The whitespaceBack
The History of the Graphic Design Police

In the begining was the whitespace an endless area of clean white space stretching in all directions to a distant horizon, pure and blinding like frost on the desert.

 

 

 

The Babble of Font and Pixel

The Babble of Font and PixelThen into the whitespace came a whole host of fonts, serif and sans serif, graphics, clipart, wordart without end. These elements filled and cluttered the whitespace and fought for attention.

Fonts beyond number despoiled the whitespace. Images were stretched and pixellated in the chaos. Many did not survive. Millions of colours overloaded the whitespace and Kerning, Leading, Tracking and Harmony were destroyed in what became known as the Babble of Font and Pixel.

 

 

The Reign of Comic Sans

Comic Sans
doing her worstSome tried to impose order on the chaos and for a while Helvetica and her husband Tahoma won what became known as the battle for Modernism's soul. Just as their victory over the babble looked secure their first daughter Comic Sans returned the whitespace into a second age of chaos. Along with her terrible comrades wordart and clipart they polluted the white space with disharmony and kitsch irony. A great sadness fell over the whitespace.

At one low point Comic Sans was seen in six or more different sizes on one part of the whitespace and the words "about me" written with every letter in a different colour forced into a hideous curve. There seemed little hope for the whitespace.

The Birth of the Police
Then came a fight back led by Verdana and the GIFling these two chose not to fight but instead to form an early version of the Graphic Design police. The so called Semantic Paragraph Group or SPG took the fight to Comic Sans and the pixellated images that still filled the whitespace.