Times Modern and the modern Times

Times and iPad

There’s a tendency when talking about typefaces to focus on the little details. However, this is a story about the life cycle of typefaces, specifically the way typefaces have been a crucial part of the life cycle of The Times of London, a trusted brand that has carefully cultivated its use of typography for decades.

I recently gave a talk at the Click series of conferences in New York, San Francisco, and London, which were partly sponsored by my employer. My talk was about the history of custom type used by The Times of London, particularly the Times Modern family that they currently use for headlines and other display stuff in the paper and in their digital versions.

Someday there should be a video available of the version I delivered in San Francisco, but until that surfaces you can also get a more refined version of the story (including a bunch of photos I took of the The Times offices here in London) in the sleek new issue of Linotype‘s bilingual Fonts in Focus magazine, available now for just the price of postage.

Fonts in Focus

Hipsta-Michi

Michi

It’s a terrible shame that I won’t actually be in London to see it, but I was delighted to find out that the photo above is going to be part of a show of Hipstamatic images at the Orange Dot Gallery in London in January.

Perhaps the folks putting together the exhibition had a simoiar reaction to my pal Norm, who once said of that photo: “It looks the way I want to feel.” For me, I’ve always loved how that image captures captures the mood of a relaxed, uncomplicated summer day with friends — a rare instance of proper, perfect vacation — in a little Austrian village called Streifing.