographics. But for a thoughtful designer such as Nick Shinn, a multiple-choice approach to fonts is just “trite amusement.”
The same kind of black-letter font, he points out, can be equally suitable for ecclesiastical settings or heavy-metal tattoos. So much for the ideal personality type. He says, “I believe in typefaces that resist categorization.”
Yet even the decidedly geekish Typophile website isn't above playing with these perfect-type connections, if more cerebrally and allusively than Pentagram: ”I am Thesis. I love myself, I think I'm grand, I go to movies just to hold my hand” – a reference, in case you missed it, to the fact that the versatile Thesis has both serif and sans serif varieties.
For type designer Patrick Griffin of Canada Type, it's not surprising that humans can be made to fit typefaces, given that there's a big business in doing the reverse.
“When graphic designers talk among themselves, then, yes, type is going to be intellectual. But when you're talking to clients, all their questions are human-context questions: Is the font friendly? Is it clean? Does it deliver a message seamlessly? Typefaces are the children of society, and they reflect the culture they're designed in.”
Find out your type at www.pentagram.com/what-type-are-you. Enter the password “character.”
Expanded antique font
EXPANDED ANTIQUE
"A wood-type font dating from 1880, Expanded Antique has big, bold shapes that can announce a play or match from across the street but with extremely delicate and attractive spaces only noticeable once you cross the street,” according to Pentagram. Recommended users include boxing or wrestling promoters – people who need to make a big impression professionally but, privately, prefer “the finer points of expression.”
Baskerville italic font
BASKERVILLE ITALIC
So understated it was designed by a man called Moore, not Baskerville, this font “combines a firm measured stroke, a light measured stroke, a flowing serif and an insistent angle for an academic dignity and excellent legibility. If you are well-read, a little short-sighted and you tend to lean quietly but firmly towards the right, then Baskerville Italic is your type."
Cooper font
COOPER
“A heavy but generous font with soft serifs, casual curves and a pleasant inclination and no hint of sharpness,” say the Pentagram designers. “If you are an imposing sort of person who does not hanker after leanness or fitness but is happy with your life and with your love handles, then Cooper Black Italic is your type."
Perpetua Titling Light font
PERPETUA TITLING LIGHT
Designed in 1928, this font is influenced by Roman stonecutting, “with a very measured differentiation between its thick strokes and thin strokes, and with delicately bracketed period serifs. If you're a quiet, old-fashioned sort of person who'd secretly prefer shoed stability to barefooted liberty, Perpetua Titling Light is your type.”
