Echoing other people’s commentary, I really enjoyed this reading and the examples it provided. I found the shoe-typeface matching exercise interesting, how the shape of each typeface complemented the style of each shoe so well. It made me realize that just like visual symbols, fonts also have cultural/symbolic associations–for instance, the accents in the middle of the typeface in Mesoquite immediately gave it away as a Southern style shoe.

As for the emotion-typeface matching examples, I felt like I agreed with their choices a bit less, making me think that abstract ideas/emotions are harder to visualize than physical objects/styles. For the anger example specifically, I really wished they chose the “Angst Heavy” font, I feel like it conveys the boldness/messiness of anger better and fit the person’s facial expression well.

I found the pixel-font examples interesting because it demonstrated how much you can take away from a letter and still recognize it. Just like other visual symbols, I think we’ve grown so used to reading letters that even a couple of pixels are enough to convey a letter. It made me think back to arcade video games like galaga and packman that kept their pixelized font over the years without upgrading and wonder whether they did it out of practicality or to envoke nostalgia.