I invited Resnick to take a look at the design of The Harvard Lampoon, the so-called humor magazine that used to be occasionally published by the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization of the same name, and The Advocate Gazing at the cover of The Harvard Lampoon, Resnick identifies two different fonts in the magazine heading. One is particularly hard to place.

“It is probably Futura, but it’s been altered by giving it parallel cuts at the edges of the ‘A’ and the ‘M’ … If you look at the tops of those letters, the sharp points, that too is very Futura,” says Resnick. The choice presents an objective set of implications. “It speaks of the industrial era but it has a little bit of Art Deco in it. There’s a little bit of decoration in it.”

As for the title of The Advocate, Resnick mines the slight curve of just one letter for a world of meaning. “The way in which it’s drawn is a digital response. Look at the way the curves are drawn, especially on the ‘C.’ It’s not a smooth ‘C,’” says Resnick. “It’s like it would be in a digital ‘C;’ it’s pixilated … The type itself, because of the way in which it is drawn, reveals to me it’s from a digital time.” To my untrained eye, I just see the third letter of the alphabet, but one letter for Resnick can tell a historical story. For typographers, the unit of meaning is miniscule. The finest grain of typographical substance is not in the differences between typefaces or even those between given letters. These atoms of meaning are the subtle curves and flourishes within each line of a letter and its infinite variations. For experts, the art in font occurs primarily at the microscopic level.

However, my inability to see these hidden meanings in font is the goal at which good typography aims. In the misuse of fonts—like Comic Sans on an ambulance—the mismatch of style and substance is clear. But when a font is achieving its purpose, it gains seamlessness, even invisibility. Then, it can be truly appreciated by those who notice a distinctly rounded serif.

“If you choose the right typeface and use it the right way, chances are the reader won’t notice,” says Freyer. “What you hope will happen is that they’ll read the text and the use of that font will make it smoother, or it will evoke the right mood.” For Freyer, this function of font is analogous to that of punctuation in a sentence. A reader may not notice each punctuation mark, but every one of them works in concert to frame the meaning of actual content.

EXPRESSIVE PRESS

Back in the Bow & Arrow Press, Ollier shows me the layout of a California Job Case, a wooden box called a typecase drawer that is used to store the letters, symbols, and numbers used in letterpress printing. The drawer is organized to make typesetting more expedient, the letterpress equivalent of our QWERTY keyboards. The letters are not arranged alphabetically and seem haphazard until Ollier explains, “The order of letters in the English language is not ‘a,’ ‘b,’ ‘c,’ ‘d,’ ‘e.’” It is in the order of greatest frequency, at least for lowercase letters: “a,” “t,” “e,” “s,” “o,” and “n.” Numerals and symbols are at the top of the case and at the right are less frequently used capital letters. I am reminded that in an art form lacking automation, this sort of preparation is necessary.

That said, the press is not a time capsule immune to the needs of modern typography. It seeks to revivify an old form but functions also to recast the digital fonts of today in their historical context. Daniel A. Gross ’13, a Student Print Master at the Bow & Arrow Press, uses Times New Roman for his papers. After two years of working at the press, he does not plan to stop using Times New Roman. However, he has an appreciation for letterpress and font choice. Perhaps it is reserved for the three hours of Open Press Night every Thursday—when any student can come and experiment with the press—and put aside when reading period comes along, but the awareness is there. “It’s nice to take things that people look at every day and charge them with significance. People read text all day long, especially at this school, and to take that kind of text [as having] an aesthetic meaning, not just an expressive meaning, is great.”

—Staff writer Hayley C. Cuccinello can be reached at hcuccinello@college.harvard.edu.