Font discussions

A brief discussion of school newsletters and font choices spurred this particular memory. The main history I need to give here is that I am not a designer. However, I have worked closely with numerous designers over my career.

As a web developer who mostly builds things that people read, fonts are a thing that I think about. Not a lot, but I appreciate the good ones and am annoyed by some other ones.

Hillary would make fun of me for this when I pointed out a particularly bad or good choice.

She laughed with incredulity when she learned I was watching a documentary about the Helvetica font.

But as a person who more or less read documentation for a living some of this evidently sank in. More, I think she knew more about this than she was willing to let on.

So anyway, it's October of 2017 or thereabouts. A newsletter comes home with Isaac from his teacher. We both like her quite a bit and Isaac is having a good time thus far. I pick up the newsletter and start reading it. I shudder, laugh a bit and curse.

Hillary asks, "What's the problem?" This is not a reaction she'd have expected from someone reading a kindergarten handout.

I wordlessly hand her the piece of paper. Hillary has it in her hands for probably five seconds, "Oh god. And I was really thinking I liked her. I guess this is it then."

Heather was in the kitchen at the time hears this and asks, "What did she do?"

Hillary responded, "She used comic sans."