I certainly wouldn’t want to read a whole book set in that. Okay for display, or very short text in certain advertising or brochure usage. Within the more modest range of good “transparent” text typefaces there is still plenty of diversity for variations in the tone the typographer wants to convey.

Oh my god, I thought I’d never get through that book. Not because it wasn’t good (it was), but because of that horrendous typeface! Thanks for saying something!

Yeah - thanks.

R

Sovereign Light is all wrong, but I give them credit for trying to be original. Does anyone recall a unique choice of typeface in a novel that actually worked well?

Eileen

See, as a book designer, that’s my biggest—maybe my only—no-no: interfering with the reader’s experience of the writer’s work. A quirky—more so in the Light—but not unattractive typeface, the serifs are a distraction. Choosing a typeface such as that for main body text makes the book about the design (form), as opposed to the subject (substance).

Nick Shinn did a unique but appropriate one for Duddy Kravitz that works very well.
http://www.randomhouse.ca/richler/
http://www.shinntype.com/richler.html

R

Russell - that font is simply gorgeous. Thanks for posting it!

Steve - What if YOU wrote the novel? (A novel about a type designer, of course.) What font would you use for your own book?

E

It could be an interesting exercise to use type to influence the mood of the reader and the way the book is read, like the sound track in a movie... Helvetica for the business man, a classic typewriter font for the detective and Sovereign Light would of course be the villain.

... or maybe not.

R

I’m glad others feel the same here, and appreciate Steve’s comment of interfering with reader experience.

Is it because as a shameless consumer of books usually set in same old same old, that it’s possible to just become habituated to what one perceives to be a “normal” typeface fit for purpose? (A point well made in the Speikerman short in regard to groceries.) And yes, what *would* you use if you were to write a novel? As a book designer do you have a solid set of guaranteed fonts you’d fall back on and run into a burning office to save?

As a designer - not books may I hasten to add - I do appreciate the publishers trying something new; and as a face per se I quite like Sovereign - I just wasn’t expecting to see it there, mixed with another indented serif (I think Garamond) when Thomas switched between narration and citation.

But maybe like any new - almost rebranding I suppose - exercise should be tested out on us, the great unwashed before being released into the wild? Does such a practise exist, or is book publishing centred upon fail safes and tradition or what the design team like?

I really like where you’re going, Russell — the challenge would be to make it work gracefully without interrupting the flow. It may be impossible. Any thoughts?

I’m coming dangerously close to asking the question: “if you were a font, what font would you be?”

Eileen

Eileen Burke Graphic Design

I frequently wake up as Blur, aim towards Univers with the assistance of coffee and end up as Helvetica Rounded and hope noone notices. Um...

Russell: Sovereign Light as the villain...it’s the font used for narration. I do hope you’ve not predicted the ending here... ;)

Oops, Spoiler alert... Sorry :o)
R

I wouldn’t want to read that. You are right about Sovereign Light being too distracting; it’s just too noticeable to be a text face. I would find it extremely irritating to read for any length of time.

I admit it’s a turkey - I was trying to do something different when I designed it - I don’t know what the hell I was thinking of. I quite liked it while I was working on it, but now with the benefit of hindsight, (and not seeing it for a while) I’m not keen at all!

Anyway, you will not have to suffer it very often; it hardly sells any copies at all! So that’s good!

I can only apologise from the bottom of my heart and promise to only design good typefaces in the future.

I just Googled it - the book also uses Geetype - any adverse comments on that?

Nick Cooke

Even an appropriate text font can be hard to read if it isn’t set well - too small, too tight, bad H&Js, too close to the gutter, even no ligatures can be distracting. I read a book recently that was justified with no hyphens. Some of the word spacing was absurdly loose.

But nothing more so than the problem I’m facing right now - I accidentally ordered the large print edition of a book recently from Amazon. The type is probably at least 16 or 18 points, looks like a kid’s book. But it’s making the book a real page-turner.

I won’t hazard a guess—because that is what it would be for a book that I have no familiarity with—for an alternate to Sovereign Light in the case of The End of Mr. Y. When I design a book I don’t choose typefaces without getting a “feel” for the book first. But it got me thinking, in longer terms than a post here should take up. So I blogged about it on my blog at Tiano Design.

Nick: It certainly wasn’t an adverse comment to the font, as I said, I do quite like it - just being used inappropriately I thought - and that’s what I was getting at.

simon (feeling guilty)

i can’t believe your only complaint with the book is the typeface... did you reach the end...?