Mostly about Fonts…
4 08 2008Regardless of the title above, here is what can happen on the web
A wonderful school project that was taken out of context - the poor fellow was trashed on a variety of sites when it was learnt that this was but a project and not a reality. What a shame - it is a wonderful school project
http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com/drawing.aspx
this is the supposed route of the ‘project’, chosen to create a giant map
Fonts:
We all make jokes about doctors and their writing and the need for pharmacist to take course in writing recognition. I know many people who only ever got the ability to print nicely from their Architecture degree, and I myself am not known for the neatness or klegibilty of my own script therefore I found this posting wonderful:
“Something which has always intrigued me: these people that help us communicate … how do they themselves communicate? If we strip away the monitors, and the printing presses, and the typefaces … how would William Caslon have written on a post-it note? http://www.themaninblue.com/articles/handwritten_typographers/
One letter - M
Used again and again for the public transport systems around the world. Here is a compilation of what has been done with it. http://mic-ro.com/metro/metrologos-static.html
The beautiful things that can be done with type are amply displayed here: http://www.aisleone.net/2008/design/a_b_-peace-terror/
“A_B_… is a functional information design piece that uses computational aesthetic principles to compare complex and socially relevant data. The dual-sided overlay of the two graphs allows for a direct visual comparison of the peace and terror measures. The functional nature of the poster becomes poignantly relevant when one makes detailed comparisons across nations for the various measures—many of the results are quite surprising and stand in contrast to prevailing norms of collective national perception.”
Free Fonts: They sometimes say you ge what you pay for but I hesitate to apply that sying to some of the things that are given away in the design world
“Welcome to Font Cubes. Here you’ll find the best free PC fonts and free Mac Fonts from the best font artists in the world. The fonts listed in our free font collection are their author’s property. Please contact their authors for further consultation regarding the use of the listed fonts. ‘ http://www.fontcubes.com/
the barber shop font
MisPrinderType
ABOUT-name: Eduardo Recife- location: BRAZIL - Belo Horizonte - MG
http://www.misprintedtype.com/v3/fonts.php
These Numbers are not free but there are 16 different fonts here so the 129US is pretty reasonable!
http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_styles.php?productLineID=100018&cpuCount=1
I particularly like the ‘Premium” but can imagine times when the others would have been useful
Ralf Herrmann’s Typography Weblog
‘EXPLORING WEBFONT POSSIBILITIES
Embeddable webfonts (as introduced with Safari 3.1) are not just about using fancy fonts on web pages. It also opens new possibilities for using glyphs that are simply not available in the standard system fonts. Let’s say you are a linguist or archeologist and wan’t to set an ancient text and you need characters that are not available in Arial or Lucida Grande. Putting little images inside the text was the only way to do it – so far. But the images wouln’t scale and copy & paste of such a text wouldn’t work properly. But with webfonts you could do those things smoothly – and much more. Here are two examples …”
http://opentype.info/blog/2008/05/14/exploring-webfont-possibilities/
This is once again gaining support, thankfully, with the ability being built into new browsers. There is a great resource here ; http://www.fontembedding.com/
‘Why FontEmbedding.com?
Fonts play a critical role in the display, printing and manipulation of text based information and content. As technology has evolved, so have the intricacies of properly developing, licensing and deploying fonts. This evolution impacts everyone that designs, develops or uses fonts:
- Type designers, font foundries & distributors
- Graphic designers & typographers exploring new media
- Web designers & web developers
- IT managers & system administrators
- Software developers & hardware manufacturers
Type as Art
An interesting site - but unless you want to have others market your ideas, this is only a starting point for your exploration. Note -
‘The typographic creations built with this application will be stored in a database hosted by JRVisuals, LLC. As such they will be and perpetually remain the joint property of JRVisuals and Silo Design. We reserve the right to use these creations for promotional and/or commercial endeavors. All efforts will be made to credit those who took part in their creation however compensation is not promised nor implied.’
Along the same lines:
LADIES OF THE BASELINE http://www.inkfinger.us/store/2007/02/ladies_of_the_b.html
‘Each Typewoman is created entirely with type (letters, punctuation, ligatures) in the typeface of their namesake and sit atop a pattern created with the same. No letterform has been skewed, stretched, flipped or any other bastardizing technique — just scaling at rotating. So the letters are pure as the driven snow! Check out this little glimpse of how the letters are laid over each other:’ http://www.typeisart.com/
Typebase - Foundries and Designers
A listing or links http://www.typebase.com/foundries.html
Credits-Last update on 05-01-2008, TypeBase contains 553 links to fine quality typographic websites around the world, selected by Donald Roos [VetteLetters.nl] & Robert-Jan van Noort [Pankra Studio].
My Fonts - What the font
There are a varierty of sites of this nature - but boy can they save time when the client has provided you a piece of artwok and no idea of the deigners font source.
‘Ever wanted to find a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using our WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and instantly find the closest matches in our database…’ http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
Assuming the client does not want you to match an existing font - here is resource to help you pick an appropriate font - http://www.typesql.com/
And while time is passing you can have this as a Screensaver to keep track of the time http://www.simonheys.com/wordclock/
‘Word Clock is a typographic screensaver for Mac OS X and Windows. It displays a fixed list of all numbers and words sufficient to express any possible date and time as a sentence. Word Clock displays time by highlighting appropriate words as each second passes.’
