Tag: typography

Bookmarked Relative Font Weights Considered Harmful by Den McHenryDen McHenry (denmchenry.com)

Not exactly, but who can resist writing a "considered harmful" article when you can get away with it?

The real harm is that you can very easily conceal the semantics conveyed by font-weight depending on the font that's rendered, which is not always in your control. This all depends on how you define the base weight to which your relative values refer, and (1) whether that base weight is actually available in the rendered font and (2) which value is substituted if it isn't.

You get a webmention, and you get a webmention, and…

👓 The world’s first code-free sparkline typeface | After the flood

Read The world’s first code-free sparkline typeface (After the flood)

Displaying charts in text without having to use code

Data can be hard to grasp however visualising it can make comprehension faster. Sparklines (tiny charts in text, like this: 123{10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100}789) are a useful tool, but creating them for the web has always required code and using them in word documents was previously impossible.

Sparks, now in its second release, is a family of 15 fonts (three variants in five weights each) that allows for the easy combination of text and visual data by removing the need for any technical know-how. By installing the Spark font you can use them immediately without the need for custom code.

Liked a post by AlonealastalovedalongtheAlonealastalovedalongthe (Toot Café)
All the hand painted signs I find disused in sheds and basements make me sad. I don't think the ability to print signs with computers and digital fonts actually made the world a better place. Definitely didn't make it more beautiful. Logos like the coca cola logo are static, dead imitations of beautiful handwritten scripts shoved in everyone's faces as a reminder of what once was a living, human pursuit rewarded by society.

👓 What do you want to do when you grow up, kid? | Robin Rendle

Read What do you want to do when you grow up, kid? by Robin Rendle (robinrendle.com)
I fell into web design via books. When I was maybe six or seven I remember reading about polar bears and how they hibernated in a large compendium about all sorts of natural habitats and curiosities ranging from foxes hunting in the desert and wild horses running on the Mongolian plains to Emperor penguins shivering in the Antarctic. And to this day I still remember that giant, double page spread of a bear and her cubs. It was a wondrous illustration but what piqued my curiosity was how the writer described hibernation.

What a great little story here. I may be biased because I love all of these types of things myself.

🔖 Sans Forgetica | RMIT

Bookmarked Sans Forgetica (sansforgetica.rmit)
Sans Forgetica is a typeface designed using the principles of cognitive psychology to help you to better remember your study notes. It was created by a multidisciplinary team of designers and behavioural scientists from RMIT University. Sans Forgetica is compatible with both PC and Mac operating systems. Download it for free today, or keep scrolling to learn more about how it was made.

📺 Sans Forgetica | The font to remember | RMIT University | YouTube

Watched Sans Forgetica | The font to remember from YouTube
Sans Forgetica is a typeface that has been specifically designed by academics at RMIT University to enhance memory retention.
Download the font and Chrome extension, or hear more from the team who created Sans Forgetica, at: http://sansforgetica.rmit

As I look at some of the websites being created for the EDU522 class, it’s exciting to see what people are creating and how they’re expressing themselves. As hinted at in the Who Am I module, I do think it may be useful for some to think about the readability and accessibility of their sites. Even simple things like the color of a background against text can make it unpleasant or difficult to read. For ideas on readability, I recommend Kevin Marks’ WIRED article How the Web Became Unreadable.1

Be creative and have fun, but remember the multiple audiences and communities who may not consume your content the same way you do.

References

1.
Marks K. How the Web Became Unreadable | Backchannel. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/2016/10/how-the-web-became-unreadable/. Published October 19, 2016. Accessed August 1, 2018.

👓 The Billionaire’s Typewriter | Butterick’s Practical Typography

Read The billionaire’s typewriter by Matthew But­t­er­ick (Butterick’s Practical Typography)
A friend pointed me to a story on Medium called “Death to Type­writ­ers,” by Medium de­signer Marcin Wichary. The story is about the in­flu­ence of the type­writer on dig­i­tal type­set­ting. It ref­er­ences my “ex­cel­lent list” of type­writer habits.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

Min­i­mal­ism doesn’t fore­close ei­ther ex­pres­sive breadth or con­cep­tual depth. On the con­trary, the min­i­mal­ist pro­gram—as it ini­tially emerged in fine art of the 20th cen­tury—has been about di­vert­ing the viewer’s at­ten­tion from overt signs of au­thor­ship to the deeper pu­rity of the ingredients.  ❧

This also sounds like a great way to cook!

