Feed Me » Typography

Custom web font kerning

Seth — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 05:08:49 +0000

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 reason to love archive.org

Seth — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:22:57 +0000

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.

Link round up

Seth — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:42:32 +0000

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.

Slash bash, custom type

Seth — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:14:24 +0000

Have you ever seen the capitals of Fette Fraktur? Eww. I thoroughly enjoyed customizing the S and B of the Slash Bash pumpkin party poster. Also, if you get the chance, we’d love to see you at the third annual Slash Bash. RSVP here.

The text deets.

Beautiful errors

Seth — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 05:32:13 +0000

I’m absolutely loving the error I got when printing out a presentation for a client. Look at the way the letters started to peel from the surface of the paper. It comes from having a fully supported black (c100 m100 y100 k100) printed on a laser printer with a bad fuser.

Creativity pro tip: relish and learn from the surprising error. Sometimes the surprising “error” leads to a new perception and innovation.

The new movie font

Seth — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 07:38:18 +0000

For years, movie posters have utilized Carol Twombly’s font creation Trajan. There’s even a montage of covers here. Thankfully, it’s a well drawn font. Let’s all be grateful that we don’t encounter Avant Garde on many movie posters. There may be a bold new font on the rise and a few people have asked me about it. It’s called Brothers, designed by John Downer at Emigre. It’s accompanied by a great set of alternate glyphs, word logos and elements. I first used Brothers on an identity project 5 years ago and I’ve enjoyed it ever since due to it’s bold, chiseled and lithographic forms.

Display font (work in progress)

Seth — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:07:49 +0000

Create-a-font-in-30-minutes exercise. It’s a display font, not meant for body text. I included a few alternate characters. Inspiration came from the cross hairs in my camera view finder.

Notes from July 15, 2010

Seth — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:40:54 +0000

Tracking value in InDesign – directly correlates to adding units to both the left and the right of the glyph in TypeTool.

Sometimes you’ll notice that fonts display on screen differently depending on what zoom level you’re looking at. This is based on the position of the anchor points of the curves. If all the points have been plotted on easily divisible even numbers, then it is more likely to display consistently with various zoom levels. Highly geometric fonts, by definition, will display on screen more consistently.

notice the exaggerated bounce in baseline and cap height alignment.

This has the desired amount of bounce in cap height and no baseline bounce.

Unicorn Graphics The most amazing resource — Wood Type Museum

Setting up Illustrator to work with font creation:
Preferences – Units = pts

grid = 10 pts with 10 subdivisions
clipboard = aicb preserve paths, uncheck PDF
More details here

Quick links

mucca design uses this guy for type design devicq.com

926 gorgeous WPA posters

Seth — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:01:35 +0000

Library of Congress WPA Posters There’s some excellent gems here.

Here’s a hint. When you’re viewing the slideshow, you can click on the image and the info will display. Click on the “More about this item…” link and you’ll be taken to a page where you download a much higher resolution and other juicy tidbits.

Notes from July 13, 2010

Seth — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:41:42 +0000

Optical vs Metric spacing

In design software like Illustrator and InDesign there is a palette drop down to choose between optical and metric spacing. Metric reads the spacing generated during a final stage of font creation by the font designer — if care was taken to customize kerning pairs. Whereas, Optical spacing uses an algorithm designed by Herman Zapf (of Optima and Palatino fame). Zapf built the algorithm to read the amount of color in a character and its counter spaces and produces calculated spaces between the characters.

If the font in question is a carefully designed font, then metrics will be the best option to select and only occasional custom kerning will be needed. If its an amateur/hobbyist font, then avoid the metrics and hope the optical produces reasonable results, but be ready to spend a lot of time correcting specific kerning pairs.

Galaxie Casseopeia

Charles Jenkins painstakingly took 2 years producing an amazing connecting brush script font called Galaxie Cassiopeia. Each letter has 7 tail alternates and 4 intro strokes. Take it for a spin. Notice how when you type character sets like “lll” and “lol” or “lal” how the joins reflow to make an appealing connection. This not only demonstrates the quality of the font, but showcases Opentype capabilities that weren’t previously possible in TrueType or PostScript.

Quote from an unknown source

The more frequently type glyphs are seen (even in literature, display or digital), the more the personalities —whether pleasing or annoying — will catch attention. Sweat the details.

Guest Lecturer Charles Jenkins from Vllg.com

Charles Jenkins – Brilliant type designer behind the brilliance of the Blackberry font, Infinity used by ATT and Verizon – at various times, custom type for big magazines and a few other gems.

Future of type: will add personality in unexpected places.

Type is a community more than an industry.