this made me laugh: we just got required to all use a single FONT as well as the usual branding signature garbage => why are office bosses so dumb?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Thieves are using information contained in 'out of office' auto-reply emails and cross-referencing it with publicly available personal information to target empty houses.
Criminals are buying huge lists of email addresses over the internet and sending mass-mailings in the hope of receiving 'out of office' auto-responses from workers away on holiday.
By cross-reference such replies with publicly available information from online directories such as 192.com or bt.com, the burglars can often discover the name, address and telephone number of the person on holiday.
Guidelines to avoid falling victim to the practice, including keeping messages bland, redirecting enquiries to another colleague, not giving out your job title, not saying you are away on holiday and not putting personal contact details in your email.

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 9 December 2002 14:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Or not going on holiday!

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 9 December 2002 14:51 (twenty-two years ago)

What's that have to do with the font issue?

― Sean (Sean), Monday, 9 December 2002 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

i know, this is like the worst asked thread-question ever!!

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 9 December 2002 16:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Do you mean font in the bathing sense? If so then I am on your side.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 9 December 2002 17:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Surely being forced to bathe together is less severe than being branded with the company logo, N.?

― Tim (Tim), Monday, 9 December 2002 17:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I know what Mark is on about. It happened here in the Registry until I complained and said that the office choice (Arial) was not only dead boring but harder for dyslexics to read. They moaned Verdana looked like a kiddie font but I won the day.

I use whatever font is appropriate. They cannot batter me down.
On the other issue i don't set out of office voice-mails or e-mails as anyone who matters will know I'm away. Anyone else should just wait for em to get back or phone a colleague. Spoon-fed world we live in.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 9 December 2002 17:21 (twenty-two years ago)

i never fucking use those out of office replies, because i HATE when i get bombarded with them myself. grrrr...

when i still worked at the ad agency, they tried to get everyone to use a consistant font and signature and company branded logo in their emails. i was the only person that refused to do it, on the grounds that i fucking hated html-based email and wouldn't use it.

so when our office got hit by the iloveyou virus, EVERY OTHER FUCKER in the office using html based email and with scripts enabled in their inboxes got blitzed by it. except me. who was smart enough not to use outlook. but guess who had to clean up the mess on the server? and you wonder why i hate office people...

― kate, Monday, 9 December 2002 17:56 (twenty-two years ago)

we had a standardised font at work. the font? comic sans. made all the documentation look like it was written by a clown.

and in many ways it was.

(office move now rescheduled for 20th december btw. nice!)

― koogy, Monday, 9 December 2002 18:45 (twenty-two years ago)

arial for us too... why please?

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 9 December 2002 18:49 (twenty-two years ago)

the worst thing was, this office tried to make us all use a standard font that was a mac font, and NOT AVAILABLE ON THE PC'S THAT WE ALL USED.

― kate, Monday, 9 December 2002 19:05 (twenty-two years ago)

arial 11.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 9 December 2002 19:09 (twenty-two years ago)

arial 11 = my new trance band.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 9 December 2002 19:17 (twenty-two years ago)

So my out of office reply that says "I, Martin Skidmore, of 1, High Street, London, will be out of the country from December 1st to 15th, and by the way my back door is pretty flimsy" isn't a good idea then? Even if it's written in Arial?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 9 December 2002 19:20 (twenty-two years ago)

by the way my back door is pretty flimsy

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 9 December 2002 19:23 (twenty-two years ago)

do not feed the perry!!

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 9 December 2002 19:24 (twenty-two years ago)

what's this about Arial being hard for dyslexics? I thought the whole point of Arial and Helvetica was that they were easy to read?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 9 December 2002 23:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Computers render them terribly; if you MUST use sans-serif Verdana is the way to go - it was designed for web use. Along with Georgia (also designed specifically for computer screens and standard web point-sizes) it's probably the best product Microsoft has ever produced.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 9 December 2002 23:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Arial is cheap Monospace stretched to the proportions of expensive Helvetica to avoid license fees. It's awful.

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

At a charity I worked for not so long ago, I was presented with a big red folder on my first day all about House Style. I guess it did kind of make sense - we sent out a whole ton of letters to victims of crime every day, as did every other branch in Scotland, so it was good to be uniform. We used Palatino 11. They didn't care what font our emails were in though - most people there didn't know how to use email beyond clicking Reply All (PET HATE, AAAAAGH!)

I use Comic quite a bit at the moment - it's not a written rule, but this is a primary education department and we're all jolly good fun etc. If I had a Mac I'd use Kidprint, which I wuv.

