Type surrounds us at every moment of our waking hours—from the mundane
line items on the bills we pay and the labels on our food to transcendent explosions
of alphabetic experience in posters, on the Web, and on TV.We pass thousands
of typographic messages every day,most of which we discard or fail to see at all.



Typography stands at the crossroad of the beautiful and
the useful. Like a painting, it is something to look at and
contemplate for its form. Unlike a painting, it is also something
concretely functional since it is meant to be read.
It’s helpful to think about type as being like architecture—
designing a house is ultimately useless if, in the end, the
house falls down or fails to keep out the rain.