Good Grief!

Because this is my weblog, and I can damn well beat a dead horse if I feel like it, here are some final thoughts on the font and dating discussion.

Philip from Hoptown weighed in:

Men tend to use whatever font their computer is stuck on. Women are more promiscuous and experiment with fonts of different degrees of femininity.

And check out Whitebait in the City, a new and interesting Aussie weblog. Whitebait links to a great saga about Stephen Banham, a typeface-obsessed Australian, and his crusade against Helvetica. A few highlights that are relevant to the current topic:

• Banham insists that Helvetica is a lifestyle font and “an easy, lazy way to look cool.”
• Rick Poynor, a British design writer, says that Helvetica is “placeless and lacks imagination and warmth.”
• An Austrian designer, Clemens Schedler, says, “Helvetica is sex without love. Its lack of volition is pure denial. You can do what you want with it, it doesn’t resist or agree.”

Beware the Helvetica man, Sassy J—especially if that’s what his computer is stuck on.