Typography for Lawyers
typographyforlawyers.com
typographyforlawyers.com
Of course, the two aims are not mutually exclusive.
http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=766
You have to activate it by checking a box in the Font dialog box... so irrational it's painful to contemplate.
I can imagine they did this for backward compatibility's sake (kerning would impact page layout), but consider the fact that 90% of the word processed documents produced today have crappy kerning because it was hidden behind a checkbox nobody will ever touch.
Though I also think typography is important, you end up with a lot of non-serious and bad lawyers simply looking serious with good typography because that's what the serious and good lawyers do. Bad content is still bad content no matter how you dress it up.
And when typography is used as a signal, as more bad lawyers adopt it, it becomes a less and less effective signal--until it becomes standard fare, and not useful at all for telling serious lawyers from non-serious ones.
Things that are "in style" slowly erode in distinguishability as they become mainstream and overused, and then the better elements from older looks are remixed into something distinctive and those who have the motivation and wherewithal to try them out (you could call them the fashion-conscious) bring these new looks into vogue.
You can find this in everything: music, clothes, art, not just typography. That's not to say it's a bad thing, it's just an evolution of human interest.
Out of those fields, typography remains the most closed discipline (I would argue creating a professional typeface is on the level of carving a violin, it is much more inaccessible than combining clothing accessories or beats in audio production), and since the elite foundries are still moving into the digital age kicking and screaming, there is much interesting progress to look forward to. It will be a while before typography is starved for ideas and recycles lazy, supercommercialized dreck the way (in my opinion) pop music has gone for the YouTube/iTunes era.
Also, much of his advice doesn't apply to the web. Fonts designed for print often don't fare well on the screen, especially at small font sizes
Think of Monotype vs. Linotype as the Depression-era Mac vs. Windows and you’ve got it...(In fact, when it came time to license fonts for their operating systems, Microsoft licensed Times New Roman from Monotype and Apple licensed Times Roman from Linotype, perpetuating the schism.)
For example: http://tinypic.com/r/27y0uo3/5
1. press Command-T or choose Format > Fonts > Show Fonts
2. click the gear icon in the lower left
3. choose Typography…I agree with everything but the above.
One big problem about curly quotes is that many default Windows fonts have their curly quotes all mixed up – Verdana is one of the offenders – as you can “see here” on HN. I then just refuse to use such shoddy fonts. Not the curly quote’s fault that the font is screwed up. (You can use incorrect UTF-8 characters to get the correct curly quotes when using something like Verdana, but as soon as your text is copied and the font is changed you again end up with the wrong curly quotes.)