Typeface Personals Ads: Rejected submission to McSweeney's, 5/31/2000 (never submitted)

The Personals

“Good letters are rare. Most of the letters we see about us are ugly, inadequate, or erratic.”

Jan Tschichold, 1952

Computer screen humanist sans serif seeks modern sans serif with a light stroke contrast for conversation, friendship, smokers OK (Reply to box: Verdana)

Renaissance old style, standard among book designers and printers for four centuries, seeks Renaissance old style revival for output at all resolutions (Reply to box: Garamond)

Classical sans serif, simple, functional, famous, good listener, seeks a good bread-and-butter typeface for most jobs (Reply to box: Arial)

Transitional typeface, generous proportions, marked differences between fine and bold strokes, seeks explicitly classical typeface for serious relationship (Reply to box: Baskerville)

Pure, simple but not artificial sans serif, classical proportions, legible in text and display, seeks elegant, readable humanistic typeface, no serifs, drugs, fatties (reply to box: Gill Sans)

20th century humanistic serif typeface, beautiful, classical lines, seeks excellent text typeface to give sparkle to long text passages (Reply to box: Perpetua)

POSTSCRIPT: In a semi-related vein, this Typography Class project seems like a damn fun exercise, although those example personal ads are completely implausible (nobody is gonna spend the dough to say "If you have kids that is great," when they can just say, "You, kids? Great!" and save a bundle .... although it does occur to me that that shorthand is rife with dangers for misinterpretation ... Anyway, I did my "Typographic Personal Ads" goof first! And there's no subtextual tolerance for pedophilia at all in it! Sorry, Catholic Church.)