Like all non­sense, it’s in­tended to be easy to swal­low.  ❧

You’re giv­ing up far more than de­sign choice. Mr. Williams de­scribes Medium’s key ben­e­fit as res­cu­ing writ­ers from the “ter­ri­ble dis­trac­tion” of for­mat­ting chores. But con­sider the cost. Though he’s bait­ing the hook with de­sign, he’s also ask­ing you, the writer, to let him con­trol how you of­fer your work to read­ers. Mean­ing, to get the full ben­e­fit of Medium’s de­sign, you have to let your story live on Medium, send all your read­ers to Medium, have your work per­ma­nently en­tan­gled with other sto­ries on Medium, and so on—a sig­nif­i­cant concession.  ❧

You’re definitely not owning your own data.

Boiled down, Medium is sim­ply mar­ket­ing in the ser­vice of more mar­ket­ing. It is not a “place for ideas.” It is a place for ad­ver­tis­ers. It is, there­fore, ut­terly superfluous.  ❧

👓 Hiding Information in Plain Text | Spectrum IEEE

Read Hiding Information in Plain Text (IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News)
Subtle changes to letter shapes can embed messages

An interesting piece to be sure, but I’ve thought of doing this sort of steganography in the past. In particular, I recall having conversations with Sol Golomb about similar techniques in the past. I’m sure there’s got to be prior art for similar things as well.

👓 One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong. | Washington Post

Read One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong. by Avi Selk (Washington Post)

“Professionals and amateurs in a variety of fields have passionately argued for either one or two spaces following this punctuation mark,” they wrote in a paper published last week in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

They cite dozens of theories and previous research, arguing for one space or two.  A 2005 study that found two spaces reduced lateral interference in the eye and helped reading.  A 2015 study that found the opposite.  A 1998 experiment that suggested it didn't matter.

“However,” they wrote, “to date, there has been no direct empirical evidence in support of these claims, nor in favor of the one-space convention.”

I love that the permalink for this article has a trailing 2, which indicates to me that it took the editors a second attempt to add the additional space into the headline for their CMS. And if nothing else, this article is interesting for its layout and typesetting.

I’ll circle back to read the full journal article shortly.1

 

References

1.
Johnson RL, Bui B, Schmitt LL. Are two spaces better than one? The effect of spacing following periods and commas during reading. Atten Percept Psychophys. April 2018. doi:10.3758/s13414-018-1527-6

👓 Smelvetica | Tims Curious Creations

Read Smelvetica by Tim Holman (tholman.com)
Smelvetica is an experimentation in taking one of the worlds most beloved fonts, and turning it into a morbid monstrocity.

We need more fonts like this so people appreciate the good ones a bit more.

👓 A brutal redesign | Duncan Stephen

Read A brutal redesign (Duncan Stephen)
When I started to experiment with different ways of blogging, I realised what I was doing was a bit off. So I decided to redesign the blog.

I appreciate that others are grappling with these design ideas as well. I need to get back to some of my own work and experimenting in this area. It’s also a bit reminiscent of Dries Buytaert’s recent post Reclaiming my blog as my thought space in which he contemplates some of these types of issues and questions, though from a slightly different perspective.

📕 Read pages 220-356 of Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield

📖 Read pages 220-356 of Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield (Gotham Books, , ISBN: 978-1592406524)

Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

Chapter 16: Pirates and Clones

But type designers were more like apple growers cultivating unique fruit without protective fences; whenever someone stole them, they could argue that apples were the result of the sun and rain and God’s own fair intervention.

Highlight (yellow) – 16. Pirates and Clones > Page 227

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… and font-editing software such as Fontographer.

Highlight (yellow) – 16. Pirates and Clones > Page 228

Might be worth playing around with this program?
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A recent example concerned Segoe, created by Monotype and licensed to Microsoft, which bears a close relationship to Frutiger. Their common usage is different (Segoe for screen display at small sizes, Frutiger for signage), …

Highlight (yellow) – 16. Pirates and Clones > Page 229

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Chapter 17: The Clamour from the Past

There are hundreds of small presses in the Uk, Europe and the United States. One of the newest is White’s Books, which in the spring of 2010 had just eight titles in its list, …

Highlight (yellow) – 17. The Clamour from the Past > Page 246

I’m curious to look at some of these.
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Your choice may often come down to “Has it got a small caps italic?” So few of them do.

Highlight (yellow) – 17. The Clamour from the Past > Page 250

Ha! I have in fact actually made this very decision before.
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There is another rare feature that places his [White’s] books among the remnants of a type museum–the setting of a catchword at the bottom of the right-hand page.

