I'll only ever buy a VW vehicle because of my German roots :D

Unfortunately, VW doesn't make a minivan to suit the growing family and their new SUV is too small - Dare I say Dodge or Chrysler.

Stuart :D

Don't you dare, Stuart. Simply wait one more year. The Microbus: 2005.

http://www.vw.com/concept/index.htm

As to the topic at hand: Strangely, whenever I'm on a type-buying binge, I tend to feel rather Dutch.

Jon, a Norwegian-American...

Am I unpatriotic? ;) I'm sorry I cannot limit myself to one kind of cheese.

Perhaps I can sqeeze them into a Dune Beetle :D

The more I thought about the original post, the more obvious it became to me that I have no predisposition to purchasing particular fonts because of who made them or their country of origin.

I'll site Cottingly as one of my alltime favorite typefaces and its designer hails from the UK.

See! Simple as that! It's also hard to ignore a successful typeface like Fontesque from our pal Nick Shinn up in Canada. It's become an incredibly popular display face in the US.

I guess a great typeface is a great typeface and I'd personally be reluctant to go out of my way to find a "local" homerolled version of something that already is exactly what I want.

That's my opinion when it comes to purchasing type. Regarding other products I purchase, I think I may have a bias due to regionality, relationship to my personal background, etc. - less 'legitimate' reasons and more 'gut' reasons.

Hopefully I'm not going too far into a tangent, but I think my purchase decisions are based mostly on historical purchase experiences, sense of value for amount paid, packaging/ambiance, and cost.

Type patriotism is silly.

vw made a minivan:

http://touran.volkswagen.de/

>Type patriotism is silly.

If there were two typefaces of equal merit, one from a 'local' designer and one from a 'foreign' designer does local win hands down?

Kris, sure I like to support locals just as much as the next guy, I just don't think it should be a criterea for choosing a typeface. Design, legibility and visual qualities should. Choosing a font because it's local is like choosing it for it's name. Or only designing stuff in your local-football-team-colours.

Kenn, I think that is exactly what I am trying to say! Thats what "typefaces of equal merit" meant. I guess it is hard to make yourself clear in the middle of the night after being told that a potential client wants the brand designed for free but wants to pay for the posters/implemetnation.

I'm not so Patriotic, but I do like Retro stuff, love the Snappy Hour Images Stuart (I bought a licence)

Thanks Daniel!

Acutally I had a different angle on this question . . .

Say I'm an Art Director in Toronoto and I want to capture the regional flavor. Chances are I'd want to use a face that reflects that flavor and more than likely it'd be a face developed locally.

The job of an Art Director is to do as much as they can to influence a purchase decision to 'joe public' to buy what they are creating advertising for. If 'joe public' lives in a specific region, I'd be a fool not to design work that they can relate to visually.

It's part of that whole advertising, getting into the consumers head, blah blah making them feel familiar with the message I'm trying to create for them . . .

Stuart :D

I'm also not a type patroit.

BUT, we have run into difficulty buying fonts from other countries.

When we bought a set of multiple-work station fonts from Switzerland a couple of years ago, the over $1000 U.S. price tag triggered some kind of mechanism under the Patriot Act.

My colleague had a lovely time trying to explain to some bored government official how it is possible to pay that much money for "a couple of fonts". They were positive we were involved in something nefarious and held up the transaction for several days.

> Say I'm an Art Director in Toronoto and I want to
> capture the regional flavor. Chances are I'd want to
> use a face that reflects that flavor and more than
> likely it'd be a face developed locally.

I'm just having a good time trying to imagine what a regional Toronto style typeface would look like. Hogtown Gothic? Bloor Street Bold? CN Tower Triple Condensed?

Maybe of note to the large turnout from the
Minneapolis crew in this post (Stuart, Jon and Kristin),
is Frederick Warde's Arrighy italic cut for Monotype.
Warde was born in Wells Minnesota.

Americans should be star spangled patriotic and buy American type designs from a mysterious Italian owning a Finnish Company.

Grant,

For that matter, at a time like this, I should remind you "I am a Canadian". The beaver is a noble animal. Long live the Queen and all that rot.

Send cheques to: (French spelling.)
http://lanstontype.com/lanstonaddress.html

Buying from anyone else would be treasonous.

> ...I should remind you �I am a Canadian�.

As am I, which makes purchasing those American-Italian-Finnish typefaces from you very convenient indeed. No exchange rates to mess with... say, do you accept Canadian Tire money?

I have no 'patriotic' preferences when I buy type. Seems foolish to me. If anything, I'd buy from a company that I like for other reasons. Besides, I don't think my occasional type buying affects the economy all that much.

I like certain designers more than I like certain countries, too.

