The ABC of Fonts: Albertus, Baskerville and Comic Sans is the story of three different typefaces told across three small books written by Simon Garfield and published by Orion
The first is Gartfield’s favourite display face, the second is his favourite text face, and the third is - the third is Comic Sans. Together, they may be the only typefaces you will ever need. At the very least I can promise three fascinating accounts of how these unique visual languages came to be and why they’ve endured (Albertus is from the 1930s, Baskerville from the 1750s, and Comic Sans will be 30 in 2024). Each of the three made a brief appearance in Garfield’s book Just My Type in 2010, but they now have a show of their own. The story of Albertus (or at least Garfield’s telling of it) begins in the Bronx in 1973 at the birth of hip hop before taking over much of London. The story of Baskerville examines the obsessions of the man who made it and the restless safari of his corpse. And the tragi-comic story of Comic Sans relates how a typeface got out of control.