The importance of font choice…

Hung my stuff at the Coppercon art show. I am slowly becoming more adept at hanging art. I trace this less to any skill on my part, and more to my willingness to let James hang it all while I fill out control sheets. Got 13 pieces up, including the big acrylic kirin, so we’ll see if anything sells–art show sales are still down, although they’ve apparently improved since the original economic toileting last year.

As we were driving back from the convention hotel, we got behind a car festooned with religious bumper stickers. One caught my eye in particular. It was one of those “Smile, god loves you” bumper stickers, but this one really stood out.

For one thing, the smiley-face accompanying it appeared to have been drawn by someone with a great deal of enthusiasm, but maybe not the steadiest hand. So it was Very Smiley, but its eyes were different sizes, giving it the look of the cheerfully concussed.

The best part, however, was that the designer had made two key decisions that had quite an impact on the message. The comma had been left out, and they had selected a large, bubbly font for “smile” and “god” and a small, sans serif, for “loves you.” The resulting message read “SMILEGOD loves you.”

Obviously, this raised a number of questions, like “Who is Smilegod?” “What does Smilegod want?” “Why does Smilegod love me?” “Should I love Smilegod back?” (Not unless he buys me dinner first.) “What are the teachings of Smilegod?” “Is this the cheery concussed visage of Smilegod, or one of his followers?”

Anyone qualified to speak for Smilegodism, feel free to show us the way.

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