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Typeface Talk on "To the Best of Our Knowledge"
Wisconsin Public Radio’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge“ show had a great typography-related discussion today for all you typofile nerds out there.
Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones discuss one of their more famous typefaces, Gotham, and how the Obama campaign came to use it. Then Matthew Carter discuses his most recognizable creation—Verdana. And, yes, there is a bit about IKEA’s adoption of this screen font, along with a few animated reactions, heh.
The remaining interviews are nice as well, Kitty Burns Florey (whose name sounds like a rather scary children’s story) discusses her latest book “Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting“ and Tracy Honn of the Silver Buckle Press talks about the Golden Official #6 press from the late 1800s.
Check out the audio here—enjoy!
Posted on Sunday, 01 Nov 2009 
Comments
Tags: audio,
public radio,
typography
Who you callin' a Font-face?
When I set up a comp for a website in Photoshop, many times I can spend hours figuring out which pixel goes where and what color it is. And since I drank the web standards/semantic web Kool-Aid, I’ve tried to keep the “text as image” scenario to an absolute minimum. So, while I’m in Photoshop lining everything up, I always seem to end up creating the big content box of greek text. What font should I use for the body copy? It usually ends up being Arial or Times New Roman. As web designers, we’re able to select our 3 or so favorite fonts for a certain class and hope for the best. My favorite thing is the “serif or sans-serif” declaration, which to me seems like a shot in the dark since people can change this preference in their browser. Essentially, outside of Arial and Times New Roman web typography has been just that—a crap shoot.
Not ever person realizes that websites are designed and built by people who are not necessarily designers (or builders for that matter). So, this is sort of a good thing to constrain font usage on the web. Having a limited amount of fonts to choose from creates a usability construct in that people on the internet get used to seeing Arial or Times New Roman, so anything outside of that throws them for a loop.
A colleague of mine once cringed at the possibility of selecting body copy fonts for a client as it would add another layer of complication in producing a site. I can understand this, though it strikes me as a bit lazy for a designer to disregard something as vital as the typeface of the majority of the content. It’s hard to imagine a book designer only being offered 2 fonts for the body text, isn’t it?
Enter the font-face descriptor from 1997 —that really worked out great, ugh. I can’t remember which browser supported this or didn’t, but I do know that it didn’t gain any traction at all and we all kept seeing the same ol’ fonts.
Twelve years later, I think the fire under people’s collective asses are being lit as Safari and Firefox have embraced “new” ideas in web design, including embedding fonts in websites. Of course, this means designers will end up waiting a few years for Microsoft’s IE to catch up, then another few more years for grandma’s to update their web browser—but hey, I’m not complaining.
There are a few potentially large repercussions to all this font-face business. We could potentially have to interact with ugly fonts and/or font treatments. Also, I’m no performance analyst but I wonder how embedding a font or twelve million will slow down me hitting a website.
One of the interesting areas though is licensing typefaces. Right now, designers are limited in the legal sense to free fonts. The idea of “you get what you pay for” typically applies. When I think of free fonts out there on the internet, I always think of the ACDC or Purple Rain fonts which are purely decorative. I’m unaware of any free web fonts out there that are readable in terms of using it for body copy.
In my mind, this opens up the possibilities on two fronts. The first being foundries being able to license fonts for specific usage online, hence increasing their revenue. The other possibility is for type designers to tackle readability issues regarding web typography. So, we might be seeing some really interesting new fonts in webpages! At the very least, this whole font-face thing might stir up the typographer/webdesigner debates in after-work cocktail parties.
By the way, this is set in CA BND by Cape Arcona. While it’s really nice headline font, I wouldn’t want to read someone’s blog using this face.
Posted on Friday, 08 May 2009 Comments
Tags: css,
typography,
web design,
web standards
Typocalypse
Dutchman Lars Willem Veldkampf tells us what certain famous typefaces are trying to say via Typocalypse well as trains our brain. Nice!
Also, check his portfolio.
Posted on Monday, 16 Mar 2009 Comments
Tags: flickr,
netherlands,
typography
Marion Bataille - ABC3D
Genius. Fun. Now I know my ABC3Ds! I suggest all typofiles and moms pre-orderABC3D
Posted on Sunday, 23 Mar 2008 Comments
Tags: books,
typography
FruiType
Image: Sarah King
Sarah King has painstakingly carved out a niche in the fruit-carving industry, while exciting type nerds on the internet at the same time! She belongs to a graphic design collective in the UK called Evening Tweed which has a few more of her excellent pieces of work as well as a few of her other colleagues’ work as well.
Posted on Thursday, 13 Mar 2008 Comments
Tags: fruit,
typography,
uk
The 1970s Type
Mark Simonson Talks Type about an edition of Metropolis from 1977.
I have a personal love and admiration for a lot of the careful type lockups from the 1970s. A few years ago I was at a used book sale at a library in Rio de Janeiro and picked up a hardbound 10 year special edition of Revista Manchete, which was stocked full of yummy type similar to what Mark shares. I believe this cover is from 1971.
Posted on Friday, 22 Sep 2006 Comments
Tags: 1970s,
graphic design,
typography
Douglas Bowman's roulette
I love Douglas Bowman’s big, bold, and web-colorful roulette page (as well as homepage). Each six-digit string is its own HTML color, refreshing the page will give you a different, I’m assuming random, color combination. Nice!
Posted on Sunday, 10 Sep 2006 Comments
Tags: code,
color,
typography
2005 FontShop Calendar
Here’s a great way to get your paws on a free calendar AND stick it to the man. Download each month or the entire 2005 calendar and send it to the color printer. No, for real, it’s a great calendar, a wnice idea for a promotional piece. And by the way, there’s some wonderful fontage as well as graphic design up in the mix.
And while you’re at it, go ahead and subscribe to their font feed. That is, if you love type the way I do!
Posted on Wednesday, 04 Jan 2006 Comments
Tags: graphic design,
typography
Quatrifolio, Marian Bantjes
I just bumped into Marian Bantjes’ Quatrifolio and it rocked my socks off. I immediately recognized her style from Speak Up (another fantastic site). First off, what’s not to love about her work – with elements of classical typography, exaggerated “pixel art,” as well as good old-fashioned pen and paper sketching. Her type (letters, that is) has a life of its own – living, breathing, with a personality to boot. And those patterns are sick! ↠that means really good.
She’s a terrific “anti-writer” as well. Many designers, myself included, get a little bogged down explaining your entire life in three extremely clever sentences for the purpose of charming the pants off that potential client we have yet to hear from. She handles it well by (kinda) not playing that game. Anyhow, why don’t you start clicking away and see for yourself while I start planning on how I am gonna run her fanclub!
Posted on Tuesday, 01 Feb 2005 Comments
Tags: illustration,
typography
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It's 05:16 Saturday, 13 Mar 2010, have a nice day!