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New font coming very soon. Here’s some work in progress.

I just released some new fonts.

Stendo – is a wide slab serif that never lock you down to western style — for sale here:

Atrek for sale here:

This April Apple’s company valuation passed the $600 billion mark. There are only 5 other company’s to reach that same value. Here’s a few commonalities of their logos.

Simplicity reigns supreme.

• All of them employ a strong super-simplistic-easy-to-remember logo
• 4 of the 6 use a single color for their primary logo

• 3 use red; 3 use blue.
• 3 of the 6 use a clean typographic ligature.
• All of the 6 have simplistic customized fonts. Even Apple a customized version of the ubiquitous Myriad.
• All of them have gone through revisions that greatly simplified the logo. This helps logos to be easier to reproduce and apply to products.
• 4 use a sans-serif font. One uses a script.
• 3 use a shape and then repeat it at least 4 times
  • Microsoft with one block repeated in various colors
  • GE with the tear shape rotated and repeated
  • Cisco with varying and repeating vertical lines
• All of them make legibility and readability absolutely obvious
• None of them use dimensionality – shadows, layers or foreshortening.

For a recent logo development project, a beloved client loved a particular sketch. After culling through thousands of fonts in the database memory it became clear that a custom typeface would be the only way to proceed. So the lettering sketches began.

Frequently when crafting the perfect logo it makes sense to start with a pre-existing font and then alter a few of the letterforms to make sure all the letterforms flow together nicely. Conversely, the following font is completely built from scratch starting with a single line being drawn in Illustrator and incrementally building and manipulating the curves.

For those who’ve embarked on custom font development, you know it can be a joyous discovery of voluptuous curves and intersections. However, as Christian Robertson said, “the ‘s’ is the most difficult letter to design in the [english/latin] alphabet.” I agree — there were a few profanities released during the building of this set. Here’s a few tips to sculpting an ‘s’ of steel.

› Make sure that the upper and lower counterspaces aren’t equal.
The bottom is frequently slightly larger than the top
› The diagonal curve will likely be thicker than the rest of your strokes
› Don’t be afraid to start over several times
› The terminals determine a significant amount of the attitude of the font

FYI – This font will not be for sale as it is a proprietary font built for a client (unless they choose to make it available) If you’re looking for similar well-crafted fonts, you should consider: Silas Dilworth’s Breuer or Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Forza.

I have a not-so-obvious attraction to two things. Kerning and butter. It seems nice kerning makes the nicest headlines feel so smooth and tasty, which is why I’m pretty happy about the TypeButter. Although I haven’t sufficiently kicked the tires of this little jquery plugin I’m looking forward to web headlines being custom fonts, beautiful, and well-kerned.

Another great reason to love archive.org was shared by Mr. Johnathan Hoefler. There’s a 1912 American Type Founders specimen online! 1300+ pages worth of vintage typography.

via @H_FJ.

Last night I attended a great meeting (Utah Mobile Developers) concerning monetization of mobile apps. This was one of the slides that Dave Robinson shared. Original here.

Resource:
Make sure to take some time to peruse some delightful pre-disney era designs and illustrations. The color theory alone is well worth some appreciation time. I’m especially fond of the typography and filagrees of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and the illustrations in calendars of the Antikamnnia

Favorite new app:
Recently I’ve enjoyed lemon.com and the free iPhone app. I like the simplistic interface design, and the convenience to take photos of receipts and have all the text OCRed for future use.

Videos:
Everything is a remix: Helpful viewpoint in learning creative solutions. I’ve always frowned upon people who blatantly ripoff some one else’s design. But a designer that can pull off a killer remix of previously uncombined ideas deserves smile of respect followed by a sketch of the new idea you just got from it.

Kid History: Clean and entertaining way to hear a story from the perspective and vocabulary of a child, but acted out by adults. My favorite way to watch these funny videos is in the company of my wife and children. My kids rarely stop laughing.

Adrenaline rush “I believe I can fly” – Proxy adrenaline rushes are sufficient for my tastes. This video foots the bill, and this comic captures my thoughts exactly. More video sweetness and slo-mo from the same film maker here.

The above video get’s me excited to do more sports/motion capture. I’ve gotta try a glidecam sometime. Does anyone know where I can borrow a glidecam around here in the UV area? I’ve called around here, and no one seems to have one available. Please drop me a line if you have any suggestions.