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Publisher emeritus Sam Matthews tackles the history of "Thinking Inside the Triangle," as well as a couple other points from Tuesday's City Council meeting.
City Council members on Tuesday night took a look at four possible logos to project an image for the old tank town.
No, nary a water tower appeared in any of the possible logos presented by Susan Bercu, a graphic artist working with Tracy-based Nappic Communications, but there were plenty of triangles.
In fact, the slogan, "Think Inside the Triangle," was a common thread for all four possibilities. Obviously, the common — somewhat overused — saying of "thinking outside the box" was the genesis of the slogan, not to mention Taco Bell’s adaptation of "think outside the bun."
The triangle, of course refers to the Interstate freeway triangle that surrounds Tracy with Interstate 580 along the foothills west and south of town, Interstate 205 around the north edge of Tracy and Interstate 5 to the east.
Use of the triangle for a community logo struck a response in my historical memory. It was back in the 1960s, when the freeway triangle was being established that the Tracy Chamber of Commerce developed new entry signs on both ends of 11th Street. Using the triangle as shaped by the freeways, the sign welcomed people by saying "Grow with Us."
John Miller, the Tracy insurance agent who died last year, was the guy to put the triangle and slogan together while serving as chamber president. John had the talent to work with graphic elements, and he also had a lot of energy to get the welcoming signs designed, constructed and erected.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, members of the council voiced greater interest in two of the four possible logos, and Bercu said she would continue to work at developing possibilities with the council’s views in mind.
Creating a logo and an image of our town isn’t a new task. For years, beginning in the 1950s, before "Come Grow with Us" was used by the Tracy Chamber of Commerce on welcoming signs, Tracy’s slogan was "Where Agriculture and Industry Meet." It was the product of a contest sponsored by the chamber to create a slogan. The Press even carried the slogan in its flag at the top of the front page.
I will have to say that some of the terms used in the City Council discussions I watched on Channel 26 registered a sour note in my ear.
In discussing the various triangle-style designs presented to the council Tuesday night, members of the council and the folks from Nappic Communications talked about different type styles used for the "Think Inside the Triangle" wording on each possible logo.
The type styles under discussion were called "fonts" by everyone involved, and that really grated on my ears. I’ve never been a printer or even played one on television, but I have been around printing and typography most of my life.
The word everyone needed to use was not "font," but "typeface." A "typeface" is a design of lettering originally used for printing but nowadays is big in the computer graphics world.
A typeface can have serifs or be sans-serif (without any serifs) and can be of various weights, ranging from light to extra bold. And it can be italic, too.
A font is one typeface at a given size. In printers’ terms, the size is measured in "points," and there are 72 point to an inch. It all goes back to the time when each size (or font) of a typeface occupied a drawer of hand-set type. Later one or more fonts occupied a magazine of letter molds ("mats") in a hot-metal linecasting machine.
Example: One font could be New Times Roman Bold (a popular face used in many computers today) 36 point (a half-inch high). If the type size were 18 point (quarter inch), that would be a separate font. So would be New Times Roman Medium 24 point. All would be in the same type family, but with different weights and sizes — each a font.
The development of digitized-type production, which changes the weight and size of a myriad of new typefaces with the touch of a computer key, no doubt has caused the blurring of the difference between the use of the word "font" and "typeface," but that doesn’t make misuse of the word "font" any more correct.
Anyway, that was my main gripe about the wording used at Tuesday’s council meeting. Oh yes, there’s another — this a long-standing one.
It seems that most times a member of the council proposes a motion, he or she says, "I make a motion."
Tilt.
Way back in the dim past at West Park School, students involved in clubs or student government were told never to use those words. Just say, "I move …"
That was an iron-clad rule, and anyone who violated it was quickly brought to task. That’s not the case at today’s City Council meetings, where "I make a motion" has become the norm.
It’s too bad that Vern Rowland, the longtime Southern Pacific conductor, has passed on to the big caboose in the sky. Vern was an expert on Roberts Rules of Order and could have shed some light on this issue.
And those are my word-usage gripes for this week.
• Sam Matthews, Tracy Press publisher emeritus, can be reached at 830-4234 or by e-mail at
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