Highlight (yellow) – 17. The Clamour from the Past > Page 250

I did always appreciate this vestige of publishing.
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

Sabon

Sabon was developed in the early 1960s for a group of German printers who were grumbling about the lack of a ‘harmonized’ or uniform font that would look the same whether set by hand or on a Monotype or Linotype machine. They were quite specific about the sort of font that might fit the bill, rejecting the modern and fashionable in favour of solid sixteenth-century tradition–something modeled on Garamond and Granjon. They also wanted the new font to be five percent narrower than their existing Monotype Garamond, in order to save space and money.

Highlight (yellow) – Sabon > Page 251

Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

Chapter 18: Breaking the Rules

Here are the rules as [Paul] Felton considers God intended them:

  1. Thou shalt not apply more than three typefaces in a document.
  2. Thou shalt lay headlines large and at the top of the page.
  3. Thou shalt employ no other type size than 8pt to 10pt for body copy.
  4. Remember that a typeface that is not legible is not truly a typeface.
  5. Honour thy kerning, so that white space becomes visually equalized between characters.
  6. Thou shalt lay stress discreetly upon elements within text.
  7. Thou shalt not use only capitals when setting vast body copy.
  8. Thou shalt always align letters and words on a baseline.
  9. Thou shalt use flush-left, ragged-right type alignment.
  10. Thou shalt not make lines too short or too long.
Highlight (yellow) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 255-256

Quick synopsis of Felton’s book The Ten Commandments of Typography / Type Heresy
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

Or this observation on digital type from the design critic Paul Hayden Duensing: ‘Digitizing [the seventeenth-century typeface] Janson is like playing Bach on synthesizer.’

Highlight (yellow) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 258

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… type was like painting and architecture: an elitism prevailed, and what you produced was only half the story, and what you said about it counted just as much.

Highlight (yellow) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 259

Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

But he [Sebastian Carter] also championed the not-such-a-great-job, the pieces of design and printing that didn’t turn out to be beautiful or clear, merely interesting. He illustrated his talk with some items that were ‘pretty cruddy’, and suggested that these too had a place in our world. ‘I would not want to live in a world of exclusively good design at the bus-ticket level,’ he said.

Highlight (yellow) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 261

delivered mid-October 2004 Beatrice Warde Memorial Lecture at the St. Bride Institute
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

Thus armed, ‘the designers of tomorrow will not look back; we give them the chance to fail abjectly and completely; they’re all in the typographic gutter and some of them are looking at their scars.’ The result, of course, would bring forth more failure, but also types of originality and brilliance.

Highlight (yellow) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 262

This sounds to me like statistical mechanics at work in design. Many will be in the median, some will be three signma out and either be truly great or out of the game altogether. The question is how to encourage more at the higher end, knowing that evolution is a very strong selector. In fact what does the distribution over a few generations look like with evolution in play? How strong is it?
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

Peace

Highlight (gray) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 265

Why wasn’t this used in it’s actual face like the other examples? Was it not available? Or too expensive for one word?
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

‘Where is the language of protest now?’ he asks. ‘We have been led to believe that culture was only there as a financial opportunity.’

Highlight (yellow) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 265

Quote from Neville Brody
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

The key, Brody said, in a strange echo of Morison, was ‘to change a newspaper entirely, but to make sure no one noticed. […] When we first showed it to focus groups they didn’t notice it had changed, but when we told them it had changed, they hated it.’

Highlight (yellow) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 266

Sounds like America’s racial culture in the last 60 years. The question is did they hate it because they’d been lied to and it was a psychological effect after-the-fact when they obviously otherwise didn’t know?
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

Buffalo and Popaganda

Highlight (gray) – 18. Breaking the Rules > Page 267

again, no exemplars of these faces
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 morning

The Interrobang

the @ […] may be almost as old as the ampersand. It had been associated with trade for many centuries, known as amphora or jar, a unit of measurement. Most countries have their own term for it, often linked to food (in Hebrew it is shtrudl, meaning strudel, in Czech it is zavinac or rollmop herring) or to cute animals (Affenschwanz or monkey’s tail in German, snabel-a, meaning “the letter a, with a trunk,” in Danish, sobaka or dog in Russian), or to both (escargot in French).

Highlight (yellow) – Interrobang > Page 269

Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

Chapter 19: The Serif of Liverpool

… and we were sucha funny family, a little bit Alan Bennett.

Highlight (yellow) – 19. The Serif of Liverpool > Page 271

Who is Bennett? Curious cultural reference that doesn’t play in the US…
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

Chapter 20: Fox, Gloves

Rather than ten letters of each new typeface showing in Handgloves and the rest of the alphabet shown beneath it, each font now comes with words unique to its character, style and possible use.

