I’m almost afraid to admit it. Several months ago, I ordered a copy of the UK first edition of Simon Garfield’s Just My Type. I read it rather quickly, and even enjoyed some of it, although the amount of factual errors and oversights in the text was completely maddening. Paul Shaw has written up a review of the book’s failings better than anyone else probably could; if there were an option print out his article to sign like a petition, I would do so.
Nevertheless, I got an e-mail last week about a podcast from the Copyright Clearance Center. Despite the odd-sounding name, the message led me to an interesting 20-minute interview with Simon Garfield. You can listen to it here – http://beyondthebookcast.com/just-my-type
Nice moments in the interview include a story about how Helvetica (the film) inspired Just My Type. It is also swell to learn about just how much Garfield likes Helvetica (the typeface). Unfortunately, the not-true story about Cyrus Highsmith’s “day without Helvetica” is repeated. The same page that I link to above has a crazy, minute-long animation advertising the US edition of the book, put together by Penguin USA; the film is worth a look. Without spoiling too much, it shows the compound word “JustMyType” in a whole lot of different typefaces.