Body-text fonts, pt. 17: Robert Slimbach’s fonts: Adobe Garamond, Minion, and, especially, ITC Slimbach

We live during Robert Slimbach’s benevolent reign, or Adobe’s. It’s stale. Good as Slimbach’s Adobe Garamond and Minion have been, it’s tedious to see them still used so often.

Slimbach has created other fine typefaces for Adobe – Adobe Ten Oldstyle, Adobe Text (see Elizabeth Anderson’s Private Government), etc. – but, for whatever reason, book designers haven’t warmed to them. Arno and Warnock are good, too, but only on certain days of the week.

What I really like by Slimbach is his early, Zapf-inspired eponymous font for ITC. I first noticed it in NIV Study Bibles from the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s also in Bruce Cumings’s history, Korea’s Place in the Sun, and in the anthology Latin American Philosophy for the 21st Century; lately, it’s been shared all over the Internet in the body text of Ross McCammon’s book, Works Well with Others: An Outsider’s Guide to Shaking Hands, Shutting Up, Handling Jerks, and Other Crucial Skills in Business That No One Ever Teaches You.

(I seldom read self-help books. But I read all of this one. It’s painless, and it gives tips about how and when to write curt emails and use curse words and drink after the job and on the job, and how to tell your dining partner you’re not going to drink if you aren’t going to. And how to pronounce the names of alcoholic drinks from Scotland. It’s a very pro-drink book. The author’s dissimulations to the contrary, it’s the douchiest self-help book I’ve read. [I know, there are much worse ones.] After I finished the book, I looked up some of McCammon’s Esquire articles, and wow, that was like landing on a different planet. I shut the computer and fled the room. … By the way, I learned from At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig [Adobe Garamond] that the country that imports by far the most Scotch, or that used to, is tariff-free Paraguay; the booze is then smuggled into Argentina and Brazil.)

As for Minion itself, I like it – but not tiny, and not in lines of interminable length, which is how Oxford University Press uses it.

Wanna see Minion used well? Look at a Vintage paperback of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Madeline and its philosophy; a shootout

Winter is here in earnest. Snow covers the ground (thankfully, the sun sets appreciably later than at solstice-time). Samuel and I hardly ever go out strolling any more – unlike the little girls who walk around Paris, “in rain or shine,” in Madeline, which has become Samuel’s favorite book.

We read it daily. I used to struggle with the lines of poetry because they’d often break in the middle of a clause, but now I can utter them smoothly enough. The trick is to stress the RHYMES: “Madeline woke up two HOURS / later, in a room with FLOWERS.”

Madeline is not a very profound book, though the philosopher Thomas Hurka quotes from it to summarize his theory of what distinguishes the virtuous: “They smiled at the good / and frowned at the bad.” He omits the line: “And sometimes they were very sad.” (I suppose that when these little Parisian girls are sad for the soldier who has returned, wounded, from the colonies, it can be construed as another example of their “frowning” at the bad.)

On the other hand, the girls neglect to “thank the Lord [they] are well”; indeed, they are sad that they are not ill (they covet the benefits that their friend receives as compensation for having been ill). Perhaps they are not so virtuous after all.

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And now, some outdated news too important not to mention. Barcelona defeated Liga de Quito in the “return” leg of Ecuador’s championship round and, for the sixteenth time, won the Serie A.

I missed the game, alas. It was held on Tuesday night of last week – not on Wednesday night, as I had expected. Apparently, Barcelona “parked the bus” all game long and waited for the penalty shootout. Not very glorious.

Then again, just winning in Quito is difficult enough. This was Barcelona’s first victory in Liga’s stadium since it was inaugurated in 1997.

I was especially pleased for Matías Oyola, Barcelona’s captain and long-serving midfielder, who played his last game before retiring. He scored in the shootout. He contributed to three of Barcelona’s championships.

Here is a video of the shootout.

New Year’s Eve

It’s the last week of the winter holiday. I’m sick. Worse, my thoughts have been woeful. But thanks to Karin, it hasn’t been a woeful year.

I’m grateful, also, to the Ecuadorian soccer players for winning all four of their World Cup qualifiers. Here are their goals, set to stirring music.

More of the same music.

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My “best of 2015” prizes:

Best Movie. This year I saw only three new movies: Minions, Ex Machina, and Paddington. Each was good in its way. But the award goes to Minions. The Best Supporting Actress prize goes to Queen Elizabeth II, of Minions.

Best Song. I haven’t listened to very many new songs (let alone albums). But clearly the best song of the year was “Hotline Bling.”

Best Music Video. “Hotline Bling” – there were many excellent videos of this track, but this one was the best.

Best Philosophy Book. Tom Hurka’s British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing. Fascinating. Breathtaking. One hundred years of insular reasoning, distilled with Hurka-l-ean effort.

Best Fiction Book. I’ve not read anything from this year. I started reading Slade House, but what with my illness, I couldn’t hold myself up against the blast of David Mitchell’s authorial voice. Maybe when I feel better.

Ana & David never came up from Houston; Edoarda & Stephen are in Nicaragua; Martin & Mary are going to a New Year’s Eve party. I await my Sweetie for a peaceful evening on the couch.