Font conversations
It became perfectly clear this morning that I am no longer "at the coal face" and have descended into staff work hell. While innocently sitting in my cubicle, I overheard the following conversation while folks waited around the communal printer for their print jobs:
"Did you get that e-mail about the change to paperwork formatting?"
"Yah. Now the memos need to be in Times New Roman font and the cover sheets in Arial. Why do we change these standards every few months?"
"I like Arial myself. All the other departments use Arial. No one uses Times New Roman anymore. I think people laugh at us when we present them paperwork using Times New Roman."
Wow. Can you believe that the conversation continued for a number of minutes. I cannot believe that I know work in an environment that font choice is an acceptable conversation piece.
There was a little part of me that wanted to explain that Times New Roman should be used for body text as it is a serifed font, while Arial is better for headlines or computer screens. I realized that this was a bit too typography-geek.
Comments
No, you are not too much of a typography geek. It must've been hard not to put your two cents in.
I do countless presentations every year. Giving presentations is a skill like writing or anything else. My peeves are when other presenters do annoying and avoidable presentation mistakes. These include: using serif font, using a white/light background with dark letters (dark background with light letters projects better and is easier to read), use too many lines of too small a font size (you didn't tell us to bring our binoculars, now did you?), or read the slide word for word without adding additional info or comments (BORING!).
But I try my best to be tactful and polite. I keep my thoughts to myself, unless asked.