F+S Typography Not Acknowledged in Award Competitions

When I was back home last month, my boss gave me an article to look at, that she thought I would find interesting; she was correct. The article is called "The Best Font for the Job: Typography in Caldecott Winners 1990-2010" by Thomas Phinney and Lesley Colabucci. This article can be found in Volume 8 Number 3 Winter 2010 edition of Children & Libraries, the journal of the Association for Library Service to Children.

At the beginning of this journal is a note from their editor Sharon Verbeten. I was entertained when reading it because it starts by stating that she has been the editor of several magazines and she has never felt compelled to write about her commentary to the articles until now. She stated that the article by Phinney and Colabucci made her look at books in a new way. I just felt like it was an unneeded spot in the magazine. It made me feel as if she was trying too hard to give exposure to the article; it felt out of place. Meanwhile, if you look at the typography used throughout the magazine, you may think the article did not respond to the correct people. I know from past experiences that you will not always have the kind of freedom to play around with type and layout; but there has to be some way that they can fix their typography and design.

The most interesting part of the article was the fact that typography was not part of the judging criteria. I am still a bit baffled by that not being part of the criteria. I know that when I look at books or anything with text what I look at is the overall product. I know that now having gone through two typography classes and having gained more of an interest in type I am a more sensitive to text in general; but I know that even though many of us were taught as children "not to judge a book by its cover," it still happen and it still does. So I question if some other aspect of the book that was actually graded received a lower score because of the overall design not piecing together.

Phinney and Colabucci decided to do was look at the past winners of the Caldecott and judge their typography, splitting the winners into different groups based on effectiveness of typography. In the article, specific book titles are mentioned and discussed very briefly about how the text does or does not work within the book in a sentence or two.