The agony is over -Type and Type Design for masochists

My presentation was the middle one of three. The first guy did his presentation on Stinky Cheese Man, and it turned out to be a fabulous choice. Much more experienced in the ways of children's fiction than I, he'd found a book to talk about which had a great variety of typefaces and layouts, heaps of funny lines and ingenious page designs. AND he knew who did the typography, what the typefaces were and what was the ancestor of each type. I was just relieved he didn't also have a charismatic speaking style.

I was pretty damn nervous when it was my turn. To make things worse, there was something wrong with Chatterbox so the slides couldn't be presented on-line. Too late, I had realised that I could've picked an easier topic to do my assignment on. Once, I talked for a good thirty seconds before realising I had taken my finger off the CTRL key, which meant that no-one could hear me.

The guy who presented after me cheated - he picked an artist's book by a typographer whose aim was to present a variety of interesting typefaces.

I have come to this conclusion - there are many types of geeks in this world, and book-geeks are the ones who measure book type to the nearest millimetre; they are the ones who can talk for a whole fifteen minutes on how to make vellum from the skin of a newborn calf without saying "Oooh, the poor little calf"; they are the ones who prefer to describe a book's physical appearance using code rather than just taking photos.