“…preserve character identity under duress”

Emphasis added:

According to a designer who used to work with Frere-Jones, his eye is so sharp that he can look at a printout of a letterform and tell if it’s one pixel off, the same way Ted Williams was said to be able to hold a baseball bat and tell if it was a half-ounce too heavy. He often approaches typography from strange and playful angles; in college, he drew an experimental font called Cat’s Cradle, “which nested and tangled each letter into its neighbor, like shopping carts nested together in front of a supermarket,” he says. “The goal was to preserve character identity under duress.”
—Jason Fagone, New York Magazine
I love that, “preserve character identity under duress.”
Aren’t we all trying to do that in one way or another?

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