by Tim Kitz

A

t our last Production Weekend, Leveller editors denounced each other for preferring Comic Sans to Garamond and vice-versa.

It turns out that there is no left and right wing in the editorial board of the Leveller – there is only serif and sans serif.

Next time we figure we should do a mock radical trial. Can you imagine? “You stand accused of a heinous betrayal of the revolution. Our finest spies have gathered authoritative rumours that you … ACTUALLY LIKE COMIC SANS”

Font Wars: A Parable in Dialectic

“No! That’s not true! My finger slipped when I was trying to change the default font to Avenir Next Demi Bold!”

“Avenir … Next … Demi Bold?! Surely you mean Avenir Medium Oblique!”

“No! Avenir Medium Oblique? The most reactionary of all the Avenirs?

“Reactionary? What nonsense!”

“But it’s true! Medium Oblique is so … obliquely middle-of-the road, so subtly middle-class, so … liberal. Why it’s right in the font’s name.”

“Well, make up your mind, is it reactionary or is it liberal? Your analysis lacks political rigour!”

“It’s both! Avenir Medium Oblique is … the ultimate bourgeois font!”

[Collective gasps]

“Why I bet if we opened your laptop, we would find that you had even reduced its size from 12 to 11 points! You are using a smaller version of this font!”

“But … I …”

“You, my dead comrade – well, you’re no comrade at all. YOU are a PETIT BOURGEOIS!”

“…”

“I rest my case. Guards, take him away –  to the guillotine!”

Rapturous Acclaim: The Revolutionary Aftermath

A fervent pandemonium reigns. Even after a full contingent of crack troops is brought in from the People’s Democratic Dictatorship Post-Revolutionary Ultra-Proletariat Advance Faction Union Peasant’s Protection Unit Guards (PDDPRUPAFUPPUG for short) to restore order and calm the delegates three hours later, the court stenographer cannot keep up as delegates literally fall over each other delivering paeons, tributes, extemporaneous manifestos, and allegorical erotic poems celebrating that most revolutionary of all fonts, Avenir Next Demi Bold. 

Eventually the stenographer is denounced for not having taken notes in Avenir Next Demi Bold. The stenographer is forced to admit to not even knowing how to draw the letters of Avenir Next Demi Bold by hand! It is believed that they were spontaneously torn to pieces on the spot. (For this righteous act, the delegates presumably piously pardoned themselves before voting themselves each a chestful of medals.)

Sadly, all records of the revolutionary process are lost from this point on, but we must assume that they are still pursuing the cause of the fontal ultra-revolution with the highest and most puritanical rigour and zeal. By the time this reaches you, dear reader, they have probably encoded their DNA in Avenir Next Demi Bold through sheer force of revolutionary will.

Note: The Leveller (mostly) follows Canadian Press Stylebook, which advises that “The newsroom can be a very stressful place” and “Avoid… an excessive intake of caffeine and alcohol.”

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