Fonts of Fame

What font do you write in? Do you have strong feel­ings about it? It turns out many writ­ers do. Slate has a fas­ci­nat­ing slide-show essay mark­ing Hel­veti­ca’s fifti­eth anniver­sary, cel­e­brat­ing the font “some have called the offi­cial type­face of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” In an accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle the mag­a­zine sur­veyed a few famous writ­ers and none of them claimed the big H as their let­ter­ing of choice (couri­er won by a landslide–apparently these peo­ple have fond mem­o­ries of their type­writ­ers). If you’re in New York, you might check out the MoMA exhib­it cel­e­brat­ing Hel­veti­ca’s gold­en moment.

Ready for a new look your­self? There are hun­dreds of sites ready to help you get your font on for love or for money–check out Sim­ply the Best Free Fonts as just one exam­ple. To be safe, always make sure you scan down­loaded files for virus­es before start­ing that new nov­el.