Georgia On My Mind: A Quick Typographic Journey

Alexandra Duncan

No, this blog post is not going to be about my yearning love for Ray Charles and his well-known ballad "Georgia on My Mind." It's about the typeface: Georgia. It's one of my favorite typefaces, one because it looks classic, simple and modern and it adds class to anything I write it in, two its unique history. Georgia was created in 1993 by Matthew Carter, aptly named after a tabloid article titled "Alien Heads Found in Georgia." Thank goodness they didn't call the typeface "Alien." For one of my first document design classes, I had to create a flyer for the Georgia typeface to showcase the personality of the font and some quick facts about it. You can find it below this post. Georgia is a serif font, meaning it has little strokes at the end of characters that act as an embellishment. Another popular serif font is Times New Roman. A font without a serif is called a sans-serif font, such as Helvetica.

I constantly think about typefaces. They are everywhere and new typefaces are being created everyday. Some fonts are used more than others, like Helvetica and Times New Roman and some are used sparingly or seasonally. Everyone should have a favorite typeface. Maybe you like that one heading in a magazine because it's unique and it speaks to you. You could even see your name written in the typeface because it matches your personality. Next time you're out in public at a park or in public transit, observe the fonts being used and analyze why they might be used in those particular areas. One website that I'm constantly browsing is dafont.com. It allows users to browse hundreds of fonts for free and even lets you download them free of charge for personal use. A great feature they have is they let you type whatever words you'd like so you can preview fonts that you like. It's a great place to explore and experiment with different fonts.

Alex is a technical writing major with a focus in multimedia and a minor in Africana Studies.