The arrangement for Pope Francis' funeral was meticulous, and the ceremony attracted a global audience. But it is the arrangement of his gravestone letters, and is now attracting attention for features.
A simple slab only has 10 characters, but the spacing between them can be read like “Fra ncisc vs.”
The lettering is of course intended to be read as Franciscus, a derivative of the Latin pope's name. (v In Latin, I stood on both u and v.)
Pope Francis' marble tomb reflects his simple style and satisfies his desire for a final resting place that is unadorned. In that sense, Times Roman's Tombstone lettering, a craftsman-like font widely used in the English language, can be considered appropriate.
But for those who are obsessed with the space between letters, the view from above the tomb is not aesthetically pleasing.
“We've seen a lot of effort and we've seen you in a lot of ways,” said Charles Nix, senior executive creative director at Monotype, one of the world's largest typeface and technology companies.
In typography, Nicks says there is a general interval. This is the overall space between the characters within the typeface. But kerning is the space between letters and characters.
He said in addition to designing actual letters, typographers design spaces around each letter.
“We spend a lot of time making sure there are harmonious intervals, especially later in the design process,” Knicks said.
“But even after you get the best possible interval, you're still pairing letters like Capital A and Capital T, and there's a lot of space between them,” he added. “So we create special kerning pairs and program them into typefaces.”
When they see the letters on the gravestone, the double take for some is caused by the lack of rumour between pairs of letters.
So what happened at the Vatican?
“It could have been laid out as individual letters, and it wasn't actually entered,” Knicks said. “So it may not have been the font that created the template for that. It may have been placed in the pattern in which individual characters are used, and in contrast, they may have been spaced mathematically in contrast.”
For centuries, people have tried to find mathematical ways to engrave letters, he said, and it always fails.
Vatican representatives were unable to contact us immediately due to comments on the lettering.
Nicks said it is not common on grave markers. This is especially true because it has been produced very mathematically since the 20th century. The method is much more expensive and can accommodate more texts, he said.
The editor of Fast Company, a business, technology and design magazine, was one of the first to notice discrepancies.
Other more casual observers quickly pointed out Franciscus' “A” away from the other letters.
“Why do you seem to press the letter “a” to open the secret room where the Ark of the Ark is stored? ” asked El Cordoba, a digital creator, comedy writer and grammarian.
“It appears they downloaded the Roman bootleg version without the kernel data embedded in the file, brought it to ancient software like Adobe Scribe 1517 AD, and spaced the letters in the software,” she said. “And this is what you get: hatred of design.”
Paul Shaw, a historian of type and design, was as disappointed as poor intervals are predictable, as “ran” and “cvs” have historically letters (ra and v) that require manual adjustment.
“The name of Pope Francis was cranked out by someone operating the stone cutting machine, probably via sandblasting from a computer-prepared template,” he said.
In an email, Brooklyn-based art director and designer Evan Sult wrote:
