Jessica Helfand, "Typography for the People." AIGA Journal of Graphic Design 12:2 (1994) 11.

Electronic mail, which reportedly links an estimated half million people worldwide, is arguably the greatest boon to the communications industry since the invention of movable type. In recent months, electronic correspondence has moved beyond mere letter-writing to virtually revolutionize reporting (John Seabrook interviewed Bill Gates via E-mail in The New Yorker last fall); dating (electronic love letters eliminate the incriminating paper trail of their predecessors--safe sex gone digital); even taxes (electronic filers accelerate their refund, contribute to the paper reduction act, and avoid those little boxes that nobody's handwriting ever fits in anyway.)

In contrast to its precursor--commonly referred to as "snail mail"--E-mail offers increased speed at reduced cost. Moreover, E-mail seems to be the only feature of the so-called information highway that seems to be working. So why, then, in an age that boasts such enhanced communication, must we be restricted to a single ugly typeface. Might there be something better than Monaco for this all-encompassing font of choice.

In an effort to resolve this burning question, I posted such a query on two electronic bulletin boards, America OnLine and Applelink. The responses vary from the heavily cynical to the highly critical. Collectively, they reflect the widely differing points of view regarding this complex, yet ultimately rather homogenizing influence on our culture.

"Frankly," wrote Chris Black on America OnLine, "I am now so used to Monaco, I get annoyed when friends use other fonts in E-mail." He added that type on his computer screen was most readable at 9 pt, and made the rather Darwinian observation that Monaco's survival was a consequence of its being "the fittest for this purpose." My correspondent also confessed that he "wouldn't be caught dead using Monaco for hard output, though! ;)"

No, that was not a typo. The semi-colon and parenthesis mark are, in E-mail lingo, the equivalent of a smiley face. (If you think 500 years of printing history have evolved into a sophisticated communication system, think again.) "It might be good if special characters could be added to whatever font is chosen," replied America OnLine's Jonathan45, "like Smiley faces ;)." Mr. 45 went on to try and sell me his shareware smileyface font, which he's now brazenly hawking over the net. As a post-modern hieroglyph, the idea of typographic marks being assembled to suggest pictographic images is not altogether uninteresting...but surely we can do better than a smiley face, no? ;)

On to Applelink. Here, my responses were more pointedly directed toward typophiles. "Future developments should not be in the direction of a 'single all-encompassing font-of-choice,' but of a single system encompassing all choices of fonts," wrote Matt Rowe. "It should be easy enough for an E-mail application to let user specify fonts, perhaps one for screen viewing and another for printouts. In other words, it's not the font that should change, but the applications. You can use any accent or tone of voice on the telephone--why not on E-mail?" Rowe offered up Lucida Sans Typewriter as his font-of-choice for printed output.

"The solution is either make fonts that are small enough to slip transparently into the mail message or to make certain that everyone has a system that can supply a wide variety of type designs," wrote Ben B. of the Elseware Corporation. "Yes, at low resolution all fonts start to look the same, but this res is not with us forever. In the end, if I had to vote, it would have to be Teras Sans; a new face for a new medium.

The resolution issue seems to be key. "By the time you get down here (low-red monitors, 9-12 pixels per em), they all look alike," write David Berlow of the Boston-based Font Bureau. "My choice would be Interstate, the font designed for the Department of Transportation a long time ago to serve the signage needs of drivers on the last great h-way."

As a model for navigating the next great h-way--the information h-way,that is--this might now be such a bad idea. At least road signs don't use smiley faces.

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