Samuels Type runs the foundry as a family :) Then Rebecca Samuels would be the elder sister I guess. Also great: Rosemary Samuels, Colin Samuels
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Font of the day: Rebecca Samuels
Samuels Type runs the foundry as a family :) Then Rebecca Samuels would be the elder sister I guess. Also great: Rosemary Samuels, Colin Samuels
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Font of the day: Neubaubet
Neubau is widely known for selling (excellent) vector stuff, but they also make trendy fonts. You can buy Neubaubet at NBLaden, and I love the type treatment there.
Also great: NeubauGrotesk you see here. There will be an exhibition in Eindhoven on September 5., 2008, don't miss it!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Font of the day: Pauline
Pauline is a script face that is not that scripty at all, but still warm and kind of naive. I particularly like the italics. Get it at Insigne, and also look at Valfieris, Sommet, and Aviano Slab (my favourite of the three)
Monday, May 19, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Font of the day: Hamburgotische
Hamburgotische by TypeType is a modern interpretation of a blackletter. For €40 you get 2 styles, may come in handy next time you design a beer lable for kids :) Other fonts to check out: Mono, Perform.
Their freebie page doesn't offer anything as of now, but looks promising.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Font of the day: WeddingSans
WeddingSans is not really an appropriate name, this font is clean, mechanical, there's nothing soft or romantic about it. And it's one of the few fonts designed by a female type designer: Andrea Tinnes. You can get it at Typecuts for only €140/16 cuts (which isn't much if you ask me). Other fonts to check out: Skopex Serif, DasDeck and Broadway Hollywood (not for sale, but beautiful).
Friday, May 16, 2008
Rich type
BBC reports that Zimbabwe has issued a 500m dollar banknote (obviously not pictured). Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate is 165,000% and the banknote you see is only worth about $1 (today in the evening). In that case it's no surprise that the fonts used are Arial and Times.
Various pictures of money can be found in this Flickr pool.
Font of the day: Buffet Script
Sudtipos is well-know for their beautiful script fonts, and I had a hard time to choose one for the font of the day. It's Buffet Script, which is based on calligraphy by Alf Becker, a great American signpainter. Other great fonts: Grover Slab (not script), Downtempo (not script) and of course Affair (very, very script)
Thursday, May 15, 2008
TypeSQL: everything is connected
Font of the day: Blaktur
Knowing my love for really black type, it's no surprise that the font of the day from House is award-winning Blaktur; if you ever need a fun, contemporary blackletter, give it a go, for only $50 ;) Other fonts to check out: Neutraface, Paperback and Luxury
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Frutiger Serif
Linotype introduces Frutiger Serif, which is actually reworked Meridian by Adrian Frutiger, who turns 80 in a few days. Together with Akira Kobayashi they've changed Meridian's metrics and proportions to match Frutiger, and added some new cuts.
10 typefaces you see everywhere
In no particular order:
I mean is there another typeface that has an own movie? Univers turned 50 and nobody cared, Futura will turn 80 and I don't see any poster contests or special t-shirts editions coming.
Give me5 minutes 2 minutes in any city, I'll show you Helvetica. I'll show you Helvetica Neue, Helvetica Rounded, I'll show you Swiss 721, I'll show you Helvetica Ultra Light, Extra Black Condensed, Extended Oblique, Heavy Italic, well you get the picture.
Helvetica=Everywhere
I wrote it in all-caps for a reason, see that R? Ugly. Nonetheless Arial is probably the most used typeface ever, thanks to Microsoft of course, and it's the first typeface on the list quite often. Actually Arial is here as a represantative of all system fonts like Comic Sans, Times New Roman, Verdana etc. My grandma told me: if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all, so I'll stop here.
Dare to be different? Use FF Meta! As a corporate type, for long copy in design magazines, for bold ad headlines, for signage, for just about everything. That was the motto 15 years ago, and now with the beautiful FF Meta Serif on the market, the usage may just explode again.
Advertising agencies love Futura. Fashion labels love Futura. Every big foundry has an own Futura. Why not, it's a sans with no strings attached: a j is only a line and a dot, as fresh as it was 80 years ago. But 8 out of 10 typography professors will tell you not to use Futura for long body copy. But 8 out of 10 people who own Futura never had a typography professor.
FF DIN, or any other DIN is used for everything that is supposed to look cool. Packaging? DIN! Fashion? DIN! Sports? DIN! Electronics? DIN! Portfolio? DIN! You see gray text on black, which is kind of hard to read? You probably see DIN.
Most used of Gill's weghts: Light and Ultra Bold, at least I feel that way. The weird thing about it is that the Ultra Bold lowercase is hideous. No wonder, that weight was designed only to beat Futura Extra Bold. At least the caps are ok.