Highlight (yellow) – 20. Fox, Gloves > Page 291

Kind of similar to the quirkiness of paint chip color names, somewhat useful, but meant to help sales too…
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

Coles introduced me to Chris Hamamoto, who had a long list of Handgloves alternatives on his computer. Anyone in the office could add to it,
butthere were certain guidelines:

The key letters, in order of importance, are: g, a, s, e. Then there is: l, o, I. And of lesser importance but still helpful: d (or b), h, m (or n), u, v.

Verbs or generic nouns are preferable because they don’t describe the font (like adjectives) or confuse the sample word with a font name (like proper nouns).

Avoid tandem repeating letters unless showing off alternatives.

Use one word, as spaces can get too large and distracting at display sizes.

Highlight (yellow) – 19. The Serif of Liverpool > Page 293

This could actually be a rather interesting information theory problem.
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

Chapter 21: The Worst Fonts in the World

‘Real men don’t set Souvenir,’ wrote the type scholar Frank Romano in the early 1990’s, […] ‘Souvenir is a font fatale … We could send Souvenir to Mars, but there are international treaties on pollution in outer space … remember, friends don’t let friends set Souvenir,’

Highlight (yellow) – 21. The Worst Fonts in the World > Page 301-302

Souvenir bold evokes 1970’s porn and Souvenir Light evokes the Love Story movie poster, romance novels, and maybe the poster for Flowers in the Attic for me.
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

Chapter 22: Just My Type

… you can fire up one of a number of software programs — TypeTool, FontLab Studio and Fontographer are the most popular — and begin your quest.

Highlight (yellow) – 22. Just My Type > Page 320

I want to look at how these work.
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

He [Mathew Carter] replied, ‘Some aspects get easier. But if you’re doing a good job you should feel that it gets harder. If you think it’s getting easier, you ought to look out. I think it means you’re getting lazy.’

Highlight (yellow) – 22. Just My Type > Page 321

Carter on whether computers have made the life of a type designer any easier.
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

In 1968 the influential graphic design review The Penrose Annual asked exactly the same things: ‘Aren’t we done yet? Why do we need all these new fonts such as … Helvetica?’
The answer, than and now, is the same. Because the world and its contents are continually changing. We need to express ourselves in new ways.

Highlight (yellow) – 22. Just My Type > Page 322

Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

‘There are only thirty-two notes on a tenor saxophone, and surely to god they’ve all been played by now.’

Highlight (yellow) – 22. Just My Type > Page 322-323

Matthew Carter on Why New Typefaces?
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

… there is a lavish app called TypeDrawing, which takes even the plainest fonts to exciting new heights; it may be the tool that teaches children about type–the modern version of the John Bull printing kit.

Highlight (yellow) – 22. Just My Type > Page 323-324

Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

…a set of Type Trumps–the designer’s version of the kids’ card game, with each font card rated for legibility, weight and special power.

Highlight (yellow) – 22. Just My Type > Page 324

an interesting set of “trading cards”
Added on Sunday, December 31, 2017 evening

Guide to highlight colors

Yellow–general highlights and highlights which don’t fit under another category below
Orange–Vocabulary word; interesting and/or rare word
Green–Reference to read
Blue–Interesting Quote
Gray–Typography Problem
Red–Example to work through

📖 Read pages 143-192 of Just My Type by Simon Garfield

📖 Read pages 143-192 of Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield (Gotham Books, , ISBN: 978-1592406524)

Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

…[Jock] Kinneir and [Margaret] Calvert did something else important: they established that it is a lot easier to read lower-case letters than capitals when travelling at speed.

Highlight (yellow) – 10. Road Akzidenz > Page 143

Added on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 night

… and cows becoming part of the proceedings at any time.

Highlight (blue) – 10. Road Akzidenz > Page 144

Just a lovely quote nestled within this page…
Added on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 night

…the iPhone has an app for font identification named WhatTheFont.

Highlight (yellow) – 12. What the Font > Page 175

Added on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 night

[Erik] Spiekermann’s blog, which is called Spiekerblog, contains acerbic comments on the type he sees on his travels.

Highlight (green) – 13. Can a font be German, or Jewish > Page 186

Added on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 night

Guide to highlight colors

Yellow–general highlights and highlights which don’t fit under another category below
Orange–Vocabulary word; interesting and/or rare word
Green–Reference to read
Blue–Interesting Quote
Gray–Typography Problem
Red–Example to work through