Catalogue Shopping - Argos anyone?

Such a prosaic shop for such a lovely place. The typeface itself is also quite attractive, with its little swirls and such, which I'm sure have proper typefacey sort-of names. Swirly-serif or something.

So what is there that's vaguely recent that has anything to do with this font? I don't know. I was hoping that Argos would have done something embarrassing that I could have talked about, but they haven't. Apparently it's been a shit year for DIY retailers, due to the crap weather (no surprises there, then) but Argos has bucked the trend, even though they own - or are part of - Homebase. According to the FT, they're doing rather well given their recent financial reports. I could tell you more but then I'd have to pay. Sod that. I'm sure it's not that interesting. Oh, alright, the Telegraph reports the same story but doesn't charge: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/09/12/bcnhome112.xml

It's probably because they don't hire proofreaders and don't spot things like "popylar" in their text. It's an ill wind, though, isn't it? Picnic stuff doesn't sell but XBox sales go sky-high!

I've also just noticed that the Argos typeface and the Telegraph one have a lot in common. Okay, the Telegraph one is somewhat more Teutonic, but the general swirls and such like are similar. It's like the parent font had two children, one gay and one Nazi...

In my sad attempt to find any links that might be considered relevant, or appropriate, I found out that Argos was Oddyseus's favourite dog who waited for his master's return for over 20 years... Awww. Strangely enough, in an old Argos catalogue, there's a photo of how the dog might have looked when his owner returned:

It takes a few seconds before you spot where the photo editor should perhaps have been a little more - ahem - judicious in his use of the photo-editing tools. Or maybe he was well aware of what he was doing. After all, the object in question has been masked beautifully...