030: Thou shall not buy into the twelve good typefaces theory

Commentary The great designer Massimo Vignelli is arguably the most prominent champion of the theory that you only need twelve good typefaces. Now, I’m a massive fan of Vignelli’s work. He designed the New York subway map and the iconic American Airlines logo, and his work for Knoll during the 1970s still informs the company’s work to this day. Despite all this, I can’t agree with him on this one. It’s true to an extent that we now have so many thousands of typefaces because type design as an industry continues to produce typefaces as commercial products. It’s also true that thousands of those typefaces are pretty awful and practically unusable. However, there are of course more than twelve good typefaces. The important point to make here is that a ....TS