Comment by Pinus

It is sometimes said, that nostalgia is not the yearning for the past as it actually was, but for the past as it exists in our rosiest memories. I seem to have taken this one step further — I yearn for a world which I never experienced, and which possibly never existed except in my fantasy at the time. I was born in 1971. By the time I was aware of computers, but still a child, in the late 1970’s to the mid 1980’s, my image of computers — real computers, the sort that flew you to the moon or ran large companies or research labs, not the Z80 basic-in-ROM “home computer” we actually had at home — was formed by whatever reading matter was around, most of it outdated even at the time. This was Apollo-era spaceflight. It was 9-track open-reel tape stations and chain printers. It was Frutiger and Univers.

Obviously, many of the things my parents used were from the 1960’s or 1970’s, so that is what serious stuff for grown-ups looked like. (This condition could be hereditary. I have no children, but if I had, they would be exposed to things like my DSLR and stereo amp, both older than they would have been.)

I think this is what makes me like the aesthetics of this typeface so much. It is not what computers used to look like, what they look like today, or what they will look like tomorrow. It is what they were supposed to look like!