In the end, my favorite number of all is the 2 in Akzidenz Grotesk Light. It looks like a swan that has a big neck. It doesn’t come back. American 2s always curve back. That one just has this big neck that ends short. Maybe the swan is a childish association, but to me it has this majestic “don’t touch me; leave me alone” quality, but still elegant. Swans aren’t cuddly. They’re bitches. But that’s what I like about the 2. It’s different. And it’s very difficult to do because you have this big white space, then it gets very black down there. You get some light into the top. It’s really a bitch, a total bitch to get that curve right so that it doesn’t fall over, so that it doesn’t sit on its ass. Designing a 2 or any number is always really difficult.
But maybe that’s why I like them so much.
-Erik Spiekermann, type designer
I found this quote strangely hilarious. Oh, the joys of venturing into number design.
Source: designmind.frogdesign.com
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
Source: digital.library.upenn.edu
