Helvetica & Ampersands

This week's readings really reminded me of the movie Helvetica. Especially Wysoki's "The Multimedia of Text." Both talk about the use of serifs, or the small "tails" many typefaces have. Helvetica discusses the emotional impact these tails have, while others argue that serifs make texts easier to read. Wysoki points out the introduction of sans serif typefaces: "type designers, in tune to the industrialization or Europe and the United States in the latter half of the 19th and into the early 20th century, wanted typefaces that functioned relationally, like machines. They streamlined the typefaces with which they had grown up, removing everything they saw as extraneous, such as serifs" (129). What is interesting to me is the lack of attempted integration of these sans serif typefaces into everyday texts. You can see them as signage or in titles of articles, but rarely do you see a sans serif text face as the body of a text.

Pretty much all of the articles we read this week made me dork out because I love how different symbols and typefaces function in text. Is there a major for that? Solomon's text on "The Power of Punctuation" made me super nerd-happy. She begins the text by defining punctuation as "The use of standard marks and signs in writing and printing to separate works into sentences, clauses, and phrases in order to clarify meaning" (282). In other words, punctuation makes sense of the chaos of words. When you read a regular text, punctuation is there, but are we consciously paying attention to the way it functions in the text? Other than indicating where to pause or the end of a sentence, I wouldn't say that when I read a text I'm consciously thinking, "oh here's a clause" or, "look at that! This period is square. I MUST be writing in Futura!" Instead, we move across the words and take for granted what punctuation is doing for our reading. I think I'm going to take up the worship of punctuation. ALL HAIL THE AMPERSAND!

No, but in all reality I have a weird obsession with the ampersand because of this:

I can't find anything to confirm this, but it is a beautiful notion.