They say it will also be available in this rotary version
I have mentioned this site before but on July 21st 2008 there was a nice posting covering some wonderful funny doodles - on a napkin no less http://ilovetypography.com/2008/07/21/sunday-type-napkin-type/
If you want a static desktop rather than a screensaver the same site points you to iStock for a free image

They also have a listing of their Popular Articles
- How to Make a Font
- Type History series
- Web Typography Guide
- On Choosing Type
- Identify That Font
- From Moleskine to Market
- Who Shot the Serif?
- Typoholism—an addict’s tale
As you can see, one of those is about trying to identify fonts and it includes the link I have mentioned above
A couple of more fonts for those odd situation; This time from The Design Bureau of America
http://thedesignbureauofamerika.com/thebureaulovesyou/fonts/
‘Welcome to The Design Bureau of Amerika’s design resource site. The assets found here are FREE to download and use. This is simply a way for The Bureau to say “thanks” and give a little something back to the design community. If you use these assets, please show The Bureau some love back and give credit when possible. Thanks,Keith Bowman, Creative Director’
Other sites that touch on type: http://inspiredology.com and http://inspiredology.com/typography/
‘Inspiredology is a new resource that covers everything that inspires us. Most sites show Best of galleries and massive databases of thumbnail sized screen shots of css sites. We are here to give you what our name says, we are here to inspire. If you find yourself stuck or looking on how you can make your project better, visit inspiredology.com to get yourself out of that dark creative hole.’
Type for you - http://www.typeforyou.org/
‘Typeforyou is a blog on typography.
‘My name is Pedro Serrão and I’m a graphic designer from Porto, Portugal. I like type, playing piano, architecture, product design, motion, travel, music, interaction, MIT, art, vespas. If you´d like to see of my work go to www.pedroserrao.com or www.thisispacifica.com
João Planche www.prideparanoia.com
I’m João Planche, an interactive designer from Lisbon, Portugal. Among other things I like everything that moves, interactive explorations, experimental solutions, architecture, hang out with friends and a special love on typography.
Pedro Mesquita www.thisispacifica.com
Hello, My name is Pedro Mesquita and I’m graphic designer. I live and work in Oporto. I love design, surf, skate and a lot other stuff.’
Any of you who have designed a web site and want the end user to see what you are seeing , know of the problem of the end user not having your fonts. In CSS you use a device called a font stack. A useful resource is: http://unitinteractive.com/blog/2008/06/26/better-css-font-stacks/
‘Better CSS Font Stacks by Nathan on 6.26.08 | One aspect of designing for the web that almost immediately offends designers is the lack of fonts that are considered safe to use. While it is true that there are only a handful of web safe fonts, the ones we do have at our disposal can be quite powerful and diversely useful. On top of that, CSS gives us a nice little thing called a font stack.’
And from ; http://24ways.org/2007/increase-your-font-stacks-with-font-matrix
‘Increase Your Font Stacks With Font Matrix by Richard Rutter’
Not about fonts, but images…
Photoshelter is the most recent outlet for our images… They have available an interesting widget that allows us to embed the images here in the blog… Neat marketing for them, and for us…
Onto getting that type off the screen
‘We love everything about printers, paper, ink and printing. We have been playing with them, writing about them, and using them for more than two decades, so we like to think we know more than a little bit about them.
Of course, the world of printers is a big one, and we’ve chosen to focus largely on photo printers for amateur and professional photographers. Run by Rick LePage and Ben Long, Printerville offers unbiased news, reviews, technology discussions and more. We are not affiliated with any printer manufacturer, paper supplier or other company in this market.’
Rick LePage and Ben Long
Remember those names - Articles by them a worth reading. Along with David Pogue, Dan Margulis , Ben Wilmore and the crew from The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (http://www.photoshopuser.com/), Scott Kelby probably the best known.
Fantastic writes were Cary Lu (http://www.tidbits.com/carylu/) and Bruce Fraser (http://www.brucefrasertribute.com/) but have both passed on. If you can find material by them, it is worth a read. Cary in particular helped me through my early days of mac discovery.
From Red River Paper:
‘Inkjet paper from inkjet paper experts. Red River was founded in 1997 and has over 40 years experience in fine papers. We hand pick fine paper from mills around the world and bring them to our plant in Dallas, Texas. From here, we convert the paper to various sheet sizes and rolls, as well as add special features available only from Red River. We offer wholesale direct pricing, and the convenience of over 30 different inkjet papers under one roof. Red River invests the time and money to understand and test the latest inkjet technology from Epson, Canon, HP, Lexmark and others. Our customer service reps are well versed in our products and inkjet printing, and can give our customers helpful advice on which Red River papers will suit their needs.’
Not only a source of printer needs it is a great source of info, like this article on ink jet printing costs : http://www.redrivercatalog.com/cost-of-inkjet-printing-v1.html
And to end this posting I will share with you a brief movie about a font conference.
It is to be found on collegehumor.com at http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766
As they say ‘This video wasn’t long enough, so we made it double-spaced.’
Going to stop here, the ‘Interesting topic folder‘ is down to 81 items, three major groups and many single items - I may never get caught up!
Bye for now - R
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