American Century Puns

So, she walks over and takes a seat next to him on the bench, turns to him and says, "Sorry to bother you. I know this may be a little forward but I would love to grab coffee with you some time."

Flattered, the man responds, "Sure... but what makes you so certain you and I would get along so well?"

"Well..." the woman says. "A couple things, actually. I noticed you were wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. Iron Maiden are my favorite band of all time. When they went on their reunion tour in 1999, my parents took me to see them in Cleveland. I was 12 years old and it was the first concert I ever went to. I absolutely love Iron Maiden."

The man can't believe it.

"I saw them play Cleveland in '99! First concert I ever went to on my own. My best friend Jimmy Spitz and I told our parents we were sleeping at each others' houses, snuck out, took a bus into the city and saw them play at the Plain Dealer Pavillion!"

Naturally, they're both shocked.

"If that isn't weird enough..." says the woman. "I noticed you're reading Mark Twain. I was a communications major in university and I actually wrote my thesis on Mark Twain and how he used satire as a lens to comment on current events of the time, comparing him to satirical news sources of today. He's my favorite author."

Now the man is really taken aback, "Get out of here! I was an English major in university! I specialized in 19th century American literature and this is like my fourth or fifth time reading Tom Sawyer, I absolutely love Mark Twain."

They both can't believe it...this has got to be a match made in heaven.

"Ok..." the woman says. "Well, buckle up because here's the icing on the cake. I noticed you're eating a prune. Prunes are my absolute favorite fruit. When I was a kid, my grandfather lived on a farm. He had an orchard that mainly grew apples and some lemons, but he knew how much my sister and I loved prunes so he kept a couple of plum trees. Every year at the end of the summer, we'd go up and harvest the plums with him. He'd dry them and by the time we'd go back to his place for Thanksgiving he'd always have those prunes saved just for us. They're my favorite fruit! I love prunes, you're eating a prune, this has got to be fate. What do you say?"

The man puts down his fruit and responds,

"It's a date!"

Math, physics, comp sci. The only easy class was "The American Century." Open book midterm and final, so he wasn't going to do any of the reading all semester.

“It’s a huge waste of time, Dad,” he laughed when I objected. “I’m not learning a damn thing in the class.”

“Well, then you’re just going to have to take that class over again,” I snapped at him.

“What are you talking about?” he yelped.

“You know why, Gabe,” I said. “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

When I worked for a design agency, I had two adamant higher-ups. There was a brand identity project for a new company, and I was in charge of typography, but those two disagreed with my choice of font.

The first one was this stony-looking Peruvian-American man named Esteban Ferrero, but since that's Spanish for Steven Smith, and our company had a rule that everyone has to call each other using nicknames instead of last names, everyone, including himself, just called him Steve. The second one was a Dutch woman with a sharp glare named Evelien van der Berg. She was famous for giving designers a hard time convincing her that their design choices work better than hers. In accordance with the company rules, we called her Eve.

Anyway, I showed Steve my first draft, and he wasn't convinced that I chose LinoLetter as the main font, and told me that I should use a sans-serif font. But I stood by my position that serifs add legibility to printed and digital material, that it fits the company's identity as an organic store, and that it is hard to stand out with a sans-serif. It took a lot of debate, but in the end, Steve was convinced that LinoLetter was acceptable.

A few days later, I showed Eve a more elaborated version, as for the sizes and styles of the font, and the pairing of LinoLetter with Century as the headline font. She insisted that I should have used a sans-serif font for the headline. I expressed my view that LinoLetter is a font with composed and legible shape, and Century, while it is also legible, has flair at larger sizes. She kept disagreeing with me, saying I should use something bolder and more contrasting, like Tungsten. It felt like hours had passed before the conversation went anywhere, so I had to give up and look for a sans-serif font that goes with LinoLetter.

So it goes to show that the one who gave me a hard time was adamant Eve, not adamant Steve.