Letter Feet

You ever get mad at learning? Like the fact that you learned something when you were trying to just vegetate about? Well I learned against my will today.

So some guy I might be crushing on a bit complemented some lettering I did on my work notes a couple weeks ago. Annoyingly, that was all it took for me to take lettering up as a small passion. Okay, I’m not actually that shallow; making things cute does help me focus and give a shit about work, and I’m in a rut where my daily task lists are getting redundant and boring.

We CANNOT let the daily task lists get redundant and boring.

I desperately need lists to function. It just so happens that now I’m accomplishing that with lettering rather than just colors like I usually do. Because cute guys I guess. Whatever gets you there.

So back to today, I went on break just to get french fries. I get my fries, think about lettering and recall the new discount store in town had a decent book section. Last I went, there were nice chalk art/calligraphy books I wanted, but I had already overextended my budget. I stopped by, and bought three different books on lettering. No, wait…two. Only two, I told myself to chill and put some down. Yes, there were even more than three books on the topic there.

I still have a lot of time in my lunch hour, so I sit and skim some of my new books before heading back into the office. There was a page basically showing like…the anatomy of type, I guess you could say. And I had never known or even ever thought about serifs.

Guys, the names of fonts, MEAN SOMETHING. Or at least some do. I had zero clue the little letter feet had a name. Which makes footless letters, without or SANS feet, or SERIFS. SANS SERIFS oh my God.

That’s fucking crazy. LETTER FEET. We have a name for them! And we’ve like…always had a name for them.

Well I didn’t really need that epiphany today, so I’m mad. It’s not like some random thought I can just forget as quickly as I learned it. I am always typing, reading, doing something with or without letter feet. I’m choosing fonts probably every day of my life. And they meant nothing. The names of fonts were completely arbitrary. But noooooo, not anymore. It’s not that I hate learning, it’s just that I’d kind of appreciate a heads up before gaining a knowledge that I can’t unsee for the rest of my life. Random Wednesdays on break from work are for mindless nonsense, y’know? I just wanted some french fries.

When I went back to work, I told my colleague about the earth-shattering discovery of serifs,

AND SHE ALREADY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE. Well not how I described them, necessarily.

So I don’t know. Is this just general knowledge? Am I slow? Can we please normalize the term “letter feet?”

Let me know in the comments.

PS: The fries made me sick, so even though I did not care to learn anything new today, I guess I’m glad I got something good out of my lunch break. I knew I had no business ordering anything from Chick-Fil-A. It’s kinda what I deserve. Anyways, ciao for now.