COLD TYPE: A Baltimore Media Blog
by JOAN JACOBSON
At the bottom right-hand corner of yesterday’s Baltimore Sun is an explanation about the paper’s new typeface that couldn’t be further from the truth: “To Our readers: Today you may notice that we have changed the newspaper’s type styles to improve readability.”
The reason for the new typeface (as anyone left at the Sun will tell you) is to conform with the typeface of other Tribune newspapers so out of town stories can be plunked into the paper without readers noticing that both the news – and the typeface – are not locally produced.
The note did not tell us the name of the Tribune type face, but it replaces one that was designed especially for the Sun in 2005 to be easier to read. That type was named for Baltimore’s most famous journalist, the prolific and confounding genius, H.L. Mencken.
Mencken Text, as the website Typofonderie tells us, was designed by Jean Francois Porchez and chosen only after focus groups (back when the Sun could afford such superfluous expenses) and readers said they favored the Mencken Text over the old Sun typefaces.
Five years ago the Sun even heralded the new typeface (exclusively used by the Sun until 2008) with a special page explaining how and why it was chosen:
“We communicate with our readers using type — lots of it. The challenge is to make the type speak through the use of distinctive shapes, styles, curves and sizes. We’ve met that goal by creating a new typeface we call Mencken.”
As of yesterday, the Mencken type is gone, along with much of the spirit of the kind of news stories for which Mencken – and hundreds of Baltimore journalists who followed him – were famous.
Long live Mencken – and his type.
