Oral Argument

Episode 34: There’s Not Really a Best Font

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We discuss the role of design in the practice of law with renowned typographer-lawyer Matthew Butterick. The conversation ranges among very practical tips for making better documents, why so many legal documents are poorly designed, why lawyers should care about design, and what it even means to design a document. Matthew explains why IRS forms are some of the most well-designed legal documents around. Also, Joe manages to connect (positively) enjoying physical books with smelling gasoline.

This show’s links:

  • About Matthew Butterick, also here and @mbutterick on Twitter
  • Nicholas Georgakopoulos, Knee Defender, Barro’s Error, and Surprise Norms
  • Christopher Buccafusco and Chris Sprigman, Who Deserves Those 4 Inches of Airplane Seat Space?
  • Keith O’Brien, America’s Chimp Problem
  • The pronunciation of “chimpanzee”
  • Cecilia Kang, Podcasts Are Back - And Making Money (sadly, not ours, but here’s Christian’s post on Podcasts and some of the reasons we started this show)
  • Overcast, our preferred podcast app
  • Episode 11: Big Red Diesel, in which we discussed typography, text editing, and the worst breaches of email etiquette
  • Butterick’s Practical Typography (and how to pay for it if you choose!)
  • From the book: Typography in Ten Minutes and Summary of Key Rules
  • Matthew Butterick, Typography for Lawyers (and how to purchase physical and Kindle editions)
  • Ben Carter, Typography for Lawyers: One Space, Double Spacing, and Other Good Ideas
  • An example of a Supreme Court opinion, notable for its design
  • Robin Williams, The Mac is Not a Typewriter
  • Matthew Butterick, The Bomb in the Garden, text and images from a talk Matthew gave at TYPO San Francisco in 2013
  • Rob Walker, The Guts of a New Machine, reporting on the iPod’s first two years and including the quote from Steve Jobs that “design is how it works” (Note too the uncertainty in 2003 whether the iPod would go on to sell like the breakthrough Sony Walkman, which sold 186 million in twenty years. As of this article, the iPod had sold 1.4 million. It went on to sell 350 million in eleven years.)
  • Dan Barry, A Writing Coach Becomes a Listener, a profile of William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well
  • Mike Monteiro, Design Is a Job
  • Lawrence Solum, Legal Theory Lexicon: Fit and Justification
  • Patrick Kingsley, Higgs Boson and Comic Sans: The Perfect Fusion
  • Matthew Butterick, Pollen, “a publishing system that helps authors create beautiful and functional web-based books” and that “includes tools for writing, designing, programming, testing, and publishing”
  • Matthew’s Equity and Concourse typefaces
  • Matthew Butterick, The Economics of a Web-Based Book: Year One

    • Special Guest: Matthew Butterick.

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    Oral ArgumentBy Joe Miller and Christian Turner
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