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Mixing Garamonds

It is well-known that typophiles do not like ITC Garamond. They are also not fans of Adobe Garamond. But when the two get mixed in one book, they blow all their renaissance fuses. Excerpts from some posts. MB is Matthew Butterick and CL is Chris Lozos.

MB: I was examining a paperback copy of the book "The No-Asshole Rule" in the airport. I was curious how you get a whole book out of a title that seems fairly self-explanatory. The text was set in ITC Garamond, which would be bad enough on its own, but the italic used in the text was not ITC Garamond italic, but rather Adobe Garamond italic. At that point, the book lost all credibility, because despite the title, it was clear that an asshole had been allowed to handle the typography. No-Asshole Rule: flagrantly violated. [...] To combine ITC Garamond and Adobe Garamond like this requires a willful act of perversity and disharmony. It would be easier to just use ITC Garamond italic. But here, the book designer expended time and labor to produce something even uglier.

CL: You are assuming some actual thought went into that decision. My guess is that 4th edition paperbacks that end up in airports are done "by computer" meaning humans are forbidden from taking part in the process because they require an hourly rate and health insurance. My guess is that Adobe Garamond Italic came earliest on the font menu so was selected. No one cares what poor schleps who can only buy books in airports have to suffer. After all, they are about to get crammed into a tincan with bad air and poor service where they will not only contract some dreaded disease but be late for their meeting anyway. ;-) That surely is a job coveted only by assholes.

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