I (also) am Canadian. A chesterfield is a couch, a toque is a hat and it's Zed not Zee

I really find it odd though that my school, The Ontario College of Art and Design (http://www.ocad.on.ca) tends to use a significant ammount of british design in it's new image, including architect Will Alsop and Priori (by Jonathan Barnbrook) being the schools new official typeface. Priori appears in the new school logo, and on other offical school documents (I've only seen Bold Sans Small Caps in use, but I wonder if the school will ever use other members of the Priori family in the future)
I like the new building and the rebranding, but as one of Canada's leading school of art & design, you'd think they would've considered a canuck approach.

I'm still slightly spooked by the fact that there's something called 'The Patriot Act'...

It gives me the willies. When they give it a name like that, they're basically saying, "You don't agree with the policy? Then you must be a traitor." Next thing you know, the Republican Party will rename themselves the Patriot Party.

> Next thing you know, the Republican Party
> will rename themselves the Patriot Party.

May I suggest something from the Barnbrook collection for the imminent rebranding? Actually, Patriot is much too obvious a choice... Tomahawk has a nice ring to it though...

I think they'd go with something more modern, like Times New Roman.

Grant, Tomahawk is the name of a Cruise Missle. Just think any time they fire one of those 1 Million US tax dollars goes up in smoke.

I think you mean $1,000,000 Canadian. Apparently the going rate is less that $600K US.

http://web.ask.com/web?q=how+much+does+a+tomahawk+cruise+missile+cost%3F&o=0&qsrc=0&askbutton.x=30&askbutton.y=12

Does that bring the thread back on-topic?

Si

>>I'm still slightly spooked by the fact that there's something called 'The Patriot Act'...

It freaks me out too, but then I live in a country where you can still be beheaded for treason...

There was a thread (which I cannot find) about the fonts that represent nations.
http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/
to bring this neatly back to New Zealand.
By the way, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act abolished the death penalty for Treason and Piracy,
Aha me Hearties.

> Grant, Tomahawk is the name of a Cruise Missle.

Oh, please be assured that I knew that when I posted. It was a gentle nod to the party being discussed.

Forget cruise missiles, what you really want to buy is a MIG-29. Unfortunately, they won't ship to Canada.

Grant, Tomahawk is the name of a Cruise Missle. Just think any time they fire one of those 1 Million US tax dollars goes up in smoke.

Every time a Tomahawk Cruise missile is fired my thoughts shall be with the american tax payers.

�

MIG-29's are not very patriotic...

Deciding on a face for patriotic reasons has only ever happened to me when the project at hand is rather patriotic. Sounds heady I know, but design-wise it can play into ethics - when the project at hand is very public to that nation - one has to think about repercussions however minor - not that any of you here think of type as a minor decision of course.

"Type patriotism" has neocon chauvinistic implications. Put differently, nation hands, mother tongues, cultural considerations, certainly there is room for that.

After all, we are folk artists����

> MIG-29's are not very patriotic...

They are to me! The "Mi" in "MiG" stands for Migoyan, the Armenian head designer.
The smaller your nation the more patriotism makes sense.

hhp

Not bad for someone who was notable for "growing up in a remote Asian village."

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Aerospace/Mig/Aero61.htm

Si

>Every time a Tomahawk Cruise missile is fired my thoughts shall be with the american tax payers.

At least you guys get some bang fir your buck. All we get is funding for education, health and all those other boring things. Give us some missiles! More jets! A space station! Stop wasting my hard earned taxmoney on sick people!

either your cruising for a bruising or your awfully sarcastic.

health - boring? give you some missiles?

news flash: the sick people are the ones who use the missiles or are either the ones who are hit by them.

>>either your cruising for a bruising or your awfully sarcastic

I'm awfully sarcastic. Sorry if I offended you. I don't really like missiles at all.

*sigh*. Back to nodes.

kris.

Kris, smileys work miracles. Tanya don't tell me
you took his remark seriously. It oozed irony all the way.

This thread reminds me of something I once read about
the new signage for the subway system of some city in
the United States. My recollections are pretty vague,
but IRRC they had used Gill Sans and the author was
wondering if maybe it had been more appropriate to use
something like Franklin Gothic. I wasn't so sure what to
think of it, but after reading stuff by Jean Fran�ois and Hrant
about the relation of typefaces to culture and language
I guess he may have had a point.

Yves,

It oozed irony all the way.

������������������

Cool� it's Yves, the irony expert. You should open up a dry cleaning business

Been hiding these days or what?

Hi mister G! Long time no see! Didya get my New Year's
Card in the end? It got sent back the first time.

I'm not hiding, I'm so friggin' busy with the Type ID Board I
can only occasionaly check on General Discussions. Lame
excuse I know but I can't help it.

Yves, that's exactly why I pulled out of the ID section - well, that and being dethroned as "Fastest Draw in the West" by Eduardo! ;-)

hhp

Well, you must see this !!!

Scaryshit.
You guys need to get TAG to do your timing now.

hhp

I simply gave up. The only thing that keeps me going
nowadays is the vain illusion that I'm running that place...

... although "strolling that place" is a more accurate
definition when you compare it to what people like Karl,
Franz, Eduardo et al are doing.