Born in the wrong era
Born in the wrong era
These fonts were all born in the wrong era. they are a late bloomer, and old soul, and a child prodigy living his second life.
Moore Computer (they/them) was part of a wave of fonts designed to be detected by magnetic ink character recognition (MICR). You know the first one, E-13B, which is the numbers-only font that lets machines read the digits at the bottom of your checks. Its imbalanced spacing, right angles, square holes and tumorous strokes started as a practical necessity but grew to be a symbol of "technology."
Somewhere between then and now, though, that image got flipped on its head. Moore Computer, once a vision of modernity, now speaks completely in the retro tense. How?
When viewed at a glance, a distant point on the horizon might resemble the future. But as time moves forward, that point comes nearer and nearer until one day you're looking at it in the unflattering, skin-wrinkling, belly-bloating rearview mirror. Fonts that articulate “the future” as a specific design inevitably meet this fate. Their vision for an upcoming reality may turn out right or wrong, but either way it turns out and fades away. Moore Computer is our witness.
Predicting the future is hard work, though, and should be left in the professional hands of storefront psychics and insider traders. Once Moore Computer was released from the burden to be right and now, they were able to be themself
.When I see Moore Computer hawking their wares in vintage Etsy stores and posing for selfies on '70s IG moodboards, I see a playfulness that was missing when they were the spokesperson for computer manuals and appliance advertisements. Their value isn't conditional on their technical abilities - people love them for who they are.
Life moves fast and technology moves faster. It's a rare gift that Moore Computer was finally able to slow down and enjoy it.
Any given Saturday night, you'll find Recoleta in her bedroom (second floor, left of the stairs, if you hit the picture of Grandma and Grandpa in college you've gone too far). She's imagining a chiller life. Or maybe it's just different. But it certainly doesn't have the Common App website or follower counts or numbers at all for that matter. And certainly certainly not Tim.
Recoleta may have been designed in the TikTok generation, but she was born in the wrong era. The 60s were for her. Or was it the 70s? When was Fleetwood Mac? Well… any of those times would be better than now. There'd be neighborhood kids, no one would ask her about college, she'd fit in, and days would pass like movie montages
.Recoleta's type face is a spitting image of the fonts she looks up to. That angled stroke in her lowercase “e” - that's pure Windsor. Her rounded strokes and nib-y serifs could've been bought from Cooper Black's Depop page. At lighter weights, she has a unaffected glamour that borders on waifish. At heavier weights, she flips to the other side of the juvenile coin and trades muted disinterest for unbothered goofiness.
Like so many modern fonts in her generation, Recoleta is torn between a thousand things and she's expected to do it all. She needs to make sense printed on Instagram self-care how-to's, thrift shop totes, and start-up dentists offices. Whatever happened to just letting fonts be kids? These code switches can be tiring for a young font still finding its own voice. So tiring, in fact, that Recoleta doesn't notice the skill she displays in making them.
If only she knew what her parents' friends say about her. How engaging she is. How she listens better than anyone her age should know how. And so elegant, too.
She'll get there soon.
Egyptienne (he/him) peaked late. Not a 5th-year-senior, “I know all the moves,” slippery, suave, "alright, alright, alright" late peak. Egyptienne was a foreign exchange student from another time, lucky enough to be well received but never totally understood.
No one is quite sure when Egyptienne was born - some say 1820, others 1851. Egyptienne was designed in the time before birthdays, when people were too busy toiling in fields and being generally itchy to write down a birthdate. But after a century and a half in the flip-over pages of typeface catalogs, Egyptienne moved to the big city and blew up. All of a sudden, it was on album covers and movie posters and newsstands.
Why? Egyptienne is bold and self-assured. It has enough character to be interesting at large sizes. And yet it remains readable at small ones. When the Dutch celebrate Sinterklaas on Sinterklaas Eve, they give each other large chocolate bars in the shape of their initials. Egyptienne is typically the font. It's fun enough to fit a festive spirit, but legible enough to be printed in industrial quantities of melty, waxy chocolate.
Egyptienne reminds me of the suits men wore to the office in the 70s. While still formal, they were bolder than the white collar workwear of previous decades: wider lapels, flared legs, brighter colors. This balance between restrained formality and fashion-forward creativity makes sense in the contexts Egyptienne thrived: the covers of hip social commentary magazines like New York Magazine and Fact. Intellectual but provocative, cerebral but visceral.
It's a good thing he waited those 150 years - when his time came, Egyptienne was a perfect fit.
This article is only possible becase of fontsinuse. You can find most of these fonts and images - and many more - listed there.