I have seen one company after another to adopt FF Dax as their corporate typeface, making their logos look like subsidiaries of the ominous DaxCorp. If Google would want to change their logo, they will use FF Dax, I bet.
Frutiger is a typeface I'm admiring my whole (type-aware) life, a work by a true master. Whenever you want a type which is barely there, which offers the shortest distance between information, eyes and brain, choose Frutiger. Choose Frutiger if you don't know what to use, it will look friendly if you write to a friend, it will look sober if you raise an invoice. Maybe because this typeface adopts the emotions of the content, it is used so widely. Number of times I've used Frutiger: 1.
Of course Zapfino's usage reaches it's peak around December 24th, but it is everywhere. When you see Zapfino on a greeting card, it's like writing El Cheapo all over it.
On one hand, Hermann Zapf created a beautiful typeface, the calligraphic precision of which is unmatched. Unfortunately that precision is ruined by the content: the mentioned cheap greeting cards, anything involving Italian cuisine or anything that wants look artsy... Bad karma.
Gotham is a timeless piece, well-spaced, with beautiful numerals, graceful caps. Look at the M, R, G, Q, nothing to add, nothing to take away, proportions that can live on forever. A flawless sans? Gotham is closer to it than many others. And Gotham is everywhere.
Now, in no way I'm saying that the above typefaces (with exception of Arial) are bad and shouldn't be used. I've used some of them, and I probably will do so again. I only suggest that before using a certain typeface just because it's on your hard drive already, you think for a moment if you don't need something more... unique, that could do just as well, or better. There are plenty of alternatives ;)
I mean is there another typeface that has an own movie? Univers turned 50 and nobody cared, Futura will turn 80 and I don't see any poster contests or special t-shirts editions coming.Give me
Helvetica=Everywhere
I wrote it in all-caps for a reason, see that R? Ugly. Nonetheless Arial is probably the most used typeface ever, thanks to Microsoft of course, and it's the first typeface on the list quite often. Actually Arial is here as a represantative of all system fonts like Comic Sans, Times New Roman, Verdana etc. My grandma told me: if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all, so I'll stop here.
Dare to be different? Use FF Meta! As a corporate type, for long copy in design magazines, for bold ad headlines, for signage, for just about everything. That was the motto 15 years ago, and now with the beautiful FF Meta Serif on the market, the usage may just explode again.
Advertising agencies love Futura. Fashion labels love Futura. Every big foundry has an own Futura. Why not, it's a sans with no strings attached: a j is only a line and a dot, as fresh as it was 80 years ago. But 8 out of 10 typography professors will tell you not to use Futura for long body copy. But 8 out of 10 people who own Futura never had a typography professor.
FF DIN, or any other DIN is used for everything that is supposed to look cool. Packaging? DIN! Fashion? DIN! Sports? DIN! Electronics? DIN! Portfolio? DIN! You see gray text on black, which is kind of hard to read? You probably see DIN.
Most used of Gill's weghts: Light and Ultra Bold, at least I feel that way. The weird thing about it is that the Ultra Bold lowercase is hideous. No wonder, that weight was designed only to beat Futura Extra Bold. At least the caps are ok.
I have seen one company after another to adopt FF Dax as their corporate typeface, making their logos look like subsidiaries of the ominous DaxCorp. If Google would want to change their logo, they will use FF Dax, I bet.
Frutiger is a typeface I'm admiring my whole (type-aware) life, a work by a true master. Whenever you want a type which is barely there, which offers the shortest distance between information, eyes and brain, choose Frutiger. Choose Frutiger if you don't know what to use, it will look friendly if you write to a friend, it will look sober if you raise an invoice. Maybe because this typeface adopts the emotions of the content, it is used so widely. Number of times I've used Frutiger: 1.
Of course Zapfino's usage reaches it's peak around December 24th, but it is everywhere. When you see Zapfino on a greeting card, it's like writing El Cheapo all over it.On one hand, Hermann Zapf created a beautiful typeface, the calligraphic precision of which is unmatched. Unfortunately that precision is ruined by the content: the mentioned cheap greeting cards, anything involving Italian cuisine or anything that wants look artsy... Bad karma.
Gotham is a timeless piece, well-spaced, with beautiful numerals, graceful caps. Look at the M, R, G, Q, nothing to add, nothing to take away, proportions that can live on forever. A flawless sans? Gotham is closer to it than many others. And Gotham is everywhere.Now, in no way I'm saying that the above typefaces (with exception of Arial) are bad and shouldn't be used. I've used some of them, and I probably will do so again. I only suggest that before using a certain typeface just because it's on your hard drive already, you think for a moment if you don't need something more... unique, that could do just as well, or better. There are plenty of alternatives ;)
Peugeot type
In case you didn't know, the type on the back of the Peugeot cars is from Jean Francois Porchez and is called Lion. Love the numerals!
