A Typeface That Expressed Regret

Marta Overhang designed a typeface in 2009. It was intended to be neutral. It was used, instead, primarily in contexts that were apologetic in nature: condolence cards, correction notices, letters retracting earlier letters. Overhang spent a decade thinking about why.

This book is the result. It is part design history, part typographic theory, part investigation into what it means that marks on a page can carry emotional content that the person who made the marks did not choose. Overhang's conclusion — that a typeface has a disposition that is partially designed and partially found — has been contested. The contest is documented in the footnotes.

The book is set in the typeface it describes. Overhang considered this either honest or ironic and decided it was both.

A second typeface appears at two points in the text: once in the dedication ('to everyone who received a letter in this typeface when they were not expecting one') and once at the very end, in a sentence that is left for the reader to interpret.