Iconic books are texts revered as objects of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight. In religious and secular rituals around the globe, people carry, show, wave, touch and kiss books and other texts, as well as read them. This blog chronicles such events and activities. (For more about iconic books, see the links to the Iconic Books Project at left.)

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Greater Truthiness with Baskerville

Errol Morris wrote a two-part essay in the New York Times about the effects of type-fonts. He used an online quiz to test whether six different fonts affected people's answers. He found that more people believed a statement printed in Baskerville than in Georgia, Helvetica and three others. Along the way, he has much to say about the tendency inherited from reading hand-writing to evaluate letter-forms for the credibility of what is written--the legitimacy earned from iconic fonts. He also summarizes John Baskerville's turbulant life.

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