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:13 (twenty-two years ago)

arial is a KNOCKOFF of Helvetica and it is indeed awful.

KIDPRINT MUST DIE! i hate it SOOOOOO much. it is expensive and RUBBISH. there are many many cheap "kid" handwriting fonts that are as good and not as expensive. FontFont fonts are all hideously over priced too. there. got that off my chest.

and Meta can fuck off too.

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:36 (twenty-two years ago)

FONTRAGE!!!!

Verdana is a grebt font - nice, light, airy and not too serious.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't stand Verdana. People who hate Arial = frivolous wasters.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I like Kidprint. I just found it on a mac one day. Sniff.

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Can I just say that if you're working to very tight deadlines and NEED certain people to get a response, then out of office is PRETTY DAMN ESSENTIAL so you can direct your requests elsewhere...

We used to use Times New Roman 13, now the standard is Arial 12. But in my reply to emails font I use LETTER GOTHIC (cos I am a goth).

― Sarah (starry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:50 (twenty-two years ago)

(NOTE: Even though I like Arial, my favorite people are frivolous wasters.)

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:50 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry, madchen. fonts is what i do innit. kidprint is twee and lovely. i am over exposed to it somewhat and it annoys me that it is used ILLEGALLY all the time by certain people when we expensively license lots of lookalikes.

Actually overexposure can't be the whole story cos i still like the Rotis family (semi serif, num num) and that's been done to death for years now. Probably the longest lived fad in font usage for a decade. Ha ha, industria was so 1995.

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Rotis ~= the Natwest font?

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I am currently managing the brand overhaul of the charity I work for and intend to be DRACONIAN in my grid/typeface/look&feel specifications. PH34R ME!!!!

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I like Tahoma, although if I'm typing to a supplier correcting some of their code I'll put the code in Courier New to distinguish it from the rest of the text of the e-mail. I think it would be cool if you could get a versh of Courier which had some of the bits of the letters coloured in and which enabled you to type letters that were part black and part red to make your work look EVEN MORE like old fashioned typewritten letters!

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Old skool typewriter fonts++

Not being able to use them in yr official correspondence at work or in fact download them at all--

― Sarah (starry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

i like tahoma too

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

i think so Graham -- it's everywhere and i ain't looked at natwest stuff recently

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_201.jhtml

fonts: search and destroy

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

kidprint is twee and lovely.

I, er, used it when I made flyers to give out at a Belle & Sebastian gig. BLUSH!

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I just tried Verdana, Tracer - it's horrible! Trebuchet MS is my new web font.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

verdana/arial/trebuchet/tahoma/comic = ALL WRETCHED. i am some kind of font rockist. microsoft bloody frontpage, mumble, splutter, croak

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I am currently using Gill sans on my Mac. It is good and stern, which I think is important when giving the computer instructions it is unwilling to perform.

― RickyT (RickyT), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I just go with Times or Times New Roman. Frills are not for me.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey Alang wot about LETTER GOTHIC then?? *bounces up and down* Analyse me on my latest font choice!!!

― Sarah (starry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I like trebuchet and tahoma.

my main prob w/ arial is that, due to its omnipresence, it has morons spelling 'aeriel' incorrectly [FACT].

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:11 (twenty-two years ago)

i like verdana too, but not as much as tahoma

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:12 (twenty-two years ago)

RickyT using Gill sans for code makes me happy. I thort code rockists used Lucida typewriter. Sarah, Letter Gothic is the only other real font mentioned so far, and it is a nice crisp font too. prob v good for coding.

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Bookman and New Yoik for me, but only the screen fonts in paticular point sizes.

Also Humanist 521 Bold.

Analyse me!

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Tahoma is too close together and has those funny H's.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I like courier, too.

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:19 (twenty-two years ago)

humanist 521. is nice. very headline. i am off to sort out someone's pdf problem now. the font doctor is "out". (wanker)

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:21 (twenty-two years ago)

(um unless it wasn't obv, that last was aimed at me)

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Times New Roman is what I use for coding. Email is done in plain text or Arial.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I just did something in Arial cos I couldn't be arsed to change it and when I printed it off I thought 'cripes that looks crap Arial sucks rilly rilly hard'.

So long as no one punches me in the head for using an offensive font I don't care what I use. I am a font philistine. Or phont philistine. Or font filistine. Or overtired.

― Emma, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Wingdings. S'all I'm saying.

― smee (smee), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Gill was involved with making a few people (and animals!) carry out actions they were unwilling to perform IIRC hem hem.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

was that wanker aimed at me, alan?

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Lucida typewriter is vile. Makes everything look like it's being written for an Atari ST or something. Courier is much better for fixed font stuff, but it doesn't render very well on my mac screen.

