Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Typing myself a letter ... indirectly

When I opened the mailbox yesterday, I was excited to see an airmail envelope. Could this be a letter from one of my typospherian correspondents in Mexico, Germany, or many other countries?

But no—on closer look, it was retro-styled mail from a nonprofit organization.



I almost tossed it in the recycling, but decided to rip open the envelope and found a fundraising letter from FINCA, which promotes microloans and other economic solutions in developing countries. The letter was adorned with an image of a Polaroid, with a "typewritten" message on it ...



... But wait! That's my Remington Noiseless font!

It is a very odd experience to be one of thousands of recipients of a mass mailing, and then to discover my own creation within the mail, based on the typing of my first and dearest typewriter.



Remington Noiseless is a popular font, and I've run across it in unexpected places before, as I did on a recent trip to Oakland.

If you'd like to have it, please help yourself.

As for microloans, they have mixed success.






12 comments:

  1. That's SO COOL, Richard! Your contributions to the Typosphere are definitely felt far and wide. So validating to see it manifest in weird & interesting ways like this piece of mail!

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  2. Heh, now you know you've arrived - when everyone's stealing from you! Your immortality is assured :D

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  3. Your font will go down in history along with some works by great classical music composers who used to use some of each others work and think it great that someone else liked it enough to use it.

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  4. Congratulations on such a unique form of notoriety! I've heard of a couple similar examples: an online vendor I buy products from has mentioned their photo of a glass of wheatgrass juice has been used all across the internet. And closer to home, a photo of a friend's child leads the results when one Googles "child temper tantrum".

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    1. For a long time, a photo of my Underwood no. 5 was the top result on Google images for "typewriter." Now I think it's #10 or so. This kind of meme-creation is slightly gratifying. I wouldn't call it notoriety for me, though, since hardly anyone who uses the photo or the font has a clue who I am. Which is fine with me!

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    2. Would you link to that photo? Now I'm wondering if it's the same machine on my I ♥︎ MY [typewriter] bumpersticker.

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    3. Yep, that's your typewriter I have on the back of my car. Good shot!

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  5. That's really funny! Whether you are famous or not, at least your typewriter is!

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  6. I confess to having used the Remington Noiseless from time to time, but have found that the Lucida typeface is a wonderful one for exhibit labels. Thank you for makiing it--and the other typewriter fonts--available!

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  7. Lol on the last line. I have seen more use of typewriter fonts lately. I used to do some of that work when the software was first available. Tedious, but maybe it is much easier now. A me ‘to-do’ list item.

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