I love type. Not typewriters, but type, although I do really like the old ones, and have an Underwood in my spare bedroom gathering dust, but that I can’t part with because it’s so darn cute. I am an advertising copywriter, which means that I’ve been around type and fonts for more than two decades, but I think it started even before I worked in advertising. I think it started when I was a kid, and I used to enjoy making different kinds of letters with my bic pens, or number two pencils. I  was always making bubble letters, or creating my own fonts, or tyring to perfect my script, with Mrs. Quigley, the penmanship teacher who came once a month to Frank A. Berry school and taught us how to write in perfect formal curly cues. She was very fancy and sort of flamboyant and had cat glasses that she wore low on her nose, and blonde, highly teased and sprayed hair.  I’m quite certain script is no longer taught (and what does one major in, by the way to teach script), given that the cuts that are starving so many schools of music and art. And while it seems pretty funny that we actually had a special someone come to our school for the sole purpose of teaching us script writing, it’s also a little bit romantic, too. Computers seem to have made writing with a pen or pencil a thing of the past, but I still covet someone’s perfect letters, distinctive alphabet. My friend Sharon Morgera always had exceptionally beautiful handwriting when we were growing up. Now she has created a business where she uses her amazingly gorgeous handwriting to do invitations and maps and anything else that could use her steady and creative hand. She also does beautiful illustrations, too. And then there’s my friend Stephanie Peterson Jones, who’s handwriting I also coveted growing up. She is wildly talented and has had a few different careers, but she has always been an illustrator at heart. She has done children’s books and posters and paintings. I still love getting a card from her, which she will make for me, and I cherish, because I love her, but also because her writing is so familiar and pretty.

There’s a movie called Helvetica, which is about fonts and which I have surprisingly not seen yet. Helvetica Neue Extra Light is one of my favorite fonts. I’m also partial to American Typewriter. Lately I’ve been into Reed and Buttermilk. And I love any font which looks handcrafted.There are people who are famous for having created fonts, which I would one day like to be, but doesn’t it seem like everything you could do with a lines and curves has already been done?

Yesterday I bought a whole bunch of new fonts from MyFonts. I went on a little spree. I can’t wait to use them. It’s like getting jewelry for my computer. And you know how I feel about jewelry.