ashley, you might want to skip this post

“I think sometimes that being overly type-sensitive is like an allergy. My font nerdiness makes me have bad reactions to things that spoil otherwise pleasant moments.” One of his (least) favorite examples is the Cooper Black typeface on the Mass sign outside a beautifully restored 1885 Carpenter Gothic church near his weekend home in Cape May Point, New Jersey. “Cooper Black is a perfectly good font, but in my mind it is a fat, happy font associated with the logo for the ‘National Lampoon,’ the sleeve of the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ album and discount retailers up and down the U.S.,” Mr. Bierut explained. “I wouldn’t choose it as a font for St. Agnes Church even as a joke. Every time I go by, my vacation is, for a moment, ruined.”

- michael beirut, partner at pentagram, on typographic howlers.

sing it, jerry

“I love that we have an institution that is essentially saying, ‘Damn the rules. Other museums aren’t putting enough great contemporary art on view, so we’ll do it any way we can!’ This important institution has grown with the times. It is thankfully not the New Museum of old.

I sorely want to defend the New Museum for making such a brazen move. Unfortunately, the museum may have outsmarted itself, and in an effort to eclipse other local institutions and fill a hole, it acted with hubris, leaving itself open to bitter complaints of dodgy, decadent soul-selling. I trust the New Museum. Sadly, it may now have a problem with its credibility. The art world now thinks that the ‘experimentation’ the New Museum is engaging in is somewhat mad, and that the institution has been badly compromised. I hope this is untrue.”

- jerry saltz, re: new museum shitshow brouhaha.