Critique Wall.com

Allan Haley, type guru and prolific typography author (see More About Allan Haley below), spoke to the Orlando AIGA chapter. Haley appears to know more about type than I know about most other subjects combined. But the focus of his presentation was on the power of non-font typography or words created without the use of digital fonts.

I've always wondered if the hand-lettered for-sale sign is not more effective than a similarly placed campaign poster, real-estate or other digitally produced and designed advertisement. And my take on Haley's presentation indicated this is true because the hand lettered sign humanizes the message and engages the reader. Haley also asserted non-font typography entices, and builds impact and drama.

This was a refreshing look at the power of type. I admit that primarily working on the Web in an effort to separate content from presentation we care less for good typography and more for structurally correct mark-up. We are as Ellen Lupton puts it preparing for the "afterlife of data" where the content lives on longer than the display medium to be republished and consumed as print, screen, audio, mobile or some future medium. I found it wonderful to be reminded of the amazing power of type to produce emotion, feeling, and appropriately convey more than just content with a message.

Haley showed off with his apparently famous type quiz asking many unique questions about type we probably should have known already. Among other trivia, I learned double spaces after a period are referred to as French spacing.

Haley obviously loves type. When asked if there are too many typefaces he replied, "is there too much music."