to glut yourself on Dino dos Santos’s typefaces at half price.
The sale ends on Tuesday. Run!
Continue reading “You have four days”
Category: typography
TypeCon 2007 in 100 words or less
“I love Quark, but . . . at some point you gotta stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.”
“Calli means ‘good’ and graphy means ‘writing,’ so calligraphy means ‘beautiful writing.’ Isn’t that neat?”
Because some users don’t know how to type curly quotes instead of straight ones, you should make fonts whose straight quotes are the same as the curly ones—are you !@#$% kidding me?
Cabarga talks softly, is clever with Illustrator.
Elements 3E signed by Bringhurst!
Hotels with lousy Internet must die.
Many pretty Mexican typefaces.
Anything is interesting for only twenty minutes—almost.
Hot or not: curvy, with a prominent tail?
The Psychology of Fonts, commissioned by Lexmark Printers and written by psychologist Dr Aric Sigman explains how a typeface will significantly influence what the reader thinks about you.
Courier is seen as the choice of “sensible shoes” type of people or “anoraks” and curvy icons like Georgia or Shelly suggest a bit of a “rock chick” personality.
So that’s why I like Georgia: I’m a rock chick! Duuuude!!
The study found rectilinear fonts were more appealing to men, while the more round and curvy fonts with prominent tails were favourites with women.
Huh. I wouldn’t have thought it’d shake out in quite that way, but that shows you what I know about the sexes.
(Via Design Observer.)
Photo: erika’s licks by Lex in the City / Alexia; some rights reserved.
Four Questions for Book Designers
If you’re a book designer or merely wish to play one on TV, Stephen Tiano’s got a few things to ask you. Interesting questions, interesting answers.
Photo: Questioning by Ann Douglas; some rights reserved.
See you in Seattle?
Anybody going to TypeCon?
Despite saying last year that “I probably won’t go again,” and despite adding a mental “and especially to the one in Seattle,”* I just registered for, oops, the conference in Seattle. Because I realized that the way things are shaking out, otherwise I’ll end up not taking any summer vacation, and that’s just sad.
So I’ll drag myself out there for a week, see some friends, and maybe visit Vancouver. But also, because I’m already committed to flying across the country, staying in a hotel, and taking days off from work, this year I will be attending two full days of workshops (including “Bezier Curves for Cowards”!!), which I think will make the whole expedition much more fun and worthwhile.
And you?
Photo: elephant car wash by Jason Brackins; some rights reserved.
- Lived there for a year. Didn’t like it.
What typefaces writers compose in, and why
Slate presents “My Favorite Font: Anne Fadiman, Jonathan Lethem, Richard Posner, and others reveal what font they compose in and why.” Some bits I appreciated:
I like Courier because it seems provisional—I can still change my mind—whereas Times New Roman and its analogues look like book faces, meaning that they feel nailed down and immovable. —Luc Sante
Most of my books have been set in Walbaum, which sounds like a chain store but is in fact an early-19th-century font designed by Justus Erich Walbaum, a German punchcutter whose luscious serifs may have been influenced by his early apprenticeship to a confectioner. —Anne Fadiman
Obsessing about fonts is a form of procrastination, so of course I have indulged in it ever since I graduated from a TRS-80 Model III to a Macintosh. —Caleb Crain
There’s a strong preference for Courier, which I happen to think is a good idea. Keeps the writer from getting to hung up on presentation. When I worked on the PEN literary journal, I’d format files in Courier for the staff, but in Times New Roman for the editor in chief. The book was then set in very small Adobe Caslon, and we’d find another round of typos on that version—you see different kinds of errors every time you change the typeface.
The default fonts in most of my non-layout applications are set to Georgia, Verdana, and Andale Mono. Yours?
(P.S. Man, remember daisy-wheel printers? I used to take mininaps between pages when I printed out my papers for school; each page took, like, five minutes, and I found the tat-tat-tat-tat-tat soothing.)
Photo: APL 10 by Paul Downey; some rights reserved.
Michael Bierut on Picking the Font
A very readable piece over at Design Observer on picking the font: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface. Much more detailed and articulate than my mumblings on the subject.
Photo: Stopping for breakfast ? by Ram V; some rights reserved.
4 colors × 144 pages × 4 weeks
Oh, do go look at Tom Christensen’s wickedly detailed walkthrough, Manuscript to Art Book in Four weeks: The Making of Masters of Bamboo. Cool, cool, cool!
(Thanks, Tom!)
Picking the font: A case study
Having just gotten back from the weeklong holiday and totally forgotten how to do my job, while blathering about choosing text faces the other day I omitted two very obvious considerations:
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What kind of type is used in similar books?
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What typefaces are used on the book cover or jacket?
Choosing text type
There’s a nice little article that’s been doing the linky rounds called 15 tips to choose a good text type, by Juan Pablo De Gregorio, a Chilean graphic designer and a typographer. (I saw it most recently at Coudal Partners, who got it from Andy Rutledge.)
I was already thinking about this, as the famed David Moldawer asked me about it a couple of months ago, but I’m not sure I can unravel the selection process very articulately. Most of Señor De Gregorio’s advice has to do with legibility, and that is, indeed, a very big concern. But then how do you choose among the hundreds of typefaces that are quite legible, inoffensive, and suitable for text? Continue reading “Choosing text type”