Hero with a Thousand Typefaces

A book that didn’t make my “best/worst/weirdest” list from 2007 was Michael Bierut’s 79 Short Essays on Design. I adored it but couldn’t come up with a decent joke award for it. Looking back, I should’ve gone with “Most fonts used in a good cause,” since every essay is set in a different font, to great effect.

Virginia Postrel writes about the profusion of fonts and includes a neat 8-minute video interview with Mr. Bierut.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to laying out my magazine. Which uses Palatino for body copy, Helvetica Black for headlines, Gill Sans for author/contributor copy, and Univers 55 for sidebars.

(Oh, and Mr. Bierut has a new essay up on Design Observer, but I haven’t read it yet.)