Monty by Jim Meddick for January 11, 2024

Monty is a font of knowledge.

That seemed to be no accident on his part.

Is she mad that Monty spoiled the surprise or that the credits are in that particular font?

The only font that triggers me is when Old English fonts (also known as Blackletter) is in all uppercase. It’s almost unreadable.

Verdana anyone?

Interesting to see how the term “font” has evolved over time. During the days of hand-set type it referred not just to the letter style but also its size, because you didn’t want to mix (for example) agate of a particular style in with 6-point type of the same style; each font had to go into the proper box.

Trivial factoid: Those boxes were organized not in alphabetical order, nor in the QWERTYUIOP sequence of the Sholes keyboard, but rather something more akin to the Dvorak keyboard, in which the most commonly used letters are on the home row. In the case of hand-set type, it was stored in boxes beginning with ETAOIN SHRDLU.

We frequently watch stuff we know we’ve seen before, but can’t remember the outcome

That would be Monty — semibold.

I knew today’s strip would bring out all the typography nerds in the comments. It did not disappoint.

I can’t remember this girl’s name…

or when you read out loud any one of the names in the scrolling credits as if you know them…

At least it’s not Comic Sans.

The font is always serif you need it.

Can I get that in a Cyrillic alphabet?

Search “The typography of Alien, posted by Jason Kottke” It also covers “2001” and “Moon”

Monty, you rascal.

I looked up the Montserrat typeface—IMHO it’s pretty uninteresting, and the SemiBold Italic doesn’t add anything.

My own favourite text typefaces for most of my work are Georgia (serif) and Candara (sans), because they’re popular Microsoft typefaces with Old Style numbers, which IMHO are much much classier and more readable than lining numbers.

Of course, for movies what really matters is the typeface used for the posters: https://vimeo.Com/230280763

(I was excited to see casts of Trajan’s Column at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.)

(Typography nerds might also enjoy https://vimeo.Com/31237546 , also from Cheshire Dave. I like Cooper Black a lot—I use Cooper Black Italic on my letterhead.)

Monty, that was really mean!

I’ve known graphic designers, and I’m pretty sure that it’s true….