Paper Matters

According to an artilce in The Independent today, 23.5 million items of illegible mail are sorted and deciphered each year by some 200 Royal Mail workers. Handwritten letters make up about half of this amount during the year and as much as 70% during the Christmas season. The key thing to remember is to print the post code neatly and try to control your creative urges to decorate the envelope with holly and reindeers and fancy festive script!

This week on my drive to work I listened to a reading from "Just My Type" by Simon Garfield on Radio 4's Book of the Week show. If you haven't heard of the book or missed the show, you can still hear it on the BBC iPlayer service.

It is a fascinating book, described by the New York Times as "a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things."

The show I listened to was all the use of type in the last American election and specifically about Obama's use of Gothan "a type consciously chose to suggest forward thinking without frightening the horses". As I read the book I was continually amazed at the unconscious power and persuasion typestyles have on our every day life.

The book is out in paperback and would make an excellent stocking stuffer.