Once used to describe a subset of a more comprehensive typeface – the letters as they appear in upper case, for example, or italicised – it is now generally used interchangeably with “typeface” itself, to mean an entire family of type. That has all changed not only did the web enable the Font Game in terms of providing the technological platform, it did so too by creating a large cohort of enthusiastic followers of fonts.Īs Simon Garfield points out in his clever and funny book on the history of typography, Just My Type, “the word ‘font’ – previously a piece of technical language limited to the design and printing trade” is now very much part of “the vocabulary of every computer user.” As it has become part of everyday speech, it has also lost some of its precision.

Outside of a small number of professionals and aficionados, there simply weren’t enough people with enough familiarity with the world of fonts – people who habitually read the medium as well as the message – to make up a viable pool of players. It is hard to imagine the Font Game gaining traction twenty or even ten years ago. It is very much a game for the times, a product of our newly acquired awareness of the significance of fonts – of the appearance of the text we read, and the impact of that appearance on our lives. There are other players who are not far behind, followed by many more who are moving up the ranks and gradually improving their recognition rate and hence their scores.

The best score “for all time” (meaning for all time so far) belongs to Theon of Guyana who has picked all thirty correctly in an impressive thirty-nine seconds, closely followed by Timi of Hobart who took only slightly longer, at forty-five seconds, to achieve perfect accuracy. THE FONT GAME, which first appeared at I Love Typography and is also available as an iPhone app, invites players to identify thirty different fonts from alternatives that are generated out of a database of “657 gorgeous samples.” Success is based on both accuracy and speed and there are three levels of difficulty – Somewhat, Rather and Exceedingly.

By Simon Garfield | Profile Books | $29.99

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