The eagerly anticipated 2009 Philosophical Gourmet report has been released recently. For those who are unfamiliar, the gourmet is a ranking of anglophone philosophy departments. As usual, the rankings have been scrutinized and discussed endlessly on blogs and in real-life. But I want to examine one shortcoming that I think has not been noted:
The typeface used in the logo.
(old logo)
(new logo)
To the best of my approximation (with the help of Identifont and WhatTheFont), the old logo uses Alinea Sans Bold (see comment below) and the new logo uses Arial Narrow Bold. (The oldest logo seems to use Univers Bold.)
The question is, why the change? As anyone who lists Helvetica as one of their favorite movies on their facebook profile knows, Arial sucks. That, and the fact that the old logo was perfect serviceable, makes the change mysterious. Even on a first pass, I thought the old logo looked better. I especially liked R. So I think the Philosophical Gourmet has really taken a step back this year. Bummer!
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4 March, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Mihira Jayasekera
Hey Sam — how’s it going? One of your loyal readers (who shall remain nameless) alerted me to this post. In case you’re interested, my guess is that the font in the previous logotype was Myriad, not Alinea Sans. Myriad shows up in…myriad places (sorry) now that it’s a default font on Macs. I think you’re right about Arial Narrow on the new logotype (though that weird hook on the ‘r’ in Gourmet threw me — probably an artifact from anti-aliasing/exporting as GIF). Speaking of Helvetica the movie, did you hear about Hustwit’s new project, Objectified? The trailer is phenomenal. We should catch it together if we’re both back in AA at the same time.
Cheers,
-Mihira
4 March, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Shen-yi Liao
hey mihira. it’s good to have a real designer visit! you’re right, of course, that it’s myriad. (i looked at `a’ more closely.) i’d really want to see objectified; i’ll be in ann arbor in the summer, if you’re around.
5 March, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Mihira Jayasekera
I’ll be back in late June/early July. I guess no screenings have been announced for Ann Arbor yet, but hopefully it’ll get there by mid- to late-summer. Hope all’s well in New Haven — keep up the crustiness.