― RickyT (RickyT), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Why did anyone like Industria?

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

For some reason the idea of RickyT using a Mac feels very strange.

― Sarah (starry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Geneva is a nice Mac non-proportional font. Much better than Courier.

I used to have a font called Optimum. That was lovely.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:49 (twenty-two years ago)

i got told i am Century Gothic. i guess it kinda suits me. in red.
but really, red doesn't suit me.
how exciting i am, i am sure you'll agree.

― g-kit (g-kit), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 16:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I like Monaco 9

Probably the longest lived fad in font usage for a decade

eh what about UNIVERS? for all things even tangentially related to women's mags? it's so "fresh" and "fun" i want to spyak

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Paul Mason to thread!

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 17:02 (twenty-two years ago)

We use Stone. It rocks.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

It feels very strange to me as well. Some of the 'features' are a little baffling to say the least. Frexample: when I move a breakpoint around the text editor in Project Builder it pops up a little window telling me the number of inches between the breakpoint and the top of the file.

― RickyT (RickyT), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Spyak!! What a great word! Cheers Tracer!

Rick: that's MADNESS sheer MADNESS.

― Sarah (starry), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 17:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Trebuchet rulez. It looks like the Johnstone family, which I presume it's based on. But I like Johnstone. Treb isn't the greatest on the interweb though sadly. Though nice when done through images as opposed to text. My favoutite eva was Epsy Sans. Charcoal was nice too.

Destroy - 'handwriting' fonts. Die, die, die. Comedy fonts are like comedy ties and comedy socks = crap.

― Dave B (daveb), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 17:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm still loving that andy was forced to Comic Sans for all documentation.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 17:19 (twenty-two years ago)

ILX is a style lab.

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 18:33 (twenty-two years ago)

American Typewriter - sadly not seen much these days.

― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 18:44 (twenty-two years ago)

eurostyle is my font of choice right now. mmmmmmmm, euro-ie.

― dyson (dyson), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 19:55 (twenty-two years ago)

If everyone loves type fonts so much, why don't we politely ask Graham to rig this sucker up?

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 23:34 (twenty-two years ago)

nooo!! i don't love the fonts anyone else loves!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 23:40 (twenty-two years ago)

nooo!! i don't love the fonts anyone else loves!! -- mark s (mark@evazev.demon.co.uk), December 10th, 2002. (mark s)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 11 December 2002 00:18 (twenty-two years ago)

This is certainly the most interesting thread ever, at least since that one about people's bottle tops collections.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 11 December 2002 00:19 (twenty-two years ago)

"why don't we politely ask Graham to rig this sucker up?"

why don't we carefully kern every single letter while we're at it?
i spend enough time at ilx as it is.

― dyson (dyson), Wednesday, 11 December 2002 05:11 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

guess who loves comic sans...

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 17 May 2004 14:12 (twenty-one years ago)

oh my Lord

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Monday, 17 May 2004 17:49 (twenty-one years ago)

It would be really cool if the ILX settings would let you put your own stylesheet in that would be applied to all pages.

― 24 hours with the King of Snake. (SNAKE!) (ex machina), Monday, 17 May 2004 23:07 (twenty-one years ago)

What... the... faaackkkk... HES SINGING ABOUT HIS WIFEYS BOOBS GETTING BIGGER WHEN SHE'S PREGGERS.

I need to scrub my brain now :(

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 17 May 2004 23:17 (twenty-one years ago)

HES SINGING ABOUT HIS WIFEYS BOOBS GETTING BIGGER WHEN SHE'S PREGGERS.

I saw that and I didn't want to think about it. CURSE YOU FOR BRINGING IT BACK TO LIGHT.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 17 May 2004 23:33 (twenty-one years ago)

fourteen years pass...

Based on observation, one of the defining qualities of a boss is the ability to confidently assert the very first thoughts that pop into your mind as if they were facts and to evince no doubt even when some part of you must realize that your audience knows you're completely full of shit. If so, pshh, that's how I ILX, I could totally be a boss.

(Just realizing this morning, even despite having gotten myself into the sweet spot where they leave me completely alone 99.9% of the time, that there's a certain lightness and beauty to be found in every day that the bosses decide to stay the eff home.)

― Loggins and Rogers and G are...K3NNY (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 18 December 2018 13:33 (six years ago)

I can confirm that in the process of becoming the boss at my work, that's pretty much the only skill I had to master. It gave me new admiration for those to whom it comes so naturally.

― mick signals, Tuesday, 18 December 2018 15:09 (six years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.