Font of the day: Leadville
Leadville is a nice quirky slab serif, a revival of Egiziano (1812). It's $29 at Aerotype, and they've got many other nice hot metal originals and display fonts.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Font of the day: Galaxie Polaris
Galaxie Polaris is equally great for headlines and long copy, it has that neogrotesque feel, but is at the same time somewhat soft, but not too much. And the best thing: it's $49/weight, but the family of 10 fonts costs only $199! Get it at Village fast, before they realized how cheap it is! Also great: Apex Serif, Stag and Mavis.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Font of the day: Tubby
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Font of the day: Fedra Serif
Fedra Serif A is a sturdy face, which looks magnificent in print. I love the low contrast, the short ascenders and descenders, the tight spacing, the a, the g, M, P, K... If you need a finer face, go for Fedra Serif B, if you need an accompanying grotesque, try Fedra Sans, if you want striking headlines, take the Display cut, need to use tables? There's Fedra Mono too. Stunning language support, (including cyrillic, Greek and Arabic!) beautiful italics and loads of OpenType features make Fedra a family fun to work with. Of course at €90/cut it's not cheap at all, but that's a font that will serve you well for years! While at Typotheque, don't forget to check out Greta and Jigsaw. Also great: the sketches of fonts in development, nice insights.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Font of the day: Berkeley Oldstyle
ITC Berkeley Oldstyle is an excellent text face, and the delicate details (especially in the italics) make it very suitable for display use. Based on the design of Frederic Goudy, it comes in 8 cuts as an OpenType Pro font. Starting at $39!
Friday, May 9, 2008
Quickly change units in Photoshop
If you want to change measurement units, just right-click the ruler.It also works in other Adobe apps, and InDesign even lets you to change vertical and horizontal units separately.
Font of the day: Tondo
Dalton Maag's Tondo comes in four weights starting at £30. Also great: Lexia, InterFace and King's Caslon.
The truth about Comic Sans
It is a typeface everyone loves to hate, it makes everything look ugly and unprofessional, and yet it is for sure used more often than any TDC winner... Vincent Connare, the author of Comic Sans explains how the typeface comes to your PC.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Font of the day: Solaris
Solaris from Elsner+Flake comes in 11 cuts starting at €35. And they also give away their Alternate Gothic No. 2, just click the link at the top of the shop, and fill in the details.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Pictogram language
Gerd Arntz designed around 4000 signs, which symbolized key data from industry, demographics, politics and economy, for the visual language Isotype. Some of the signs are now online, and are a great source of inspiration.
P.S. The Gerd Arntz logo is set in Akkurat from Lineto.
The 72 DPI myth
Too often I hear that “if someone wants to publish pictures online, they should be 72 DPI”. People always say “300 DPI for print, 72 DPI for screen”. This is just plain wrong, and here's why:
The DPI value indicates the dots per inch resolution used to print things out. With 300 DPI there are enought dots in one inch to make the pictures look sharp, with 72 DPI artifacts are clearly visible.
But on the Internet, the resolution is irrelevant! Let's make some tests:
Our test picture is 500x500 px, 300 DPI. The filesize is 259,4 KB.
Now let's change the resolution to 72 DPI, leaving the physical dimensions at 500x500 px.
Still 259,4 KB!
What if we change the resolution to 2 DPI? (Don't try to print that out ;)
Yep, the filesize is still 259,4 KB.
You can download the files and see that DPI won't make any impact on filesize, it will only affect the printed materials. If you want to reduce the filesize of a picture, you will have to reduce the pixel dimensions.
The font used to “test” is the free Regular Cargo by Nik Thoenen.
The DPI value indicates the dots per inch resolution used to print things out. With 300 DPI there are enought dots in one inch to make the pictures look sharp, with 72 DPI artifacts are clearly visible.
But on the Internet, the resolution is irrelevant! Let's make some tests:
Our test picture is 500x500 px, 300 DPI. The filesize is 259,4 KB.Now let's change the resolution to 72 DPI, leaving the physical dimensions at 500x500 px.
Still 259,4 KB!What if we change the resolution to 2 DPI? (Don't try to print that out ;)
Yep, the filesize is still 259,4 KB.You can download the files and see that DPI won't make any impact on filesize, it will only affect the printed materials. If you want to reduce the filesize of a picture, you will have to reduce the pixel dimensions.
The font used to “test” is the free Regular Cargo by Nik Thoenen.
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