Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Fontastic Voyage
Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.
Years ago, I remember reading books at my grandparent’s house that contained material from the old Pogo daily comic strips by Walt Kelly. Wonderfully satirical and humorous for various ages, those comics contained a number of memorable characters that engaged readers.
Of interest to me even back then were the ones that utilized stylized speech balloons to help convey the tone each individual brought. There was Deacon Mushrat, a muskrat of higher learning who spoke with a Gothic style typeface. There was a mortician vulture named Sarcophagas Macabre who conversed in a fine scrip lettering that resembled the kind found on funereal announcements. But by far the most influential character I ran across was P.T. Bridgeport, a flim-flam artist if ever you saw one, showman and circus operator that articulated everything with fonts drawn from the highly decorated type often found on 19th century circus posters.
Shortly after desktop computers were commonly introduced to the corporate workforce, there was an incredible boom in the growth of newsletters, circulars and other cheap-to-make periodicals that wannabe authors felt compelled to create. Content was overflowing, but unfortunately so was the use of inappropriate fontage. Not educated on the nuances of publishing, marketing and message, many energized people generated distracting documents because they …
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