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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.

links from lecture

Seth — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:31:04 +0000

typefoundry.blogspot.com — Documents for the history of type and letterforms

type tool — simplified font creation, limited in features from it’s older brother Font Lab

Mercury — font based on the Scotch typefaces designed in the 1770s (from H&FJ)

Letters to Type – observations from July 12, 2010 class

Seth — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:22:11 +0000

After catching a redeye flight, and arriving at JFK at 6 a.m. one would think it would be tiring to hear a 2 hour lecture on the history of type in a warm and dark room. But it was inspiring to hear what Sara noticed from the various stages of letterforms. For example the differences in stresses between lining numbers, capitals and lowercase. I thought that the stresses would be similar, but they are carefully different. And, few typeset spans can equal the beauty of the original half uncials designed in 500 a.d. … And there’s even such a thing as a well executed, insightful, and beautiful powerpoint. The instructor proved it. Did you know that the first lower-case sans-serif font was made as recently as 1835?

Here’s one of the handouts:

We mainly worked on our initial font creations. Mine is inspired by an old water meter near my house. See below.

Apologies for the picture quality. I purposely left my camera at home and am using a small point and shoot.

Dreams can come true

Seth — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:07:33 +0000

$900 for a week of type/font/design training, from the geniuses who created Gotham, Verlag, Chronicle, Sentinel, and Tungsten.

Here’s the lead: http://cl.ly/1VOG

If I get to go, I commit to post up lessons each night, so you can benefit and so I can learn twice by trying to teach my newly acquired knowledge.

Remember: Kem is bad kerning.

Designers don’t let friends use Avant Garde (font)

Seth — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:06:04 +0000

As Brian Memmott used to say, “If you’re ever tempted to use Avant Garde, use Futura”

Ok kids, time for another tweak. The e was corrected as well as the kerning, but for this post we’ll focus on the s. Notice that the s is about half the width of the d which makes the s feel too dense in compared to the pacing of the rest of the letters. To correct this, don’t use horizontal character stretching. Stretching the glyph to be wider produces too much weight in the horizontal widths/bowls of the s.

type touch-up

Seth — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:18:14 +0000

Occasionally, I get my hands on some anchor points that need a better foundation. Such was the case for a recent client project. The guilty font was none other than Quicksand. It’s a trendy free font right now. The main problem with the font is the lack of optical balancing in the letter forms. I’ve included an enlarged view of the previous form (pink) and the optically adjusted form (blue). Whenever you have an arm or bowl of a letter meet a vertical stem, it’s tasteful to have some tapering in the connecting area so the font doesn’t feel too clunky. Especially at small sizes, the font will tend to look muddy or heavy.

You can see the full update here.

Ginger Monkey

Seth — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:48:08 +0000

Head on over to gingermonkeydesign.com to appreciate a little illustration/type goodness. I particularly enjoy the color selections and textures. I have yet to tire of the extremely ornate as long as it is hand done, the more raw the elements the better.

Psychotique web design

Seth Taylor — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:28:48 +0000

My responsibilities were logo creation, product design, photography, website design, interaction, and managing the shopping cart coding and some training.