Thursday, January 13, 2011

Fontastic Job


What's it like if your job was picking out fonts for books? From a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle...

It is perhaps a slight exaggeration to say fonts are Vanessa Dina's life. But she often chooses the typefaces for books in her role as art director for the San Francisco independent publisher Chronicle Books (no relation) and speaks about fonts as if they were people with distinct character traits. Her recent book-design projects include "Tartine Breads" - "I used Tribute and clean, classic Benton Sans" - and "Whoopie Pies" - "I chose more whimsical fonts like Blockhead and Bodoni Egyptian."

She doesn't leave the fonts at the office, though. On the walls of the graphic designer's airy Mission apartment are many items centered on type - collections of retro ads, luggage stickers and colorful Muni monthly passes along with framed old Letraset alphabets and numerals - the sort that designers like her used for print before computers. "I've been going to flea markets and tag sales for as long as I can remember, picking up vintage and retro pieces with old fonts on them."

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