What do Innovation, Tempered Radicalism, and Breakfast at Tiffany's have in common? I just read a fascinating book called "Fifth Avenue, 5am", by Sam Wasson. It's about the making of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.  I picked it up while on vacation expecting a fairly light, easy vacation read.  What I found was a book that describes many of the same organizational challenges experienced by companies trying to innovate, but written in a much more engaging way than most business books.

The organizational story starts with Marty Jurow and Richard Shepard, two producers looking to make a great movie, not unlike entrepreneurs looking to start a new business.  They ran across the script and against the judgment of others decided that hidden beneath the surface, it had the makings of a good, romantic comedy.

However, the story romanticized the life of a call-girl.  In the Hollywood of the 1950’s, this just wasn’t done.  In order to make the movie, there would need to be serious work to make the story palatable within that environment.  There were strict regulatory boards, serious politics over talent selection, and too few resources to work with.  Getting all the requisite approvals for a movie that was far from the “standard Hollywood formula” would be nearly impossible.  Starting to sound familiar?

The book goes on to tell the story of how Jurow and Shepard navigated the environment. Whether it was intentional or not, the creators of the movie followed a lot of the advice given to large corporations about how to enable innovation to occur within their companies.  Here are a few:

They recognized the initial insight illuminated by the original book, written by Truman Capote.  The main character tapped into a nascent shift in the zeitgeist.  The world was changing, and the book was a harbinger of what was coming.  This is not unlike finding an unmet need in the market.

They took advantage of timing.  At the time, the current Hollywood formula was at risk of being disrupted by the mass adoption of TV.  They were able to use this to their advantage when dealing with the regulatory groups to loosen the grip on what was deemed appropriate subject matter in the movies. How often does it take the threat of death of the establishment before meaningful changes can be made?

They took risks to hire the right talent.  In some cases, it involved allowing the screenwriter who was selected “politically” to write parts of the script and fail.  That gave them the freedom to choose the person who did not have the experience, but did have the capability to do the job they needed. How often are people hired in large companies based on how well they did existing roles, and those skills may not be relevant in the new role?

They also understood the importance of casting a “girl next-door” like Audrey Hepburn in the lead role.   Her reputation and past roles enabled the audience to accept her as a fundamentally “good girl”, and her quirky nature enabled her to be credible as a character living a very non-traditional lifestyle.  This is not unlike the ideas in Maureen Scully and Debra Myerson’s article “Tempered Radicalism and the Politics of Ambivalence and Change”.   From the article’s abstract; “Tempered Radicals” are individuals who identify with and are committed to their organizations, and are also committed to a cause, community, or ideology that is fundamentally different from, and possibly at odds with the dominant culture of their organization”.  Casting Audrey Hepburn enabled the movie to fit into both worlds.

In my personal opinion, the ability to find such Tempered Radicals is key for any organization looking to do something different in a traditional environment.   Jurow and Shepard may not have done this consciously, but if you read the book closely, their ability to hire people who could “walk on both sides of the fence” was key to the ultimate success of the movie. 

As we all know, the movie was a great success, and the book illuminates many issues that business books try to dissect.  What makes this book useful as a business book is that it focuses on all the irrational behaviors that exist in human nature, and their impact on the end-product.  Most business books focus on the rational aspects of organizational issues.  But let’s face it, organizations are collections of humans, and as long as that’s true, books like Wasson’s will impart many lessons to those willing to acknowledge human nature.

I don't usually do this, but it's time to air a little pet peave of mine.  It has to do with the use of the term 'font' when what is meant is 'typeface'.  In art school I studied graphic design which required quite a bit of focus on typography.  I'm not the best at handling type, but I did learn enough to recognize awkward kerning, poor leading, the fact that a quotation mark should sit outside of the paragraph line, and the fact that Garamond is a beautiful typeface - but not a font!  This mix-up never really bothered me much, as I don't expect people who never took a typography course to fully understand the difference. However, I do expect those who are in the business to get it right.  When I use software on either a PC or Mac product, it bothers me that in the menus I'm asked to select a font, that I need to choose a font-size, and that the term typeface is nonexistent. Really?  The people who write the software used to handle type ARE in the business, and they should know better. 

What is the difference?  I found an old article from AIGA way back in 2002 that gives one of the easiest explanations to understand. Here it is in full:

They’re not fonts!

“What font is used on the Absolut Vodka bottles”?

“Can you identify the font used in the new Star Wars movie”?

“Do you recognize the font in the attached PDF”?

I get questions like these daily. I don't mind them. Fact is, I enjoy the challenge. What I don't like, however, is the nomenclature. It seems that just about everyone is using the word“font” when they are referring to a typeface. “Fonts” and“typefaces” are different things. Graphic designers choose typefaces for their projects but use fonts to create the finished art.

Typefaces are designs like Baskerville, Gill Sans or Papyrus. Type designers create typefaces. Today they use software programs like Fontographer or Font Lab to create the individual letters. A few still draw the letters by hand and then scan them into a type design application.

Fonts are the things that enable the printing of typefaces. Type foundries produce fonts. Sometimes designers and foundries are one and the same, but creating a typeface and producing a font are two separate functions.

A little history may help. John Baskerville created the typeface design that bears his name. Creating the design was a multi-stage process. First, he cut the letters (backwards) on the end of a steel rod. The completed letter is called a “punch.” Next, Baskerville took the punch and hammered it into a flat piece of soft brass to make a mold of the letter. A combination of molten lead, zinc and antimony was then poured into the mold and the result was a piece of type the face of which was an exact copy of the punch. After Baskerville made punches for all the letters he would use and cast as many pieces of type as he thought he would need, he put the type into a typecase. The resulting collection of letters was a font of Baskerville type.

Over the years, there have been hand-set fonts of Baskerville type, machine-set fonts, phototype fonts, and now digital fonts. Currently, there are TrueType and PostScript Type1 fonts of the Baskerville typeface. There are Latin 1 fonts of Baskerville used to set most of the languages in Western Europe and Greek and Cyrillic fonts that enable the setting of these languages. All these fonts are of the Baskerville typeface design.

Maybe it's OK for the folks that set the neighborhood church's newsletter to call them fonts; but those of us who claim to be typographers and graphic designers should refer to our tools by the correct name. So, what font is used on the Absolut Vodka bottles? I don't know. But I can tell you that the name “Absolut” is set in the typeface Futura Extra Bold Condensed.